The surge of illegal migration is a direct result of President Barack Obama's 2012 executive order granting administrative amnesty to minors in the U.S. illegally combined with his "foreign policies, his border policies and his immigration policies," James Carafano, vice president for national security and foreign policy at The Heritage Foundation, said Thursday on
Newsmax TV.
Should Obama make good on his threat to sign off on more
administrative amnesty over the summer, the number of illegals will balloon, he added.
Story continues below video.
Note: Watch Newsmax TV now on
DIRECTV Ch. 349 and
DISH Ch. 223
Get Newsmax TV on your cable system –
Click Here Now
The argument that the current crisis is the result of former President George W. Bush is "ridiculous," Carafano said, explaining that illegal immigration had dropped considerably until Obama's 2012 executive order.
Between 2006 and 2007, there was bipartisan rejection of a bill being pushed by Bush to grant amnesty to millions in the country illegally and to beef up both border and internal security, Carafano explained on "America's Forum."
When the bill failed, Bush forged ahead with internal enforcement, strengthening border security and building a fence. At the same time, the recession hit and the combination resulted in the number of people entering the country unlawfully declining, something that "was unprecedented because there had been an unprecedented growth since the 80s. It started to go down and it kept going down until 2012."
Once Obama announced the DREAM Act in 2012, the numbers began to climb, Carafano said.
"The coyotes, the guys that do the human smuggling, used that as an advertisement campaign and combined with the situation in Latin America, those numbers have started to skyrocket," he said. "The current wave of illegal border crossing that we're seeing is on President Obama."
The president is creating one of the "greatest national security threats that we've seen in the 21st century," according to Carafano, while concurrently "gutting" the U.S. military, which as a result now conducts "almost no drug interdiction in Latin America."
"What really scares the hell out of me are these transnational gangs and the transnational criminal cartels that smuggle money, people, guns and drugs," he said. "It's destabilized countries throughout Latin America. They have networks that run all the way from deep in Latin America up through Canada. They work with people like Hamas and Hezbollah. They have networks that run through Africa and Central Europe. These criminal cartels are a threat to the security of the United States. President Obama's policies, which encourage illegal migration, encourage the border being the less secure and stable place, that creates a breeding ground for these guys to operate."
Related Stories: