Jophiel wrote:
Rick Perry is showing how prescient he is by pointing to a letter he sent to Obama in 2012 talking about growing numbers of minors at the border. His letter pre-dates DACA by several months and is presumably based on several months data prior to that. So, no, short of major advances in Latin American chrono-journeying, DACA is not the primary cause of this influx nor are any DACA-related comments by the president.
Um... Because the Obama administration was ignoring the law with regards to deportations for quite some time before formally declaring it in DACA. That's what Perry was talking about. And at the time, he was complaining about a 90% increase in unaccompanied minors in 2012
bringing the total for the first 6 months to 5,200. But instead of changing his policy, Obama formalized it with DACA, and today we have 50,000 unaccompanied minors in the first 6 months.
Seems like Perry was dead on accurate with his criticism then. Obama ignored him, doubled down on the policy, and what happened? The problem got worse.
Quote:
Now, of course, it'll be "Well, but they knew we were thinking about it..."
It wasn't just "thinking about it". They were doing it already. DACA was just Obama taking credit during an election cycle for a policy that had already been in place for a couple years so as to shore up support among Latino voters in the election that year. He was using it as a wedge issue by showing that he was "doing something", while the GOP was not. What's really really funny is that despite all these attempts by liberals to try to convince people that this influx has nothing to do with the non-deportation policy of the Obama administration, Obama himself has been trying to distance himself from the policy itself, by arguing that it wasn't him doing it, but the DHS. Which is funny since he used it in his campaign, so clearly he was on board.
Spin, spin, spin...