Category: Immigration

Ag Amnesty Again Passes House

By Joe Guzzardi

Last week, the U.S. House of Representatives passed the Farm Workforce Modernization Act of 2019 (HR 5038), a massive amnesty that the bill’s title tries to disguise. The final vote, mostly along party lines, was 260-165.

By giving the legislation a sympathetic but totally misleading name, its Open Borders signatories hope that the public will get behind it, and encourage the Senate to pass it. The House dares not identify HR 5038 as what it is: an amnesty that includes lifetime valid work permits, Green Cards and a path to citizenship for up to 1.5 million illegal aliens who have been employed – or claim they’ve been employed – in ag at least part-time during the last two years. Amnesty would also be granted to their family members.

Illegal alien ag workers who spent as little as weekends-only on the job would qualify. But a big caveat, the Green Cards won’t come until the workers have been subjected to a minimum of four years of slave-like labor. Growers know that once their laborers have Green Cards in hand, the workers will leave their indentured servitude positions to head off for better jobs in construction, manufacturing or retail. History confirms this pattern. The 1986 Immigration Reform and Control Act granted amnesty to about 1.1 million so-called Special Agricultural Workers, or SAWS, plus their spouses and minor children. But once the government issued the Green Cards, the ag workers quickly found more lucrative employment.

HR 5038 extends its damage beyond the ag industry. The bill’s sponsors kept the numerically unlimited H-2A category for seasonal work. But, HR 5038 expanded the H-2A guest worker program to include dairy, meat and fish processing, and canning employment, and would also set aside 20,000 H-2A visas each year that could be used for year-round agricultural jobs traditionally held by American workers.

The bill would also create 40,000 additional Green Cards each year for longtime H-2A workers and other low-skilled foreign workers. If HR 5038 becomes law, it would virtually ensure that Americans employed or seeking employment in several industries would be shut out or possibly lose the jobs they already hold. Passed without debate, the legislators didn’t acknowledge the inconvenient truth that legal immigrants or U.S. citizens hold about 50 percent of agriculture or agriculturally related positions.

HR 5038 offers not a modicum of modernization. The House bill, bowing to the powerful ag lobby made up of mostly former federal employees, spends more than $100 million annually to guarantee that growers will have continued access to unproductive, low-wage immigrant labor. True modernization means mechanization. Unlike humans, robots can operate 24/7 and have been successfully put to use worldwide. Machines manufactured in Australia, Holland and Japan harvest radishes, brussels sprouts, kale and other crops at, compared to manual picking, lightening-like speed.

Once employers become foreign worker-dependent, they stop looking for practical alternatives like mechanization. Employers count on immigrant workers’ continuous presence in their future plans instead of taking full advantage of the no-cap H-2A visa. At the same time, foreign workers come to depend on their meager earnings to support their families, thereby vastly increasing the likelihood that the “guests” will become permanent fixtures. As the old and often-repeated immigration bromide goes, nothing is more permanent than a guest worker.

Congress has introduced an ag amnesty bill every year for more than a decade. Anti-American worker Rep. Zoe Lofgren (D-Calif.), who during her 25-year congressional career has an unbroken record of endorsing more worker visas, is the original sponsor of HR 5038. But if Congress really wanted to help farm workers instead of their hooked-on-cheap-labor employers, it would slow, instead of promote, more guest programs that will eventually include amnesty.

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.

Ag Amnesty Again Passes House

Gavin Newsom Ignores Crisis Afflicting California

By Joe Guzzardi

I recently returned to my Pittsburgh home from a trip to Sacramento. I went reluctantly. When I fled my native California in 2008, I vowed never to return. A better way to phrase my departure would be to say that I felt pushed out. Overdevelopment sprawl and an increasingly reckless government made California unrecognizable to me. But a close friend’s retirement party drew me back.
 
My instincts to stay away were correct. Sacramento, within living memory, a quiet Central California city, is well on its way to matching Los Angeles and San Jose for unsustainable, quality of life-killing growth. As for societal trends, my hotel was located directly across the street from the State Capitol building, a favorite homeless encampment. Last month, homeless transients attacked state groundskeepers. The last thing a Sacramento visitor would want to do is take an after-dinner stroll around the block.
 
Calif. Gov. Gavin Newsom, like many other state officials trying to sweet talk their way out of citizens’ backlash against indifference to the public health and safety concerns that the homeless create, has promised more housing programs. During his first ten months in office, Newsom signed $1.75 billion in new housing initiatives. Newsom also helped pass laws that would reduce evictions and exorbitant rent hikes.
 
