Columnist Navarrette: Obama Erred by Not Visiting Border

President Barack Obama has turned the immigration crisis into a political football and made a grave error in not accepting Texas Gov. Rick Perry's invitation to tour the U.S.-Mexico border, says syndicated columnist Ruben Navarrette, Jr.

"Rick Perry is right, Barack Obama's wrong. Barack Obama should go to the border. He should have gone to the border way before now,'' Navarrette told "The Steve Malzberg Show" on Newsmax TV.

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"His level of literacy about all things related to immigration and the Southwest and the borders is very, very low, and Rick Perry is right to invite him," Navarrette said Monday.

"The White House was too cute by half trying to make this political.''

Navarrette says the mushrooming influx of children into the United States, which has created a health crisis at hospitals along the border, is nowhere near ending.

"They're going to keep coming for a long, long time . . . for maybe the next year or two. It's a frightening thought," Navarrette said.

"It's going to keep happening until the cartels who are making a lot of money smuggling these people across [at] $8,000 a head — they've made probably somewhere in the neighborhood of $400 million in this last surge — are caught and punished."