Ahead of a meeting with the president of Costa Rica Monday, Vice President Joseph R. Biden blasted Republicans’ “inflammatory rhetoric against immigrants” and said solving the migration crisis from Central America requires “hard trade-offs.”
“In this heated campaign season, there has been no shortage of proposals for how to address the challenge of immigration on our southern border,” Mr. Biden wrote in an op-ed for Univision News. “Build walls. Deport people en masse. And all of it accompanied by a constant stream of inflammatory rhetoric against immigrants.”
He said such proposals “tarnish our most closely-held values and ignore our cherished history as a nation of immigrants where the poor and vulnerable have a fair shot to achieve the American dream.”
Mr. Biden is meeting with Costa Rican President Luis Guillermo Solis, whose country has agreed to take in some refugees and process them before they get transferred to the U.S. or another country.
The White House announced in late July an expansion of a program to admit Central American refugees to the U.S., saying it would broaden an initiative allowing unaccompanied Central American children into the country as refugees. Republican presidential nominee Donald Trump and many GOP lawmakers criticized the move.
“Migration from Central America is a complex problem with no easy answers,” Mr. Biden said. “Addressing the factors that push families and children to flee — including crushing poverty, endemic violence, and a deep desire for family reunification — requires hard trade-offs. That’s why the Obama-Biden administration has embraced a two-track approach, which offers relief to those in immediate danger while also pursuing long-term solutions to address the underlying drivers of migration.”
The administration has doubled foreign aid to Central America to $750 million in recent years to help promote economic growth in El Salvador, Honduras and Guatemala to help stop the flow of people fleeing conditions in those countries for the U.S.
• Dave Boyer can be reached at dboyer@washingtontimes.com.
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