Yesterday I posed a question to Governor Huckabee about whether his new immigration proposal punishes children for the actions of their parents - something he decried just weeks ago in an exchange with Mitt Romney. Here's the response I received last night from Governor Huckabee:

"Under my Secure America plan, immigrants and their families here illegally would have to return to their home countries.

"Because we are talking about a policy that has profound implications for people's lives, I suspect that some people will attempt to use these hard cases to discredit the idea that anything can be done about the problem of illegal immigration. But we have unfortunately reached a crisis point where doing nothing is no longer an option. The policy of de facto amnesty has been a failure which is why we must focus on enforcement and attrition.

"The current system forces people into the shadows and into hiding. There should be no one living in our country with his head down, which is what we have now with an out-of-control immigration system. Although my plan isn't perfect, I believe it is a fair and compassionate approach to correcting a broken system."

I read that as a "yes." In other words, kids who are here illegally and in school - the same kids that Huckabee sought to provide additional opportunity to as governor and who defended that policy by saying we're a "better country" than to punish kids for the actions of their parents - would be taken out of school and deported.

I also think Huckabee is being either disingenuous or naive by arguing that his "report and deport" plan is going to be better than the current system, which "forces people into the shadows and into hiding." What sort of compliance does he expect? Millions of illegal immigrants - some of whom have been built lives and families in America over the course of the last few decades - are not going to voluntarily walk in to immigration offices and say "go ahead and deport me" back to a place where they have no job and no home.

It seems to me Huckabee's plan would therefore have the opposite effect of creating an America where people don't live with their "heads down." Even if his plan succeeded in deporting twenty or thirty percent of those living here illegally, for the remaining 70-80% the shadows would be much deeper and the fear much greater.