Category: Guest Authors

Enemies Among Us Courtesy Of Biden Policy

By Joe Guzzardi

Only the most willfully obtuse on Capitol Hill would deny that the Biden administration’s neglect of wide-open borders might lead to a national security crisis.

Estimates vary on how many foreign nationals from numerous countries have unlawfully crossed the U.S. borders, but the independent news agency Axiosput the total at 160. Distance isn’t a deterrent. Many of those nations are avowed U.S. enemies like Yemen, Cuba, Venezuela and Afghanistan. Facebook airlifted some Afghans to Mexico with the probable intent to enable them to enter unvetted.

In testimony to Congress earlier this year, Customs and Border Protection confirmed that four apprehended individuals match names on the FBI’s Terrorist Screening Database. The watchlist is extensive and includes people “known to be or reasonably suspected of being involved in terrorist activities.” About 450 Chinese nationals also surged the border.

The Biden administration’s sanctioned border fiasco has been well documented, but the willy-nilly visa handout system, mostly unreported, also leaves the nation exposed to malfeasance.

To date, there have been at least three incidents where foreign nationals from unfriendly nations and with dubious intentions, specifically espionage, have accessed the highest levels of federal government. The most infamous is suspected Chinese spy Fang Fang, California’s U.S. Rep. Eric Swalwell’s campaign donations bundler and suspected lover who entered on a student visa, and connived her way to social acceptance with California U.S. representatives Judy Chu and Mike Honda, as well as other Midwestern government officials. When honey pot spy Fang Fang’s subversive purposes were under FBI investigation, she fled to China and took whatever confidential information she may have collected with her. Despite his well-known associations with a suspected Chinese agent, Swalwell is on the House Homeland Security, Judiciary and Intelligence committees.

Swalwell isn’t Congress’ only dupe. Senate Committee on the Judiciary, and Subcommittee on the Immigration, Citizenship and Border Security member, California Sen. Dianne Feinstein employed for two decades as her personnel chauffer a Chinese national that the FBI suspected of being a spy.

As with the Swalwell case, Feinstein’s office insisted that the driver, promptly fired when the truth emerged, never gained access to top secrets. The driver may be small potatoes in the Chinese Ministry of State Security’s long-range plans, but in June 2015, Chinese hackers stole sensitive personal data of 20 million Americans. This included Social Security numbers, addresses and more when they breached the servers of the Office of Personnel Management. That data treasure trove provided Beijing with countless opportunities to access military secrets and take advantage of unsuspecting citizens, or possibly blackmail them.

A Washington Examiner story about Feinstein and the breach pointed out that U.S. university campuses are “host to scores of Chinese assets and operatives.” As of the academic year 2018-2019, nearly 400,000 Chinese students were enrolled in American universities, a total that tripled over the last decade, and raised concerns about intellectual property theft. The 400,000 total is exclusive of Chinese students who completed, either officially or informally, their course work but haven’t returned home.

In February 2021, the CATO Institute published its study titled, “Espionage, Espionage-Related Crimes, and Immigration, a Risk Analysis, 1990-2021.” Cato concluded that although suspected Chinese spies had a significant presence during the period studied, restricting immigration or visa issuance would be more harmful to U.S. prosperity than helpful to national security. Congress’ goal for Chinese migration, and all other immigration matters, should be to strike a compromise solution with the primary purpose of advancing America and her interests without unduly restricting vetted, potential contributors.

Last summer, Arkansas Sen. Tom Cotton set off a firestorm of criticism when he suggested that Chinese students be banned from studying science, technology, math and engineering to protect against those disciplines ultimately being used against America. Cotton didn’t propose ending student visa issuance to Chinese nationals or even limiting the visa totals, but simply making sure that potential enemies didn’t take unfair advantage of U.S. immigration generosity to undermine America when they return home or to prevent recent American citizen graduates from getting white-collar jobs. The Bureau of Labor Statistics estimates that 300,000 foreign STEM and related non-STEM workers are in the economy performing jobs that should be American-held. But like other rational immigration recommendations that put Americans first, proposed but ignored in past years, Cotton’s idea went nowhere.

Obviously, the U.S. must do more than tighten student visa oversight to protect the homeland; border enforcement where illegal immigrants continue to arrive in historic numbers, and may reach 2 million during the current fiscal year, would be an excellent place to begin.

