Opinion: 100,000-Plus Kids — Blame Obama, Bush, or Who?

FILE - This June 19, 2014, file photo shows President Barack Obama pausing as he talks will about the situation in Iraq at the White House in Washington. Obama acknowledged the risks of mission creep when he outlined plans to help Iraq combat the Islamic insurgency that has made gains with lighting speed, but he pledged that the U.S. will not be "dragged back" into a lengthy conflict or become ensnarled in "mission creep." The deployments mark a sharp shift for a president who oversaw the full withdrawal of American forces from Iraq in late 2011 after Washington and Baghdad failed to reach an agreement to keep a few thousand troops in place. (AP Photo/Pablo Martinez Monsivais, File) (Ap)

Some Americans are going berserk over the huge numbers of children walking into the United States through Mexico from Central America; e.g. — some cable news, some radio talk shows.
Additionally, there is a loud minority that point to the porous South Texas border as the ultimate result of Barack Obama’s perceived Open Border policies.

That emotional cohort, however, is wrong that President Obama is totally responsible for the thousands of children and some adults that have overwhelmed thousands of Texas-based Border Patrol agents. Obama deserves only one third of the blame for the situation.

To Obama, the five Democrats and the recalcitrant House Republicans the question will be: “What part of legal don’t you understand?”

— Raoul Lowery Contreras

One third of the blame belongs to six Democrat U.S. Senators, five of whom voted against proceeding in 2010 to passage of what became known as the DREAM Act (Development, Relief and Education for Alien Act) that had passed the House 216-198.

The five who voted against ending debate were Montana’s Max Baucus, now Ambassador to China; Montana’s Jon Tester, Nebraska’s Ben Nelson (now a lobbyist) Kay Hagan of North Carolina currently not favored for re-election this November and Arkansas’ Mark Pryor considered the Senate’s most endangered incumbent this November.

The sixth Senator to be blamed for the DREAM Act defeat was Majority Leader Harry Reid who desired a defeat in order to blast Republicans; enough Republicans voted for proceeding with the Dream Act to have passed so Harry Reid’s Democrats killed the Dream Act which would have allowed children brought here illegally to be legalized with a path to citizenship.Naturally President Obama blamed Republicans for killing the Dream Act, but the real blame lay with his five Democrats and Harry Reid who didn’t “whip” his own people to make sure they were voting for the Act which the majority and enough Republicans wanted passed.

The remaining third of blame for today’s border mess lies with former Congressman Tom Tancredo (R-CO) and his political off-spring, Congressmen Steve King of Iowa, lame duck Michele Bachman (R-MN) who is leaving Congress in December and somewhere between 40 and 60 like-minded Republican representatives who are death on Comprehensive Immigration Reform.

This group of mostly back-bench Republicans screams when anyone mentions immigration reform. The number one scream of these people and their enablers in talk radio is the word “A-M-N-E-S-T-Y.”

There is no amnesty proposed by anyone in the Senate or the House. Doesn’t matter, the enablers of stop-any-immigration-reform movement don’t care, they deceitfully label “legalization” with many conditions as amnesty and further are really death on a “path to citizenship.”

The current crisis on the Texas border and basically only on the Texas border can be blamed equally on Obama, on those five Democrat senators who were so frightened by someone running against them this year and the few dozen anti-immigration-reform-of-any-sort Republicans.

In the final analysis, however, Barack Obama is the principal bogey-man because when he became President in 2009 he had a Democrat House and Senate and he did nothing on immigration reform, didn’t offer any reform program and didn’t mention immigration reform.

To this day, Obama has not offered a written plan or proposal for immigration reform like George W. Bush did in 2006 and 2007. Obama has failed, utterly failed the Hispanic community that is concerned with immigration.

Can the situation be fixed? Not the immediate problem, we just will have to deal with it. But the long range problem can be alleviated by, of all people, Eric Cantor, whose defeat in the 7th Virginia District primary will end his congressional run this December.

If Speaker John Boehner cooperates, Eric Cantor can partner with the Cuban American Republican congressmen from Florida, Democrat Luis Gutierrez of Chicago and a couple of Hispanic congressmen from California and Texas and offer a House comprehensive reform bill with five basic elements:

• A reformulation of the existing Immigration and Customs Enforcement into a field agency of real sworn border cops, not cast-offs from other agencies; more than nine border sectors so agents can be moved around on a moment’s notice not as now with union rules. No more agents are necessary than the 20,000 on payroll now.

• Annual or bi-annual work permits applied for by employers of workers already here or needed in the future, all employment categories, no felony records, labor laws applicable to all.

• Residential permits for families here already with American born citizen children.

• Permanent residency for foreign college graduates in technical/science/engineering and mathematical fields of study.

• An E-Verify program (Social Security card based) administered by a contractor (credit card or merchandising company such as VISA, Master Charge, American Express or Amazon). To be fully functional at a time certain to be used on all hires.

This five point program will channel the vast majority of people coming to the USA for work into legality.

To Obama, the five Democrats and the recalcitrant House Republicans the question will be: “What part of legal don’t you understand?”