Posted on 01/09/2008 1:46:06 PM PST by ding_dong_daddy_from_dumas
Earlier today, I hammered the Huckabee campaign for not getting back to me within 3 days time on an immigration question I had for them.
Well tonight, I received a pleasant call from the lovely and talented Charmaine Yoest, who works with the Huckabee campaign. She apologized for the campaign's delay in getting back to me and answered all my questions.
First of all, definitively, as I thought, the Huckabee immigration plan DOES NOT contain any sort of touchback provision.
To the contrary, Huckabee's policy on illegal immigration is as follows,
* Policies that promote or tolerate amnesty will be rejected.
* Propose to provide all illegal immigrants a 120-day window to register with the Bureau of Citizenship and Immigration Services and leave the country. Those who register and return to their home country will face no penalty if they later apply to immigrate or visit; those who do not return home will be, when caught, barred from future reentry for a period of 10 years.
Some people have pointed to something Huckabee said on Fox News Sunday as evidence of a touchback plan,
WALLACE: Let's turn to immigration, because you put out a new immigration plan this week. You called for building...
HUCKABEE: Yes.
WALLACE: ... a border fence, for cracking down on employers, for telling illegals to go home.
But last year in an interview, you said something somewhat different. You said this, "I think that the rational approach is to find a way to give people a pathway to citizenship."
Governor, in your new plan, the only path is to go home and to get on the back of the line, which, of course, would mean years of waiting. Why the change?
HUCKABEE: Well, I don't think there's an inconsistency. When I said a pathway, I didn't say what the pathway was.
I now believe that the only thing the American people are going to accept — and, frankly, the only thing that really makes sense — is a pathway that sends people back to the starting point.
But this idea of the 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 any place in the world within seconds, do a background check instantaneously — it's our government that has failed and is dysfunctional.
It shouldn't take years to get a work permit to come here and pick lettuce. So 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.
What Charmaine said -- and incidentally, this is what I thought he meant in the first place -- was that Huckabee was moving on from talking about amnesty into talking about how his plan will deal with speeding up the legal immigration process. That's the last part of the 9th plank of his plan,
9. Modernize the Process of Legal Immigration
* Eliminate the visa lottery system and the admission category for adult brothers and sisters of U.S. citizens.
* Increase visas for highly-skilled and highly-educated applicants.
* Expedite processing for those who serve honorably in the U.S. Armed Forces.
* Improve our immigration process so that those patiently and responsibly seeking to come here legally will not have to wait decades to share in the American dream. Governor Huckabee has always been grateful to live in a country that people are trying to break into, rather than break out of.
Also, she said that claims that Minuteman founder Jim Gilchrist is considering withdrawing his endorsement are not true. To the contrary, she said Gilchrist will be campaigning with them in Iowa.
I think I have been one of the harshest critics of Huckabee on immigration on FR. Until now, I was never able to find any attempt to explain what Huckabee said on Fox news Sunday on Dec. 9:
"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."
This explanation, dated Dec. 21 2007, says that When Huckabee said "days, not weeks," he was referring to a different part of his plan that talked about legal visa applicants, not illegals.
It is very possible to say something in a 30 second answer that will be completely misunderstood. Is the Huckabee staffer who gave this explanation spinning here, or is that what Huckabee really meant?
One problem FR people like me have is Huckabee's record, including his deal allowing Mexican Consulate to lease state property for $1 per year.
As governor, Mr. Huckabee opposed a bill to require proof of citizenship to register to vote. The bill would have also required state agencies to turn in illegals.
Mr. Huckabee fought that, as well as a bill to deny illegal aliens taxpayer-funded public benefits. Then-Gov. Huckabee backed issuing drivers’ licenses to illegal aliens.
Mr. Huckabee supported a partial amnesty as governor, in the form of in-state tuition for illegal aliens. He even tried to advantage illegals with scholarships.
He continues to support rewarding illegal aliens who claim to have entered the country as children with in-state tuition — effectively taxpayer-subsidized education. When Mr. Romney pressed him on this at the CNN debate in November, Mr. Huckabee said, “we are a better country than to punish children for what their parents did,” as if that were the end of the argument.
This flavor of amnesty, which was beatenin the U.S. Senate this fall when the DREAM Act came up, gives foreign lawbreakers an economic benefit unavailable to legal but out-of-state Americans.
It also puts illegal aliens in the pool of college applicants. That means for every illegal alien who lands an admissions slot, an American kid is kept out of college. Mr. Huckabee somehow rationalizes this perversity as “compassionate.”
Mr. Huckabee went to Mexico in 2003 to urge the Mexican government to open a consulate in Arkansas. Heleased the consulate state office space for $1 per year (obligating Arkansans to subsidize the rest of the costs of nearly $600 a month). And he put together a sweetheart deal for Mexico to enjoy a permanent facility in Little Rock without having to pay rent for three years.
