We have rated and added Gov. Haley Barbour (R-Miss.) as the 9th person on our 2012 Presidential Hopefuls Grid. 

Twelve months before the Iowa Caucuses, Barbour's immigration platform ranks him as the WORST of the GOP Hopefuls who (a) have shown some interest in running for President in 2012, (b) have not ruled out running, (c) are showing up in popularity polling, and (d) are considered by political analysts to have fundraising capacity. 

Look in the next section of this blog for the improvements for recently retired Gov. Tim Pawlenty (R-Minn.).

Barbour's immigration platform right now is even worse than that of former House Speaker Gingrich who previously held the distinction as worst among the Republicans.

You can always get to our Prez Grid by clicking on the big red Compare Presidential Hopefuls button in the right column of our home page at www.NumbersUSA.com. Or view the 9 Hopefuls with this link:

http://www.numbersusa.com/content/action/2012-presidential-hopefuls-immigration-stances.html

You can view all the supporting info and links for why we rate each of the Hopefuls as we do in 12 immigration policies by clicking on their photo at the top of the Grid. View Barbour's individual page at:

http://www.numbersusa.com/content/action/haley-barbour.html

If you are a fan of Gov. Barbour for reasons other than immigration and want to help him, use the contact information at the top of his page to let him know how disappointed you are in his immigration stances and to make specific suggestions for him to improve his Immigration Platform Grade in the weeks ahead. 

See lower in this blog more specifics about what we found when we researched Gov. Barbour's full immigration platform.

If you have information about Barbour's immigration stances that don't appear in our analysis, please send to us with this email link:

[email protected]

PAWLENTY WIDENS HIS  IMMIGRATION-REDUCTON LEAD WITH APPEARANCE AT HISPANIC CONFERENCE

The only politician previously on the Grid who has done anything this past week to add to his/her profile was Gov.  Pawlenty.

When we introduced our Prez Grid early this month, Pawlenty's immigration platform was not nearly as strong as it needs to be but was pretty clearly the best of the bunch.  He improved his standing over the last 10days.

Surprisingly, he made the improvement through his appearance at a much publicized Hispanic Leadership Network event in Miami.

The event was hosted by former Gov. Jeb Bush (R-Fla.) and several other conservative promoters of "comprehensive immigration reform," amnesty and increases in foreign workers even during a time of high unemployment.  Jeb follows his brother George and so many veterans of that Administration in arguing that Republicans have to advocate for higher immigration in order to win Hispanic votes in order to win the White House again.

Every GOP Hopeful but Pawlenty declined to walk into that trap -- probably figuring that anything said to please the people at that event would likely decrease votes in Primary elections.

So, when we heard that Pawlenty was going, we expected him to pander in some way that would knock him out of the No. 1 slot on our Grid.

Instead, Pawlenty showed a lot of spine, not so much for the specificity of good things he said about the need for immigration reductions (he stayed rather vague) but for all the bad things he didn't say.

Rather than state support for any kind of legalization, Pawlenty told the Hispanic conference that America is based on the rule of law and:

. . . we can’t have wide swaths of the country nodding or winking or looking the other way to broad violations of the law.”

Given a chance to score points with Hispanic voters by promising more work visas when a Florida newspaper asked about what he planned to say at the Hispanic conference, Pawlenty said:

As we talk about immigration and the Latino vote, we shouldn't make the mistake of thinking the only thing they care about is immigration and jump to that first and only. As I talk to the Hispanic community and Latino community, they've got a lot of other concerns as well, which is are they going to have a job, are they going to get a good education, are they going to be able to afford college, are they going to be able to buy health care, what's the economy going to be like. They have national security concerns, so one of the messages I'm going to deliver down there is we don't need to have every discussion start and continue and end with just immigration and not pigeonhole either them or their concerns."

Improvements this last 10 days in Pawlenty's rating on amnesty and on unfair worker competition edged his overall immigration platform grade from a "C" to a "C+."

His grade is that low -- not because of any bad stances but -- because there are several immigration issues he still hasn't engaged and because he has not been specific enough in some of his good stances in terms of what he would do as the President. He and Sen. Thune (R-S.D.) and Rep. Paul (R-Texas) who have "C-minus" grades still have a long way to go to earn the label of a true leader on our immigration issues.  But they are headed in the right direction and thus far have avoided the stumbling that many candidates do because of pressures to pander to various economic and demographic special interest groups.

BARBOUR EXTOLLS ILLEGAL ALIENS & FAILS TO SEE VICTIMS OF TOO-HIGH IMMIGRATION

On our first pass on Gov. Barbour we give him:

• 1 Abysmal rating
• 2 Bad ratings
• 6 Unhelpful ratings
• 3 First Steps ratings
• Zero Good
• Zero Excellent

His Abysmal is on Limiting Unfair Worker Competition, matching him with Pres. Obama.

He gets a Bad on Amnesty (along with Sarah Palin and Mike Huckabee) and also on Ending Birthright Citizenship (along with Obama).

Barbour's low ratings seem to be mainly the result of careless statements and the lack of attention to immigration as something that creates real victims among the American people.  His extolling the virtue of illegal-alien labor in Mississippi is indicative of how little he has tried to formulate an immigration platform suited for most voters. We will welcome -- as we do with all Hopefuls -- all future efforts that Gov. Barbour makes to improve his platform and grade.

ROY BECK is Founder & CEO of NumbersUSA