Huckabee and Us

This is not about Mike Huckabee. It is about us. It is about you and me and all of us who will next November choose the President of these United States.

Mike Huckabee says openly, in public and in print, that if he were President he would address the problem of illegal immigration by first sealing our borders (not easily done, and enormously expensive, but possible), and then deporting an estimated 12 to 15 million people. On his official website Huckabee says that he would send them all back home, to get in line with everyone else wanting to come here. He would first invite people to voluntarily leave.. And then he would round the rest up. His "Secure America Plan" states, "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 reentry for a period of 10 years." (Secure America Plan, Point 3 - "Prevent Amnesty")

Focus, if you will, on that single word "caught." Now, let’s get this right: this man who wants to make decisions about life and death for millions of people as the leader of the most powerful nation in history seriously thinks that, a.) millions of people would voluntarily leave homes, families, jobs, their hopes for their children – voluntarily, I say – to go back to their home country where they have no homes or jobs or futures, or, b.) our local police departments or national guard or armed forces (some of whom are themselves undocumented immigrants) will search out, arrest, and incarcerate millions of people. Millions. This by armed forces and local police departments already stretched to the breaking point, and with a national debt off the charts. This is what he is seriously advocating.

Try to envision what such a project would look like, even here in Oshkosh. Can you imagine the trauma, the human suffering, the violence, the division, and the expense engendered by such an effort? Mr. Huckabee apparently can’t. He thinks he could round up 12 million people and send them home, without, presumably, much trouble at all.

After these 12 million are "caught," where will they be housed while being processed – in our overcrowded prisons? In church basements perhaps? Will each one get a fair hearing . . . in what court, defended by whom? And the children . . . born in the US . . . what about these American citizens? Will we break up families? And once "home," where would all these people live? What problems would arise there with the influx of so many people?

And then there is the small matter of who will be doing all the work that these people are doing every day – harvesting our crops, packing and serving our food, cleaning our places of work and homes, and otherwise filling important gaps in our service industries. Really: who will take those jobs?

I don’t deny that immigration is an important – and thorny – issue. But as I said earlier, I am not so concerned about that issue as about the fact that a Presidential candidate can seriously propose a preposterous plan and still be in the race. Instead of being summarily dismissed from consideration, Huckabee is, for the moment at least, a "front-runner." What does that say about us?

If a candidate suggested that we solve our population problem by colonizing Mars before the end of his or her first term – an equally outrageous, impossible plan – wouldn’t he or she be rightly labeled at least as incompetent, and dismissed?

We long for politicians who will speak the truth about our very real challenges. We long for leaders who can offer solutions that are at least feasible. If we elect people who tell us just what we want to hear – never mind if it is absurd – then we will get what we deserve: leaders who lie to us because when they ran for office we weren’t smart enough to know how ridiculous their proposals were.