Thread: White House seeks extra $1.4B to address surge in children crossing southern border

White House seeks extra $1.4B to address surge in children crossing southern border

Published June 03, 2014
Associated Press

FILE 2011: A woman walks near the border fence between Mexico and the United States in Nogales.Reuters

President Obama on Monday described a surge in unaccompanied immigrant children caught trying to cross the Mexican border as an "urgent humanitarian situation," as the White House asked Congress for an extra $1.4 billion in federal money to cope. Obama said the U.S. will temporarily house the children at two military bases.
Obama appointed the head of the Federal Emergency Management Agency, Craig Fugate, to be in charge of the situation.
In its new estimates, the government said as many as 60,000 children, mostly from Central America, could be caught this year trying to cross the Mexican border illegally, costing the U.S. more than $2.28 billion to house, feed and transport the children to shelters or reunite them with relatives already living in the United States. The new estimate is about $1.4 billion more than the government asked for in Obama's budget request sent to Congress earlier this year.
Obama described the growing humanitarian issue at the border in a presidential memorandum Monday that outlined a government-wide response led by Fugate.
Obama's director of domestic policy, Cecilia Munoz, said the number of children traveling alone has been on the rise since 2009, but the increase was larger than last year. Munoz said the group also now includes more girls and larger numbers of children younger than 13.
"All of these things are contributing to the sense of urgency," Munoz said. "These are children who have gone through a harrowing experience alone. We're providing for their proper care."
The growth has surpassed the system's capacity to process and house the children. Last month, the federal government opened an emergency operations center at a border headquarters in South Texas to help coordinate the efforts and the Office of Refugee Resettlement, a division of the Health and Human Services Department, turned to the Defense Department for the second time since 2012 to help house children in barracks at Lackland Air Force Base near San Antonio.
Mark Greenberg, an assistant secretary at the Health and Human Services Department, said about 1,000 children were being housed at the Texas base and as many as 600 others could soon be housed at a U.S. Navy base in Southern California.
The number of children found trying to cross the Mexican border without parents has skyrocketed in recent years. Between 2008 and 2011, the number of children landing in the custody of Refugee Resettlement fluctuated between 6,000 and 7,500 per year. In 2012 border agents apprehended 13,625 unaccompanied children and that number surged even more -- to 24,668 -- last year. The total is expected to exceed 60,000 this year.
More than 90 percent of those sheltered by the government are from Honduras, Guatemala and El Salvador, many driven north by pervasive violence and poverty in their home countries. They are held in agency-contracted shelters while a search is conducted for family, a sponsor or a foster parent who can care for them through their immigration court hearings, where many will apply for asylum or other special protective status. Border Patrol agents have said that smugglers are increasingly notifying authorities once they get children across the Rio Grande so that they can be picked up.
Rampant crime and poverty across Central America and a desire to reunite with parents or other relatives are thought to be driving many of the young immigrants. Munoz said Monday the administration is aware of false rumors that have circulated that migrant children who get to this country would be automatically allowed to stay here or benefit from some future immigration reform legislation.
Migrant kids remain in removal proceedings even after they're reunited with their parents here, though many have been able to win permission from a judge to stay in the U.S.
The Office of Management and Budget said in a two-page letter to Sen. Barbara Mikulski, the chairwoman of the Senate Appropriations Committee, last month that the increase in children trying to cross the border alone could cost the government as much as $2.28 billion. The administration originally asked Congress for $868 million for the "Unaccompanied Alien Children" program run by Health and Human Services, the same amount Congress approved last year.
Brian Deese, deputy director of the budget office, said the Homeland Security Department would also need an extra $166 million to help pay overtime costs for Customs and Border Protection officers and agents, contract services for care of the children and transportation costs.
A House appropriations subcommittee voted last week to add $77 million to the original request. Deese sent the letter to Mikulski a day after the House subcommittee vote.

http://www.foxnews.com/politics/2014...sing-southern/

Why isn't he "seeking" this kind of money for our Veterans?

Let Mexico support all the Central Americans that they are helping to import. JMO

Hopes fade for quick Senate vote to help veterans

By Associated Press
Originally published: Jun 4, 2014 - 6:24 pm

Associated Press

WASHINGTON (AP) -- Hopes faded late Wednesday that key senators could quickly craft a compromise bill that would help veterans facing long appointment waits at veterans hospitals and make it easier to fire administrators who covered up the delays.

Senators had hoped to vote as soon as Thursday on a measure to address an uproar over veterans' health care following allegations that veterans have died while waiting to see a Veterans Affairs doctor. Senators wanted to pass the bill before Friday's 70th anniversary of the Allied invasion of Europe in World War II. Up to a dozen senators were expected to attend the D-Day ceremonies in France.

