From the Washington Post Editorial Board: Nobody knows for sure how much weight, or blame, to assign each of the factors that have contributed to the flood of unaccompanied children and teens crossing the U.S.-Mexico border in recent months. The surge of illegal entries has crested into a full-blown immigration crisis, the resolution of which now depends on the unpromising hope of cooperation between the Obama administration and Congress.
Since the fall, some 52,000 undocumented youngsters, most from Central America, have poured across the border — about five times more than crossed in all of fiscal year 2012.
President Obama is right to have declared that unacceptable and to insist on restoring order along the border. But the solution he has proposed, reasonable as far as it goes, is incomplete.
Many of the youthful border crossers are driven to undertake the perilous journey by the “push” of lawlessness, drug violence and sex trafficking in Central America. And many appear to be encouraged to risk the trip by the “pull” of overburdened U.S. immigration courts and the unforeseen consequences of U.S. laws and lax patterns of enforcement that have allowed tens of thousands of young immigrants to stay in this country after entering without documentation. Democrats and Republicans share responsibility for those laws.
Some of those seeking a foothold in this country also may mistakenly believe that they will be covered by Mr. Obama’s 2012 order granting a reprieve from deportation to children and teens who arrived before 2007.
A more likely culprit is legislation approved by Congress with bipartisan support in 2008, which was intended to protect minors from sex trafficking and other abuses. That law, signed by President George W. Bush, allows undocumented immigrants from non-border states — including the Salvadorans, Hondurans and Guatemalans who constitute most of the current wave — to have their cases heard by an immigration judge . As the backlog of cases mounts, the minors are admitted into this country while they await a hearing, which may take months or years.
Last week, Mr. Obama wrote to Congress saying he would seek to modify that law. Yet he made no such request Tuesday when he instead proposed some $3.7 billion in spending to add immigration judges and other personnel and to house, feed and care for the minors who have already crossed the border.
That seems unlikely to send the get-tough message Mr. Obama promised. The fact is that since he entered office, shortly after the 2008 law took effect, the number of undocumented youths deported or turned back at border posts has plummeted, according to government figures released to the Los Angeles Times.
Mr. Obama has come under intense pressure from Democrats and immigration advocates to continue this leniency. They make their argument on humanitarian grounds. But there is nothing humanitarian in tacitly encouraging tens of thousands of children to risk their lives, often at the hands of cutthroat smugglers, to enter this country illegally.
If the president is serious about restoring order to the border and dissuading children and their families from a costly and life-threatening trip, he will add teeth to his policy by seeking the legal change he promised.
FROM THE LEFT: Republicans need to do more than just criticize, and offer solutions.
By Danny Vinik, in the New Republic: The humanitarian and immigration crisis unfolding at the southern border of the United States isn't just one of the most difficult issues that President Barack Obama has faced during his presidency. It's one of the most difficult issues the country has faced. And yet, instead of proposing realistic solutions to the crisis ("Deport them immediately!" being unrealistic, both legally and practically), Republicans have spent the past month using it to score political points, disingenuously calling it "Obama's Katrina" and complaining that the president didn't visit the border while fundraising in Texas.
Republicans have also blamed the crisis on Obama’s executive action on immigration — known as the Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals (DACA) — that allowed undocumented minors who had been in the U.S. since 2007 to stay legally. But the fundamental issue is that the immigration system does not have the resources to deal with the more than 50,000 unaccompanied minors who have crossed into the U.S. in fiscal year 2014 so far. A 2008 law requires that migrant children from countries other than Mexico and Canada receive a hearing before an immigration judge — and the vast majority of those crossing the border right now are from Honduras, Guatemala, and El Salvador. In other words, the government doesn’t have the legal authority to quickly return these minors to their home country and doesn’t have the resources to process them quickly.
Obama has proposed solutions. In late June, the White House requested more than $2 billion to help ease the immigration backload. Obama also, initially, asked that Congress reform the 2008 law so that the government could return the migrant children faster. Republicans said they were open to changing the law, but wanted the president to end DACA. “This trip (to the border) has confirmed that this is a disaster of President Obama’s own making,” House Judiciary Committee Chairman Bob Goodlatte said. …
On Tuesday, Obama upped his request to Congress, asking for $3.7 billion in additional funds. Republicans were not impressed. “The proposal that has come over for $3.7 billion has nothing to do with dispelling the idea … that if they come here they can stay,” Sen. John McCain said. … McCain also demanded that the migrants be deported to their home country. Yet, he proposes no solution for how to reduce the backload in the immigration system so that those deportations can occur.
On Thursday, a new GOP talking point emerged: Republicans won’t give Obama a “blank check.” Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell and Minority Whip John Cornyn both said it. House Speaker John Boehner proposed sending in the National Guard and then lambasted the president for not doing so. “In other words, he won’t do it for the kids, it’s all about politics,” Boehner said. “We’re not giving the president a blank check.” It’s unclear how sending the National Guard to the border would “do it for the kids” or how a $3.7 billion funding request counted as a “blank check.” Republicans are once again refusing to confront the legitimate challenge of the unaccompanied minors who have already crossed the border.
Obama, on the other hand, has requested funds to deal with that exact problem.
