Obama Administration Warns Money Low To Deal With Migrant Crisis

[Purveyor]

Source: REUTERS

By Richard Cowan and Julia Edwards
WASHINGTON Thu Jul 10, 2014 8:29pm EDT

(Reuters) - The Obama administration warned lawmakers on Thursday that U.S. border control agencies would run out of money and migrant children would run out of beds if Congress did not approve $3.7 billion in funds to address an influx of people from Central America.

Days after the White House put forward its request for emergency funding to address the humanitarian crisis at the southwest U.S. border, Department of Homeland Security Secretary Jeh Johnson pressed the need for lawmakers to approve the request.

U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement and U.S. Customs and Border Protection would run out of funds by mid-August and mid-September, respectively, without the emergency cash, he said at a Senate Appropriations Committee hearing on the request.

Health and Human Services Secretary Sylvia Mathews Burwell said her department would run out of beds in temporary housing facilities if the number of unaccompanied children crossing the border continued into August at the same rate seen in May and June.


Read more: http://www.reuters.com/article/2014/07/11/us-usa-immigration-idUSKBN0FF27Y20140711

[JDPriestly]

1. Obama should call it what it is, and invasion, and use military money to handle it.

The influx of these children is a well organized invasion. It has reached military proportions. We have to end it.

Our country, our social services system, is not prepared or funded to handle an influx of children, mostly teenagers, who don't know our culture or language well enough to live on their own.

This is a matter of national defense, not of immigration and nationalization.

[geek tragedy]

2. That's how Steve King talks about immigration, not how Obama talks about it nt

[JDPriestly]

3. I am not opposed to immigration. I am opposed to children invading our country.

Where are we going to house these children? Who is going to pay for their educations? The Republicans cut food stamp money last year. How will we get them to fund the costs of feeding, housing and educating children who are not citizens, are not legal immigrants and just decided to come here without visas?

If we have 50,000 to one million this year, how many will we have next year?

Young people who grew up and went to school in the US and have no place to go outside the US can't get jobs. Who is going to employ these kids?

Who is bringing them here? The drug coyotes? If so, how many of the "children" are gang members themselves, and how many are being set up to carry on the drug trade for the cartels?

These are serious issues and questions.

It is not a matter of human rights. It is a matter of an invasion.

Interestingly, I hear that most of the children come from El Salvador, Guatemala and Honduras, all countries in which we have either had huge plantations or in which the Reagan administration meddled. This is a human tragedy but the answer is not to encourage more children to attempt immigration by offering to let them stay.

[joshcryer]

6. It's a loophole JD.

Last edited Fri Jul 11, 2014, 01:55 AM - Edit history (1)

They are exploiting a clever loophole where they send their kids, the kids get picked up by CPS, the family flies over on temp visa to pick the kids up, then pow, they walk away and disappear in the million other illegal immigrates who come here every year.

edit: it seems that a lot of these kids are claiming abuse and want protections, whether true or not, their concerns should be met.

50k is a drop in the bucket.

Once it blows over and the media stops caring about it they will be released to family as per the loophole that the parents are exploiting and they will whither to the winds. No one will care. For those kids who don't have care givers who can take care of them of course it's an issue but that doesn't mean they should be dismissed as "invaders." Would you really be for sending a kid back to a brothel or abusive parent if they are claiming abuse?

[JDPriestly]

7. They will be deported unless they can present evidence of their abuse.

It's a real tough sell because immigration judges hear these stories every day, week after week, month after month, year after year.

I have great sympathy as I often say for kids who have been in our country for years. They should be permitted to stay and file citizenship papers if they wish.

But there are probably more jobs in El Salvador now for those kids than there are here. If they come to the US, a large proportion of them are likely to be enticed to join gangs. It is a nightmare.

Yet another bequest of the Reagan and Bush administrations who pushed for and got, in Reagan's case, the wars in Central America and Bush who signed CAFTA.

I feel great sympathy for the children, but do you know how difficult it will be for those who stay? Impossible. That's how difficult.
Only very few will be able to lead good lives.

[joshcryer]

9. It really depends on how many are really abuse victims.

The truth is that they had to pay thousands of dollars to get a smuggler to get them into the US. They then go to a border guard place and announce that they're here illegally. For me, that means that they're exploiting a child trafficking / CPS loophole whereby they are allowed to stay until someone can take care of them.

So their parents fly in under a temporary visa, then they land, travel to where their child is, show the documents, then they are released to "fly back" to their home country. Except at that point both child and parent are within the borders, and can disperse, as do 1 million immigrates a year.

I skeptical about the abuse claims given the journey they had to make to make it to the US. The child trafficking laws exclude Mexico and Canada, so they are coming from much further countries and to make that journey they need a sophisticated smuggler who charges decent fees to get here. But those claims should be researched.

If it is just foreigners using their children to get a footing in the US, I don't really give a damn, they'll take care of their kids.

[Purveyor]

4. Thank you JD, thank you. Your view of this dire situation is much like mine and

scarce around these parts.

[joshcryer]

5. Are you serious?

I read that as sarcastic satire but are you actually serious that this is an invasion?

