The Border Crisis Could Be Solved With a Quickly-Passed Change in the Law and the President's Signature

Charles Lane at the Washington Post:

So, here we are: The Wilberforce Act [which grants permisos and asylum hearings to other-than-Mexican unaccompanied children], logical and humane on paper, has been overthrown by an influx of Central American kids that reached 10,146 in fiscal 2012, 20,805 in fiscal 2013 and 39,133 between last October and June 15, according to the Los Angeles Times.

...

If they do find their way to a stable home in the United States, the children will likely skip their far-in-the-future hearings and grow up undocumented, living in the shadows even under the version of immigration reform favored by President Obama -- though maybe we can look forward to a brutal political debate over legalizing them a decade from now.

This isn't anyone’s idea of sustainable immigration; at least it shouldn’t be. Some call the situation a humanitarian crisis. I prefer "national scandal."

[T]he key is to fix the Wilberforce Act: to permit prompt exclusion of unaccompanied Central American minors, as is already the case for Mexicans and (far less frequently) Canadians. Only by showing people there is nothing to be gained by paying traffickers for the traumatic voyage through Mexico will the chaos cease.

To his credit, Obama voiced support for such a measure. Less to his credit, he omitted it from his proposal to Congress after 200 activist organizations urged him to reconsider; they argued in an open letter that it would leave Central American children at the mercy of criminal gangs back home.

This is why Obama won't go to the border. Because the fix here is obvious, but he has been forbidden by his leftwing henchmen from enacting it.

So he doesn't want to highlight the problem; highlighting the problem would put pressure on him to do the obvious thing and fix the problem.

Instead, as usual, he wants the public just to forget there's a crisis, as a lack of public attention provides him with plenty of latitude to do things not in the public's interest.

So I imagine we'll see some more #BearIsLoose hashtag games and maybe some celebrities or somethin'.

posted by Ace at 01:25 PM

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