Some GOP candidates resist total immigration negativity

Positive excerpts from last night's presidential debate

MR. GUILIANI:

New York City allowed the children of illegal immigrants to go to school. If we didn't allow the children of illegal immigrants to go to school, we would have had 70,000 children on the streets at a time in which New York City was going through a massive crime wave, averaging 2,000 murders a year, 10,000 felonies a week.

The only two exceptions related to care -- emergency care in the hospital and being able to report crimes. If we didn't allow illegals to report crimes, a lot of criminals would have gone free because they're the ones who had the information.

MR. ROMNEY:

Are you suggesting, Mayor, that if you have a company that you hired to provide a service ... that you now are responsible for going out and checking the employees of that company, particularly those that -- that might look different or don't -- doesn't have an accent like yours, and ask for their papers? I don't think that's America...

SEN. MCCAIN:

[W]e need to sit down ... as Americans and recognize these are God's children as well and they need some protections under the law and they need -- (applause) -- and they -- they need some of our love and compassion. ... [W]e'll solve this immigration problem and we won't demagogue it ... and we won't have all this other rhetoric that unfortunately ... contributes nothing to the national dialogue. (Applause.)

MR. HUCKABEE:

This bill would have said that if you came here not because you made the choice but because your parents did, that we're not going to punish a child because the parent committed a crime. That's not what we typically do in this country. It said that if you'd sat in our schools from the time you're 5 or 6 years old and you had become an A-plus student, you completed the core curriculum, you were an exceptional student, and you also had to be drug and alcohol free, and the other provision, you had to be applying for citizenship. It accomplished two thing that we knew we wanted to do, and that is, number one, bring people from illegal status to legal status; and the second thing, we wanted people to be taxpayers, not tax takers, and that's what that provision did. ... In all due respect, we're a better country than to punish children for what their parents did. We're a better country than that.(Cheers, applause.)