Month: March 2022

Afghan Evac Flaws Cautionary Lesson For Ukraine

By Joe Guzzardi

More alarming details have come to light about how badly the Biden administration botched the Afghan evacuation. Instead of taking a deep breath, and committing itself to a more prudent – and legal – approach to resettlement and asylum, President Biden is jumping in feet first with the Ukrainians.

First, a review of the failures associated with the Afghan airlift. Last week, the Department of Justice revealed that several Afghans had allegedly bribed a Commander in the U.S. Navy Reserves in order to obtain a coveted Special Immigrant Visa. SIVs help expedite the resettlement process, and remove all possible doubt about the visa holder’s loyalty to America. Federal prosecutors filed visa fraud charges against 53-year-old Navy Reserves Commander Jeromy Pittmann of Pensacola, Fla., who wrote up more than 20 fake SIV recommendations which falsely claimed the Afghans had worked as translators for the U.S. Armed Forces. Pittman also alleged that he supervised the Afghans, a lie, and that unless they were granted SIV visas, they would be Taliban targets, and at risk for their lives. Pittmann now faces 20 years in a federal penitentiary.

Second, since August 2021, about 85,000 Afghans have been resettled in 46 states, many if not most of them improperly vetted against counterterrorism databases, a fact which Department of Homeland Security Secretary Alejandro Mayorkas confirmed. A report released by the Department of Defense Inspector General harshly criticized Biden for his rushed, botched and numerically unlimited resettlement that allowed “significant security concerns” to take up U.S. residency.

DOD cannot locate at least 50 Afghans with possible terrorism ties and worries that “the U.S. government could mistakenly grant ineligible Afghan evacuees with derogatory information from the DOD Automated Biometric Identification System database SIV or parolee status.” Moreover, DOD concluded, Biden’s State Department and the United States Citizenship and Immigration Services also could provide dangerous, unvetted Afghans with visas, Green Cards, and naturalized American citizenship.

Third, violent post-Kabul airlift crimes occurred almost immediately after the August 2021 airlift, proof that vetting was lax. In September 2021, the Western District of Wisconsin federal grand jury returned indictments on two Afghans that included sex acts with minors under age 16, and spousal assault by strangulation and suffocation. The perpetrators had been assigned temporary housing at Ft. McCoy, Wis., a military base that at one time housed nearly 13,000 Afghan evacuees.

The ongoing Afghan resettlement process is about eight months old, and no one can predict whether it will be successful or fraught with social and assimilation challenges much like the Somali refugees struggled with. Whatever the end result may be, Afghan resettlement is a huge, continuous and costly project that will take years to complete.

Nevertheless, the Biden administration is ready to embark on expedited processing of Afghan refugees “with open arms” even though the legal steps are years long, and cumbersome. But since the Biden administration’s indifference to immigration law is well-known internationally, some wealthy Ukrainians have decided to forego refugee status, and instead file asylum claims inside the U.S. after traveling through “safe countries” on route, and then getting past border officials.

Regulations require that asylum seekers must make their claim in the first safe country they reach, Poland, for instance. And Article 31 of the 1951 Convention Relating to the Status of Refugees stated specifically that illegal aliens or migrants cannot be denied the chance to seek asylum as long as they are “coming directly from a territory where their life or freedom was threatened.”

Recently, a group of Ukrainian migrants arrived at San Ysidro, Mexico, an international point of entry. But even though the Mexican government declared that special and immediate treatment will be given to migrants or people arriving from Ukraine for asylum purposes, the migrants’ destination is the U.S. Asylum claims should be denied to petitioners who pass through safe countries to reach the U.S.

Enforcing the safe country concept doesn’t mean that the U.S. will turn its back on migrants in danger. The idea instead is that instead of continuing what might be a perilous journey that covers hundreds of miles, for those truly in peril, the first safe haven may be the best place to begin a new life. Biden’s task is to enforce the safe country concept to ensure that Ukrainian or other asylum seekers don’t take unfair, undeserved advantage of U.S. generosity.

