Huckabee Would Repeal Birthright Citizenship
Filed under: 2008 elections, Immigration, Mike Huckabee — marc moore on January 8, 2008 @ 9:02 pm CET
It’s been an interesting day to be a supporter of Mike Huckabee. First, Huckabeen gave the money quote of the day speaking about what the American people want from their government. Then came the Dick Armey attack. Now, an apparent and transparent Huckabee flip-flop regarding the children of illegal immigrants:
Mike Huckabee wants to amend the Constitution to prevent children born in the U.S. to illegal aliens from automatically becoming American citizens, according to his top immigration surrogate — a radical step no other major presidential candidate has embraced.
Mr. Huckabee, who won last week’s Republican Iowa caucuses, promised Minuteman Project founder James Gilchrist 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.
The Washington Post, via Rob at Say Anything:
Mike Huckabee told a roomful of Washington reporters Thursday that he will defend his effort to educate the children of illegal immigrants “even if it costs me the election.”
Huckabee has been criticized by Mitt Romney and others in the GOP presidential race for supporting legislation in Arkansas that would have made all youngsters who graduate from state high schools eligible to compete for college scholarships, no matter what the legal status of their parents.
With Norris citing examples of children of illegal immigrants he has helped educate through his foundation, Huckabee declared that “my soul will not let me” compromise on that stand–despite the bill’s rejection in his state senate.
And now:
So why the sudden change in attitude? Oh yeah, South Carolina. Where illegal immigration is issue #1 among Republican voters.
For me, this comes off as rank pandering. Are we really to believe that Huckabee has gone from feeling that it’s immoral to deny the children of illegal immigrants access to this nation’s entitlements to feeling that we should deny them citizenship? I think that’s asking a lot even of the most adamant Huckabee supporters.
I commented about his apparent change of heart after the Fox debate, thinking aloud that Huckabee needed to simply tell the truth, which is that he is now running on a plan to reduce the benefits given to the children of illegal aliens, whatever he’d felt before.
But Huckabee’s apparent position of the day is miles beyond - and in direct conflict with - what he said on Fox and that conflict is a problem for me.
It’s not that I disagree with the position that Huckabee is staking out - illegal aliens should not be given benefits that they have not helped to pay for, including free or nearly free education for their children. No problem with that.
Further, it does not make sense to me that the children of illegal immigrants should automatically become citizens. Again I agree with Huckabee’s alleged desire to stop this practice as it’s clear, to me at least, that the Founding Fathers’ words were far more applicable at a time during which America was a mostly empty wilderness in need of human capital. We still need the rejuvenating influence of immigration; however, the time for an uncontrolled flow of newcomers passed a century or more ago and the law of the land should be updated to reflect that.
However, the idea that Huckabee, as president, will somehow lead a charge at the Supreme Court and the Constitution I find more than a little disturbing, particularly after the legal system’s abuse at the hands of the Bush administration. E.M. Zanotti does too.
Then there is the matter of the change in Huckabee’s long-held position that the children of illegals should not be denied benefits based on their parents’ actions. I was promised a Mike Huckabee who held his principles in high regard and based his policies on those principles. I was promised a candidate who would not change his policies in response to the whimsy of this or that poll. Whether Mike Huckabee is that candidate is in doubt now.
Finally there is the matter of Huckabee’s advisor with regard to illegal immigration, James Gilchrist, founder of the Minuteman Project. Although his group has done some much-needed work at the U.S.-Mexico border, I cannot consider Gilchrist a reliable source of either information or advice. It’s a bad sign that Huckabee is apparently taking him seriously.
You’ll note that I’ve hedged a bit in this post because the information has not yet been confirmed by the Huckabee campaign. Hopefully it’s just a trial balloon that will be shot down. Even then, some damage will have been done.
via memeorandum
UPDATE by MvdG: Huckabee says the article is nonsense.
I do not support an amendment to the constitution that would prevent children born in the U.S. to illegal aliens from automatically becoming American citizens. I have no intention of supporting a constitutional amendment to deny birthright citizenship.
Via Jazz Shaw.
1 PatHMV
January 8, 2008 @ 8:16 pm CETBecause denying citizenship status to large numbers of immigrants in their country has worked out oh so well for France…
2 Jazz Shaw
January 8, 2008 @ 8:20 pm CETDebunked. Huckabee released a statement already categorically denying this story. It was another case of the Washington Times doing sloppy reporting on a single, very questionable source. Check out The Corner for details.
3 Michael van der Galien
January 8, 2008 @ 8:23 pm CETJazz, thanks for dropping that.
Marc (and others) here’s the link to the Corner.
4 C Stanley
January 8, 2008 @ 8:25 pm CETIt would be a major flipflop, so I’m inclined to believe Jazz- but will keep an eye on the story just in case.
To me, it shows how idiotic it is to try to take a position on any one facet of immigration without addressing it as a whole. You can’t deal with the birthright issue separately from the rest, and you can’t say that you oppose immigrants on the basis of legality while simultaneously refusing to admit that they’re here illegally almost at our invitation because we’ve looked the other way while business sought cheap labor.
5 sam
January 8, 2008 @ 9:07 pm CETya they got it wrong check out Jazz.
man the media always gets it wrong!
