US President Barack Obama on Wednesday warned parents in Central America not to send their children alone on the perilous journey through Mexico to illegally cross the US border.
Obama also urged US Congress to stop playing politics and work with him to pass his request for US$3.7 billion in emergency funding to deal with the building immigration crisis.
“Parents need to know this is an incredibly dangerous situation and it is unlikely that their children will be able to stay,” Obama said, referring to a flow of 57,000 unaccompanied minors from Central America who have crossed the southwestern US frontier since October last year in the search for a better life. Often they are smuggled across.
Photo: AFP
“I’ve asked parents across Central America not to put their children in harm’s way in this fashion,” he said.
Obama was speaking in Dallas after meeting Texas Governor Rick Perry, local officials and faith leaders to discuss the border drama, which has developed into a toxic political showdown.
He demanded that lawmakers quickly pass the emergency funding bill to tighten border surveillance and enforcement, and to rush customs and legal resources to the area to speed up deportations of illegal immigrants, and to consider asylum cases.
“Are folks more interested in politics, or are they more interested in solving the problem?” Obama asked. “If the preference is for politics, then it won’t be solved.”
The president’s request for more money has met a stiff response from Republicans in the US Congress, who say that his plan is more geared to dealing with illegal minors already in the country rather than stopping the flow of new illegal entries.
Perry had demanded Obama visit the border and initially declined to greet the president as he stepped off Air Force One in Texas on a visit that includes several political fund-raising events, but after a hurried exchange of letters between Texas and Washington, the two men agreed to hold a meeting on the pressing immigration problem.
Perry even rode with Obama aboard his Marine One helicopter to the talks in Dallas.
Perry spelled out the Republican approach to the border crisis, which is based on claims that Obama has failed to protect the US frontier.
“There is a humanitarian crisis unfolding that has been created by bad public policy, in particular the failure to secure the border,” Perry said in a statement. “Securing the border is attainable and the president needs to commit the resources necessary to get this done.”
Republicans see securing the border as sending more men, including National Guard reserve troops, to protect it.
Obama says the problem is not that people are evading US security forces, but that there is insufficient infrastructure to process them when they arrive.
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