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 The move, disclosed earlier to Reuters by Democratic congressional
aides, follows last year's 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.
The surge of arrivals 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.
Writing in the New York Times on Thursday, Vice President Joe Biden
said inadequate education, institutional corruption, rampant crime
and a lack of investment were hampering the economies of El
Salvador, Guatemala and Honduras.
 He said that if opportunity was not available to the 6 million young
Central Americans entering the labor force in the next decade, "the
entire Western Hemisphere will feel the consequences."
"Confronting these challenges requires nothing less than systemic
change, which we in the United States have a direct interest in
helping to bring about," Biden wrote.
"Toward that end, on Monday, President Obama will request from
Congress $1 billion to help Central America’s leaders make the
difficult reforms and investments required to address the region’s
interlocking security, governance and economic challenges," said
Biden, who will lead the effort.
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He said the three countries had taken action to combat corruption
and had devised a joint plan for economic and political reforms.
Washington is prepared to work with international financial
institutions and the private sector to help the three countries
train their young people, make it easier to start a business, and
ensure local enterprises benefit from free-trade agreements with the
United States, the vice president said.
"The cost of investing now in a secure and prosperous Central
America is modest compared with the costs of letting violence and
poverty fester," Biden wrote.
(Reporting by Patricia Zengerle in Washington and Richard Cowan in
Philadelphia; Additional reporting by Peter Cooney in Washington;
Editing by Sandra Maler and Lisa Shumaker)
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