President Obama Urges Congress to Pass Immigration Bills

ABC News – by MARY BRUCE, DEVIN DWYER and JEFF ZELENY

Emerging from a meeting on the border crisis with one of his harshest critics, President Obama said he and Gov. Rick Perry, R-Texas, don’t have a major disagreement about how to handle the problem, the challenge is Congress.

“There’s nothing the governor indicated that he’d like to see that I have a philosophical objection to,” the president told reporters. “The problem here is not a major disagreement around the actions that could be helpful in dealing with the problem. The challenge is: is Congress prepared to act to put the resources in place to get this done.”  

“The question is are we more interested in politics or are we more interested in solving the problem,” he said.

The president urged Republicans to put politics aside and act on his request for $3.7 in emergency funding to cope with the influx of unaccompanied minors flooding across the border.

“Congress has the capacity to work with all parties concerned to directly address this situation,” Obama said. “They’ve said they want to see a solution. The supplemental offers them the capacity to vote immediately to get it done.”

Roughly half of the funding would go to the Department of Health and Human Services to provide care for the surge of children crossing the border, including additional beds.

The rest would be split between several departments to tackle the issue on both sides of the border, including $1.6 billion to the Departments of Homeland Security and Justice to boost law enforcement at the Southwest border and pay for additional immigration judge teams, among other things, and $300 million to the State Department to tackle the root causes of this crisis and to send a clear message to these countries not to send children illegally to the U.S.

The president is also seeking more leeway under the current law to speed up the deportation of the unaccompanied children, most of whom are from central America.

“The issue is not that people are evading our enforcement officials; the issue is that we’re apprehending them in large numbers. And we’re working to make sure that we have sufficient facilities to detain, house and process them appropriately while attending to unaccompanied children with the care and compassion that they deserve while they’re in our custody,” Obama explained.

“While we intend to the right thing by these children, their parents need to know that this is an incredibly dangerous situation and it is unlikely that their children will be able to stay,” he added.

Perry had urged Obama to visit the Rio Grande Valley but reportedly declined an initial offer to greet the president for a quick handshake on the tarmac unless Obama was also willing to have a substantive meeting.

ABC News has learned that Sen. John Cornyn, R-Texas, and Rep. Henry Cuellar, D-Texas, will announce joint legislation as soon as tomorrow that would seek to reverse the 2008 law at the heart of this humanitarian crisis.

“Our offices are exploring a bipartisan solution to address the humanitarian crisis on the border,” Megan Mitchell, a Cornyn spokeswoman told ABC News tonight.

The thrust of the measure would be to treat Central American minors the same as Mexicans when they cross the US border illegally.

This will be highly controversial among some Democrats — because of the human trafficking aspect of the original bill. But it’s also expected to gain broad support.

The governor has publicly slammed the president for his handling of the crisis, blaming him for the influx of unaccompanied minors and even suggesting he is part of a “coordinated effort” to bring children over the border.

“I have to believe that when you do not respond in any way, that you are either inept or you have some ulterior motive of which you are functioning from,” Perry told ABC’s Martha Raddatz on “This Week” on Sunday.

In addition to attending a roundtable meeting with local officials and faith leaders to discuss the crisis, Obama and Perry also got some one-on-one time. Perry greeted Obama on the tarmac in Dallas and rode with the president to the meeting aboard Marine One.

Despite mounting political pressure, Obama is resisting calls for him to personally visit the border during his two-day visit to Texas.

“This isn’t theater. This is a problem. I’m not interested in photo-ops. I’m interested in solving the problem,” Obama said, noting his top aides, including his Homeland Security Secretary Jeh Johnson, have recently visited the border. “There’s nothing that is taking place there that I am not intimately aware of and briefed on.”

Perry also offered his own readout of the meeting saying in a written statement, “Five hundred miles south of here in the Rio Grande Valley there is a humanitarian crisis unfolding that has been created by bad public policy, in particular the failure to secure the border…Securing the border is attainable, and the president needs to commit the resources necessary to get this done.”

http://abcnews.go.com/Politics/president-obama-urges-congress-pass-immigration-bills/story