Can you spell irony?
Per ThinkProgress:
Hours before Congress broke for the August recess, House Republicans claimed that the President could use executive action to fix the border situation with unaccompanied children fleeing violence in the Central American countries of Honduras, El Salvador and Guatemala.
In a press statement released Thursday, House Speaker John Boehner (R-OH) and other House Republican leaders indicated that President Obama could address the crisis “without the need for congressional action,” a statement tinged with some irony given that just the day before, House Republicans had slammed the President with a lawsuit claiming executive overreach.
“There are numerous steps the president can and should be taking right now, without the need for congressional action, to secure our borders and ensure these children are returned swiftly and safely to their countries.”
That sound you just heard was my jaw hitting the floor.
Self-awareness evidently isn’t one of the Speaker’s attributes.
As a post to Daily Kos put it, a bit more baldly, “I shit you not. Republicans in the House are encouraging the President to act on his own — for which lawless actions, of course, Republicans in the House earlier this week voted to sue him. You really can’t make this crap up.”
You must be kidding yourself. Do you think Congress has never passed laws concerning border security before, particularly after 9/11? There’s a problem at the border because this administration and prior administrations chose not to enforce the laws already passed by Congress. Every American should wake up to the fact that the war on terrorism was a totally manufactured reason for stripping Americans of their civil rights. It certainly had nothing to do about “national security.” We can send a man to the moon in less than 10 years, but we can’t build a fence to protect the border after 13 years. If the President spent as much time working to fix this problem as he does on the golf course and partying with his celebrity friends, he might have found a solution to a problem made by his own willful refusal to enforce laws already on the books.
What, build a wall like the one that was in Berlin? Really? Do you really think building a wall will fix immigration? Our system is broken. Even legal immigrants like my spouse have to jump through hoops to live in this country. The only solution to this issue is national ID cards. Other countries keep immigration controlled that way but I’m pretty sure right wingers would not even consider that solution. I’m just thankful that they were not shooting immigrants at the border when my grandparents came here over 100 yrs ago. They too came here legally.
End the drug war (with central American countries) and this border crisis will disappear.
I was told by someone in a position to know, that to become an American citizen takes at least 3 years and costs approximately $10,000. If this is the case; it explains why there are millions who remain illegal. Who can afford this but the rich who are the ones fighting to deport them or hire them at minimum wages. What is the legal position for those who are in the process of becoming citizens? I haven’t seen information explaining the process and/or the cost of becoming a citizen; meanwhile the number of illegals of all ages continues to increase as the GOP stands in the way of progress on this issue with their red herring immigration reform. What is that Shakespearean quote, “…full of sound and fury, signifying nothing…”? An apt description of the all recent acts of the House by Boehner and company.
There is one cause of our immigration problem. It’s less expensive for businesses to fill jobs with desperate foreign labor, to bring them here, then it is send the jobs there.
No jobs, no immigrants. That simple.
Of course the brand marketing done by the GOP for corporate America presents it first as a government problem, now as an executive branch problem.
Meanwhile, business once again, shows us how to privatize profits and socialise risk.
The guiding principle for our Uber-Capitialism is if you cannot out source it to the Third World then bring the Third World here. It was the American business community that brought the Third World here to drive down Wages.
@JoAnn: Good quote from William Shakespeare! The front end of that quote fits the opposition perfectly. It goes like this: “It is a tale told by an idiot, (full of sound and fury, signifying nothing).”
Thanks, Betty, no idea why I couldn’t remember the first part of the quote when you consider who I was referring to:)
Of course a national ID would be of great avail. The problem being that such a card might be considered a right to vote in national elections and they would never take that chance!
The fees that USCIS charges for legal immigrants skyrocketed after 9/11 to pay for immigration enforcement. Still, hundreds of thousands of aliens immigrate to this country legally every year. There is no legal path for most of these people flooding across the border without bending the rules. A nation without borders isn’t really a nation at all. The only reason for allowing unrestricted immigration to this country is if your goal is to flood the country with as much cheap labor as possible to drive down wages and destroy the middle class. Check the numbers. The plan is working beautifully. http://www.nytimes.com/2014/07/27/business/the-typical-household-now-worth-a-third-less.html?_r=0 You also can’t give a damn about public health in this county if you allow people with serious, communicable diseases to flow across the border unrestricted.
There are more than 40 million immigrants in this country right now. Nearly a third are from Mexico, most of whom were not well off when they came to this county. Many of them entered the country unlawfully at the southern border and were later granted legal status either through a prior amnesty program or waivers of inadmissibility. India is the second largest country from which our immigrants arrive, followed by China and the Philippines. There isn’t a single, European country in the top 10 countries for arriving immigrants. Third world countries are well ahead of Europe.
If they are suing him for usurping his authority, then refuse to pass legislation that could help him resolve the problems, then tell him to go ahead and act without their needed congressional action, isn’t that intrapment?
Of course, our immigration problem is self limiting. When business can buy most labor at third world prices, and finds that poor people make lousy customers, they’ll say oops, and reverse the trend that they began. It’s called the harvesting of the middle class. Part of their wealth redistribution program.
They make the profits. The middle class, large in number, pays the social costs.