CNNFN Lou Dobbs Tonight-Transcript

CNNFN

SHOW: LOU DOBBS TONIGHT 06:00 PM Eastern Standard Time

January 23, 2004 Friday

HEADLINE: LOU DOBBS TONIGHT; CNNfn

GUESTS: Ed Weiler, Drew Cline, Dana Rohrabacher, Bill Powell, Jim Ellis, Tim Ferguson

BYLINE: Kitty Pilgrim, Miles O'Brien, Lisa Sylvester, Jamie McIntyre, William Schneider, Jeanne Meserve, Candy Crowley, Bob Franken, Jen Rogers, Casey Wian, Christine Romans

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PILGRIM: President Bush's new immigration plan would give temporary legal status to an estimated 10 million illegal aliens in this country. My guest tonight says that would have many dangerous effects, especially on our healthcare system and also national security.

Congressman Dana Rohrabacher is a member of the International Relations Committee. He joins us tonight from Irvine, California. And thanks very much for joining us.

Congressman, you say that the Bush plan is really a defacto amnesty and you don't like it at all. Explain to us why.

REP. DANA ROHRABACHER, (R) CALIFORNIA: Well, first of all, let me note I think President Bush has a very good heart and I think that he's motivated because of the predicament that we have with so many people in our country, illegally, who are being exploited and live in very bad conditions.

And I think the try to normalize the situation, the president is trying to reach out for a solution, but I don't think that solution will be very good for the rest of us. I think it will have dramatically bad impact on people's wages and on our social services.

PILGRIM: One of the things you object to is giving Social Security to illegal alien workers and you have proposed an alternative to that. Tell us a little bit about it.

ROHRABACHER: Well, let's put it this way. If we start providing that people in our country illegally can be part of our Social Security system, there is going to be no end to it. It will just-most countries in the world do not have retirement plans for their people. And if they learn all over the world and third world countries that they get to the United States, that they could be part of our Social Security system, it is going to have a horrendous damage.

I'll give you this one example. Our people today don't pay into Social Security as much as they get out. After a few years, it becomes a city penned from the government to help people live well or live better when they are older. Well, if we extend that same courtesy to tens of millions of people who come from foreign countries. When they go back to their own country, we are going to be providing retirement benefits for millions and millions of people all over the world. It will break the system.

PILGRIM: One of the other things you take on is healthcare and you basically were opposed to voting for the Medicare Reform Bill because of a billion dollars that was in it to take care of healthcare needs of illegal aliens in this country. You ultimately went with the bill, but came up with a plan of your own. Tell us a little bit about that one.

ROHRABACHER: Well, surely. I voted for the Medicare bill. The president was strongly pushing that to make sure, again taking care of our seniors. But while that bill was in the Senate, somebody added an extraneous provision, it was a good friend of mine, Senator Kyl, that extraneous position-addition was that there was a billion dollars added to the bill to provide emergency healthcare for illegal immigrants.

Well, my bill-I was not going to vote for the bill, but to get my vote they agreed that we would have some legislation that I would write that would mitigate the bad impact of having the taxpayers officially picking up the medical costs, emergency medical costs, for illegal immigrants.

What my bill says is that if an illegal immigrant comes in for emergency healthcare. Yes we're going to treat him if it's an emergency, but we are not going to be treating him, and it does define what an emergency is, for conditions that he had when he came into this country.

We can't have people coming here and expecting to be treated for genetic conditions, for cancer, for long-term healthcare problems. No, we will treat someone if they are in an emergency, if their life is threatened at that moment and only to the degree that they can then get back to their home country.

Furthermore, the hospitals will be required to get the names and ask the legal status of the people they are treating. Then make that available to the INS.

PILGRIM: So it really-I was about to ask you, it really makes the hospital responsible for reporting an illegal alien in this country, does it not?

ROHRABACHER: No, what it does is it require the hospitals to ask questions as they have to ask right now. They ask a lot of questions. It just means they have to ask is the person here legally? And if not, who-where they live and who their employer is.

And what my bill does, if they are here illegally, and the employer has not called to try to confirm whether they are here illegally, the medicare costs will then be picked up not by the taxpayers for that emergency healthcare, but by the employer.

PILGRIM: All right. Very interesting proposals. Thank you very much for explaining them to us.

Congressman Dana Rohrabacher, thanks for being with us.

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