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Rock-A-By Huckababy
Last week the New York Times reported that under Mike Huckabee’s immigration plan, if illegals don’t leave the U.S. within 120 days, they get deported and can’t return for ten years. I took this to mean that if illegals did return to their home country within 120 days, they would get legalized. I called this scheme amnesty. However, based on the seemingly unambiguous anti-amnesty language in Huckabee’s Secure America Program posted at his website which I read later (“Policies that promote or tolerate amnesty will be rejected”), I corrected my post and said that Huckabee opposes amnesty. But the story is not over. Huckabee’s statements at the Univision debate and elsewhere over the weekend, as reported by Mark Krikorian at the Corner and Allan Wall at Vdare, reveal that my first reaction, which I had said was wrong, was correct after all. Krikorian writes:
Huckabee still hasn’t figured this issue out. McCain and Giuliani are openly calling for amnesty, but Huckabee’s new immigration plan says that “Policies that promote or tolerate amnesty will be rejected.” … [But] He’d said [before the Univision debate] on Fox News: “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.” [Emphasis added.]So it’s just as I initially thought: when Huckabee says that if illegals don’t leave within 120 days, they get deported and can’t return for ten years, etc., he means that if they do leave within 120 days, they can get legalized and return almost immediately! Which means that his statement that he opposes amnesty is a lie. In his terrific article at Vdare about the Univision debate, Allan Wall writes:
Huckabee too, though he denied it, seems to support a form of amnesty as long as the illegals go home first.Wall then quotes Huckababy:
“When people come to this country, they shouldn’t fear. They shouldn’t live in hiding. They ought to have their heads up, because the one thing about being an American is, we believe every person ought to have his or her head up and proud, and nobody should have to be in hiding because they’re illegal when our government ought to make it so that people can reasonably come here in a legal fashion.”Which seems to mean either that everyone should get amnesty, or that the borders should be opened so that all people who want to come here can come legally, including people who up until the present moment have been illegal aliens. Which is tantamount to amnesty. Whatever the ambiguities in the situation, there is one thing we can be sure of: A politician who talks in the emotion-soaked language Huckabee uses about immigrants is never going to be serious about controlling legal or illegal immigration.
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