It was a little more than two years ago that President Obama issued an executive order that his administration would stop deporting young illegal immigrants who enter the United States as children, if they met certain requirements.

        His action was prompted, in part by the failure of Congress to pass a controversial "Dream Act" that would provide conditional, permanent residency to certain immigrants who graduated from U.S. high schools, arrived in the United States as minors and lived in the country continuously for at least five years prior to the bill's enactment.

        Among the items to qualify for temporary, six-year residency they would need to complete two years in the military or two years at a four-year institution of higher learning; if they acquired a degree during that time  or received an honorable discharge from military service they could qualify for permanent residency.

        At the time, there were those who felt the Dream Act should be passed, as is, immediately and there were those who felt it needed more work because it left open too many loopholes.

        Of the millions of undocumented aliens in this country, the executive order was expected to affect only about 800,000 of them.

        Less than a month ago we were met with the news that more than 52,000 unaccompanied children (a number expected to increase to 90,000 by year's end) have been detained after crossing the Texas-Mexico border since last year.  Most are coming from Central America without their parents and most under the impression that they will receive leniency from U.S. authorities.  That number is in addition to the estimated 39,000 adults who have crossed into the United States illegally during that time.

        We don't have enough of anything in place to deal with the massive increase in the number of people caught, especially children, entering the U.S. illegally.

        In a humanitarian effort, President Obama has ordered $3 billion to try and deal with the growing crises.  Since federal detention facilities are overflowing, the U.S. is transporting some of the people to facilities in other states and constructing temporary ones to ease the over-crowding.

        The government is rushing additional lawyers, asylum officers and immigration judges to the Texas border, where most of the new immigrants are arriving, to process cases more quickly and reduce the large numbers of those who must be released, with promises to appear at later court hearings.

        This week we were met with news that Federal officials can't resolve 85% of 2.9 million "inconsistencies" on applications for the Affordable Care Act.  And according to an administration report, most of the problems involve certifying citizenship and income.  Nearly 77 percent of the applications under scrutiny differ from what applicants submitted on those two vital questions.

        To think that the first executive order led to the drastic increase of young children trying to enter the U.S. illegally is not a stretch.  Properly addressing the care these people receive while being processed in the United States is the proper and humanitarian thing to do.

        Releasing them in several different states with only a promise to return for court hearings at a later date – well, maybe there is a better way to handle that.  At least until the problems with the Affordable Health Care database and other data-processing gremlins to the trillion-dollar system are fixed.