The guy wants to stop- Immigration Global trade imbalance/ Chinese currency manipulation He's got my vote. All other issues are moot.
Wait a mintue here! Are you talking about Huckabee? He wants to stop immigration? Huckabee has a history until a couple weeks ago of being incredibly soft on immigration. Government funds for college tuition for illegals in Arkansas. Implying that deportation of illegals isn't the right thing to do. Making statements like, "we can't punish them for what their parents do." His entire record is soft on immigration, then suddenly two weeks ago he has a change of heart and comes out with a 9-point plan to completely get rid of all illegals. Forget for a moment the idea that his plan calls for 12 million illegals to voluntarily leave. Let's assume that the plan worked and they all left. My state is at 2.7% unemployment and we have a lot of latinos. If the illegals all left, wages would skyrocket overnight causing massive sudden inflation. Yeah, that is a great plan. Up until recently I actually liked Huckabee and decided that I might actually vote for him. The further I look into his policies, the more I am convinced that he is incredibly inadequate for the position. This little immigration flip-flop has kinda been the icing on the cake. I don't like the fact that Romney changed his stance on abortion but there is a big difference. Romney was pro-choice in his campaign, but sided with pro-life on every bill that hit his desk. His actions have always been pro-life, so I am more likely to believe that being pro-choice was just a front to get elected in a liberal state. Huckabee's actions indicate that he is soft on immigration. IMO, once he wins the immigration issue will be a non-issue for him. His ridiculous plan indicates that he is completely out of touch with reality. He's knows that it is impossible to implement, so he can promote it all day long without consequence.
Actually Romney was pro-life then pro-choice and now he is pro-life again. And in all fairness how is he not weak on Immigration if As recently as 2005, Romney was describing [immigration] proposals by McCain and others as "reasonable" and "quite different" from amnesty. That's of course besides 6 sanctuary cities and one sanctuary mansion in Massachusets.
I dont understand your first point. I already indicated that he is pro-life and only switched to pro-choice to win the election in Mass. Even then, he always acted in favor of pro-life while in office. Sorry. I don't mean to be too rude, but I decided a while ago that anyone mentioning the "Sancutary Mansion" probably isn't informed enough to debate with. Even the debate analysts after that statement was made said, "That was a ridiculous statement and the American voters are too intelligent to fall for something like that." In reality, Romney did everything he should have done in that situation. He fired the company. If everyone did that, we wouldn't have an illegal immigration problem here. As to your other point, to my knowledge there are 2-3 sanctuary cities in Mass. Anyway, the number is meaningless. The question is whether he supported them. He vetoed in-state tuition reduction for illegals. He authorized troopers to enforce immigration laws. He protested issuance of drivers liscences to illegals. He fired a company under his employ when it was found that they employ illegals. He openly criticizes the idea that sanctuary cities should be endorsed by the federal governement, and his new plan is to reduce federal funding to cities on those grounds. The only thing he didn't do as Gov. was reduce funding to the sanctuary cities, but that isn't the same as endorsing their status. Anyway, in my other post I wasn't saying that Romney was hard on immigration. I was saying that Huckabee is flip-flopping on immigration. My reference to Romney was directed to the fact that his actions have always indicated his true thoughts on abortion. I would say the same thing about Huckabee. I believe that his actions have already shown that he doesn't consider illegal immigration a problem. But it seems that you completely missed the point of my post.
No you were not rude but you were wrong, Romney did not fire the company until the issue came up during the debate: Here is what he said: "After this same issue arose last year, I gave the company a second chance with very specific conditions,â Romney said in the statement. âThey were instructed to make sure people working for the company were of legal status. We personally met with the company in order to inform them about the importance of this matter. The owner of the company guaranteed us, in very certain terms, that the company would be in total compliance with the law going forward." Standing on stage at a Republican debate on the Gulf Coast of Florida last week, Mitt Romney repeatedly lashed out at rival Rudy Giuliani for providing sanctuary to illegal immigrants in New York City. Yet, the very next morning, on Thursday, at least two illegal immigrants stepped out of a hulking maroon pickup truck in the driveway of Romneyâs Belmont house, then proceeded to spend several hours raking leaves, clearing debris from Romneyâs tennis court, and loading the refuse back on to the truck. In fact, their work was part of a regular pattern. Despite a Globe story in Dec. 2006 that highlighted Romneyâs use of illegal immigrants to tend to his lawn, Romney continued to employ the same landscaping company â until today. The landscaping company, in turn, continued to employ illegal immigrants. http://flapsblog.com/?p=5987
That is a ridiculous argument that in my opinion lends credibility to his anti-illegal-immigrant stance. He acknowledges that he made it clear to the company that he wouldn't accept their practice of employing illegals. He was assured that they wouldn't. When he was informed that they were, he fired them. What's the issue. I don't expect my state governor to break into the employment contracts of each company he hires to run a background check on each employee. Like I said before, anyone holding to that argument is in my mind not even worth debating.
He did not find out that the company he hired was using illegals, someone else did it for him. OK, it was not his job, I can buy this argument. But then he did not fire the law-breaking company and did not report it to the INS, he had a talk with the owner of the company instead. He did not follow up, did not verify that the company complied with his requirements, he took the owner's word for it. For more than a year he did absolutely nothing to make sure that the company abandoned its illegal activities. He only took actions when someone else pointed out once again that the company was still breaking the law and only because it interfered with his campaign. He did not do due diligence, he did not even do bare minimum to make sure that his contractor was not using illegal immigrants. Frankly I don't have any problem with this situation and I don't have any problem with Romney but him and his supporters accusing others of being weak on immigration is a tad hypocritical given that he did not move a finger to clean up his own backyard.
Granted, he didn't go the extra mile to investigate the situation. How many of these candidates do you think have anything to do with things like landscaping crews that rake their leaves? When you consider his immigration record I think he has a right to challenge some of his opponents on immigration. It's called campaigning. Consider the two he is making comments about. One is the mayor of the biggest sanctuary city in the country. The other pushed for special privileges of illegals in his state. He has the duty to point out these issues.
If he did not want anything to do with landscaping crews he should have fired the law-breaking company on the spot and reported it to the INS or at the very least he should have followed up on the problem and made absolutely sure the company complied. He should have done it to avoid any appearance of impropriety if for no other reason. ...Unfortunately I disagree that he did not go the extra mile. He did not go the extra inch. I do agree that he has every right to challenge his opponents on immigration, I also think his opponents have just as much right to defend their record as vigorously as you defend Romney's and argue that NYC was not a sanctuary city and giving grants to children was the right thing to do. Moreover his opponents have a right to point out that they found illegals in Romney's own backyard and not once but twice and that in 2005 he considered Bush/McCain immigration proposal "reasonable" and not an amnesty.