Some GOP Concerned about Huckabee's Immigration Views
By Fred Lucas
CNSNews.com Staff Writer
December 04, 2007
(CNSNews.com) - As former Arkansas Gov. Mike Huckabee climbs in
the polls in the GOP presidential race, some of his Republican Party
opponents are criticizing his record on illegal immigration as being
un-conservative and not in line with what American voters want from
their next president.
When he was governor, Huckabee held the
following positions on illegal immigration: He supported higher
education benefits for children of illegal immigrants, opposed a
federal roundup of illegals from his state in 2005, opposed a 2001 bill
requiring proof of citizenship to vote in the state, and in 2001, a
member of his administration pushed for legislation to grant driver's
licenses to illegal immigrants.
"I would hope he could be
trusted to secure the borders, but given his track record in Arkansas,
I don't see the conservative he has portrayed himself to be in Iowa,"
Jake Files, a former Arkansas state representative and current chairman
of the Sebastian County, Ark., Republican Party, told Cybercast News Service.
Files supports GOP presidential candidate Fred Thompson.
On the campaign trail, Huckabee has repeatedly said that the first step to immigration reform is securing the border.
Last
summer, he opposed the ultimately defeated Senate immigration reform
bill, which would have established a path to citizenship and a guest
worker program for illegal immigrants. Huckabee joined other opponents
of the measure in calling it an "amnesty" bill. But his front-runner
status in Iowa has increased scrutiny of his conservative record.
The
matter that has come up again and again was an initiative in 2005 to
offer the children of illegal immigrants in-state tuition rates and
make them eligible for the same merit-based scholarships to Arkansas
state colleges and universities as legal citizens. The proposal did not
become law.
After opposing candidates raised that issue during
the CNN/YouTube Republican debate last week, Huckabee responded, "We
are a better country than to punish children for what their parents
did."
Huckabee has said he supported only the merit-based scholarships for illegals.
But
on ABC's "This Week" on Sunday, when questioned by host George
Stephanopoulos, Huckabee seemed to concede that the legislation went
beyond awarding merit-based scholarships to children of illegal
immigrants and included in-state tuition for children of illegals.
Holding
a copy of the legislation, Stephanopoulos said: "Aside from the
scholarships, if a child of an illegal immigrant went through high
school in Arkansas, he would get the same in-state benefits as other
Arkansas residents do. Yet if a student was coming in from Colorado,
they would pay higher tuition."
"The difference is, if a student comes in from Colorado, he hasn't been educated in our high schools," said Huckabee.
"He
hasn't had our courses. But if you've had a child that's been there
since he was five- or six-years-old, or even since he was 13 - and he's
had his entire high school experience sitting along side Arkansas
students - the point is, is he better off going to college and becoming
a taxpayer as opposed to not going to college and potentially becoming
a tax-taker?" Huckabee added.
Though an in-state tuition
provision was part of the bill in the legislature, from the governor's
standpoint, in-state tuition was never part of proposal, said Huckabee
spokeswoman Alice Stewart.
"It was a proposal for merit-based
scholarships, based on meeting academic requirements and applying for
citizenship and remaining drug- and alcohol-free," Stewart told Cybercast News Service.
The
former governor was less ambiguous about the issue in 2005, said former
Republican Arkansas State Rep. Jeremy Hutchinson, who fought against
the Huckabee immigrant-education bill.
"There was no question in Arkansas that he supported in-state tuition," Hutchinson told Cybercast News Service.
"To say you shouldn't punish the kids for their parents' mistake is
wrong because it's not necessarily the kids. The requirement was three
years residence in Arkansas. A lot of non-traditional students get
their GEDs and get in-state tuition."
Hutchinson, also a Fred
Thompson supporter, specifically takes exception to Huckabee's
opposition to a federal raid of 119 illegal immigrants at an Arkansas
poultry plant, 107 of whom left the country either voluntarily or
through deportation.
Huckabee disapproved of the action by U.S.
Immigration and Customs Enforcement and called for a federal
investigation of the summer 2005 raid.
He reportedly said,
"How is our government benefiting from an abandoned 1-year-old? I'm
thinking as a parent, if I was in that position and my only crime was
plucking a chicken to feed my family. I didn't hurt anyone. It would be
different if the crime was robbing a bank with a gun or making
methamphetamine."
Concerning Huckabee's response to the raid,
Hutchinson said, "It was wrong to criticize the agents. They don't make
the laws. They enforce them."
Further, to believe that the raid
means Huckabee will be soft on immigration misses the point of the
criticism about the raid, said Stewart.
"Huckabee's concerns
surrounded the fact that federal authorities didn't contact the state
and local authorities about the raid," Stewart said. "Once they went in
and made the raid, the parents were hauled off to jail and the kids
were left to fend for themselves and taken into state custody.
"The
governor felt as if there should have been federal, state, and local
coordination prior to the raid so that the children could have been
taken care of. Once again, he does not feel that children should be
penalized or punished for the actions of their parents."
Earlier
this year, Democratic front-runner Sen. Hillary Clinton (N.Y.) faced
criticism after she failed to give a clear answer about whether she
supported a New York state proposal to issue driver licenses to illegal
immigrants.
Yet little has been said about support in the
Huckabee administration to enact a similar policy in Arkansas in 2001.
Huckabee himself did not voice support for the legislation, but his
human services liaison, Robert P. Trevino, lobbied the legislature to
pass the bill.
Huckabee never supported that proposal, Stewart said.
Trevino,
who could not be reached for comment Monday or Tuesday for this story,
wore two hats. In addition to his state job, he was also director of
Arkansas's chapter of the League of United Latin American Citizens
(LULAC), an advocacy group.
"It wasn't something he (Huckabee)
walked the halls of the Capitol touting," Files said. "But Bob Trevino
was actively in support of it, and he was one of the governor's main
guys. He wouldn't have been that active if the bill didn't have the
governor's support."
On ABC's "This Week," Huckabee said, "In
2005, I signed a bill that didn't allow illegals to get driver's
licenses. So I don't support the idea of illegals driving or voting."
The
former Arkansas governor also explained that his opposition to a bill
in 2001 that would require proof of citizenship to vote was primarily
for administrative reasons.
"In motor voter 2001, there would
be in essence making the front line DMV worker, the entry-level state
employee, responsible for being an immigration agent and checking the
documentation," Huckabee told Stephanopoulos on ABC.
"I think
the most important thing to do is to make sure that is done at the
federal level so that if you're going to check for authentic
identification, you do it with people who aren't at the entry level of
a state office," Huckabee added.
Huckabee is not the only
Republican presidential candidate facing criticism on the immigration
issue. Arizona Sen. John McCain, for instance, took a lot of heat for
sponsoring the "path to citizenship" proposal endorsed by President
Bush but labeled an "amnesty" bill by many conservatives.
Former
Massachusetts Gov. Mitt Romney supported a more lenient "path to
citizenship" proposal introduced in 2005. But in the midst of his
presidential run, he opposed the slightly more restrictive 2007 version
of the same bill. Meanwhile, former New York Mayor Rudy Giuliani
supported his city's "sanctuary city" policy that prohibited law
enforcement from enforcing immigration laws.
While in the
Senate in 1998, Thompson supported a temporary farm worker bill similar
to the guest-worker program that was one piece of the larger Senate
immigration bill from that summer. However, Thompson was a leading
voice against the complete summer proposal, and he supported tougher
border enforcement.
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