Who's the real conservative? - former Arkansas Gov. Mike Huckabee

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.