The Big Lawsuit

[whell]

Originally Posted by finnbow

I understand that, but now we have the GOP demanding that the President send all the kids immediately back to Central America even though it's against the law they passed and Dubya signed. So, on one hand they're suing Obama for doing what they wanted (delaying the Obamacare mandate) while demanding that he defy the child trafficking law because they're too chickenshit to take any vote involving immigration issues.

We'll disagree about much of this. Obama's new found desire to strictly adhere to the law in this case is, at the very least, convenient. While everyone seems to identify the TVPRA as the root of the issue, I'm left wondering why Obama, for example, doesn't simply use his phone and his pen to creatively change the law like he did for healthcare reform. Under TVCRA, Canadian and Mexican children are exempt. He could simply decide the broaden the exemption for any children who also transits illegally through Mexico, like he unilaterally broadened the enforcement of CO2 emissions for example. I mean, at least that would be consistent with how the Administration has chosen to enforce other laws.

(On a side note, I love how you others on the left love to characterize this as "Bush's law". Its not like he wrote it himself and signed it into law. In fact, Biden was the one who introduced the law in the Senate, and Tom Lantos introduced it in the House.)

Many in the GOP want a legal way to handle the issue of illegal immigration. You've observed this yourself. However, Boehner said in February that it was “time to deal with” U.S. immigration policy, but after discussions with the Prez came away saying that it will be difficult to pass a bill this year because fellow Republicans don’t trust President Barack Obama to enforce the changes.

“There’s widespread doubt about whether this administration can be trusted to enforce our laws,” Boehner told reporters in Washington. “It’s going to be difficult to move any immigration legislation until that changes.”

They don't trust Obama on this because they know that Obama is also playing politics with this. The "fix" here would be to address this issues with the 2008 Act that is responsible for this mess. However, WaPo observes:

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.

The right answer here is not to hide behind a broken law. The law was designed to prevent and discourage trafficking and its obvious that its having the precisely opposite effect. There are many in this forum who, for example, cheer when drug laws are enforced and call such laws immoral or unjust. Is the enforcement of a law that encourages families to send their children (and, by they way, there's quite a few adults in the mix here too) unaccompanied on a long and perilous journey, where they end up being released to unknown persons (we heard testimony this week that DHS makes no effort, for example, to verify the immigration status of the people who the kids are released to)? Is it any less immoral to to enforce a law that ends up creating make-shift Manzanars out of military bases and bus depots?