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OPINION

Obama's border kids solution stonewalled: Our view

The Editorial Board
USATODAY
Texas Gov. Rick Perry welcomes President Obama to Dallas on Wednesday.

When tens of thousands of unaccompanied children from Central America started showing up at the U.S. border, Republican lawmakers were quick to pounce. The influx, they argued, showed that President Obama was weak on immigration enforcement and that his appeals for normalizing the status of millions of undocumented workers was encouraging people to make a mad dash for the USA.

Yet now that Obama is proposing a fix to the problem — asking Congress for $3.7 billion for new detention centers and more judges and legal officers to expedite the deportation process — congressional Republicans are balking.

They don't want to give Obama a "blank check." They say too much of his request is focused on the Department of Health and Human Services (HHS) and not enough on Homeland Security. They say he should send the National Guard to the border.

The GOP critics have numerous rationales, none of them convincing, for spurning Obama's proposal. Let's call the Republican response what it is: a tactical decision to let a problem fester for political reasons. As long as the problem exists, hard-liners will be able to blame it on proposals to overhaul the nation's broken immigration laws. All of the talk of a path to citizenship is prompting people to come here before the law is passed, or so goes the argument.

That is highly debatable, at best. The sales pitches that the smuggling rings are using to persuade families to send their kids northward have little or nothing to do with possible future laws. Rather, they are an accurate description of U.S. law as it stands.

Under anti-trafficking legislation enacted before Obama became president, no minor from a nation not contiguous to the USA may be deported without a full hearing on his or her application for asylum or refugee status. The more kids come, the longer the wait gets for such a hearing. It's now nearly two years.

The lengthening wait, combined with the skyrocketing number of kids, has overwhelmed the few existing centers to house these children. That means most will be sent to live with relatives, where they might or might not be heard from again.

That's what smugglers are telling the parents: Pay us to take your kids out of their violent homelands. When they get to the USA, they will be briefly detained and then released to family members.

And that is why Obama's proposals appear to be very responsive to the problem.

The HHS money is for detention centers. The money for the judges and other legal personnel is to expedite the hearing process. The National Guard can be of little help because for most part, these children are turning themselves in as soon as they get to the border.

Congress, to be sure, does have a right and responsibility to uncover problems and make changes if necessary. It can ask whether $3.7 billion is too much or too little to get the job done. It can figure out where the money should come from. And it can legitimately consider amending existing law to allow children to be deported without going through the full asylum and refugee hearing process.

But that kind of constructive dialogue and oversight, in search of a shared solution to a national problem, is not evident. Instead, the tepid response to Obama's plan reflects the kind of partisanship and dysfunction that has become all too familiar.

USA TODAY's editorial opinions are decided by its Editorial Board, separate from the news staff. Most editorials are coupled with an opposing view — a unique USA TODAY feature.

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