A Washington Post article points out the similarities between the former Arkansas Governor's recently stated proposals and those advocated in by someone writing in a conservative magazine over three years ago.

It is hardly surprising that Mark Krikorian, executive director of the Center for Immigration Studies, would approve of Mike Huckabee's new immigration plan. Seven of the nine points in the Huckabee plan were copied, in some cases almost verbatim, from a plan that Krikorian outlined nearly three years ago in the National Review. Rather than hammer out its own policy on the subject, the cash-starved Huckabee campaign simply lifted a ready-made one off the shelf.

THE FACTS

Huckabee needed to come up with an immigration plan in a hurry last month. He was beginning his remarkable ascent in opinion polls, but was under attack from GOP rivals for a "liberal" position on immigration while governor of Arkansas from 1996 to 2007. His record in Arkansas, supporting tuition breaks for illegal immigrants and opposing a federal roundup of undocumented workers, made him vulnerable to criticism from the right.

When the campaign announced the governor's nine-point immigration plan on Dec. 6, it noted that it was "partially modeled" on Krikorian's proposal three years earlier. But Huckabee took credit for the plan in the Republican debate on Thursday night, and Mitt Romney's campaign is crying foul. A Romney "Fact Check" said that the Huckabee plan had lifted "whole sections of Krikorian's editorial without quotes or direct attribution."

A point-by-point comparison of the two plans supports the Romney critique. Huckabee's is virtually identical to Krikorian's, with the exception of two points: Build the Fence and Establish an Economic Border. Huckabee says that his proposal for a flat-rate sales tax, known as the "fair tax," would create an "economic disincentive" for illegal immigration, by forcing undocumented workers to pay taxes.

Following Krikorian, Huckabee calls for a strategy to deny jobs to illegal immigrants, ensure document security, discourage dual citizenship and modernize legal immigration. He proposes giving illegal immigrants 120 days before they must leave the country; Krikorian proposes 90 days.

The Huckabee campaign has copied verbatim at least 10 passages of the Krikorian plan, including the following. (identical words are in italics, and a full list of copied passages is available at http://www.washingtonpost.com/factchecker):

¿ Those who register and return to their home country will face no penalty if they later apply to immigrate or visit; those who do not return home will be, when caught, barred from future re-entry for a period of 10 years.

¿ Employment is the chief draw for most illegal immigrants and denying them jobs is the centerpiece of an attrition strategy.

¿ Promote better cooperation on enforcement by supporting legislative measures such as the CLEAR Act, which aims to systematize the relationship between local law and federal immigration officials.

Krikorian expressed no hard feelings about the copying of his words, noting that the Huckabee campaign is a shoestring operation, "unlike the Romney campaign."

"That is what think tanks do," he said. "We come up with ideas, and we hope that someone will steal them."

To be honest, I think the immigration plans being offered by the major Republican candidates look very similar to one another. Did Huckabee lift his plan from Krikorian's writing? Maybe or maybe not. This is just a slight bump in the road for Huckabee as tries to win the GOP nomination. It won't amount to anything, and feel free to remind me if I'm proven wrong.

If I was running for office, I wouldn't be borrowing any of Krikorian's writing. He is an immigration extremist in my opinion, who won a well deserved Knucklehead award a few months back. In defense of immigration officials who are trying to deport the illegal alien wife of a US Navy sailor, Krikorian was quoted as saying.

That's just fine, according to Mark Krikorian, the executive director of the Center for Immigration Studies, which lobbies for tougher laws on illegal immigration.

"What you're talking about is amnesty for illegal immigrants who have a relative in the armed forces, and that's just outrageous," he said. "What we're talking about here is letting lawbreakers get away with their actions just because they have a relative in the military. ... There's no justification for that kind of policy."

No justification? What a warped and little mind this guy has. How about the fact these men and women are serving this country so extremists like Krikorian can continue to froth at the mouth about illegal aliens, when anyone who seriously studies the issue, knows this country has a need for the labor they supply.(And anyone feel free to show me any proof of native born Americans rushing out to pick fruit, or work in the sugar cane fields.)

Truth of the matter is, the US needs workers, and Mexico has people willing to take the jobs. Call it supply and demand, and unless a drastic shift in the labor markets occur, the US economy will continue having a need for these people. All the talk about immigration reform is mostly hot air.