Pictured is Vice President Kamala Harris, the first woman and first Black woman vice president of America
Clevelandurbannews.com and Kathywraycolemanonlinenewsblog.com, the most read Black digital newspaper in Ohio and in the Midwest. Tel: (216) 659-0473. Email:By Kathy Wray Coleman, associate publisher, editor in chief
WASHINGTON, D.C.-Vice President Kamala Harris, America's first woman and first Black vice president, has returned from her first foreign trip as vice president, a three-day visit to Guatemala and Mexico and one that has prompted more calls for the vice president to visit the Mexico–United States border, an international border separating Mexico and the U.S. that extends from the Pacific Ocean in the west to the Gulf of Mexico in the east.
Harris, 56 and a Democrat, has said that she will visit the border in due time and that there is no quick fix to the influx of Central American migrants to the U.S.
A former California attorney general and U.S. senator, she said there’s a reason people are arriving at our border and that it is prudent in the least to "ask what is that reason and then identify the problem so we can fix it.”
White House Press Secretary Jen Psaki said during a Tuesday press briefing that the vice president is doing what President Joe Biden assigned her to do relative to the immigration controversy, and that Harris is focused on foreign policy in Guatemala, Honduras, and El Salvado.
But those critical of the situation, mainly Republicans, want more answers as pressure is mounting for the Biden administration to do more on the U.S.-Mexico border fiasco.
Guatemala President Alejandro Giammattei, after meeting with Harris, said the Biden administration and Democrats in general are responsible for the border crisis in his country as it relates to the U.S., and urged Harris and President Biden to push for harsher penalties against those who cross or attempt to cross the border illegally.
Regarding its borders, and inclusive of both non- U.S. territories and U.S. borders, Guatemala is bounded to the north and west by Mexico, to the northeast by Belize and (along a short coastline) by the Gulf of Honduras, to the east by Honduras, to the southeast by El Salvador, and to the south by the Pacific Ocean.
In large part Harris' visit to Mexico and Guatemala was a success, her supporters say, in terms of outlining the immigration policies by the U.S. and the Biden administration, and in spite of growing criticism by those angry, including some Democrats, after Harris told Giammattei that undocumented Guatemalans seeking to migrate elsewhere should not come to the U.S.
Rep. Alexindria Ocasio-Cortez, a progressive New York Democrat and the youngest woman to ever serve in a United States Congress, took on Harris over her stance that Guatemalans that do not have clearance to be in the U.S. should stay off of U.S. soil, saying it's "difficult to see."
U.S. immigration policy has suddenly become a testing ground on how the vice president handles foreign policy matters amid increased scrutiny from some mainstream media pundits and from policy makers both inside and out of her political party.
The controversy over the reluctance of President Biden to visit the Mexico-U.S. border or to send Harris in his place has racial overtones, critics say, at least where Harris is concerned, and it comes as Congressional Republicans cry that the Biden administration is soft on immigration and responsible for an influx of migrants along the southern border.
U.S. border agents reportedly detained some 100,000 migrants at the U.S.-Mexico border in February alone, with nearly a 70 percent increase in that amount in April, U.S. Customs and Border Protection data shows, the highest monthly total since a major border surge in mid-2019.
Republicans say the Biden administration has watered down immigration policies in place under the Trump administration while Democrats argue that Trump's immigration policies were racist and anti-Democratic, and that they marginalized women, children, and people of color.
Harris ran for president last year, and later vice president on the Democratic ticket.
She is the first woman of color to compete on a major party presidential ticket in America.
On the campaign trail for her unsuccessful bid for president she had a tone amenable to the nation's immigrant community as she pushed immigration reform policies.
Biden later tapped her to run on his presidential ticket.
When she accepted the Democratic nomination for vice president in August at the Democratic National Convention, which was, for the most part, a virtual forum, she spoke out on racism, and on a number of other issues impacting the Black community and others, including the pandemic.
She blamed the partisan divisiveness in the country on the Trump administration, and said then that Trump, a popular Republican and one-term president who lost the November presidential election to Biden, is too controversial, and that he is mean spirited.
"The constant chaos leaves us adrift," Harris said of Trump at the time. "The incompetence makes us feel afraid."
Clevelandurbannews.com andKathywraycolemanonlinenewsblog.com: By Kathy Wray Coleman, associate publisher, editor-in-chief 
