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WALLACE: Let’s turn to immigration, because you put out a new immigration plan this week. You called for building...

HUCKABEE: Yes.

WALLACE: ... a border fence, for cracking down on employers, for telling illegals to go home.

But last year in an interview, you said something somewhat different. You said this, “I think that the rational approach is to find a way to give people a pathway to citizenship.”

Governor, in your new plan, the only path is to go home and to get on the back of the line, which, of course, would mean years of waiting. Why the change?

HUCKABEE: Well, I don’t think there’s an inconsistency. When I said a pathway, I didn’t say what the pathway was.

I now believe that the only thing the American people are going to accept — and, frankly, the only thing that really makes sense — is a pathway that sends people back to the starting point.

But this idea of the waiting years — no, I don’t agree with that. In fact, look, if we can get a credit card application done within hours, if we can get passports done within days, if we can transact business over the Internet any place in the world within seconds, do a background check instantaneously — it’s our government that has failed and is dysfunctional.

It shouldn’t take years to get a work permit to come here and pick lettuce. So part of the plan that I have is that we seal the borders. You don’t have amnesty and sanctuary cities. You do have a pathway that gets you back home.

But that pathway to get back here legally doesn’t take years. It would take days, maybe weeks, and then people could come back in the workforce.

Let me tell you why that’s important. Two reasons. Number one, the American people say, “Do something. Do it now. We don’t want to have this country ignoring the illegal problem.” I get it.

Secondly, I want people who are in this country to hold their heads up high. You know, right now there are a lot of people who really are here because they’re trying to feed their families. I don’t begrudge them that.

I say every day I thank God I’m in a country people are trying to break into, not break out of. But let’s give them a means by which they can get here through the door legally, and when they’re here they don’t have to hide, they don’t have to keep their heads down and hope nobody catches them, they have their heads held high.

Everyone living within the borders of the United States ought to do so with dignity and with a sense of pride, not a sense of fear.