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“Border Crisis” My Eye
Remember George Stephanopoulos asking that seemingly out-of-the-blue question about birth control at the Republican debate in January 2012?
I think about it all the time, because it helps me remember that the Obama Administration sees no distinction between politics and policy and—crucially—is not above manufacturing a crisis in order to take credit for solving it.
I ain’t that smart, but I know that tens of thousands of unaccompanied children don’t just show up somewhere by coincidence.
The New York Times wants you to think all these kids decided to make a spontaneous mass migration to El Norte in order to get away from the murderous gang problem in Honduras and El Salvador. NBC has a similar take.
Some say that rumors have been spreading throughout Central America that a change in our immigration laws is imminent and anyone who can get to the U.S. now will be able to stay.
Am I the only one that thinks this explanation stinks? If it were true, why would they just send their kids? Why wouldn’t whole families make the trip?
Can you imagine putting your kids on a bus or in the back of a truck and sending them to a foreign country—on their own—based on a rumor? I can’t.
Everybody knows that kids get abused, trafficked, killed, beat up, robbed, etc. when they make these journeys. This is not something that is only known to NGO types with degrees from Yale and Brown. Central American parents are, I’m sure, aware of the dangers.
So why would thousands upon thousands of these families voluntarily expose their beloved children to the possibility of such mistreatment? Because life in Honduras suddenly became so very unbearable? Because Latin America just recently developed a gang problem?
I don’t buy it. I don’t buy any of it.
These Obama administration bums are up to their old tricks, manufacturing a “crisis” on the border in order to make Republicans look mean and bash through an amnesty that they expect will give them a permanent Democratic electoral majority.
But they are playing with lives here. Children’s lives. And that’s lower than I thought even they would go.
Published in General
@29,
How about an alternative, non-tin foil cap wearing, interpretation of that datum? As early as Feb of this year the press noted the growing numbers of unaccompanied minors. That link says,
That’s “last year” as of Feb14. So the Jan14 req is in all likelihood a response to requests by the directly involved agencies (Border Patrol, etc…) for some resources to deal with the problem. So you may not agree with how this administration has responded but it’s hardly the slam-dunk smoking gun you hope it to be.
I think Rico’s post at #12 neatly summarizes my thinking on this issue. There’s plenty to blame O for on this without playing into Leftist caricatures. If that bins me as a “true believer” in your political sorting schema, so be it.
I find calls for evidence in this sort of discussion to be beside the point. I prefer to apply Occam’s razor and, for the moment, accept the simplest theory that accounts for the known facts. At present, the known facts are not explained by the theory of a self-generating spontaneous flood of children, even with the Dream promise.
How did they get into Mexico?
Where did they get the money for the coyotes?
Who is running these trains?
What parents send their children alone on such a dangerous journey?
How did they get through Mexico without being killed, or at the least robbed, along the way?
How many of these kids can prove they are not Mexican?
Why is the federal govt. sending so many of them into the heartland before they have their hearings?
FD90, you accuse me of advancing a “conspiracy theory.” I have done no such thing. Instead, I have pointed out evidence of multi-national coordination in transporting “non-deportable” illegal aliens into the United States. I have also commented on the Obama administration’s lack of diplomatic response to this effort, which is injurious to the security of the United States in that it is creating a refugee crisis on our southern border.
Given bipartisan inside-the-beltway support for amnesty, aka “comprehensive immigration reform,” and the Obama administration’s penchant for not letting crises go to waste, it is hardly qualifying for membership in the Tinfoil Brigade to presume a certain explanatory power between these elements and the lack of any federal response other than humanitarian assistance.
http://www.breitbart.com/Breitbart-TV/2014/07/03/GOP-Rep-Feds-Knew-about-Border-Surge-in-January-Not-Following-the-Law-Will-End-GOP
Rep. Bridenstine discussing, among other things, the January request for a contractor to transport 60,000 illegal alien children.
So you disagree with Hennessey’s original point that Obama manufactured this crisis? If you merely think the administration could be doing more and isn’t then I misunderstood you.
I was one who pointed out when this “DREAMer” talk and all the Republican amnesty blather was in full swing that it would have consequences expressed at the southern border. I was hardly alone in that. It is just patently obvious. Nobody can fail to see that. Certainly nobody in DC. The current situation is *at best* a price they were willing to pay in order to get something else done.
Under that most charitable of assumptions, the GOP and Democrats were seeking different things, but using the same method.
It’s a simple economic argument: people respond to incentives, incentives were issued, and now people are responding. The best thing you can say is that the consequences were unintended, and I no longer extend that charity after the pattern has become plain. More telling even than the @moatgator set-up is the swiftness and secrecy of the response: an apparently well-developed plan with logistics already laid on to import illegal aliens throughout the country. For a “bumbling” administration, some things consistently turn out pretty smooth.
I’d be interested in learning where you think Occam’s razor comes down, and why, on each of the questions you raised.
Agreed! Great post, Matt.
Occam’s razor suggests that seeming coincidences are likely to share a cause. Car won’t start and all the oil’s on the driveway? Probably connected. Found a screwdriver stuck through the oilpan? Probably not an accident.
yes.
Before I came to this thread, I had just written this comment on the Immigration survey thread:
I live on Cape Cod. In the early eighties, someone flipped a switch somewhere and suddenly, as one reporter described it, all over the Cape people were waking up to the sound of bulldozers everywhere around them. The sudden building boom created enormous anxiety here. If the it continued, we would lose our “character” and never get it back. The 15 towns got together, and with an almost unanimous popular vote they passed a moratorium on all building for, I think, five years. No exceptions.
