Questionable Analysis by Immigration Restriction "Leaders"
12/12/2007
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Roy Beck at NumbersUSA recently spoke very favorably about Fred Thompson's recent tough talk on immigration:
"Reading Thompson's full proposed immigration policy this afternoon, I am blown away by its depth, its breadth and at how it would so fundamentally change Americans' future for the better."
In his group's recent rating of presidential candidates platforms on immigration, Beck's group rated Thompson "good" on guest worker policies.

Now, here are some words from Fred Thompson current campaign statement on temporary worker visas:

"Caps for any category of temporary work visa would be increased as appropriate, if it could be demonstrated that there are no Americans capable and willing to do the jobs."
Anyone with real experience in the trenches in a profession impacted in recent years by guest worker visas understands what this means: more visas on terms that benefit major employers.

Frankly, I have real problems with stuff like what NumbersUSA did—when there was already other analysis out there. It is hard to predict what someone might actually do with the presidency once they have it. However, campaign statements are an especially poor indicator of future performance. That is why with my own analysis, I focused on criteria like actual voting records of the candidates themselves, the recipients of their donations and the voting records of their congressional endorsers.

Similarly, we get Jim Gilchrist endorsing Huckabee.

Now, in that case, at least Huckabee has a serious shot at getting onto the GOP ticket(most likely as the VP nominee). Huckbee's electability has been shown in recent weeks to be rising considerably.

Still, what bothers me here is this—why are restrictionists messing with candidates who have had such horrible records on immigration at all? There are other candidates here that have much better records on immigration—Paul and Tancredo both come to mind—and Paul actually has been showing considerable recent fund raising ability and has a small, but real chance at actually getting the GOP nomination.

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