Obama budget to include $1 billion for Central America: congressional aide

Guatemala's President Otto Perez Molina gives his annual state of the union address in Guatemala City January 14, 2015. REUTERS/Josue Decavele (GUATEMALA - Tags: POLITICS)

WASHINGTON (Reuters) - President Barack Obama's budget will include $1 billion in new aid for Central America as part of a broad effort to address the unaccompanied child migration crisis, Democratic congressional aides told Reuters on Thursday. The White House is due to unveil its fiscal 2016 budget on Monday. The arrival in the United States last year of tens of thousands of illegal migrants from Honduras, Guatemala and El Salvador - including more than 60,000 children traveling without their parents - caused widespread alarm in the country, and a political problem for Obama as he pushed Congress for a sweeping reform of U.S. immigration laws. Central American leaders had asked the United States for billions of dollars in aid to improve conditions in their countries and help stem the flow of would-be immigrants. (Reporting by Patricia Zengerle and Richard Cowan in Philadelphia; Editing by Sandra Maler)