Obama's border crisis

Letter date: 
Saturday, July 5, 2014
Letter publisher: 
OregonLive.com
Letter author: 
Rich Lowry
Letter body: 

It's hard to imagine a more apt summation of the lunatic state of the nation's immigration debate than the split screen over the past week.

In Washington, most respectable opinion lined up, yet again, to condemn Republicans...

...the crisis on the Southern border continued. A massive influx of people -- largely driven by Central Americans, many of them children...

A Wall Street Journal story about the White House reaction to the crisis was headlined "Obama Plans Executive Action to Bolster Border Security," which has a man-bites-dog feel...

A leaked memo from a high-ranking Border Patrol official said that only 3 percent of non-Mexicans apprehended at the border are being returned to their native countries.

"It will not be open arms," Vice President Joe Biden thundered in Guatemala City ...

The administration is waving the families and children into the United States, dispersing them around the country, and giving them a date ...

Experience says only about a quarter of illegal immigrants released pending a court date will actually show up...

...According to Jessica Vaughan of the Center for Immigration Studies, there are roughly 800,000 aliens who have been ordered removed but are still here.

...The key to reversing the tide is enforcement, and not just at the border...

For the left, and its fellow-travelers in the business community and on the libertarian right, there is only one side of the split screen that matters. It's always amnesty.