If Republicans object to this request, what exactly do they propose instead? How should we move through the huge backload of cases? Where should we hold the unaccompanied minors in the meantime? And how should we pay to transport them to their home countries? Reforming the 2008 law, as Republicans want, could help relieve pressure on the immigration system, but it could cause children who qualify — or who should qualify — for asylum to be turned away. Even so, there are more than 50,000 unaccompanied minors in U.S. custody. Tweaking the law will not suddenly alleviate the problem.
In the wake of DACA and Obama’s upcoming executive action on immigration, the GOP was undoubtedly going to use this crisis to criticize Obama’s immigration policies. … But along with scoring those political points, Republicans ought to propose more to help solve the crisis. Reforming the ‘08 law and screaming at Obama aren’t enough.
FROM THE RIGHT: Congress should ignore Obama’s idea and start all over.
By Rich Lowry, from the National Review: The first rule in a crisis for any executive is put on his windbreaker and boots and get out on the ground. President George W. Bush didn't do it soon enough after Hurricane Katrina and, politically, could never make up for it, no matter how many times he visited New Orleans subsequently. Obama's bizarre resistance to visiting the border on his fundraising swing out West fueled talk of the influx as Obama's "Katrina moment."
The Katrina analogy is both over the top and too generous. It is over the top because the border influx isn’t a deadly catastrophe swallowing an American city. It is too generous because Bush didn’t do anything to bring on Hurricane Katrina, whereas Obama’s policies are responsible for the influx of immigrants from the border. It is, in the argot of his administration, a “man-caused disaster.”
According to the Los Angeles Times, the number of immigrants younger than 18 who were deported or turned away from ports of entry declined from 8,143 in 2008 to 1,669 last year. There were 95 minors deported from the entire interior of the country last year. At the same time, the number of unaccompanied alien children arriving from El Salvador, Guatemala, and Honduras exploded from less than 4,000 several years ago to 40,000 since last October.
The White House brushes off criticism that Obama is avoiding the border as mere “optics,” in contrast to its highly substantive focus. But it is still not taking the crisis seriously.
In a letter to Texas Gov. Rick Perry, White House senior adviser Valerie Jarrett downgraded the erstwhile “humanitarian crisis” on the border (the president’s words) to an “urgent humanitarian situation.” When pressed on the shift in verbiage, ever-judicious White House press secretary Josh Earnest explained that it is both a crisis and a situation. Yes, it’s that bad.
The nearly $4 billion the president is requesting for the border is not fundamentally about enforcement that will reverse and end the tide, but about managing the influx.
A devastating critique of the request by the Center for Immigration Studies notes that about half of the money goes to the Department of Health and Human Services “for acquisition, construction, improvement, repair, operation, and maintenance of real property and facilities.” The enforcement portion of the request, according to CIS, “is not truly geared toward removal,” but instead to “recouping costs for temporary detention and subsequent transporting of aliens.”
The administration’s reaction to the crisis is just another in a long series of acts of bad faith on immigration. It is asking Congress for more money for its priorities at the same time the president is promising, in effect, to suspend yet more immigration laws in response to the failure of “comprehensive immigration reform.”
Republicans in Congress should crumple up the president’s border request in a ball and start over, with an emphasis on holding migrants near the border and working through their cases quickly to address the short-term crisis, and provisions for interior enforcement to address illegal immigration more broadly.
Of course, even if such a bill were to pass and to be signed into law, that’d be no guarantee that the president of the United States would enforce it. That speaks to an entirely different man-caused disaster.
FROM THE RIGHT: Obama refuses to take the immigration problem seriously.
From Leon H. Wolf, at RedState: Right now, a legal and humanitarian crisis is unfolding on our Southern border. And our President simply cannot bring himself to take the problem seriously.
By all accounts, tens of thousands of refugees have spilled across the border, many of whom are unaccompanied minors or single parents. A large plurality of the accumulated mass are not illegal immigrants seeking to come here for work, but rather Central Americans fleeing massive unrest in that part of the country. The wave of humanity has overwhelmed the capacity of the border states to handle the flow and treat these people in the humane manner that is only befitting this country, even temporarily while we process them for legitimate claims of asylum and send the rest back.
In the midst of this crisis, our President has been busy raising funds for Democrats, drinking beer, shooting pool, and politely declining joints in Colorado. Texas Gov. Rick Perry invited Obama to take a break from his busy schedule to come down to see the border; not so that Obama could get a photo op, but rather because some things — particularly humanitarian crises — must be seen with your own eyes to fully appreciate. Somehow, for some reason, Obama continues to refuse.
I can think of no non-trolling reason at this point that Obama refuses to visit the border and see it for himself. For a guy who has spent the better part of six years puling that Republicans only oppose things because he is for them, it sure looks a lot like Obama is refusing to visit the border for the sole reason that a Republican asked him to do it. Obama finally managed to wedge a meeting with Perry in between his busy fundraising schedule; but this meeting took place in Dallas, which is closer to Kansas City than it is to the border.
During the course of his uninspired and petty remarks on the subject, Obama made the hilarious claim that he is trying to avoid partisan politics, despite the fact that the very reason he couldn’t visit the border is that he had spent almost 72 straight hours fundraising to help Democrats win partisan elections.
Regardless of which side you come down on in the particulars of the immigration debate, you have to agree that the situation right now on the Southern border is unacceptable both from a rule of law standpoint, and also from a humanitarian one. Sadly, for this President, neither of those concerns merits his personal attention or even basic levels of human decency to look at least some of these people in the eye.
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