Speech #1140081595

But we dont have to guess. The thenFirst Lady was campaigning for Senate in New York. She opposed congressional action to protect Elian and advocated returning the boy to Cubacontrary to a decadeslong bipartisan consensus that we should grant safe harbor to refugees from totalitarian Communist states. Yet. the sad story of Elian Gonzalez isnt the most recent or harmful example of her opportunism. Just two summers ago. our country faced a migrant crisis on our southern border. Nearly 140.000 peopleabout half of them unaccompanied kidspoured across our border. Notably. most did not flee from the Border Patrol or try to avoid capture. on the contrary. they ran to U.S. border agents. Why would brandnew illegal immigrants. having successfully crossed our border. turn themselves in? The answer is simple: They have been led to believe they would be allowed to stay. From the multiple administration memos instructing agents not to fully enforce immigration law to President Obamas unlawful Executive amnesties. to the Senates own amnesty legislation. every signal from Washington said our political class lacked the willpower to secure our borders and enforce our immigration laws in the countrys interior. Some might say these policies and proposals wouldnt have covered the newly arrived immigrants. that they would have faced deportation. Perhaps. but what they signaled was a complete unwillingness to enforce our immigration laws. just as amnesty granted in 1986 invited another generation of illegal immigrants to migrate to our country and wait for the next amnesty. These policies certainly gave the human traffickers who transported and abused these kids plenty of grounds to tell desperate parents: Send your kid north with me. and he will get a permiso. In the end. they werent wrong. Nearly 2 years later. only a very tiny minority of unaccompanied children have been deported. In fact. more than 111.000 unaccompanied minors entered the United States illegally from 2011 to 2015. but only 6 percent have been returned to their home countries. Yes. some may have received a deportation order from a courtusually after failing to appear for a hearing. Yet the Obama administration has made little to no effort to locate them. Therefore. it is fair to say the human traffickers. the socalled coyotes. werent wrong. and many Central American parents took an understandable risk. After all. a life in America in the shadowsas advocates for amnesty and open borders call itmay be preferable to poverty and violence back home. While these factors may have been the push factors in the migrant crisis. there can be no doubt that the pull factors of amnesty. deferred action. nonenforcement. economic opportunity. and safety were just as strong. if not stronger. That is why even the Obama administration tried to address them. President Obama met with leaders of Honduras.