Thread: Huckabee plan lacks attribution

Huckabee plan lacks attribution
By Michael Dobbs
The Washington Post
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January 13. 2008 12:41AM

The Claim: "I have created a nine-point immigration policy that says there is a 120-day period in which people go to their home country and start the process from the back of the line." - Mike Huckabee, Republican debate, Myrtle Beach, S.C., Jan. 10.

"Huckabee has a new immigration plan out, and it's way, way better than anyone would have expected from him." - Mark Krikorian, National Review Online, Dec. 6, 2007.

It is hardly surprising that Krikorian, executive director of the Center for Immigration Studies, would approve of Mike Huckabee's new immigration plan. Seven of the nine points in the Huckabee plan were copied from a plan that Krikorian outlined nearly three years ago in the National Review. Rather than hammer out its own policy on the subject, the cash-starved Huckabee campaign simply lifted a ready-made one off the shelf.

The Facts: Huckabee needed to come up with an immigration plan in a hurry last month. He was beginning his ascent in opinion polls, but was under attack from GOP rivals for a "liberal" position on immigration. His record in Arkansas, supporting tuition breaks for illegal immigrants and opposing a federal roundup of undocumented workers, made him vulnerable.

When the campaign announced the governor's nine-point immigration plan on Dec. 6, it noted that it was "partially modeled" on Krikorian's proposal three years earlier. Huckabee took credit for the plan in the last Republican debate, and Mitt Romney's campaign is crying foul. A Romney "Fact Check" said that the Huckabee plan had lifted "whole sections of Krikorian's editorial without quotes or direct attribution."

The Huckabee campaign has copied verbatim at least 10 passages of the Krikorian plan.

Krikorian expressed no hard feelings about the copying of his words. "That is what think tanks do," he said. "We come up with ideas, and we hope that someone will steal them."

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By MICHAEL DOBBS

The Washington Post
http://www.concordmonitor.com/apps/pbcs ... 30393/1013

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http://www.alipac.us/article2866.html

Further proof Suckabee's immigration plan and commitment to clamping down on illegal immigration and supporting attrition through enforcement is nothing more than political expediency and political manuevering to deceive people and gain votes. Nothing, absolutely nothing whatsoever in Huckabillery's past record regarding immigration illustrates that he will enforce the immigration laws, seal the borders and clamp down on illegal aliens within the country.

I'm surprised and disappointed that Krikorian/CIS would specify a 120 day period in the home country. That is amnesty. If the illegal knows it's only 120 days and then he is eligible for citizenship, that is no better than the sham penalties in the Kennedy-McCain Senate bill. It is cynical symbolism.

The only fair and workable solution to the illegal alien invasion is attrition, through enforcement of employment laws, withholding of social service benefits, and self-deportation. Only those illegals who permanently and voluntarily repatriate should ever be eligible for legal entry, and there must be no guarantees for any of them. The U.S. must reform its legal immigration criteria, getting rid of family reunification and instead offering entry only to those whose skills are needed.

One immigration cohort we will never need is tens of millions of people with less than a 6th grade education, a reluctance to learn English, continuing allegiance to home country and culture, and an entitlement mentality. Such an immigration will cheat our taxpayers, overwhelm our culture and destroy our single language unity, just as the illegals now here are already doing.