[JDPriestly]

8. What percentage of them do you think will end up in prison within the next 15 years?

What will they do if they don't know the language and have no skills?

This is not the early 20th century. The life of immigrants is hard, really tough.

Our unemployment rates are very high. We take in the number of immigrants under our legal visa program that we can. I just think we are not able to take care of children who come here in this way. It isn't fair to anyone. Not to the families of these children. Not to the children themselves. And not to the taxpayers who will foot the bill at least during the early years of the kids' lives here.

[joshcryer]

10. I think that is an exaggeration.

And yes I read your PM before posting. I think they're exploiting a child trafficking loophole that says any kids that aren't Canadian or Mexican that wind up in the US should be under protection. The law is that they must be protected. What happens next is the parents get contacted, they request a visa to fly here, pick up their kids, and leave. Then they stay.

That's actually what I've been seeing with some of the right wing reports. The right wingers are so upset that the people are allowed to leave when they come to claim their children, as if, basically, everyone claiming a child with the proper papers should be escorted to a plane to fly back to their home country. That's fair enough, I suppose. But it's clear at least to me these people have money and means to disappear, so they're using their children, in a sort of reverse anchor baby type of thing. Instead of people coming here and having kids here then going back, they are sending their kids here so that they can come here and pick them up and they can stay.

Regardless, a million people immigrate here a year, and the vast majority of them are not criminals, they pick your tomatoes, they build your roofs, they do the shitty jobs we Americans are too lazy to do.

[JDPriestly]

11. On a very practical level, in the reality of our country and our juvenile detention system,

this law is impossible. It should be changed today. People who don't know how children are housed in juvenile detention or large foster home systems in the US should take a look and see.

Every child will need to have someone to make decisions for him or her until that child goes home or is emancipated and has someone to help it maneuver through life her in the US (on planet earth by the way where people have to eat and have a place to sleep and safety). That someone will probably be a social worker. The social worker doesn't just drop out of the sky. It usually takes a judge or someone to assign a social worker or a pastor or another responsible person to help the minor.

That is why this is difficult. I don't care where a child comes from. If that child is under the legal age for emancipation and can safely and legally live on its own, that is one thing. But in my experience you can't just abandon an underage child somewhere in the US. One might sneak under the radar, but thousands, no.

Somebody has to raise the money to care for all these children. That is why I am suggesting that Obama take the money from the military. The children could also be housed in military bases for the beginning of their time here until all the legal guardians, medical examinations, etc. have been done and they can go home. Their parents can be picked up at the airport by military buses, taken to the military bases where their children are located and taken back to the airport in military buses.

The law is crazy. Whoever wrote it does not understand how things work for juveniles who are abandoned in this country. Not the reality of it.

[joshcryer]

12. That is definitely an option Obama can have.

But I suspect that since it's already dying down in the news they're just going to ignore it and release the kids as soon as their guardians come to claim them. FOX News will cling to the story for months, like Benghazi, but no one will care.

For the children who really are running from abuse (who knows how they got the money to travel here) they'll wind up in the foster system and wind up being a drain in the vein you describe. But I suspect it is just a clever workaround to immigrate here.

I don't see Obama implementing military-style concentration camps for these kids.

[JDPriestly]

13. Apparently some are already being housed at Lackland

Air Force Base.

This is an encouraging story:

http://www.kens5.com/story/news/local/2014/07/11/san-antonio-group-provides-free-legal-service-to-immigrant-kids-at-lackland/12510255/

We could easily have 100,000 children by the end of the year. This is an international catastrophe and should be handled as a UN refugee crisis.

My husband reminds me that the British took in refugees from Germany during WWII. But there was a lot of public understanding in Britain that there was a war and therefore a lot of sympathy for the refugees. I don't think we have the same sympathy in the US for these children. And the logistics problems are enormous. This will so overload our foster care system, and it is already very shaky.

Military bases do not mean military detention. Being placed temporarily or permanently into the juvenile detention system would be much worse than living on US military bases for these children. It's a real mess.

We need to request international help to take care of the situations in Central America that are causing the crisis.

[Enrique]

15. they don't have weapons

they're not attacking anyone. They're children.

So when you call it an invasion that's not "calling it what it is", it's using a rhetorical device, the same rhetorical device that some very disreputable right-wingers happen to use.

[Neoma]

14. Always enough for war, never enough to take care of people.

[nikto]

16. What a waste of money

Spending on needy kids?


Can't we spend the $3.7 Billion on drones, or at least tax-refund$ to oil companies?

Maybe we could make a special payment to Bill Gates or Walmart Corp.

You know, something useful and fun.

[amandabeech]

17. We would agree on a lot with respect to spending,

but Congressional reality is a little different.

Republicans in the House are not going to vote on a big package for this, unless it includes money for shutting down the border. We are stuck with Boehner until January, and probably until January 2017. We may keep the Senate by a whisker in 2014, and we may either obtain or increase our majority in the Senate in 2016, but the House looks like a real problem until redistricting after the 2020 census.

Until we actually have funds to help, and I would add, as those who posted above add, that we shouldn't encourage increased immigration until people who are here and are having a hard time of it are helped. Like the low-income folks in Detroit who are having their water shut off, for instance.