Obama caused border problems
Concerning the AP article “2008 law unexpectedly at center of border debate” I read on The World’s national page of July 22, it is true that President George W. Bush signed H.R. 7311, the William Wilberforce Trafficking Victims Protection Reauthorization Act, on Dec. 23, 2008, thinking he was fighting the global traffic in sex slaves, many of them children. The Democratic Congress that passed the bill agreed.
But the article fails to mention the unintended consequences of the additional catalyst behind the mushrooming numbers of children making a beeline for our border. Conveniently omitted is President Obama’s June 15, 2012, announcement that DHS will use discretion to halt the deportations of eligible immigrant youth. That day, Janet Napolitano, secretary of DHS, had issued the memorandum: Exercising Prosecutorial Discretion with Respect to Individuals Who Came to the United States as Children.
Predictably, Obama administration officials deny that lenient policies, including it’s 2012 program, have encouraged the sudden surge. Once again they are saying, blame it on Bush!
But the numbers don’t lie. In FY2012: 6,775 unaccompanied alien children were detained. In FY2013: 24,668, in FY2014: 60,000-plus estimated total. ICE numbers show only 1,669 deportations of immigrants under age 18 in 2013 (LA Times: Deportation data won’t dispel rumors drawing migrant minors to U.S.). That’s only 6.8 percent!
On “Fox News Sunday,” July 20, Texas GOP Sen. Ted Cruz largely pinned the border crisis on Obama’s 2012 executive memo. “The cause of this crisis is the promise of amnesty,” he said. Cruz argued the number of children trying to enter the U.S. illegally has “skyrocketed” since 2012, when Obama allowed some young illegal immigrants to be eligible for delayed deportation. He says roughly 6,000 children were apprehended in 2011 coming into the U.S. illegally, compared to an estimated 90,000 coming this year and 145,000 in 2015. Cruz said that the way to help the children is to “eliminate the magnet, which is President Obama’s amnesty.”
The new “shot heard around the world” is send your children anyway you can to the USA. They will be allowed to stay, be well taken care of, get free legal help and education.
What happens when the bill for that care comes due? Veterans Affairs, Medicare and Social Security funding, among others, can all take a back seat for this newest Obama fiasco.
Raymond Straub
Charleston
