After pounding the Governor in two recent posts, I'll try being a little bit nice this time. From AP-

Punish employers who hire illegal immigrants, create a system to verify citizenship and stop the IRS and Social Security Administration from accepting fake Social Security numbers.

_Pass a tax plan, called the FAIR tax, which would eliminate the IRS as well as income, corporate, payroll and other taxes in favor of a 23 percent sales tax. Huckabee said this would credit an economic disincentive for illegal immigration.

_Eliminate the visa lottery system and admission preferences for brothers and sisters of citizens, increase visas for highly skilled and educated applicants and expedite processing for Armed Services members.

_Force illegal immigrants to return to their home countries before they are allowed to apply to return to the U.S.

1- There actually is a system in place for the checking of eligibility to work. It isn't working, because some employers(big and small) don't care and some even use their influence with the government to keep the system we have right now.

Color me doubtful as to proposals to get tough on employers.

2- The Fair Tax Huckabee is proposing along with the elimination of the IRS has no chance of ever happening. A national sales tax could happen, but never the total elimination of the income tax. Here's one reason why- Accountants, Tax Attorneys, and Tax preparers(and I fall in this category) will use their influence to stop any such change.

So this idea of Huckabee is a total fantasy.

3- If Huckabee is religious or pro family, why is he opposed to the immigration of brothers and sisters of US citizens. Doesn't he want to see families re-united? If anything, I'd love to see the process sped up. At present the petitioning of a unmarried son or daughter can take a decade or more.

As to Service members, its been heavily reported how immigrants in the Army, Navy, etc are being sworn in, often while serving in Iraq. So I don't know what Huckabee is proposing, unless it is to help US servicemen who marry foreign nationals. When a soldier moves to his new duty station, their spouse and family often need to be left behind in Germany, Korea, Japan and elsewhere. This creates hardships, including financial, for our brave fighting men and women. I'm all for helping them.

4- Force all illegals to leave the country. How does Huckabee propose to do that. Let's take the conservative number that's used for illegal immigrants in the US that's 12 million. Right now ICE is deporting alien felons at the rate of 30,000 a year as reported in the Miami Herald. If we speed this up by ten times, we'll have all 12 million illegals out of the United States in 20 years. That is if no one else enters.

Not to mention the massive cost involved for this, as this blogger recently noted. Forcing(deporting) all illegals out of the US is a fantasy.

Those are my thoughts on Huckabee's immigration plan.