GO HUCK!!!
6 ChrisWWW
January 8, 2008 @ 9:43 pm CETAnd according to a poll cited on Andrew Sullivan’s blog, the Huckster is now leading nationally.
7 PatHMV
January 8, 2008 @ 10:43 pm CETWell, has anybody asked Huckabee the real question, did he tell Gilchrist that? The original story cites Gilchrist as saying that Huckabee made that commitment to him. Huckabee’s statement this afternoon denied the substantive policy issue, but doesn’t seem to have denied ever telling Gilchrist that. It’s entirely possible that he was pandering to Gilchrist.
I’m betting that this is NOT a case of the MSM getting a fact wrong. I’m betting that either Gilchrist misled them about what Huckabee told him, or Huckabee misled Gilchrist about what policies he would support.
8 supernovia
January 8, 2008 @ 10:45 pm CETI get that it was a flub by the media, but the fact is that under hucks policies, it wouldn’t matter whether these children were born citizens or not. Citizen and non-citizen children get the same benefits, and while that makes us all feel warm and fuzzy, its only going to make the influx worse.
These "aliens" are humans who decide that life as an immigration outlaw, despite its risks, is easier and more beneficial to them than going legal. As mean as it may seem, we need to remove the incentives to break our laws, because their dream country — and indeed the country we love — will become a nightmare if we continue to let our laws slide. I don’t see McCain or Huckabee doing that.
9 PatHMV
January 8, 2008 @ 11:23 pm CETsupernovia, this is going far afield from the original story, but most immigrants are coming to this country not for the "benefits" (which they get very little of) but to WORK. Are they coming over primarily to get their children into the wonderful urban public schools we have? Do you really believe that if we kicked all the illegal immigrant children out of public schools, the parents would pack up and go home? No, we’d have hundreds of thousands of kids running around outside of school, contributing to the growth of gangs and the like, while their parents continue to work.
As for "going legal," most would undoubtedly LOVE to have a path to do so. But the U.S. has very tight quotas for legal immigration, so there is no realistic way for them to get here legally.They’re here because being here illegally is better for them than being in their home country, not because being here illegally is better for them than being here legally.
10 supernovia
January 9, 2008 @ 4:21 am CETMaybe I use the word beneficial too broadly? Being able to get a job is the biggest benefit I’m talking about. Public education is one of those things I don’t know what you do about at this point — though I wouldn’t say at all that public education keeps kids off the streets — but I can say the kids wouldn’t be here without their parents, so if we can solve why their parents are coming here illegally, then that problem will taper out. But in the meanwhile, these kids will NEED to be taught English. Setting up subcultures of teens who don’t understand each other is NOT helping.
Back to helping convince the parents to go. Unfortunately, there are alot of unscrupulous employers happy to take advantage of the situation. Employers should first be given a reliable way to verify immigration status, then be given full responsibility to make sure their employees are legal. If they choose to hire illegally anyway, they face unattractive consequences. And if employers stop hiring illegally, there won’t be nearly as much motivation to show up here illegally.
As for the slow process of immigration, I know its bad. That’s another thing we have to fix to balance this out, again, to make it more attractive to be legal than illegal. I still feel though that the person needs to be fair and considerate to the ones who tried first to do it the right way. Cause them to WANT to get in line with the others. As things are now, lines are for suckers. Who waits in line for a cookie when they’re being handed out to the pushing crowd? Switch it up so it’s logistically smarter to get back in line as soon as possible, and we’ll have a big part of the problem solved.
11 M Goddard
January 9, 2008 @ 5:22 pm CETToo bad if this is false information. Why in the world does America recognize a different citizenship of a child than from the Mother’s womb from which it came? This "automatic" citizenship has proven to attract illegal behavior (sneaking into the country just to give birth here for citizenship rights) and according to the media, it apparently has the potential of "splitting up" families, although the media would have us belive the right thing to do is not to deny automatic citizenship but to give automatic citizenship to the parents. What a mess this causes and the only obvious outcome is that poor people come here to give birth, usually at the American tax payer’s expence, see how long it is before the parents get caught, yell "what about my children" when they do, and then clog up the courts with litigation. Like I said, too bad this is not a good reporting of someone who would have the guts to not necessarily amend the Constitution, but to read it as it was written. Our constitution says something tot he effect, "no allegience to another country." Well, when you are talking about a 1 hour old infant, I would say they have a pretty strong allegience to their parents country of citizenship wouldn’t you? Our goverment just simply needs to enforce the Constitution as it is written, now how they currently read between the lines. Too bad, I was looking forward to someone actually applying some common sense.
12 Black Shards, In Your Eyes, Blinding » Huckabee Spurns Minutemen
January 9, 2008 @ 8:26 pm CET[…] to what was discussed yesterday, Mike Huckabee today denied that he will actively pursue an amendment to the Constitution that […]
13 Third Rail
January 16, 2008 @ 10:15 pm CETTo check out our interview with the Minuteman Project’s founder Jim Gilchrist tonight Wednesday, January 16, 2008 at 8pm EST go to http://thirdrailradio.com Feel free to call in and speak with him on-air.