It’s hard to accept as genuine a recidivist pandering politician’s turn on a dime from multiculturalist, liberal, open-borders, demonizing zealot to true-blue advocate of a no-amnesty, enforcement-only attrition strategy. But that’s what Mr. Huckabee is trying to pull. He hopes voters will ignore his long, awful record on immigration issues.
http://www.humanevents.com/article.php?id=24142&s=rcmc
Huck can trot this stuff out, but it’s not what he stood for as governor. He pretty much created a conduit to enable Tyson to have a cheap supply of labor, and I bet my last dollar the taxpayers made up the difference in welfare.
Is it possible that Huckabee’s answer was misunderstood?
I understand his plan to be exactly as stated in the article. Those who dislike him will say it is disingenuous or what have you for him to have this plan, but it is the one he has put forth and the one that Gilchrist is campaigning for him with.
Want to see what he really says? See: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ypdd0AKJ_Qs&feature=related
Huckabee is an open borders freak!!
Hmmmmmmmmm? Does this mean that the illegal can't touchback to be put on the path to citizenship, but the illegal can touchback to become a temporary guest worker?
Huckabee’s flip flopping on immigration is just the beginning of his fall, and soon his followers will be looking for a suitable replacement.
The GOP doesn’t get it. They need to let this faction find a home. The amount of invective aimed at evangelicals is surprising, but then everyone wants their votes.
Huckabee has surged because he won a couple of debates and he’s got evangelical support. If a quick rise can happen to the liberal pro-life evangelical Huckster, it can happen to the conservative pro-life evangelical Hunter.
Prolife evangelicals will be very comfortable in Hunter’s camp, since he’s a prolife evangelical staunch conservative.
Most of his spending increases went to welfare, particularly Medicaid and food stamps. Participation swelled too. I’d sure like to know if that was due to illegals.
He also spoke out against the ICE raids on Tyson, was suspected in aiding Tyson to bring illegals in the SE, aligned with Tyson and LULAC on bringing more in, the Mexican consulate as you mentioned, and on and on. And Tyson got cheap labor out of the deal.
And if that swell in welfare recipients was due to illegals, the taxpayers made up the difference for those cheap wages.
Borderline criminal in my opinion.
Thanks, I am trying to keep an open mind. But the devil is in the details. Even if I assume that Huckabee is sincere about his plan, what does this mean:
This is not a "touchback" provision. Those who leave this country and apply to return from their home country would go to the back of the line.
"Go to the back of the line" was one of the mantras for the 2007 amnesty bill. In that bill, they would actually go to the front of the line to get legalized, and once they got their Z-visas, might have longer wait times than some legal visa holders. But since legal applicants have to wait years for a visa to become available, the "Go to the back of the line" slogan was pure sophistry.
>>Does this mean that the illegal can’t touchback to be put on the path to citizenship, but the illegal can touchback to become a temporary guest worker?<<
Good question. Or does it mean that some of them will get to be guest workers and other won’t?
the Huckster is a fraud
This plan of his shifts as much as the Sahara sands.....
So under the Huckabee plan immigrants would have to return kicks fielded in the end zone?
I dont think Huckabee was misunderstood...
He was asked about illegal aliens and he answered about illegal aliens...
Immigrants in the US military already have a quick path to citizenship when I became a citizen in 1975 it was only 3 years from the date the person first arrived in the US..How much earlier would it have to be...There should be some time to develop a resume of behavior in the military and in the country etc...
He never adressed the REAL immigrants who already wait for years...he’s just another bleeding heart...Ooooo dont make the illegal aliens wait any amount of time, they have earned special consideration through their breaking into our country illegally /s
By the way when does that Mexican consulate close??? Hillary has promised us that she will fulfill her plan on Day One...Will Huck close that consulate on Day One ????
The plan states that they have 120 days to go home, not stay. If they do, and apply for legal entrance to this country, they are put to the back of the line of others trying to get here legally. Those found after the 120 day grace period are deported and not allowed to apply to come here again for 10 years.
The confusing part of the plan is this - Gov. Huckabee has stated his intention to speed up the immigration application process. He wants to make it quicker for immigrants to find out the status of their application than it takes today. This would allow for them to come back, if they meet muster, legally in a more expeditious manner than the current process would allow.
His quote is “if we can get approved by American Express for a credit card over the phone, why does it take years for the government to process an application” to come into the country legally?
Anyway, that is how I understand it.
http://www.freerepublic.com/focus/f-news/1950794/posts
Huckabee retreats on birthright citizenship
Mike Huckabee yesterday contradicted his own top immigration surrogate, announcing he will not support a constitutional amendment to end birthright citizenship for children born in the United States to illegal aliens.[snip]
Thanks for the post. If Huckabee took a question on citizenship and answered on work visas, he’s an idiot. Still, it would be consistent with him apologizing to Pakistan for the murder of one of their political leaders...
Huckabee has a long history of supporting illegal immigration by turning a blind eye and equating opposition to it as racism. I would trust him in the WH making policy on illegal immigration about as much as I trust Linda Chavez.
It is the Pence plan. Touchback, if it is even in the plan, means the closest Mexican Consulate.
Huck is a fraud. he is actually worse.
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