Tag Archives: border crisis

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Dysfunction reigns in U.S. House

How much more chaotic can it get in the People’s House?

Probably a lot more than what we’re witnessing, but we we’re getting now is a sideshow worthy of a circus barker.

http://www.cnn.com/2014/07/31/politics/congress-immigration/index.html

The House of Representatives canceled a planned vote on a border security/immigration bill after leaders failed to get enough support among rank-and-file members to support it. It would cost about $659 million, far less than the $3.7 billion President Obama requested when the child refugee crisis erupted on the nation’s southern border.

Meanwhile, the Senate is wondering what to do with a larger bill.

What happens now? Well, Congress is about to take a five-week summer recess, which means that, all of a sudden, the border crisis isn’t quite as “urgent” as House leadership proclaimed it to be.

As I recall, they were yammering at the White House to do something about it. The president responded with his emergency spending request, but the persistent critics said, “Not so fast, Mr. President. We aren’t going to write a blank check here.”

Now the House has come apart at the seams yet again over a possible solution proposed by that guy who lives down the street in the White House.

This is effective governance? I think not.

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Will shatters the Fox mold

http://mediamatters.org/video/2014/07/27/foxs-george-will-we-should-tell-child-immigrant/200215

George Will might find himself out of a job if the Fox New Channel brass takes serious exception to what the commentator said this morning on Fox News Sunday.

He said, and you should watch the clip attached here, that the United States of America ought to welcome the “criminals with teddy bears” into our culture, not send them back to their Central America homeland where they face possible, if not probable, harm.

I’ll just dispute one point in Will’s comment here. He mentions the nation has 3,141 counties. Divide the number of counties into the 57,000 or so child refugees who’ve come here and you have a mere handful of children moving into each county. That logic presumes we can distribute the children evenly among all American counties.

Whatever.

I found the exchange between Will and Fox News Sunday host Chris Wallace stunning.

Will is right to note that we’ve handled far more immigrants than what’s happening right now at the border. The “wretched refuse” ought to be welcome, he said.

Wow! I think I’ll try to catch my breath now.

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Troops to the border

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The more I think about Texas Gov. Rick Perry’s decision to mobilize approximately 1,000 National Guard troops to patrol the Texas-Mexico border, the more ridiculous it sounds.

Texas Monthly’s Paul Burka had a brief post on it Monday. Here is most of what he posted: “What is the purpose of sending the Guard to the border? The National Guard is a military force. Is its mission military or humanitarian? Who is the giving the orders? What are the rules of engagement? Who is the enemy? Are the troops going to cross the border and invade a foreign country, as Pancho Villa did in Columbus, New Mexico, during the Mexican Revolution? Meanwhile, what happens to the refugees? And, by the way, what is this going to cost? These are good questions in search of answers.”

If there ever was a political stunt meant to appeal to an audience outside of Texas, the governor has just performed it — clumsily, I should add.

Perry’s decision is pure showboating.

As for the cost, it became known earlier today. The troops will cost the Texas treasury an estimated $12 million per month.

To do what? The National Guard has no jurisdiction in the effort to stem the tide of children fleeing their Central American nations. Fox News’s Brit Hume asked Perry about that very thing. The governor’s response? He said the troops were there for show. He knows they cannot arrest anyone, or that their “adversaries” are unarmed children who are surrendering in droves quite willingly to local police and federal Border Patrol agents.

The governor wants to run for president in 2016. This National Guard stunt is aimed at the Republican Party primary base in places like Iowa and New Hampshire that is going to eat this stuff up.

It’s another embarrassing display of grandstanding.

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DREAM Act not related to current crisis

Let’s try to end this nonsensical discussion about whether the DREAM Act has played a role in the crisis on our southern border.

It hasn’t a thing to do with it.

The DREAM Act — which stands for Development, Relief, Education for Alien Minors — is intended to give a break those who were brought here illegally by their parents when they were children. It’s meant to clear a path toward citizenship if these individuals meet certain requirements.

The principle — supported by none other than Texas Gov. Rick Perry, among others — is to give those who have known only life in the United States to become citizens. It’s akin to Perry’s support of providing in-state public university tuition to these young Texans.

Some critics of President Obama have sought to suggest that the DREAM Act is a code for “amnesty” for the children who are flocking to this country from Central America. The actual attraction comes from a 2008 law signed by President Bush after it was approved unanimously by Congress. The law is intended to strike back against child pornographers and other human traffickers by making it more difficult to deport those who are here illegally.

With the border being choked with young refugees from Latin America, some now want to tweak that 2008 law to speed up the deportation process.

The hysterical criticism that gets tossed around, however, needs to be reeled in.

