U.S. Vice President Kamala Harris created diplomatic tension yesterday during a trip to Guatemala by claiming global warming is breaking up Guatemalan families and causing the illegal immigration crisis at the U.S. southern border, earning herself a stern rebuke from Guatemala President Alejandro Giammattei.
Fox News reported today that “Vice President Kamala Harris’ staff on Sunday insisted that the ‘main drivers’ of the migrant surge to the southern border are climate and the economy — as Harris arrived in Guatemala.”
President Giammattei was not amused. According to Fox News:
But, in an interview aired Sunday, Giammattei said he and Harris ‘are not on the same side of the coin’ on the issue, and blamed what he saw as a more welcoming message to migrants by the new administration for the surge.
“The message changed too: ‘We’re going to reunite families, we’re going to reunite children,’” he told CBS News. “The very next day, the coyotes were here organizing groups of children to take them to the United States.”
“We asked the United States government to send more of a clear message to prevent more people from leaving,” he said.
Harris and her fellow climate alarmists claim global warming is destroying crop production in Guatemala and elsewhere, forcing farmers to flee to the United States to feed themselves and their families. Scientific data, however, clearly debunk Harris’ scapegoating of global warming for the recent migrant surge. Presenting objective crop data compiled by the United Nations Food and Agriculture Organization (FAO), the website TheGlobalEconomy.com reports Guatemala farmers are enjoying a significant long-term increase in crop yields per acre and overall crop production.
Similarly, the FAO predicts global cereal production – comprising most of the world’s food production and consumption – will set a record this year for the third consecutive year.
As the objective data prove, Guatemala President Alejandro Giammattei is correct to rebuke Kamala Harris for flippantly blaming climate change for the recent border surge rather than blaming more tangible issues, including a change in U.S. immigration and border security policies under the Biden administration. To any extent climate chance and crop production impact migration from Central America to the U.S. southern border, the data show that modest recent climate change is reducing, rather than amplifying, the reasons for migration and the U.S. southern border surge.
[Photo courtesy of Wikimedia Commons: File:Alejandro Giammattei (portrait).jpg – Wikimedia Commons]
Very compelling. This is a wonderful example of how climate change is politics and not science.