President Barack Obama does not believe his temporary amnesty program for illegal immigrant children has exacerbated the border crisis even though the number of illegal immigrant kids crossing the border spiked the year after he unilaterally enacted the Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals (DACA) program in 2012.
In fact, Obama thinks programs like DACA and a comprehensive amnesty bill are ways to solve the border crisis.
Addressing the press Wednesday after meeting with Texas Governor Rick Perry to discuss the border crisis in Dallas, Obama, when asked if programs like DACA have caused or contributed to the crisis, claimed, “if you look at the pattern of immigration into our country, we are at a significantly lower level than when I took office.”
Obama, though, conceded that parents who were sending their children to America from Central America were “misinformed.” As Breitbart News has reported, even though “White House officials have gone on a public relations campaign to tell Central Americans that they will not receive amnesty, many illegal immigrants have said they traveled to America believing the Obama administration would never deport them if they made it across the U.S.-Mexico border.”
And the number of illegal immigrant children crossing the border spiked the year after Obama enacted DACA in 2010:
According to the Christian Science Monitor, “during the decade preceding fiscal year 2012, the federal government agency tasked with caring for unaccompanied minors who cross the border illegally dealt with an average of 7,000 to 8,000 cases a year.” In fiscal year 2011, there were 6,560, according to the Department of Health and Human Services.
Yet, as the Monitor noted, the following year, when Obama enacted DACA, “the number jumped to 13,625,” and at least 50,000 have entered illegally since October of last year. Officials estimate at least 150,000-160,000 more will try next year.
Obama, who said there was no need to visit the border while attending three fundraisers for Democrats in the state, blamed the increase in the number of illegal immigrant children flooding across the border on the security challenges facing Central American countries and said Central American countries needed to “get their acts together.”
Obama even said that programs like DACA or comprehensive amnesty legislation that puts all of the country’s illegal immigrants on a pathway to citizenship “frees up resources” for border security, and he implied those programs would make the situation at the border better.
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