Huckabee admits immigration plan has revolving door (amnesty or "guest" workers)

Mike Huckabee cannot be trusted on immigration matters. I'll say that again: Mike Huckabee cannot be trusted on immigration matters.

In fact, just after releasing a plan that unfortunately took in some people, he now admitted on Fox News Sunday (link, video below) what I suspected: his plan includes a revolving door whereby former illegal aliens would leave the U.S. only to return within "days, maybe weeks" as legal workers. He didn't specify whether they'd just be coming back as "guest" workers with no chance at citizenship, but considering that he's supported a "pathway to citizenship" in the past, and in his remarks he not only didn't renounce that "pathway" but sought to explain what it meant (in Clintonian terms), one can assume that he's not opposed to putting millions on the "pathway to citizenship".

Not only that, but at one point he used the same language as president Bush, refering to people coming here illegally just to "feed their families".

Furthermore, his plan to "seal" the border is as unworkable as his plan to get millions of people to register and return home in 120 days. In fact, given his demonstrated weakness - and the inability to round up those millions of illegal aliens who won't leave within the 120 days - there'd be a mad dash for the borders.

And, his concept of slapdash background checks might let untold numbers of terrorists and criminals come here as "guests" or potential citizens.

After being asked by Chris Wallace whether there was an "inconsistency" between his past support for a "pathway to citizenship" and his current immigration plan, Mike Huckabee responded: "I don't think there's an inconsistency. When I said a 'pathway' I didn't say what the pathway was. [He's not the only Man from Hope]

I now believe that the only thing that the American people are going to accept and frankly the only thing that makes sense is a pathway that sends people back to the starting point. But, this idea that waiting years, no, I don't agree with that.

In fact, look, if we can get a credit card application done within hours, if we can get passports done within days, if we can transact business over the internet anywhere in the world within seconds, do a background check instantaneously, it's our government that's failed and is dysfunctional.

It shouldn't take years to get a work permit to come here and pick lettuce. So, a part of the plan that I have is that we seal the borders, you don't have amnesty and sanctuary cities, you do have a pathway that gets you back home. But, that pathway to get back here legally doesn't take years.

It would take days, maybe weeks. And, then, people could come back in the workforce. Let me tell you why that's important. Two reasons. Number one: the American people say, do something, do it now. We don't want to have this country ignoring the illegal problem. I get it. Secondly, I want people who are in this country to hold their heads up high. You know, right now there are a lot of people who really are here because they're trying to feed their families. I don't begrudge them that. I say I thank God everyday I'm in a country that people are trying to break into not break out of, but let's give them the means by which they can get here through the door legally, and when they're they don't have to hide, they don't have to keep their heads down and hope nobody catches them. They have their heads held high. Everyone living within the borders of the United States ought to do so with dignity and with a sense of pride, not a sense of fear.

plenty more not-to-be-trusted stuff in Huck’s record:

1. Soft-on-crime, paroled violent criminals like he was God ...
http://holycoast.blogspot.com/2007/12/huckabee-was-commutation-and-pardon.html
http://www.arkansasleader.com/frontstories/st_07_21_04/huckabee5.html

2. Soft-on-illegals, giving in-state tuition for illegals was his “Jesus juice” ... HIS RECORD ON IMMIGRATION STINKS ...

Mike Huckabee disses Americans, Mexicans, promotes illegal immigration: http://lonewacko.com/blog/archives/005609.html

While Gov. of Arkansas, Huckabee was AGAINST proving citizenship in order to register to vote. He called those who were in favor of this “racists”... http://www.signonsandiego.com/uniontrib/20050218/news_lz1e18perkins.html

Huckabee fought hard to kill an Arkansas bill which would have cut off social services for illegal aliens. Huckabee called the bill, “anti-Christian” and “un-American”... http://www.arkansasnews.com/archive/2005/01/28/News/316347.html

Huckabee supported in-state tuition for illegal aliens... http://www.arkansasnews.com/archive/2005/03/11/News/318458.html

Huckabee’s opposition to the illegal aliens bill: http://www.diggersrealm.com/mt/archives/000718.html

3. Huckster was and is a tax-and-spend-aholic:

According to the Democrat-Gazette, “the average Arkansan’s tax burden grew from $1,969 in the fiscal year that ended June 30, 1997, to $2,902 in the fiscal year that ended June 30, 2005, including local taxes,” a whopping tax increase of 47% under Huckabee’s tenure. Tax legislation passed while Huckabee was governor totaled “a net tax increase of $505 million, a figure adjusted for inflation and economic growth,” according to the Arkansas Department of Finance and Administration.

In February of 2004, Huckabee joined with two other Democratic governors in urging Congress to reject a bill that would make the Internet access tax moratorium permanent and embrace a temporary two-year extension of the ban instead.

Every two years, the Cato Institute grades the 50 governors on fiscal stewardship. Here’s last year’s assessment of Tax Hike Mike [emphasis added]:

Thanks to a final term grade of F, Huckabee earns an overall grade of D for his entire governorship. Like many Republicans, his grades dropped the longer he stayed in office. In his first few years, he fought hard for a sweeping $70 million tax cut package that was the first broad-based tax cut in the state in more than 20 years. He even signed a bill to cut the state’s 6 percent capital gains tax—a significant pro-growth accomplishment. But nine days after being reelected in 2002, he proposed a sales tax increase to cover a budget deficit caused partly by large spending increases that he proposed and approved, including an expansion in Medicare eligibility that Huckabee made a centerpiece of his 1997 agenda. He agreed to a 3 percent income tax “surcharge” and a 25-cent cigarette tax increase. In response to a court order to increase spending on education, Huckabee proposed another sales tax increase.
http://taxhikemike.org

4. When challenged on points #1, #2 and #3, Mike Huckabee and campaign have lied and dissembled on his real record.

5. IS NOT A CONSERVATIVE

“[Huckabee] has zero intellectual underpinnings in the conservative movement,” says Blant Hurt, a former part owner of, and columnist for, Arkansas Business magazine. “He’s hostile to free trade, hiked sales and grocery taxes, backed sales taxes on Internet purchases, and presided over state spending going up more than twice the inflation rate.”

Randy Minton, chairman of the Arkansas chapter of Phyllis Schlafly’s national Eagle Forum, said, “We called him a pro-life, pro-gun liberal, when I was in the state legislature and he was governor.” Phyllis Schlafly herself was even more direct.

President and Founder of Eagle Forum, Phyllis Schlafly, said this about Governor Huckabee: “He destroyed the conservative movement in Arkansas, and left the Republican Party a shambles.”

"Saint Michael" is a liar. Sure, he's yapping about closing the border, but once they are HERE, he sings a different tune.

"We penalize law-breakers. We don't penalize their children for something they can't help.

"If a child is gasping for air, asthmatic, and he's on the hospital steps, what do the other candidates suggest we do, let him sit there and gasp until he doesn't have any air left and he dies? If a child comes to our school -- and our law, by the way, in most of our states, mine certainly says you've got to educate a child if he's of child age -- what do you, break your own law and say, `No, you can't come in the schoolhouse door'?

"No, you don't do that. What you do is you elect a president who will fix the problem where it needs to be fixed: At the border. But if your government at the federal government is so incompetent that it fails to secure the border, you don't then grind your heel into the face of a 6-year-old child over it. That's not what this country does. We're a better country than that."

No wonder Geraldo loves him!

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