Joe Guzzardi writes about immigration issues and impacts. Contact him at jguzzardi@pfirdc.org

Afghan Evac Flaws Cautionary Lesson For Ukraine

Immigration An Economic Issue

By Joe Guzzardi

For more than 50 years, the roiling immigration debate has been wrongly framed. The arguments for or against immigration increases are seen as liberal versus conservative, Democrat versus Republican or expansionist versus restrictionist. While those labels may be accurate, they distract from a discussion about the core issue of economics.
 
Congress, the media and employers argue passionately for higher immigration levels – an annual 1 million-plus or higher. Restrictionists maintain with equal vigor that immigration should be reset from today’s record highs back to its historical 250,000 total, the intake for the nation’s first 200 years, 1776-1976.
 
Congress’ obligation, which it ignores, is to determine what amount of immigration is best for American workers, and to protect the nation’s wage earners. Vernon Briggs, Emeritus Cornell University professor and labor economist, broke down America’s immigration history as it affected the U.S. labor force into eras: Continental Expansion, 1820-1879, immigration average, 162,000 per year; Industrial Revolution, 1880-1924, 584,000 immigrants; Rise of Middle Class, 1925-1965, 178,000 immigrants. Briggs found that during a high immigration period – the Industrial Revolution – wages for American workers were suppressed. But during tight immigration, the Rise of the Middle Class period is recognized as four decades of upward mobility, accompanied by increased productivity and innovation.

Since the Immigration and Nationality Act (INA) of 1965, the U.S. has experienced significant legal and illegal immigration growth. Since the INA, about 60 million immigrants, exclusive of illegal aliens, have entered the U.S. Most have lawful permanent resident status that includes among its affirmation benefits a lifetime valid work permit.
 
Employment-authorized lawful residents plus nonimmigrant employment-based temporary workers can add up to more than 125,000 immigrants monthly, again, exclusive of illegal immigrants who enter the labor market and compete for jobs with unemployed Americans and recent high school graduates. Since the 1965 Civil Rights movement, the income gap between blacks and whites has remained largely unchanged. Black households’ net worth is about 10 percent of white households, a statistic that’s held steady for nearly six decades. Significantly expanding the labor pool year after year through immigration has depressed wages – labor excesses help employers and harm job seekers.
 
In his book, “Back of the Hiring Line,” Roy Beck detailed the 200-year history of immigration surges, reductions, employer bias and black wealth depression. For black Americans, immigration surges translate into stagnation or repression in their quest for the middle class. On the other hand, moderate immigration, the Rise of the Middle Class decades, helped blacks get pay raises, better jobs and buy new homes.
 
Previous White Houses, Congress, the media, independent academics, Goldman Sachs and the Congressional Budget Office know the adverse impact immigration has on U.S. workers, and have spoken or written about its negative effect, especially on black Americans with less than a college education.
 
In his 2006 autobiography, “The Audacity of Hope: Thoughts on Reclaiming the American Dream,” then-Sen. Barack Obama wrote, “There’s no denying that many blacks share the same anxieties as many whites about the wave of illegal immigration flooding our Southern border – a sense that what’s happening now is fundamentally different from what has gone on before,” a reference to previous tight immigration eras. Yet Obama bitterly disappointed blacks on immigration. As his second term drew to a close in 2015, information gathered from U.S. Citizenship and Immigration Services, acquired through a Freedom of Information request, and published by the Center for Immigration Studies, found that the Obama administration had issued approximately 7.4 million more work permits than congressionally set limits allowed.
 
During his presidential campaign, Biden introduced “Lift Every Voice,” his plan to give black Americans a “fair shot.” He promised to “advance the economic mobility of African Americans and close the racial wealth and income gaps.” But by immediately opening the border during his first year in office to 2 million low-skilled, undereducated aliens, many of whom will be looking for jobs that will displace blacks, Biden is dooming African Americans to more of the same – dead-end jobs, stagnant wages and lost hope.
 
 
PFIR analyst Joe Guzzardi writes about immigration issues and impacts. Contact him at jguzzardi@pfirdc.org and joeguzzardi.substack.com.

Immigration An Economic Issue Immigration An Economic Issue