Abundantly clear ten months into Biden’s presidency is that neither he nor anyone in his administration has the slightest interest in national sovereignty or in advancing America, incomprehensible to most voters, but undeniable, nonetheless.

Joe Guzzardi is a Progressives for Immigration Reform analyst who has written about immigration for more than 30 years. Contact him at jguzzardi@pfirdc.org.

Enemies Among Us Courtesy Of Biden Policy

Enemies Among Us Courtesy Of Biden Policy

Enemies Among Us Courtesy Of Biden Policy

Black Mississippi Ag Workers Displaced By White South Africans

By Joe Guzzardi

For decades, agriculture employers have claimed that an inability to find willing American workers forces them to hire foreign-born labor. Sometimes the foreign-born workers are legally authorized and hold State Department H-2A, temporary, nonimmigrant visas. Other times, they’re illegally employed in the cash-only, under-the-table market.

The “jobs Americans won’t do” meme is convenient for employers who prefer to hire temporary visa holders who they know will work for lower wages than Americans. But too often, foreign labor displaces proven, long-standing American workers; they become cheap labor-addicted employers’ victims. Employers realize that the H-2A is a visa they can easily exploit, and for years, the unscrupulous among them have taken full advantage. Farm labor shortages nationwide, in part COVID-19 related, created an H-2A visa spike from 55,384 in FY 2011 to 213,394 in FY 2020.

In the Mississippi Delta heartland, where the unemployment rate hovers around 10 percent, H-2A ag visa workers from South Africa, mostly white, have slowly replaced American blacks who, for generations, have toiled faithfully in the fields. In a federal lawsuit filed by Richard Strong and five other ag workers against Pitts Farm Partnership (PFP), the plaintiffs allege that not only did they lose their jobs to South Africans, but the overseas workers earned higher wages than they had previously been paid. Paying the visa holders more than the displaced Americans is a variation from the norm, but more about that later.

The Mississippi Justice Center (MJC), whose mission it is to dismantle the policies that have kept Mississippians at the bottom of nearly every social and fiscal indicator of human advancement, charges that many corporate farms in the Delta cheat the local black workforce by illegally exploiting the H-2A visa program and that owners defrauded the government, violating U.S. immigration and civil rights laws.

Indeed, PFP directly violated one of the H-2A’s most fundamental requirements. Employers must, according to the U.S. Citizenship and Immigration Services website, “Demonstrate that there are not enough U.S. workers who are able, willing, qualified, and available to do the temporary work.” Demonstrating a shortage of available U.S. workers is impossible since dozens of farm workers were on the job when the South Africans arrived. Indisputably, that’s an obvious crime committed by the ag employers.

The other egregious employer crime that MJC should investigate is whether the visa holders are labor exploitation victims. A veteran black farm worker, grown older, cannot work as long or as quickly as younger South Africans. An employer can hire two overseas employees at $11.00/hour, work them extended hours, and thereby get more production from international hires than he likely could from three older $7.25 U.S. workers. How many hours and under what conditions the H-2As work are rarely investigated by the U.S. Department of Labor. Laborers are uncomfortable reporting abuses to the DOL since their employers can allege the overseas worker is not fulfilling the conditions of his visa, and deportation proceedings can begin. Over time, the link between a controlling employer and subservient employee becomes modern-day indentured servitude.

To American workers’ detriment, numerous industries staff H-2As as part of their business plans for landscaping, forestry, amusement parks, recreation, housekeeping, construction, au pairs and camp counselors. As long as Congress makes overseas workers readily available and keeps few tabs on their employers, U.S. workers will be shunned. Congress should mandate that ag employers mechanize, like so many other Western countries have done. Technological advancements in farming have helped decrease the amount of labor-intensive work and have increased yields by up to 100 percent. Machines, after all, can work 24/7, seven days a week, and 365 days a year.


Joe Guzzardi is a Progressives for Immigration Reform analyst who has written about immigration for more than 30 years. Contact him at jguzzardi@pfirdc.org.

Black Mississippi Ag Workers Displaced By Visa Holders

Biden Gives Sponsor Circles To Afghan Evacuees

By Joe Guzzardi

In her October 22 New York Times opinion piece, “Angela Merkel Was Right,” journalist Michelle Goldberg praises the German chancellor for her bold 2015 decision to resettle about 800,000 Syrian refugees. Experts like former Secretary of State Henry Kissinger and former Treasury Secretary Hank Paulson who predicted doom and gloom for Germany after Merkel threw open the borders were wrong, Goldberg wrote. Merkel, on the other hand, was correct, and now because of the refugees’ contributions, Germany is a better place.