The border crisis really isn’t a function of a “porous border.” It’s a lengthy border along our southern flank, to be sure. However, to suggest that the U.S. Border Patrol isn’t doing its job requires one to examine all the children who have been taken into custody.

They are being held in detention centers. The system has been choked by the sheer volume of refugees who have fled here. It needs serious repair.

How about we deal with the real problem and stop casting blame in search of scapegoats?

The DREAM Act isn’t the problem.

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Militarize the Texas border?

Texas Gov. Rick Perry is deploying 1,000 or so National Guard troops to the state’s southern border.

I am moved to ask: For what purpose? To round up those children? Arrest them? Detain them? Send them back to their home country?

U.S. Rep. Joaquin Castro said Perry is “militarizing” the border in the absence of a legitimate national security threat. The kids aren’t going to undermine our defense … are they?

http://www.politico.com/story/2014/07/rick-perry-texas-border-national-guard-109165.html?hp=r6

“We should be sending the Red Cross to the border not the National Guard to deal with this humanitarian crisis,” the congressman said in an email. “The children fleeing violence in Central America are seeking out Border Patrol agents. They are not trying to evade them. Why send soldiers to confront these kids?”

Hey, this is Rick Perry we’re talking about, Mr. Castro.

I have to agree with Castro’s assessment. Sending troops to do the job that the Border Patrol already is doing is little more than political symbolism, which is how the White House has described it.

Let us remind the governor of something. The Texas border with Mexico is being tightened already. Those children are being captured, detained and are being housed by U.S. authorities as they seek a way to humanely repatriate them to their home countries. As Castro noted, the kids are “fleeing violence in Central America.”

Do we just send them back to the misery they seek to escape? I think not.

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Border not secure? Tell the detainees

It’s difficult to imagine the terror that young people face when they’re shipped from their homes and they find themselves essentially trapped in a country that cannot accept them.

Then they learn that many people in this strange country have turned on them, believing that they are somehow responsible for the plight in which they find themselves.

Welcome to the United States of America, young Central American refugees.

I’ve become disheartened by this story as it has unfolded. The young people, thousands of them children barely past toddlerhood, have been allowed passage through Mexico and into Texas, New Mexico, Arizona and California. Reports are that they’re fleeing repression, virtual enslavement and corruption in their home countries of El Salvador, Guatemala and Honduras.

They come here unaccompanied, sent here by parents or transported by those notorious “coyotes,” who deal in human trafficking.

The president of the United States is asking Congress for some extra emergency money to help repatriate these young people – humanely, of course. He’s asking for money to help pay for more border security. Some in Congress don’t want to spend the money – even though they demand the president does something, anything, to help stem the flood of refugees.

Of all the arguments I’ve heard from Barack Obama’s critics, however, perhaps the most maddening in this notion that our borders are “porous,” that federal agents aren’t enforcing immigration laws, that the country has become a “magnet” for those who think it’s OK just to enter the United States and they’ll be given a safe place to live with no strings attached.

What on Earth are these critics thinking?

The borders cannot be sealed off. Still, we continue to capture illegal immigrants every single day. We’re deporting them in record numbers. The tens of thousands of young people being held by federal immigration authorities were captured, for crying out loud, by officers actually enforcing U.S. immigration laws.

I want this crisis to end as much as the next guy. I also want us to stop demonizing the children who are being used as pawns in this nasty struggle – and I want the critics to stop tossing out that demagogic canard that the United States is not enforcing its immigration laws.

Those helpless children would beg to differ.

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Divide over border crisis? Shocking!

Imagine my fake surprise at news that Republicans and Democrats are divided over how to solve the immigration/refugee crisis on our nation’s southern border.

http://www.politico.com/story/2014/07/immigration-reform-congress-closed-door-briefing-109027.html?hp=l1

Republicans who control the House of Representatives are trying to slash President Obama’s $3.7 billion emergency spending request to deal with the flood of young people fleeing Central America.

Democrats who control the Senate are trying to preserve most of what Obama has asked.

My take? If Republicans think the immigration crisis has reached some sort of critical mass, why are they scaling back so much of what the president is asking?

They want more border security? They want speedier repatriation of the immigrants? They want to hold the families and governments sending these young people to the United States accountable for their actions?

I believe the request does all of that. What in the world am I missing?

Yes, this crisis of serious national concern. There once was a time when leaders of the two major parties would lock arms and hammer out solutions — together. Those days appear to have vanished in the dust bin of recrimination that has become a way of life on Capitol Hill.

This is a disgraceful example of representative democracy failing to do what the people it represents want it to do.

Fix the problem.

