Harris: Immigration Efforts Designed to ‘Give People Some Sense of Hope’

Vice President Kamala Harris said Sunday on CNN’s “State of the Union” that President Biden’s administration had “to give people some sense of hope” when dealing with the reasons for the surge of migrants at the U.S.-Mexico border.

Harris said, “I come at this issue from the perspective that most people don’t want to leave home. They don’t want to leave the grandparents. They don’t want to leave the place where they grew up, when, you know, where they speak the language, where they know the culture, the place that is home. Most people don’t want to leave home, and when they do, it’s usually for one of two reasons. They’re fleeing some harm, or they cannot stay and satisfy the basic necessities of life, such as feeding their children and having a roof over their head. That is a big part of what is going on. So I look at the issue of what’s going on in the Northern Triangle from that perspective. Then my take on it is that we’ve got to understanding that, we have to give people some sense of hope that if they stay that help is on the way.”

She continued, “The kind of work that has to happen is the diplomatic work that we have been engaged in, including my calls to the president of Mexico, the president of Guatemala, and we have a plan to actually have another meeting coming up soon.”

She added, “This is the work that we’re doing, but it’s not going to be solved overnight. It’s a complex issue. If this were easy, it would have been handled years ago.”

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