Realists, however, know that more housing cannot keep up with Sacramento’s exploding population growth. Sacramento is growing at 1.5 percent, making it the fastest expanding large California city. Sacramento’s surrounding counties have also undergone major population increases. The City of Trees, as Sacramento is fondly but inaccurately remembered, is also the nation’s most competitive rental market and ranks among the highest when measured by monthly fee increases.
 
Given California’s population doubling between Ronald Reagan’s gubernatorial administration, 1967 to 1974, from about 20 million to today’s 40 million and projected to exceed 50 million within the next three decades, prudent leadership would try to slow immigration and thereby take the pressure off of the state’s already seemingly insurmountable problems. Yet Newsom walks on the opposite path, and at every turn foolishly encourages more immigration. Calling them “a stain on our nation’s history,” Newsom has relentlessly attacked President Trump’s reasonable attempts to bring about practical immigration reform, and instead has expanded illegal immigrants’ rights and protections. Under Newsom’s new guidelines, illegal immigrants will be allowed to serve on government boards and commissions, and Immigration and Customs Enforcement will be banned from making immigration violation arrests in statewide courthouses.
 
As part of Newsom’s immigration expansiveness, California became the first U.S. state to offer taxpayer-funded Medicaid health care benefits to low-income aliens younger than 25. The new policy is the irrational and costly entitlement follow up to Gov. Jerry Brown’s 2016 decision to allow children under age 16 access to health care regardless of their immigration status. A gloating Newsom commented that when it comes to health policy, “… (W)e [California] are the most un-Trump state in America.” Prospective migrants’ interpretation: Come one, come all! California will take good care of you.
 
Newsom’s pre-public servant career included investments in Napa Valley wineries – with assistance from the billionaire Getty family – and a restaurant and clothing chain, through which he amassed a multimillion-dollar fortune that enabled him to buy a Russian Hill mansion. As one of California’s most elite, immigration increases don’t affect Newsom. But the governor is elected to represent all his constituents, not just a select demographic that he’s decided to favor.
 
Newsom should ask exactly how many more immigrants California can support. If he answers honestly, he should act accordingly and act sensibly, something he’s shown no interest in doing.
 
 
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.

Gavin Newsom Ignores Crisis Afflicting California

53 Million Hold Low-Wage Jobs

By Joe Guzzardi

The Brookings Institution’s Metropolitan Policy Program just released a study that casts serious doubt on President Trump’s insistence that the economy is improving, and that the employment market is strong.
 
Brookings’ findings confirm that working doesn’t necessarily translate into earning a decent wage. Despite record low 3.6 percent unemployment, the Brookings’ report, “Meet the Low-Wage Workforce,” shows that 53 million Americans – 44 percent of all workers age 18 to 64 – hold low-wage jobs, earn median hourly wages of $10.22 and have a $17,950 median annual income.
 
Brookings’ research revealed that low-wage workers are racially diverse: Fifty-two percent are white; 25 percent, Latino or Hispanic; 15 percent, African-American, and 5 percent, Asian American. Both Latino and black workers are overrepresented relative to their share of the total workforce, as are women who account for 54 percent of low-wage workers, higher than their 48 percent total workforce share.
 
Economic hardship is widespread among many Americans. Brookings found that 30 percent of low-wage workers live in families earning below 150 percent of the poverty line; 16 million low-wage workers get by on very low incomes – about $30,000 for a family of three and $36,000 for a family of four. Of low-wage workers, 26 percent, or 14 million people, are the only earners in their families, with $20,400 median family earnings and another 25 percent, or 13 million people, live in families in which all workers earn low wages.
 
“Meet the Low-Wage Workforce” exposes a national disgrace, and makes the U.S. immigration policy that brings in more than 1 million immigrants each year, and issues them lifetime valid work authorization documents, indefensible. No intelligent argument can be made that, in an era when so many Americans are underemployed, immigration should continue at the pace that has been maintained for decades. More immigration means an expanded workforce when what’s needed is a much tighter labor market. In order to keep pace with immigration-fueled population growth, the economy must add 150,000 jobs per month. But the October Bureau of Labor Statistics establishment survey showed that total nonfarm payroll employment increased by only 128,000 jobs.
 
