WASHINGTON – The Vice President of the United States, Kamala Harris, defended in an interview broadcast this Sunday her work to contain irregular immigration from Central America, assuring that she focuses on giving the inhabitants of those countries the “hope” of a better future if they stay.
Harris, who in March took on the task of coordinating with the countries of the Northern Triangle of Central America to contain migration to the United States, explained the keys to his delicate mission, which has drawn him some criticism from the Republican opposition in the last month.
“I approach this issue from the perspective that most people do not want to leave their home,” Harris said during an interview with CNN television.
When the citizens of Honduras, El Salvador or Guatemala set out on the road to the United States, he added, it is “usually for one of two reasons: they are fleeing some danger or they cannot stay and meet the basic necessities of life.”
“We have to understand that. We have to give people some kind of hope that if they stay, help is on the way,” Harris continued.
He assured that the United States not only has to “help the economic development” of those countries, but also face “extreme hunger and food insecurity”, because “if they cannot even eat or have basic and essential things to live, of course they they are going to flee.”
The woman has been trying to cross legally with her children for years, something that is often complicated by the condition of one of them who suffers from hydrocephalus.
The vice president stressed that meteorological phenomena such as hurricanes Eta and Iota have “had an enormous impact on one of the main sectors” of the region, agriculture, and that is why the US Department of Agriculture is going to “increase its resources” to farmers in the area.
In addition, the US Department of Commerce is preparing a “virtual trade mission” to the countries of the Northern Triangle, he said.
Harris herself will meet this Monday remotely with the president of Guatemala, Alejandro Giammattei, and on Tuesday she will participate in a virtual round table with representatives of Guatemalan community organizations.
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On May 7, he will hold a virtual meeting with the Mexican president, Andrés Manuel López Obrador; and in June he will travel in person to Mexico and Guatemala, according to the White House.
For now, no contact between Harris and the presidents of Honduras and El Salvador has been made public, in a demonstration of the complexity of working with leaders that many in Washington have singled out for corruption.
Harris recalled that the mission that she has assumed is the same one that now president Joe Biden led when he was vice president between 2009 and 2017; and that the White House is focused on “rebuilding” many of the diplomatic and asylum structures dismantled during Donald Trump’s term (2017-2021).