On the inaugural edition of the weekly Breitbart News Saturday show on Sirius XM Patriot channel 125 from 10 AM to 1 PM EST, Rep. Steve King (R-IA) said he decided not to run for the U.S. Senate largely because he wanted to fight against amnesty legislation. He warned amnesty opponents that advocates may try to sneak through legislation in the lame-duck session of Congress later this year.

“I wouldn’t draw a deep breath at any time,” King told Breitbart News Executive Chairman Stephen K. Bannon. ” We have to be ever vigilant.” Bannon will host the weekly show with a rotation of Breitbart News editors and contributors. 

King said he kept track of all the Republicans who spoke up against the House GOP leadership’s immigration principles, which he said were “broad enough that all of the Gang of Eight’s amnesty fits inside.” He emphasized that amnesty advocates had been thinking about pushing immigration reform after the Texas primary on March 4 or after the June primaries before resistance to it stalled their plans–for now.  

Specifically, King said the House GOP leadership could even try to “spring it on us” when the lame-duck session of Congress comes up after the elections. 

King said that there were over 100 million Americans not in the work force, and he asked why those pushing for amnesty and more guest-worker visas would want to bring in workers from foreign countries who “don’t understand our language” and are “illiterate in their own language.” 

King said amnesty is more dangerous to the country than Obamacare because it is “irreversible and a irrevocable decision that changes the character, the culture, the economy, and destiny of America forever.”

“You cannot ever go back to that intersection again,” King said. 

He emphasized that the country needs a “tighter labor supply,” an quoted Milton Friedman, who said that a nation cannot have open borders and a welfare state. He said that wages “can grow by competition” instead of minimum wage laws. 

“We need a stronger, more successful middle class,” King said, noting that those who are pushing amnesty are not “salt of the earth.” King said amnesty advocates are insulated from the consequences of unchecked immigration because they live in gated communities and send their kids to private schools. 

The Republican leadership has decided to focus on amnesty instead of Obamacare (King said the worst piece of legislation in his lifetime had the president’s name on it), though, and King sarcastically said that the huge donations from Facebook, Microsoft, Google, and the U.S. Chamber of Commerce “might have influenced them.” He also said that amnesty advocates want to focus specifically on DREAMers and perpetuate the myth that all are model citizens and valedictorians contrary to the evidence because the DREAMers, when framed in that manner, are the “most sympathetic universe of people.” 

But King said that once the children of illegal immigrants get amnesty, then “they are going to bring their parents in as a part of the family reunification plan.” None of this, King said, helps the country’s economy, the Republican Party, or the conservative movement. He said there is no data that “supports the idea that Republicans are the beneficiaries of anything that supports amnesty or pandering.”

King said he was willing to politically “die on the hill” in opposing amnesty so “I will not have to live with that afterwards politically.”

“So far the rule of law is holding together,” King said. But he said that amnesty opponents must always be on the watch.