Bill Maher: Immigration Reform Will Only Create More Democrats, You Know

Katie Pavlich | June 10, 2013 7:33 AM

This week the Senate is expected to make a big push for illegal immigration reform through the Gang of 8 bill and Democrats everywhere can hardly contain how excited they are. But on his show over the weekend, Bill Maher expressed frustration with Republicans for being against amnesty.

BILL MAHER, HBO'S "REAL TIME" HOST: I think they don't want the votes because you know what? They know if they're going to take 11 million people and make them citizens and allow them to vote, they're just creating more Democrats.
Latinos who are mostly young -- young trumps it all -- they hate Republicans. They did a survey this week --

CNN contributor and Republican strategist Ana Navarro pushed back on Maher's assertions.

ANA NAVARRO, REPUBLICAN STRATEGIST: Now you are agreeing with Ann Coulter.

MAHER: I'm agreeing with facts.

NAVARRO: No --

MAHER: Wait. They did a study this week, young people, this is the College Republicans, they wanted to find out. These were people who voted for Obama who they could win back. They wanted to know how they felt about the Republicans. These are the words: close-minded, racist, rigid, old fashioned. That's what young people think of Republicans. Probably because they are close-minded, racist, rigid and old fashioned.

NAVARRO: Let's go back to the point about legalizing 11 million [illegal immigrants] means 11 million Democrats. As the only Latino on the panel, I like to opine on this. I'm a Republican Latino. We are not lemmings; we are people. We don't follow just blindly, we have opinions.

MAHER: No.

NAVARRO: Let me just say --

MAHER: But 71% [of Latinos] voted for Obama.

NAVARRO: Because who were they going to vote for? Mitt Romney, who wanted to self-deport?

MAHER: And who are you going to put up next time that they're going to like better?

NAVARRO: Oh, almost anybody.

I hate to say it, but Maher is right. As a reminder, granting amnesty did nothing for Ronald Reagan and the Republicans. Not to mention, Republicans lost the last two elections against President Obama and they ran extremely moderate candidates. John McCain, who is all about amnesty, and Mitt Romney, who has a bit of a tougher illegal immigration stance than McCain but is still anything from far right.