http://www.mikehuckabee.com:80/?FuseAction=Blogs.View&Blog_id=1206 The following is the body of an email from Roy Beck of NumbersUSA: ______________________________________ In creating this pledge, NumbersUSA believed it closed nearly all of the loopholes that our members have seen in the promises of some candidates, some Members of Congress and the President when they say they oppose amnesty. NumbersUSA's strategy in offering these 'no-amnesty pledges.' We offered a pledge to all candidates about six weeks ago and said that I would appear at a press conference with any candidate who signed it. Hunter, Thompson and Romney have all earned EXCELLENT ratings on amnesty through other methods. However, last weekend, Huckabee contacted us expressing interest in sending a clear signal that he understands what the public wants when it cries out for no amnesty. Huckabee's willingness to sign such a tightly worded and strong pledge really shows the power of grassroots pressure. Just a couple of months ago, Huckabee was still making some really awful comments about amnesty, sounding very much like McCain's current pro-amnesty plan. Yet, this week, he committed himself to arguably the most detailed and iron-clad no-amnesty pledge out there. We received strong criticism from many of you who feel that Huckabee's past stances on immigration make him untrustworthy to carry out his pledge with us -- and that we were wrong to accept his pledge. You have to make a judgment about trustworthiness on your own. We simply rate the quality of each candidate's most current campaign promises with an eye to how public and official those promises are. Some have contacted us in great anger, claiming that we have at least quasi-endorsed Huckabee. That simply is not true. We never endorse candidates. I made that abundantly clear at the first of the news conference. I saw no news reports that misrepresented us as endorsing. One set of criticisms, however, was of great concern to me. At first, the "Important Points" above were not included in the Huckabee website. Several of you said you loved the bullet points that I included Wednesday night in my report of my day in South Carolina but that unless Huckabee placed them on his website, there was no real accountability that he would ever stand by them. In response to your many emailed comments, I contacted Huckabee's campaign and said that the points of explanation had to be on the website as part of the pledge if his pledge was to be taken seriously. Huckabee almost immediately responded with the full pledge you see above. Our goal has been to persuade as many Presidential candidates as possible to move in our direction on the immigration issues. We have been pleased during the Primary season as Thompson, Paul, Romney and Huckabee have continued to improve on their overall immigration stances. This has terrified the New York Times which ran a big editorial Friday, denouncing the seemingly unending movement of several candidates toward our side. It also condemned NumbersUSA for working so hard against illegal immigration.