Leading the negotiations were Sen. John McCain of Arizona, the Republican presidential candidate in 2008, and independent Sen. Bernie Sanders of Vermont, chairman of the Senate Veterans Affairs Committee and the only self-described socialist in Congress. They met face to face twice Wednesday for a total of nearly two hours.

Sanders had said Wednesday afternoon he was "cautiously optimistic" that a vote could be held Thursday.
But a spokesman for Sanders said a few hours later that talks would continue Thursday, making a vote that day unlikely. Senators fly to France on Thursday evening.

"Chairman Sanders held productive discussions today with Sen. McCain and others about how to provide high-quality health care to veterans in a timely manner," spokesman Michael Briggs said in a statement.

Sanders "hopes to reach an agreement to take before the full Senate as soon as possible," Briggs said.
Also involved in the talks were Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid, D-Nev.; North Carolina Sen. Richard Burr, the senior Republican on the Veterans Affairs Committee; and Rep. Jeff Miller, R-Fla., chairman of the House Veterans Affairs Committee.

Sanders acknowledged that he and McCain make an unlikely pair, but he was upbeat about the prospects of quickly reaching a deal. "I'm cautiously optimistic," he said interview Wednesday before prospects for a quick resolution dimmed. "McCain is serious, I'm serious and Reid is serious."

McCain was less optimistic about a bill being passed this week. "I am not predicting anything," he told reporters.

The main stumbling block appeared to be over when and under what circumstances veterans could turn to doctors and other providers outside the 1,700-facility VA system for what is largely free care for them.
The two lead negotiators couldn't agree on how to define it. Sanders said the primary issue was waiting times, while McCain said it was giving veterans a choice beyond VA for getting care.

"The issue is how do we make sure every veteran in this country can get into a VA facility in a reasonable period of time. And if they can't, what do they do?" Sanders said, answering his own question: "They go to private doctors, they go to other medical providers. And we've got to work out the details."

McCain would rather let veterans who can't get a VA appointment within 30 days or who live more than 40 miles from a VA hospital or clinic go to any doctor who participates in Medicare or the military's TRICARE program. He complained that Sanders' approach "has the VA bureaucrat decide whether that veteran should get the health care of their choice."

A federal investigation into the troubled Phoenix VA Health Care System found that about 1,700 veterans in need of care were "at risk of being lost or forgotten" after being kept off an electronic waiting list. The investigation also found broad and deep-seated problems throughout the sprawling health care system, which provides medical care to about 6.5 million veterans annually.

An interim report by the VA's inspector general said veterans in Phoenix wait an average of 115 days for a first appointment - five times longer than the 24-day average the hospital had reported. The inspector general said at least 42 VA facilities were under investigation, including the Phoenix VA hospital, where a former clinic director said as many as 40 veterans may have died while awaiting treatment.

Sanders has complained that the VA does not have enough doctors or nurses, particularly for primary care. He is sponsoring a bill that would authorize the VA to lease 27 new health facilities in 18 states. The VA system now has 150 hospitals and 820 clinics nationwide.

Miller, the House VA chairman, said Sanders' bill was "too broad for the current discussion" and did not do enough to hold senior officials at the VA accountable for falsified waiting lists and other problems.
The House last month passed a bill by Miller that would allow the VA to immediately fire as many as 450 regional executives and hospital administrators for poor performance. Sanders has a similar bill but would give those managers more avenues to challenge their terminations. The differences didn't appear to be a major hurdle.

"The House bill is not terrible. It doesn't have the due process I would like but, you know, we can probably live with that. I can at least," Reid told reporters this week.

Meanwhile Republican governors of six states, including Rick Perry of Texas and Rick Scott of Florida, asked President Barack Obama to give states authority to conduct reviews of all veterans health facilities within their borders. The governors said the state investigations would offer an independent review by officials "who have not been part of the current systemic crisis."

Besides Scott and Perry, the letter was signed by Pennsylvania Gov. Tom Corbett, Kansas Gov. Sam Brownback, Maine Gov. Paul LePage and Louisiana Gov. Bobby Jindal.

http://ktar.com/22/1738447/Hopes-fad...-help-veterans

There are approximately 59,000 children in foster care in California alone. I guess it would be too radical to send the illegals back to their home countries and spend that extra 1.4 billion on our own children.

IMO this is just another opportunity for 'Bama to show his disdain for the American people.

*********************************
Americans first in this magnificent country

American jobs for American workers

Fair trade, not free trade