MSNBC Hardball with Chris Matthews - Transcript

MSNBC Hardball with Chris Matthews - Transcript

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MATTHEWS: Welcome back to HARDBALL.

Here to answer some tough questions about looming legal battles, illegal immigration and the president of the United States is South Carolina Senator Lindsey Graham. He is also a colonel and reserve judge in the Air Force.

Is the National Guard the right force to send to the border?

SEN. LINDSEY GRAHAM ®, SOUTH CAROLINA: I think it can help, but it is not a permanent solution. They can be forced multipliers. They can provide some technical assistance. They can relieve some logistical border problems the border patrol has. They can enhance what the border patrol is doing. But I don‘t think you are going to see them on the front lines of law enforcement.

MATTHEWS: You know, I‘ll say this for the fifth time tonight. NBC cameras have caught people coming across the border. It is a very familiar picture. It is what we call stock footage. People climbing over, racing, sometimes being caught, kind of a cat and mouse game. Will this stop that?

GRAHAM: Well, what it does it allows the bored patrol to free up some people. IT provides new technology. And it is the recognition by the president that he gets the message from his right wing that rMD+IT_rMDNM_I know the border is broken, I‘m going to do something about it. He‘s telling the American people, we‘ve got a crisis, here‘s a crisis response.

What do you do when you have a crisis? You call out the National Guard. So, yes, it will be well-received if it is not over sold. This is not a permanent fix. We don‘t have the ability to keep the National Guard on the border forever. And it is not the way to secure the border.

The way to secure the border is through technology and law enforcement. We are going to double the size of the border patrol. But this is a political statement as well as a substantive statement. But if we oversell it as Republicans, we‘ll make a mistake.

MATTHEWS: Well, that‘s where I think my head is going. If you say it is going to stop illegal immigration, that‘s overselling it. Because people know if there is a job here they can get Los Angeles or South Carolina and there‘s a guy hiring on a street corner at $10 an hour, they‘re going to be there.

GRAHAM: We‘ve got 4.7 percent unemployment. People are coming because there is no employment. There is a better life in America than there is in Central America and Mexico. So people are coming to our country for the same reason the Irish came and everybody else came. We have a right to control the flow. But if you really want to solve the immigration problem, solve the employment problem.

MATTHEWS: How do you—when did the United States get responsibility for flawed employment in Mexico or Nicaragua?

GRAHAM: We don‘t, but I am saying people are responding to our needs.

People are coming over here because we have jobs that we‘re offering them. We need to find a way to control how we offer the job and who can take the job.

MATTHEWS: Well, how about making it illegal to hire illegal?

GRAHAM: Let‘s make it not only illegal but understandable. How about going to the Chamber of Commerce that‘s all over the country and say here‘s the way you employ people, here‘s a tamper proof card, here‘s a system that works. And if you don‘t use it, you‘re going to go to jail.

MATTHEWS: And the problem is we have got people on the left and the right who don‘t believe in an I.D. card.

GRAHAM: We have got problems with...

MATTHEWS: Right?

GRAHAM: Yes, absolutely. Now let me tell you the third audience he is talking to tonight. He is talking to the United States Senate. We are about to embark on a comprehensive solution. The president is telling the right, I hear you, I hear you about the border now you need to hear me. The border alone will not solve the problem. We need tamper proof employer verification cards.

MATTHEWS: Will he say that tonight?

GRAHAM: He‘s going to say that tonight, I believe. And I think he‘s going to say, you can‘t ignore 11 million people who came here to work.

MATTHEWS: OK so the National Guard talk tonight is basically a short- term demonstration project that he‘s serious.

GRAHAM: I hear you from the right and I‘m going to act because we‘ve got a crisis, short-term solution.

MATTHEWS: And behind that demonstration project you call it, the National Guard is a commitment to really stop illegal immigration.

GRAHAM: There are two messages behind the National Guard. To the right, I disagree with you about border security only. I‘m going down a different path. We‘re going to deal with the 11 million by giving them an earned path to citizenship into the employer community. I understand the system is broken. We‘re going to start over. But if you don‘t play fair in the future when we start over, we‘re coming after you.

MATTHEWS: What happens to those people. National Guard‘s coming into place, they‘re going to be assisting the border patrol, but what happens to those 11 million people—of those people who say "I‘m not going to bother going for citizenship. I‘m going to keep working illegally." What happens to them?

GRAHAM: Well what happens to them depends on what happens to the people hiring them. If we had a system tomorrow that every employer would be afraid not to play by the rules and give the card and not follow the rules, then the jobs would go away.

MATTHEWS: But you know, we look at—we have an industry in this country, the southern part of the country. Not just air conditioning but golf resorts, hotel business. All these people exist off of illegal labor, don‘t they?

GRAHAM: They‘re coming here because of the demand. We have a high demand for unskilled workers. We‘ve got the agriculture industry, the tourism industry, construction industry, where literally, these people are doing jobs that Americans no longer choose to do.

MATTHEWS: Well if the salaries went up, they might.

GRAHAM: Well the bottom line is we‘re trying to legalize a need.

MATTHEWS: OK, you know I disagree with you, Senator. There are people in our neighborhood, in Maryland, guys working their butts off. They‘re hard-working guys. I‘ve got nothing against the individuals. But they‘re working in sheet rock. They‘re putting up plaster board. They‘re doing painting jobs. They‘re doing jobs that pay pretty darn well.

And I don‘t think most are legal. So you can‘t just say they‘re coming to do the jobs people don‘t want. We have the city of Washington with a lot of working-class people that should maybe be hired to do those jobs. Why aren‘t they getting those jobs first?

GRAHAM: What I‘m saying is that the people are being hired who come across the border are doing jobs that are unskilled work, for the most part that‘s hard work, and they‘re getting paid, most, above minimum wage.

MATTHEWS: If you drive through this town, Senator, you see the construction jobs all over northwest. They‘re Hispanic workers. How come they‘re not hiring African Americans who live in this city? Why are they all Hispanics? Why are the people who get here, these are skilled jobs. Not the guy holding the flag. Anybody can do that. But the guys doing the drilling, the cleaning up the tar work, they‘re digging for the pipelines and everything else. They‘re doing skilled work.

GRAHAM: The fair question is, are we taking jobs away from willing American workers? We‘ve got 4.7 percent unemployment. You can‘t—there are not a bunch of people standing on the streets in South Carolina unemployed.

As a matter of fact, if you‘re an employer in South Carolina, you‘re begging for somebody that will show up five days a week. So this is not about a bunch of people coming over here working cheap, putting us out of work. We‘ve got historically low unemployment. This is about supply and demand in an out of control process, broken borders, a lousy legal system.

MATTHEWS: You really mean to say that there aren‘t people in the United States who want to work construction?

GRAHAM: I‘m saying that there will never be in your lifetime, lower unemployment than we have today.

MATTHEWS: Spoken like a proud Republican. Thank you, Senator Graham. Up next, Senator John McCain spent part of this weekend with the Reverend Jerry Falwell, a man he once called an agent of intolerance. We‘ll find out how that speech went and also about McCain future. That‘s coming up in the next segment, you‘re watching HARDBALL on MSNBC.

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