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.
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.
If this is really his position, then he doesn’t understand the contradictions.
The process of returning home, applying, waiting for a background check, then waiting behind all the other people ahead of them CANNOT take a few days.
We have limits on how many immigrants we’ll accept from any particular country for a reason. They need time to assimilate. So if the limit is 500,000 legal immigrants per year, and there are 5 million people waiting to immigrate, that’s a ten year wait, even after the background check has verified they aren’t criminals.
There are only two ways to do it so it would only take a few days: 1) those illegals go to the front of the line, which is obviously unfair to those already waiting for legal entrance; 2) remove all limits to legal immigration, which is a bad idea and doesn’t provide time for assimilation.
The years-long waiting period is a GOOD thing. It ensures people are really sincere about wanting to be US citizens, and it allows limited manpower in ICE to do a thorough background check. If Huckabee thinks you can check someone’s fingerprints, mugshot databases, and criminal wanted lists, etc. all around the world in a few weeks, he is uninformed. If you only check the country where the person claims to be a citizen, then you are relying on the ID system of that one country. I wouldn’t trust any country to have an incorruptible system of identification. I’m certain in Mexico you could buy fake papers saying you are Juan Valdez even easier than you could here in the US. All you would know is who they CLAIM to be, not who they ARE.