Huckabee Reacts to Being Labeled Soft on Immigration

Sarah Wheaton reports in the NY Times:

Mike Huckabee, the Republican presidential candidate, released a plan for tougher immigration enforcement and border security yesterday, pledging to complete a border fence between the United States and Mexico by July 2010 and ruling out a pathway to citizenship for illegal immigrants unless they returned first to their country of origin.

Mr. Huckabee has taken heat in recent weeks from his rivals for the Republican nomination, especially after his impassioned defense at a Nov. 28 debate of merit scholarships to children of illegal immigrants while he was governor of Arkansas. In that debate, he responded to attacks on his immigration record by saying, “We’re a better country than to punish children for what their parents did.”

In the proposal he released yesterday, Mr. Huckabee did not address whether he still supported such benefits for illegal immigrants. But in detailing his plan for stepped-up enforcement, he said immigrants who failed to register within 120 days and then leave the country would be deported and barred from re-entry for 10 years.

In addition to completing the fence and installing an “interlocking” camera surveillance system on the Mexican border, he said he would increase the number of Border Patrol agents. Employers who hire illegal immigrants would also be subject to penalties under his proposal. Click here for the full article.

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