Huckabee Signs No Immigration Pledge
Former Arkansas Governor Mike Huckabee has become the first presidential candidate to sign the "No Amnesty" pledge from NumbersUSA, a self-proclaimed "immigration-reduction organization" and Americans for Better Immigration. The pledge calls for no "amnesty or any other special path to citizenship for the millions of the foreign nationals unlawfully present in the United States."
Huckabee, who had been hammered by conservatives for his "liberal' stands on immigration when he was in office, has taken more anti-immigration positions since the fall. He signed the pledge during a visit to the small Christian college of North Greenville University.
Yet Huckabee's position on immigration has been hard to pin down at times.
Last week, the Washington Times reported that Huckabee told his top immigration adviser that he would amend the Constitution to prevent children born in the U.S. to illegal aliens from automatically becoming American citizens. Minuteman Project founder James Gilchrist said that Huckabee told him "that he would force a test case to the Supreme Court to challenge birthright citizenship, and would push Congress to pass a 28th Amendment to the Constitution to remove any doubt."
But later in the week Huckabee contradicted Gilchrist. He said he had "no intention of supporting a constitutional amendment to deny birthright citizenship." He later claimed in an interview that his campaign had not been contacted by the Times before the story was published. But the original piece included a comment from a Huckabee spokesperson, who was quoted as saying Mr. Huckabee and Mr. Gilchrist were "united by a mutual desire to end illegal immigration and are political allies toward that end."
During the CNN-YouTube debate last November, he told former Massachusetts Gov. Mitt Romney during an exchange about immigration, "In all due respect, we are a better country than to punish children for what their parents did. We're a better country than that."
12:00 PM ET | 01-17-2008 | permalink