High on the list of Merkel’s triumphs, Goldberg wrote, was the new, more vigorous labor force that refugees represented. Bonus: the Syrians, continued Goldberg, would boost Germany’s stagnant population growth. Goldberg’s sub rosa message is that if the U.S. followed Germany’s example, adding more refugees would revitalize the domestic economy. Moreover, Goldberg suggested, since Syrians have so seamlessly integrated into German society, Afghan evacuees might do the same and thus help end U.S. divisiveness.

Not all went as smoothly as Goldberg suggested. In the years immediately following Merkel’s decision, crime in Germany spiked. Statistics related to violent crime showed that, in 2017, 10.4 percent of murder suspects and 11.9 percent of sexual offense suspects were asylum-seekers and refugees. Many migrants formed gangs and perpetrated some of the most heinous imaginable crimes.

Beyond the considerable societal challenges that refugee resettlement often brings, timing for the accepting country must be factored into any decision to admit large numbers of foreign nationals. In 2015, Germany wasn’t undergoing a continuous wave of illegal immigration as the U.S. is today. As of late October, an estimated 1.7 million illegal aliens from more than 160 nations were detained at the Southwest border. Most will eventually be admitted to the U.S. population, and rewarded with employment permission.

The federal government will have its hands full dealing with the multiple needs of under-educated, low-skilled, non-English speaking foreign nationals without adding thousands more refugees, asylees and evacuees. The federal government has already failed dismally to cope with the estimated 11 million, possibly as many as 20 million, illegal immigrants. Another large caravan is headed toward the border, and determined to get past what is now only token protection.

Unlike Germany, a largely well-run country, the U.S. is and has been politically dysfunctional for decades. Germany has a successful on-the-job training record, while the U.S. has mostly abandoned training employees and offering trade school education. Unions have been decimated. Workers are poorly paid and generally treated even worse. These failures also argue strongly against adding a new population that would further put U.S. citizens at a labor market and public education disadvantage.

Goldberg is doubtless sincere in her recommendation that the U.S. adopt a more welcoming system to accommodate a higher refugee total. For Goldberg and other refugee advocates, they suddenly have a unique chance to lead the way on compassionate resettlement. The Biden administration’s State Department recently agreed to let private groups of five individuals form sponsoring units that could, for a 90-day period, be responsible for resettling Afghan evacuees. The sponsorswill be expected to provide for the evacuees’ basic necessities such as clothing, groceries and household furnishings, as well as assist with processes to access federal, state and local benefits, and introduce the evacuees to the local community.

The congressional wealthy who have throughout their careers voted in favor of higher refugee intake could and should also step up to the plate. Senators Dianne Feinstein (D-Calif.), Mitt Romney (R-UT) and Bernie Sanders (I-VT) have consistently voted for higher refugee resettlement totals. They’re among Congress’ richest legislators, multimillionaires all, each of whom have multiple homes.

The flaw in the so-called “sponsor circles” is that the guardianship period lasts only 90 days, insufficient time for Afghan evacuees or other refugees to accustom themselves to American life. Most refugees need assistance for many years; eventually, the responsibility to provide for them will fall on voiceless state and local taxpayers.

In the end, despite interim, partial solutions like the sponsor circles, the federal government must develop a refugee program consistent with the public’s wishes, its ability to integrate new arrivals, and maintain a sustainable, stable future. A haphazard evacuation of tens of thousands of unvetted Afghans doesn’t meet that definition. Americans want to help Afghans, but the evacuees’ presence was thrust upon them. The elite and the wealthiest are better prepared to provide immediate assistance than others. Let them be the first among Americans to set an example; others will follow.

Joe Guzzardi is a Progressives for Immigration Reform analyst who has written about immigration for more than 30 years. Contact him at jguzzardi@pfirdc.org.

Biden Gives Sponsor Circles To Afghan Evacuees

Build Back Better Bad News For Tech Workers

By Joe Guzzardi

While a disbelieving nation is focused on the endless border crisis, more immigration sleight of hand is ongoing in Washington. Cloaked in Congress-speak, the troubling details of the Build Back Better Act (BBB) are being hidden from a bad-news weary public.

