Border Crisis Demands Action from Washington

Op-Ed

By Rep. Diane Black

It was a Saturday morning more than 15 years ago when I first met my friend Petti. Now a proud Tennessean, Petti left her home country of Brazil and immigrated to the United States in 1969 with the hope of creating a better life for her two children.

Her legal immigration was a demanding process but one that Petti says was well worth it -- so much so that in 2006 Petti decided to become a U.S. citizen. I was honored to attend her naturalization ceremony and will not soon forget watching as she and a room full of her peers said the Pledge of Allegiance for the first time as American citizens.

Like me, Petti is not short on opinions regarding today's crisis of illegal immigration. She believes those who break the law to enter our country, and the politicians who allow the problem to go unchecked, disrespect the sacrifices of millions of legal immigrants like her. Sadly, the influx of illegal immigration continues on the current administration's watch. In fact, we have added yet another wrinkle to this crisis in recent months: a surge of unaccompanied children crossing our border.

The Obama administration estimates that 90,000 unaccompanied minors will cross our border this year alone. At last count, more than 900 of them are here in Tennessee without any kind of advance notice from the federal government. This places added strain on our local schools and poses serious ramifications for our economy, our public health and our national security. It is an emergency that demands a response from our leaders in Washington.

President Obama's proposed "solution" to this problem was, predictably, a blank check from Congress. He asked the House of Representatives for $3.7 billion in bloated spending without any plan to address the root cause of our illegal immigration crisis. My House colleagues and I believed we could do better.

To that end, the House acted this month by passing measures to ramp up border security efforts -- including funding National Guard troops along our border -- and to expedite the return of these undocumented children to their home countries. Our bill also freezes the Obama administration's Deferred Action of Childhood Arrivals -- a government program that uses prosecutorial discretion to let select illegal immigrants obtain deportation deferrals and work authorizations.

Sadly, while the House of Representatives worked to hammer out this critical legislation, the Senate had already left town -- making this bill the latest in a series of more than 340 House-passed measures awaiting a vote in Majority Leader Harry Reid's chamber.

Every day that Washington refuses to act on this crisis is a day that our border remains unprotected and that more children go it alone to make the dangerous trek into our country. The people's House has done its work; now it is time for Senate Democrats and President Obama to follow suit.

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