Can someone please explain to me how President Obama "opened our borders"?

I was having a discussion on Facebook in the middle of which I said that I was more or less satisfied with Obama's presidency. Then another guy I knew joined the conversation saying that Obama was a failure because he "opened our borders", he made a "deal with the devil" (Iran), and he gave us another "monstrosity of a social program that was designed to fail". I asked how Obama opened our borders, when did that happen? And the original poster asked if I had been asleep all eight years of the Obama administration. I said I knew he didn't talk about building a wall, but what policies did he implement that "opened our borders"? And he replied that it was not his job to educate me, do the research myself. I did a quick Google search and all that came up was stories about how Obama's DHS secretary recently said that Democratic presidential candidates' proposals to decriminalize border crossing is tantamount to open borders. So then I typed up this question here on SW, and that's all I feel compelled to do to get to the bottom of this. So what did I miss? When and how did Obama roll out the welcome mat to illegal immigrants in between all the deportations he oversaw?

This page is a permanent link to the reply below and its nested replies. See all post replies »

JP1119 · 36-40, M

Update: he finally replied with DACA, Catch and Release, Obama “designed” sanctuary cities, he sued Arizona for trying to crack down on sanctuary cities, and “there were other things he did in the dark”. I admit I’m surprised with how much he came up with.

QuixoticSoul · 41-45, M

@JP1119 Yeah, Obama totally designed sanctuary cities 😂
[quote]The movement that established sanctuary cities in the United States began in the early 1980s. The movement traces its roots to religious philosophy, as well as the histories of resistance movements to perceived state injustices.[18] The sanctuary city movement took place in the 1980's to challenge the US government’s refusal to grant asylum to certain Central American refugees.[19] These asylum seekers were arriving from countries in Central America like El Salvador and Guatemala that were politically unstable. More than 75,000 Salvadoreans and 200,000 Guatemalans were killed by their governments in efforts to suppress the communist movement in those countries at the time.[20] Faith based groups in the US Southwest initially drove the movement of the 1980's, with eight churches publicly declaring to be sanctuaries in March 1982.[21] John Fife, a minister and movement leader, famously wrote in a letter to Attorney General William Smith; "the South-side United Presbyterian Church will publicly violate the Immigration and Nationality Act by allowing sanctuary in its church for those from Central America."[22]

A milestone in the U.S. sanctuary city movement occurred in 1985 in San Francisco, which passed the largely symbolic “City of Refuge” resolution. The resolution was followed the same year by an ordinance which prohibited the use of city funds and resources to assist federal immigration enforcement–the defining characteristic of a sanctuary city in the U.S.[/quote]

JP1119 · 36-40, M

@QuixoticSoul Nice! Where did that come from?

QuixoticSoul · 41-45, M

@JP1119 The Wikipedia entry for “sanctuary city”, if you want to chase down the citations.

JP1119 · 36-40, M

@QuixoticSoul Thanks. Did he also sign an admittedly unconstitutional executive order to implement DACA? I thought that just died and that’s why it keeps being suggested that Democrats try to get it into legislative bargains.

QuixoticSoul · 41-45, M

@JP1119 DACA has not been found unconstitutional. There is some truth it it possibly being an overreach, though. Still, it [i]is[/i] purely procedural in nature.