The National Border Patrol Council’s Rio Grande Valley chapter vice president Chris Cabrera told Sen. Marsha Blackburn (R-Tenn.) that the widely cited 400,000 “got-aways” represents a significant undercount. The total number of aliens who evaded border patrol detection is, Cabrera said, “at least twice if not three times that number,” as many as 1.2 million illegal immigrants. Add the 1.2 million not tallied to those among the 1.7 million caught and released in fiscal year 2021, and all of a sudden, the U.S. has a new population roughly the equivalent size of Phoenix, the country’s fifth largest city.

The border crisis is public, seen in its full inglorious detail on the nightly news. Congress’ immigration shenanigans occur behind closed doors and are incomprehensible to nonimmigration lawyers. Nevertheless, the open borders and Capitol Hill wrangling have the same goal: a huge, nation-altering immigration increase.

Senate parliamentarian Elizabeth MacDonough rejected amnesty Plans “A” and “B,” concluding each time that transformative immigration changes don’t belong in budget reconciliation legislation. That should have ended the amnesty discussion. But, undeterred, expansionist Democratic senators have nevertheless stealthily included provisions in BBB that will significantly increase legal immigration and subsequent chain migration. Writing for the Center for Immigration Studies, Robert Law, a former U.S. Citizenship and Immigration Services official, noted that pro-expansion advocates have tried to hide the reconciliation bill’s massive immigration increases through “an accounting scam,” commonly known as “visa recapture.”

Every year, the State Department offers 140,000 work visas, 226,000 family-sponsored visas and 50,000 diversity visas to prospective immigrants. The reconciliation bill proposes going all the way back to 1992 to “capture” and reuse unissued visas, and to make them available to potential immigrants. Law wrote that recapturing visas, as the reconciliation bill proposes, violates existing immigration law; in effect, there’s no such thing as an unused visa. Sen. Bill Hagerty (R-Tenn.) wrote in protest to his Independent Vermont colleague Bernie Sanders, and called the recapture provisions “the crown jewel of corporate lobbying.” Breaking immigration law, however, isn’t a roadblock for the Biden administration – witness the border crisis which the president and his Department of Homeland Security secretary Alejandro Mayorkas created and encourage.

BBB has more destructive provisions aimed at U.S. tech workers which would further enrich cheap labor-addicted employers. Under the proposed legislation, an illegal alien already in the U.S., and with a two-year wait for his Green Card, could, assuming his sponsoring employer pays a $5,000 fee, adjust his immigration status to lawful permanent resident, exempt from annual limits and per-country caps.

About 583,420 H-1B visa holders and their families would jump to the head of the Green Card line. Hundreds of thousands of U.S. tech workers have had their personal and professional careers ruined by callous Big Tech employers who have exploited H-1B visa rules to hire cheaper foreign-born workers while they pass over more qualified Americans.

In his same letter to Sanders, Hagerty summed up how ruinous BBB would be for U.S. tech workers: Those provisions “effectively terminate, for at least 10 years, all numerical limits on the annual allotment of green cards,” allowing “technology companies across America to employ a functionally limitless supply of cheaper foreign labor in place of willing, able, and qualified American workers.”

More than destructive to U.S. tech workers, BBB will create population spikes so dramatic that the U.S. Census Bureau will have to revise dramatically upward its growth projections. Pre-BBB and the open Southwest Border, the Census Bureau projected that U.S. population would grow by 79 million people between 2017-2060, with roughly 90 percent of that growth resulting from Congress’ immigration policies. Americans don’t want more sprawl, more traffic and a less enjoyable quality of life.

A growing number of Americans feel that Biden is too focused, and at their expense, on bettering illegal immigrants’ lives and accommodating the donor class. The $185 trillion BBB bill is a glaring example – vague promises about reaching climate goals, the proverbial vows to create millions of better jobs, affordable childcare availability, and other familiar, but never-kept pledges to improve Americans’ lives.

Immigration increases will change Americans lives, and should be discussed front and center in the Senate Judiciary Committee, not tucked away in the small print of a voluminous 1,684-pages bill that only a scattered handful of Senate aides have even read.

Joe Guzzardi is a Progressives for Immigration Reform analyst who has written about immigration for more than 30 years. Contact him at jguzzardi@pfirdc.org.

Build Back Better Bad News For Tech Workers