Huckabee further solidifies No-Amnesty Pledge

One of my concerns on Thursday with Mike Huckabee’s No-Amnesty Pledge was that the Pledge which he formally signed on camera had questionable language that might allow giving legal status to illegals, while the stronger statement that supplemented the Pledge and precluded long-term legal status was only an informal commitment that Gov. Huckabee had made to Roy Beck and sealed with a handshake. That problem has now been fixed by a new document posted at Huckabee’s website, in which the two statements are combined under Huckabee’s byline. However, as I point out below, there still may be something of a loop-hole for temporary legal status. Here, first, is the document:

January 17, 2008—11:38 PM
Numbers USA: No Amnesty Pledge
by Mike Huckabee

Yesterday, I signed the following pledge:

AMERICANS for BETTER IMMIGRATION

NO AMNESTY PLEDGE

“I pledge to oppose amnesty or any other special path to citizenship for the millions of foreign nationals unlawfully present in the United States. As President, I will fully implement enforcement measures that, over time, will lead to the attrition of our illegal immigrant population. I also pledge to make security of our borders a top priority of my administration.”

Important points:

1. The 12 million illegal immigrants now here will have to go home.

2. They will not get any legal status while here that allows them to remain long-term.

3. Once in their home countries, they may apply for re-admittance to the U.S. as immigrants, visitors or temporary workers through normal channels.

4. Once in their home countries, they will not receive any special privileges on the basis of their having been in the U.S. illegally, such as being put to the front of a visa line.

5. There will be no new categories or programs through which they may re-enter the U.S.

6. There will not be an expansion of green cards in any existing categories that will speed up their movement to the front of the line.

(The Governor agreed to this pledge made to the American people with his public signing before the national media on Jan. 16, 2008 at North Greenville University, South Carolina.)

In this statement, there doesn’t seem to be any wiggle room for legalization of illegal aliens. They get no legal status here. If and after they return home, the only way for them it get back into the U.S. is by the ordinary channels.

In reading over the document again, however, I see something that I missed before. Point Number 2, which says that the illegals will not get any legal status “that allows them to remain long-term,” opens the possibility of giving the illegals temporary legal status. And, as we know, once people get temporary legal status, it very often becomes permanent.

A source in the immigration reform movement offers a couple of angles on how to understand this.

In the bargaining to get a strong attrition program going, the source explains, it’s already clear that some of the fence-sitters in Congress will want—as a condition for their support—to soften slightly the results of the enforcement, by allowing illegal aliens who come forward to stay long enough for their children to finish the school year, or for some other time period that they may need to get their affairs in order. Since it is going to take years for attrition to get all the 12 million illegals out of the U.S., such a temporary “stay of departure” would likely not have any appreciable effect on the pace of the exodus and might be an acceptable price to pay, if that is what it takes to get the votes for a full enforcement package. Also, the illegals would probably not take advantage of such a short-term stay unless enforcement measures appeared to be so effective that the illegals feared being caught and summarily deported.

This would not be like the situation that occurs when people are admitted legally into the country on a supposedly temporary basis, say as “temporary” workers, and then their temporary status is upgraded into permanent legal residence. Any illegal alien who got some kind of temporary status would be fingerprinted and clearly identified as an illegal alien who has to leave the country by a specific date. If he stepped forward to ID himself, on the understanding that he must leave the country by a certain date, it will be much easier to find and deport him if he reneges.

Terry Morris writes:

Important and interesting stuff here. Perhaps Huckabee’s bid for the White House serves a [conservative] purpose after all.

Posted by Lawrence Auster at January 19, 2008 11:30 PM | Send