The Hammer: CHANGE THE LAW

Posted: July 10, 2014 | Author: Pundit Planet | Filed under: Health and Social Issues, Law & Justice, Think Tank, U.S. News, White House | Tags: Barack Obama, Central America, Charles Krauthammer, Josh Earnest, Krauthammer, Mexico, Obama, United States, United States Border Patrol |1 Comment

A serious president would push to eliminate the Central American loophole in our immigration laws.

For Washington Post Writer’s Group & National Review, Charles Krauthammer writes:

As is his wont, President Obama is treating the border crisis — more than 50,000 unaccompanied children crossing illegally — as a public-relations problem. Where to photo op and where not. He still hasn’t enunciated a policy. He may not even have one.

Will these immigrants be allowed to stay? Seven times was Obama’s homeland-security secretary asked this on Meet the Press. Seven times he danced around the question.

“The only question is: How long until Obama is forced to do the obvious?”

— The Hammer

Presidential press secretary Josh Earnest was ostensibly more forthcoming: “It’s unlikely that most of those kids will qualify for humanitarian relief. . . . They will be sent back.” This was characterized in the media as a harder line. Not at all. Yes, those kids who go through the process will likely have no grounds to stay. But most will never go through the process.

“Where’s Obama’s immigration policy? Did he leave it in the other pants?”

— The Butcher

Mark Boster / Los Angeles Times

These kids are being flown or bused to family members around the country and told to then show up for deportation hearings. Why show up? Why not just stay where they’ll get superior schooling, superior health care, superior everything? As a result, only 3 percent are being repatriated, to cite an internal Border Patrol memo.

Repatriate them? How stone-hearted, you say. After what they’ve been through? To those dismal conditions back home?

“Why do they come? The administration pretends it’s because of violence and poverty. Nonsense. When has there not been violence and poverty in Central America?”

— The Hammer

By that standard, with a sea of endemic suffering on every continent, we should have no immigration laws. Deny entry to no needy person.

But we do. We must. We choose. And immediate deportation is exactly what happens to illegal immigrants, children or otherwise, from Mexico and Canada. By what moral logic should there be a Central American exception?

“That’s a very good point, Dr. Krauthammer. You should write an article that says that.”

— The Butcher

There is no logic. Just a quirk of the law — a 2008 law intended to deter sex trafficking. It mandates that Central American kids receive temporary relocation, extensive assistance and elaborate immigration/deportation proceedings, which many simply evade.

“I did. Pay attention.”

— The Hammer

This leniency was designed for a small number of sex-trafficked youth. It was never intended for today’s mass migration aimed at establishing a family foothold in America.

Stopping this wave is not complicated. A serious president would go to Congress tomorrow proposing a change in the law, simply mandating that Central American kids get the same treatment as Mexican kids, i.e., be subject to immediate repatriation.

Then do so under the most humane conditions. Buses with every amenity. Kids accompanied by nurses and social workers and interpreters and everything they need on board. But going home.

One thing is certain. When the first convoys begin rolling from town to town across Central America, the influx will stop…(read more) NRO

Disclaimer: Though I’ve taken a few liberties with the money quotes, depicting an imaginary conversation with the author, all the words are Dr. Krauthammer’s, not mine. I’m just a news editor on a hot day with a dull knife in search of comic relief during the worst week of Obama’s presidency. Read the whole thing here. — The Butcher

National Review Online