MSNBC "The Ed Show" - Transcript: Immigration Crisis

Interview

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Joining me now, Congresswoman Jan Schakowsky of Illinois. Congresswoman, what leg the conservatives have to stand on in these calls for impeachment?

REP. JAN SCHAKOWSKY, (D) ILLINOIS: Well even John Boehner said impeachment
is off the table but these are people who lived in a fact free zone and a solution free zone. They`re only solution or the only answer is to take potshots, political potshots at the President of the United States, who is actually trying to solve the problem.

It will be interesting to see whether or not John Boehner, who of course has resisted comprehensive immigration reform, it will even take up the emergency spending that the President wants to do. You know, and here`s the other thing, you know, that the children flooding our borders, actually there`s been an over 700 percent increase in children going to (inaudible), in Nicaragua and Mexico.

And so it is not just in Costa Rica, it`s not just the United States, and these children are fleeing violence that was hurt the heart of any person who`s really thinking about them, wait and gangs and, you know, the kinds of threats that they`re finding in virtual war zones. That`s what the President of Honduran said, that children are fleeing his country, because it`s a war zone.

And I can understand how cold and mean these comments are, that we`re hearing from supposedly credible people.

DYSON: Yeah, cold and mean is to be underscore there. What do you think is the advantage of such callousness in disregard of he condition of those people who are there on the ground and using it as political football to score points against president Obama as suppose to reaching out to those people who are most vulnerable?\

SCHAKOWSKY: I can`t believe that they`re reflective of the vast majority of American people. Imagine the mother in Honduras, who would send her child, risking that child, crossing the desert, because it`s so impossible for that child to live safely in his or her own country. You know, I mean
I have such empathy and beyond that, it is the law, not the law of Barack Obama, the law of George W. Bush.

DYSON: All right, Congresswoman, let me just very briefly tell the people, what you`re watching here is President Obama descending the stairs of Air Force One, in a long anticipated meeting with Governor Rick Perry, who of course predictably is smiling face as he reached the President. And we`ll tell you later if we discover anything about what their conversation is about, if they`re able to discuss immigration reform, if they`re able to talk about what Congresswoman Jan Schakowsky has just spoken about, the other commitment to the (inaudible) in predicament of the people who are there on the ground, not using this a political football but to determine whether they`re not -- they`re able to come out with some sense of what`s going on.

So Congresswoman Schakowsky, what do you expect to come out of President Obama`s meeting with Rick Perry today?

SCHAKOWSKY: Well I hope they come up with a plan on how to deal humanely and fairly with the children that are there, that are crossing the border. I do want to make the point again though that the law that the President is obeying right now is the law that was pass under the Bush administration that actually prevents sending unaccompanied children back to their homeland.

So when they talk about, "This is all the President`s fault" the other falsehood is that because of the deferred action plan for immigrant children that are already here that the president adapted by executive order. In fact this increase in immigration of unaccompanied children started well before that ever went to into effect. It is the violence that a recent study that was published today said. It is the violence that has caused these children to come out.

So I`m hoping that the Governor and the President can come to some agreement on how we treat these children, so that they`re not in inhumane conditions but rather that they have legal representation that they are in settings dealing (ph) for young children and for adolescence and not in -- just in a prison cell with a number of other kids.

DYSON: Yeah, well stated. Congresswoman Jan Schakowsky of Illinois, thank you so very much.

SCHAKOWSKY: Thank you.

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