Travel into the weeds to learn how hurtful the immigration status quo is to Americans. For every five new American workers who turns 18 and enter the job market, one work-authorized immigrant receives a Green Card. The guest or temporary worker inflow is also a major challenge that job-seeking Americans must overcome. Although the federal government doesn’t maintain exact statistics on annual guest worker totals, data suggests that between 750,000 and 1 million low-skilled and high-skilled foreign nationals arrive each year on employment-based visas. In 2016, the Congressional Research Service reported that “employment-based admission has more than doubled from just over 400,000 in FY1994 to over 1 million in FY2014,” but workers aren’t subject to any skill-based labor market tests which could affirm their potential contribution to the U.S. economy.
 
Finally, according to the Pew Research Center, in 2017 the civilian workforce included about 7.6 million illegal aliens, and another 1 milliondeferred action for childhood arrivals (DACA) and temporary protected status recipients were employed.
 
Despite evidence to the contrary, Congress, elites, the media, immigration advocates and, perhaps most threatening of all, the current Democratic presidential candidates – those who if elected might influence the federal government on the future of immigration – insist that the U.S. needs expanded immigration which means that, by extension, there will be continuously loose labor markets.
 
The important immigration questions have yet to be asked in Democratic debates. With the open borders which the candidates endorse, will there be jobs for new migrants without further displacement of American workers? Proposals to limit immigration to sustainable levels are invariably met with racism or xenophobia accusations. But citizens’ employment needs must come before foreign nationals’ interests, a priority that’s long overdue.
 
 
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

53 Million Hold Low-Wage Jobs

Deep State Immigration Policy Mocks Sacrifice

By Joe Guzzardi

Of the 16 million Americans who served in World War II, about 389,000 veterans are still living, a remarkable total given that most are in their 90s or older. Among our veterans also are approximately 3.5 million Korean War vets, 610,000 Vietnam War and  hundreds of thousands more from the Gulf Wars and other conflicts.

On Veterans Day 2019, as those brave men and women reflect on their service in America’s defense, they could be forgiven for questioning whether, in light of Congress’ repeated betrayal of traditional U.S. values, putting their lives on the line was worth the risk. Congress has consistently refused to protect the homeland through border and interior enforcement. At the same time, Congress has passed legislation that subverts job opportunities for Americans. Good U.S. jobs have been offshored or given to foreign-born employment-based visa holders.

Despite President Trump’s immigration bravado, at a U.S. Customs and Border Protection Paso del Norte Port of Entry press conference, it was announced that in FY 2019 illegal immigration apprehensions hit a decade-high 1.1 million, a 68 percent increase over FY 2018. Along the southwest border, family unit apprehension set another record, 474,000. Because of the flawed catch and release policy, most of the migrants are released inside the U.S., eventually disappearing into the general population. Department of Homeland Security officials acknowledge that catch and release is, in terms of good policy, a grave failure that Congress refuses to correct. Only 1.4 percent of migrant family members from Guatemala, Honduras and El Salvador who crossed the border illegally in 2017 have been deported to their home countries.

Congress has cataclysmically failed to protect American workers. A job is essential to maintain dignity and provide for family. But Congress has looked the other way as U.S. companies have, over the years since the Immigration Act of 1990 which expanded employment-based visas, hired millions of foreign nationals to displace Americans. Employers addicted to cheap labor, in all areas – from tech and call center operations to manufacturing and human resources – love the lower wages that they can pay the outsourced workers. Studies found, however, that if the outsourced jobs returned, they could be numerous enough to provide opportunities for unemployed Americans. Adding to the job challenges of unemployed citizens, including veterans, is the annual 1 million or more legal immigrants who receive lifetime valid work permits.

Finally, the amnesty specter never fades from the Swamp. The latest, but certainly not the last effort, is the House of Representatives’ Farm Workers Modernization Act which would grant amnesty to 1.5 million illegally present ag workers, expand the controversial and often-abused H-2A visa, add 40,000 Green Cards to the EB-3 category and mandate E-Verify across the agriculture sector. The bill would also create a new immigration category, the Certified Agriculture Worker, and will provide a citizenship path. The sponsors, led by Zoe Lofgren (D-CA) and Mario Diaz-Balart (D-FL), are notoriously anti-American worker, and have throughout their careers consistently voted for more employment-based visas.

Despite the bill’s title, the legislation does nothing to modernize agriculture technology through time-saving, efficient mechanization. Unlike stoop labor, robots can operate 24/7 and have been adopted by forward-thinking U.S. ag businesses in Florida and California.

Getting inside vets’ heads to learn their immigration leanings, pro or con, is impossible. But likely many vets, like so many other Americans, must wonder when Congress decided to cater to illegal immigrants and lobbyists instead of passing legislation which assures that citizens come first.

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.