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Obama might be able to fix border crisis

What? You mean the president of the United States has the executive authority to tinker with an immigration law and can start sending some of the children back to their home countries?

And he can do it without fighting with Congress?

Do it, Mr. President.

http://news.yahoo.com/obama-may-hold-fix-flood-immigrant-kids-172132339–politics.html

Two key lawmakers, one Republican and one Democrat, think President Obama has it within his power to act. Republican House Intelligence Committee Chairman Mike Rogers said the president needs to “re-engage” this effort. “We can safely get them home,” Rogers said on “Meet the Press.” He said, “And that’s where the president needs to start. So he needs to re-engage, get folks who are doing administrative work on the border. They need to make sure they send a very clear signal.”

But would he get sued for acting on his own? Let’s hope not. Congressional critics have been complaining that the president hasn’t acted forcefully enough on a whole host of issues, the immigration crisis being the latest. The children and young adults are political refugees from El Salvador, Guatemala and Honduras. Sending them back willy nilly could expose them to mortal danger.

A 2008 law signed by President Bush was implemented to help prevent human trafficking. It supposedly makes it more difficult to send children back when they’ve entered the country illegally. As they say, no good deed goes unpunished. Smugglers have taken that 2008 and sent these young people here to take advantage of that law. And for that the president has been pounded?

Democratic Senate Intelligence Committee Chairwoman Dianne Feinstein said the law allows for administration action in the event of “exceptional circumstances.” She should know; Feinstein helped write the 2008 legislation.

If the president is facing a protracted fight with Congress over the emergency spending bill he has requested, then he should just take the action he has authority to take.

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Tax cut … with no spending offsets?

I’ll have to admit that I’m a little slow on the uptake at times.

Folks have to explain some things to me on occasion to help me make sense of trends and decisions.

This decision by the Republican-controlled U.S. House of Representatives falls into that head-scratching category.

http://www.kxly.com/news/politics/house-republicans-vote-for-business-tax-cut/26906060

The House has approved a $287 billion business tax cut. It hasn’t included any spending offsets to pay for it. Speaker John Boehner boasts that the House is working to create jobs. Maybe it will. Then again, maybe those businesses benefiting from the tax cuts will take that money straight to the bottom line. That’s been happening quite a bit lately, you know?

What’s got me puzzled is why the House GOP keeps insisting on spending offsets whenever the Obama administration proposes job creation ideas. Infrastructure spending? Can’t afford it unless we cut spending in other places.

Another thing needs noting. The deficit is coming down in rather dramatic fashion. A tax cut of the size just approved by the House is going to blow up the deficit yet again.

My memory isn’t perfect, but I do remember a time when Republicans belonged to the party of “fiscal responsibility.” They loathed deficits, while Democrats blew them off. Ronald Reagan was elected president in 1980 partly because President Carter and Congress ran deficits of a whopping $40 billion annually; there was some other stuff also that contributed to Carter’s defeat.

Memory also reminds me of how quick congressional Republicans were to share in the credit for the balanced budget and the surpluses run up during the final years of Bill Clinton’s presidency. They made sure we all knew that their spending restraints were more responsible for the surplus than the modest tax increases proposed by the president — and, oh yes, approved by Congress.

The new age of Republicanism, though, sees the party in control of one half of one branch of government talking out of both sides of its mouth.

Spending offsets only count when the other guys want to do something. Tax cuts for business? Who cares?

In the meantime, President Obama is asking for $3.7 billion in emergency spending to help deal with that crisis along our southern border. The GOP response? It costs too much money.

Go figure.

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Stop laughing, Mr. President

A friend of mine got upset early today at a picture.

The picture showed President Obama sharing a light moment with someone at a conference table. Texas Gov. Rick Perry also is present. He’s not laughing. At the moment the picture was snapped, he appeared to be scowling. I doubt that was the emotion he was expressing.

Pictures such as the one to which I refer serve to inflame partisans. My pal was angry that the picture showed Obama laughing at a meeting called to discuss the border crisis involving those tens of thousands of children who are fleeing into the United States from Central America.

I have no clue what caused Obama to chuckle at that moment. Neither does my friend.

Strangely enough, I understand why he would be upset. He’s angry about the crisis. He thinks the president should do something to stop it. There’s nothing funny at the meeting, my friend believes.

Well, maybe someone said something that tickled Barack Obama’s fancy. Maybe the governor of Texas cracked a joke later, or perhaps he’d done so earlier.

Pictures, as they say, can tell a thousand words. This one, though, tells just a few. The president of the United States had the temerity to actually laugh.

God have mercy if this kind of thing is going to get us upset.