This moratorium was powerful psychologically. The silence cleared everyone’s head. The moratorium gave everyone a chance to think, to plan, to hold meetings, to poll the community, to get organized, to identify problems, to clarify objectives, and to come up with town plans.
I realize this could never happen with immigration, but I still wish we could do it. Give ourselves some time to think. What is happening now is that this has become a highly charged emotional issue, with new emotionally charged incidents every day for the public deal with.
[continue please to the comment 43]
It’s not each, but all taken together. The spontaneous explanation explains too little. The conspiracy explanation explains it all. Sometimes there really is a conspiracy. Or was the Lincoln assassination another of those spontaneous demonstrations against a play “that he had nothing to do with.”
The moratorium on building on Cape Cod removed the anxiety that the bulldozers were creating.
It is suddenly very clear to me that this administration is stirring up emotions in this country on the immigration issue.
And the administration and Community-Activist-in-Chief is succeeding. I saw a couple of weeks ago a Pew survey in which immigration is suddenly the most important issue to a whopping 72 percent of the public–Democrats and Republicans. It suddenly is ahead of the economy and education.
This administration has clearly created this chaos and anxiety to forward its agendas.
They know the psychological impact of the deaths of little kids who were trying to get into the United States.
The Gulf of Tonkin incident?
I think the motivation is that Obama the Savior wants to pass some sweeping immigration reform bill before he leaves office, something that will have his name on it like ObamaCare. He has only two years left, and that’s why he is whipping up the public’s emotions.
Me too.
And me too.
Exactly. The unanswered questions in Howellis’s list simply do not lend themselves to Occam’s razor type analysis.
Obama is trying, and succeeding, to supplant our images of illegal alien drug dealers and gang members with images of sweet seven-year-olds.
This is a legend about Lincoln and the Civil War, that goes like this:
“According to legend, Abraham Lincoln greeted Harriet Beecher Stowe in 1862 by saying ‘So you’re the little woman who wrote the book that started this great war.’ Whether the story is true or not, the sentiment underscores the public connection between Uncle Tom’s Cabin and the Civil War.”
I wouldn’t rule out existence of government involvement that we don’t yet know about. But every one of the unanswered questions can be responded to with answers that seem as plausible or more plausible than answers that implicate Obama administration intervention.
Most everything that occurs in life falls somewhere on a spectrum between “spontaneous” and “conspiracy.” The conspiracy explanation explains it all, as you say. But isn’t that the nature of conspiracy theories?
There is plenty of evidence that demonstrates Obama administration culpability for what is happening. I think it would be best to press the case to the American people with the best evidence we have while continuing the search for answers to questions like the ones you listed.
In Obama’s megalomaniac mind, he has to share ObamaCare with RomneyCare. He didn’t really want to share credit with Romney, and Romney didn’t want it or deserve it, but it was the only way Obama could make Romney have to run against himself among the Republicans. It was certainly a successful strategy, but there was a cost: Poor Obama doesn’t feel that ObamaCare is truly his alone. FDR had the New Deal, LBJ had the 100 Days’ and the War on Poverty, Kennedy had the Peace Corps, Bush 41 had the ADA, and Bush 43 had Ed Reform. Obama wants to claim something for himself. And so . . .
The kids coming here would have been less likely to die young in their own countries than they will be in the blue state inner cities to which they are going. Obama doesn’t care about that. He can blame Bush for that because it is Bush’s “collateral damage.” Those words have been drummed in to us. So it’s Bush’s fault. And anyway, Obama can successfully blur the lines of cause and effect so that the kids who suffer will have suffered because of the Republicans.
I think the governors of the border states (or any other states seriously affected by this travesty) should grant pardons to all criminals in their sate prisons upon the condition they “immigrate” to Mexico or central America and NEVER return.
Tit for tat.
I fear I have been unclear. I support Howellis.
Border Patrol all stood down and a flood of illegals over here? Probably connected. After the president made a series of speeches declaring amnesty, especially for kids, with or without legislation? Probably not an accident.
I am so convinced I am right about the manipulation of public opinion that the Obama administration is trying to bring about that I would bet every cent I have that the number one issue in Congress when they reconvene this fall will be immigration reform.
There will be a 3,000-page bill put in front of Congress on December 24, with a vote-for-this-or-else Post-it note attached.
I’d put every cent I have on that bet.
I agree with you if the “pressing of the case” is being done by respectable spokesmen for the Republican party. But here on Ricochet, let ‘er rip.
Add Fox to this list. They are guilty of spouting the “running from gangs” line themselves.
I totally agree. This is designed to take the pressure off of all the scandals that were getting some traction before the border crisis started soaking up the evening news hour. Like you, I don’t buy any of it. Especially when they won’t let members of Congress and some media view the camps.
My question is…who is going to expose it? Who is going to stop it?
OK. If you like your conspiracy theory you can keep your conspiracy theory.
That sounds familiar. But why do I get the feeling it can’t be true?
Lest people think I’ve totally lost my mind: I don’t think that anyone in the Obama administration planned for these kids to die trying to get here. I imagine they thought they could control it. They simply wanted a lot of kids rather than the stereotypical drug dealer-looking types. These are the same stupids who thought the American people would fall for the dog-ate-my-hard drive routine.
Yes. Obama did. First, his illegal “DREAM” executive order. Actual deportations declined by half. Then, Latin media broadcasting reports of “permisos” at the border, if you act now. Reportedly, churches – which would I am sorry to say, be Catholic- telling people to go north, now, before the door shuts. Obama is responsible, and the dead child found floating in the Rio Grande today, is on his head. Not that he cares.
I don’t think they planned for dead children. But, I don’t think they care. You have to break a few eggs, after all.