President Trump says the border crisis is justification for an emergency declaration.  Since that seems to have everybody freaked out, it deserves a closer look.
Is the president shredding the Constitution or is he using all the tools legally at his disposal to bring about increased security for America and her citizens?
Is there a crisis on the border or isn't there? Does the President have the authority to declare a state of emergency or doesn't he? Is all this just bad political theater? Are you sick and tired of the swamp games on both sides of the political spectrum that put us here in the first place?
Let's at least try to herd some of the facts together and you can reach your own informed conclusion.

What constitutes a "crises"?   The seed of crises were sown in 1986 when the President Reagan granted amnesty to 3 million illegal aliens with the once and for all time promise of tougher border enforcement and employer sanctions  - which never happened.

Through the '90s and into the early 2000s we had more than a million illegal aliens apprehended a year trying to get into the U.S. Was that a crisis?

In 2000, with Democrat Bill Clinton in office, a record 1.6 million illegals were caught sneaking into the country.  Why wasn't that a crisis?  Or was it a crisis that went unaddressed?

President Clinton said we needed to get tougher on the border and his wife did too....only we didn't.  Frustrations grew. The financial burdens of illegal immigration grew.   Both sides played political games and the frustration continued to grow.   Prominent Democrats who supported barriers and fences and tougher enforcement in the recent past now call a wall immoral.

Is it any wonder that candidate Trump's promise to act on building a wall won him millions of votes and helped put him in office?  Incredibly, a divided Republican party refused to act on their majority and frustrations grew. Democrats took back control of the house and outright promised NOT to act.  And frustrations grew.

Look, it's true, the number of illegal aliens crossing the border is down significantly since its peak. Down 76 percent, some say. But does that mean there is no crisis today?  That's what the left and the media want you to believe. They say the current circumstance is a "manufactured crisis." But is it?

The border-crosser of 2000 is different than the border-crosser of 2019 and the requirements and burden of dealing with families and unaccompanied children are much greater today than before, even the much greater numbers of single men testing the system  20 years ago.  Don't take my word for it, read what the UK Guardian.had to say.

"In the early 2000s, the largest group of undocumented migrants caught entering the US were Mexican men crossing to work. When caught, border patrol sent them back without long-term detention or court proceedings.........unlike adults crossing the border looking for work, families with children and individuals seeking asylum cannot be deported quickly; asylum takes months and years in immigration court.......Adults are often detained for the duration of the legal process, but current law forbids the government from detaining children for long periods.....The government can detain families together, but it doesn’t have nearly enough space to hold all of the families now coming.... CBP apprehension statistics.....for fiscal year 2018 show steep increases in recent months – mostly families with children – a total of 16,658 people in September alone."

So does this rise to the level of a crisis? The New York Times presents numbers that would seem to point to a growing problem.
"Mr. Trump, Mr. Pence and Ms. Nielsen are right that there has been a significant increase in border crossings in the past few months when compared with the same period in 2017.....Last month, for example, Customs and Border Protection reported arresting or denying entry to 51,912 migrants at the southwestern border, compared with 19,940 in May 2017.....Similarly, apprehensions of unaccompanied children and families have surged this year from last spring’s border traffic."

Again this is significant because of the cost, the time, the logistics, the legal considerations are multiplied by families, kids and asylum seekers as compared to single men.

NPR even concurs.

 "Over the last 10 years, there has been a 1,700 percent increase in asylum claims, resulting in an asylum backlog" — from about 5,000 claims in 2007, up to more than 90,000 in 2016. ...The increase in the number of people seeking asylum is part of a larger shift in the reasons people give for entering the U.S. at the southern border."

But is it a crisis? There is one man who will know. Let's ask former President Barack Obama. In 2014, reports from CNBC, with numbers less than what we see today, Obama himself called the situation a "humanitarian crisis." Was it then? Is it now?

"In the face of an unyielding Congress, President Barack Obama said Monday he will no longer wait for Republicans to act on immigration and will move on his own to make policy changes in what has been a top second-term priority of his presidency......Obama said he will refocus immigration enforcement onto a Mexican border that has seen a tide of children crossing illegally from Central America. That means putting resources into deporting people who are the most recent border-crossers or individuals who pose a threat to public safety and national security ...

"I take executive action only when we have a serious problem, a serious issue, and Congress chooses to do nothing," Obama said. "And in this situation, the failure of House Republicans to pass a darn bill is bad for our security, it's bad for our economy and it's bad for our future."

Obama said the thousands of unaccompanied children showing up on the border underscore the need to drop the politics and act on immigration ... Still, in responding to the influx of unaccompanied children, Obama plans to concentrate immigration resources on the border areas. The move will effectively further reduce the number of deportations in the country's interior by stressing enforcement action on individuals who are either recent unlawful border crossers or who present a national security, public safety, or border security threat.

The decision coincides with a White House request to Congress for new powers to deport newly arrived immigrant children traveling without their parents ... As such, Obama's actions represent a delicate balancing act between responding to what the White House has called a "humanitarian crisis" over unaccompanied children and a demand from immigration activists to reduce the administration's record number of deportations."

Finally, on Sunday's "Meet the Press," Wisconsin Sen. Ron Johnson said to host Chuck Todd  "You know, this is not a manufactured crisis, Chuck. 120,000 unaccompanied children, family units came into this country in 2014.  And President Obama called that a humanitarian crisis. Last year, 145,000 unaccompanied children and people coming in as families. In the first four months of this fiscal year, it's already 120,000 people. We're at 2014 levels just in the first four months of this, this year. So it's a problem. It has to be solved. 

A year's worth of humanitarian crisis-level activity in just four months. Now can we call is a crisis?

Is it time to act now? Is President Trump the guy to act at last? Does the emergency declaration set a dangerous precedent -- or -- has the camel's back been broken and the emergency action is justified?

Is anyone concerned for the country's future over their concern for the 2020 election?

What do you think?

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