Guatemalan Pres to US: Pass Amnesty Bill with More Guest-Worker Visas

On Friday, Guatemalan President Otto Perez Molina called on the United States to pass a comprehensive amnesty bill with more guest-worker visas to ease the border crisis. 

Vice President Joe Biden traveled to Guatemala to meet with Molina and other Central American leaders to discuss the “humanitarian crisis” at the border. The Department of Homeland Security said that from October of last year to June 15, “52,000 unaccompanied children have been apprehended along the Southwest border.” In addition, from October of 2013 to the end of May, there have been “39,000 adults with children” who have also been detained. Most of those illegal immigrants have come from Guatemala, Honduras, and El Salvador.

“We propose… the possibility of organizing temporary work programs,” Molina said, according to pool reports, of legislation the the Congressional Budget Office determined would lower the wages of American workers. “Obviously, we believe the solution to all of this is immigration reform.”

Currently, nearly 40 percent of all illegal immigrants have overstayed their visas, and the Senate’s amnesty bill would exacerbate that problem by potentially doubling and tripling the number of guest-worker visas in many industries over the next decade. 

Molina also said he wanted to “look for immediate solutions” to the “humanitarian crisis” at the U.S.-Mexico border and called for legal mechanisms that enable the “reunification” of separated families.

Biden told Central American leaders that illegal immigrants will not qualify for amnesty under the Deferred Action program, which is what President Barack Obama told Mexican President Enrique Peña Nieto on Thursday. 

As Breitbart News has reported, “the White House’s recent rhetoric comes at a time when two in three Americans disapprove of how the Obama administration is handling the immigration issue, and illegal immigrants are not believing it, thinking they will receive ‘permits’ to indefinitely remain in the United States if they make it across the border.”

Biden, who has said that he thought illegal immigrants are “already American citizens” and told students that the Obama administration would unilaterally stop deportations, has also been responsible for enticing illegal immigrant children to make the treacherous trek to America, believing amnesty awaits them on the other side of the border.