Random Thoughts on the Southern Border Crisis
Posted on July 10, 2014
Here are some random thoughts on the crisis at our Southern border:
- President Obama looks silly when he plays pool and raises money rather than travel to the border to meet the kids that have just crossed into the United States. He looks disengaged and uninterested and, yes, a bit lazy. It’s a PR nightmare for his team and it is simply inexcusable. He got baited into not going by Republicans, and he fell for the bait.
- This is a refugee crisis and should be handled as such. I don’t think we need a long-term refugee camp, but I would prefer a central location to keep these kids safe than to let them just disappear into the American economy. A betcha far fewer kids will make the journey from Central America if they figure out that the likeliest place they will end up is in a camp and not in Chicago or Atlanta.
- Immigration reform could have fixed some of this, but not all of it. Had we passed immigration reform, it would have made clear to folk in Central America that citizenship was not going to be an option for them. Had we passed immigration reform, we would have had many of the parents of the kids have chance at legal status, which would have taken them out of the shadows and made it easier for them to fight for their rights, especially against the drug gangs.
- Our drug laws are currently the worst of both worlds. We have no enforcement of our drug laws, but they are still on the books, which gives greater power to the drug cartels.
- Mexico has done nothing to help us in this matter. They have facilitated the transshipment of these kids to their border and they have allowed our borders be overwhelmed. I don’t know what their game is, but I know they don’t care much about what President Obama thinks about it, if he thinks anything about it.
- President Obama has been his own worst enemy. Rumors have flooded Honduras, El Salvador and Guatemala that Obama was going to give these kids citizenship once they got to America. He is just now trying to disabuse these kids of this notion, but it’s too late for that.
- Obama has done nothing in Central America to bolster the power of their governments to stop this illegal flow of humanity. Nothing. No diplomacy. No urgent phone calls (as far as I can tell). No dramatic action.
- This surge helped to kill immigration reform, although it may help to revive certain elements of it. Immigration reform was already teetering before Eric Cantor lost, but this crisis killed it dead. Ironically, certain pieces of it, like increased border security, may make it into the final supplemental appropriations bill that will be sent to the President at some point in time.
- Talking about the supplemental, the President wants Republicans to look bad on it, so he is asking for the moon in hopes that they shoot him down. The fact that he has no interest in paying for his spending request only solidifies my theory that he is playing politics with this whole thing. Just as he shooting pool in Colorado.