Additionally, both the bots and the player can bypass the blight interference by: Not giving a care (bots), fiddling with registers (bots), and selecting the entity for goto using anything other than right-click and register dragging (player). (Although it does appear that the bots are slown down once they get deep enough into the blight). Notice that I was able to get mining bots and a transporter scout deep into the blight. I'm not sure that this is a bug, but it definitily looks like one.
