Month: January 2024

Nuggets Of Good Immigration News In 2023

By Joe Guzzardi

Scouring calendar year 2023 for good immigration news is a challenge. But a nugget here and there provides a glimmer of hope, however faint, for long-elusive border enforcement to become reality. The year’s highlight came in May when the House passed, 219–213, the Secure the Border Act of 2023, HR-2. The bill’s provisions include, among several other pro-enforcement features, a mandate that employers use the legislatively elusive E-Verify that would protect American jobs, require the Department of Homeland Security to restart border wall construction, reinstate Remain in Mexico, end asylum fraud, and close the loopholes that frivolously grant parole.

Another positive in the endless battle for sensible immigration is Mike Johnson’s (R-LA) election as Speaker of the House. Since entering Congress in 2017, Johnson has earned A+ immigration grades in strengthening border and interior security as well as ending asylum and refugee fraud. Johnson and like-minded GOP reps have so far insisted that HR-2 be included in any legislation that may provide funding for Ukraine and Israel. The show-down between House enforcement advocates and a Senate dominated by open-borders backers is scheduled to begin January 8. Johnson must not yield an inch, and must absolutely reject the Senate’s demand for amnesty as a quid-pro-quo to any agreement.

Unlike finding the positive immigration news during 2023, the bad news stands out like the proverbial sore thumb. The House Homeland Security Committee released a shocking report titled “Startling Stats” that detailed the extent of President Biden and DHS Secretary Mayorkas’ illegal, unconstitutional disregard for obeying immigration law and their criminal indifference to defending national security.

In FY23, Customs and Border Protection recorded more than 2.4 million encounters at the southwest border and more than 3.2 million encounters nationwide. During the current fiscal year, 169 individuals on the terrorist watchlist were apprehended attempting to enter the country illegally, and at least 1.7 million known gotaways have evaded apprehension since FY2021. Since President Biden took office, there have been 7.5 million encounters nationwide and 6.2 million encounters at the southwest border, in addition to 1.7 million known gotaways.

Also in FY 2023, CBP arrested 35,433 aliens with criminal convictions or outstanding warrants, including 598 known gang members, 178 of those being MS-13 members. Including its Air and Marine Operations, CBP also seized enough fentanyl coming across the Southwest border to kill, the House Homeland Security Committee estimates, about 6 billion people.

The report’s findings did nothing to influence the administration to end the invasion. Not only did the illegal alien influx remain steady, it accelerated unabated. Proof that the border crisis will continue unchecked: in December, CBP processed and released a historic monthly high 302,000 aliens. Since the start of FY 2024 which began on October 1, 2023, CBP has encountered more than 785,000 aliens at the southern border alone.

With Johnson serving as speaker, and with HR-2 in place as potential leverage to use in the upcoming Ukraine-Israel funding negotiations, optimism for the first steps toward border enforcement can be harbored. But as long-time veterans of immigration enforcement versus immigration chaos conflicts can attest, there’s many a slip twixt the cup and the lip.

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

 Dems Will Dump Biden?

By Joe Guzzardi

As of today, Washington D.C.’s conventional wisdom holds that the Democrats prefer a 2024 candidate other than President Joe Biden but feel that the incumbent has earned the right to run. Nonsense! Under no circumstances will the power-hungry Democrats let Biden, unwilling to engage primary debate challengers, and refusing to campaign in the time-honored fashion, again become the party’s standard bearer. Seven months remain until Chicago hosts the Democratic National Convention, an eternity in politics, and doubly so if party leaders and donors perceive that presumptive GOP nominee Donald Trump continues his upswing while Biden drops even further in national polling.

Influential Democrats and deep-pocketed party supporters could lean hard on Biden to withdraw gracefully with their promise that on his way out, they would hail him as a modern-day FDR. If Biden resists, Democrats could play hardball, a technique the party is familiar with. Since there are no secrets in Washington, everyone who’s anyone knows about Biden and his family’s nefarious dealings. Threaten to leak internal dope on the Biden family to the Republican-led Judiciary and Oversight committees and Biden might change his mind. The scenario may appear improbable but it’s not impossible.

Should Biden exit, voluntarily or otherwise, that would solve only half of the Democrats problems. The other half would be to choose a viable replacement. Many of the names floated don’t resonate with the general public—Vice-President Kamala Harris, Michigan Governor Gretchen Whitmer, and Energy Secretary and former Michigan governor Jennifer Granholm. All have net negative polling.

Still available is California Governor Gavin Newsom, anxiously waiting in the wings, fingers crossed, ready to pounce should the opportunity present itself. But if Newsom is tapped, a vexing hurdle remains—the governor would need to script a platform that will connect nationally, a tough task given his abysmal governance record.

Typically, a stumping candidate highlights his successes. Not only does Newsom have no tangible, tout-worthy achievements, his failures and misjudgments are colossal. The elitist, multimillion net worth governor will never shake his Napa Valley French Laundry birthday party fiasco. During the COVID-19 pandemic when Newsom shutdown Orange County beaches, he dined maskless with lobbyists. The incident, which showed Newsom’s disregard for his constituents, will haunt him. The dinner is a small potatoes blotch compared to California’s exploding homelessness, wide-spread poverty, soaring housing prices, rotten public education system that ranks 44^th nationwide, rampant smash-and-grab crime, and dramatic cost of living spikes.

Although California’s bullet train fiasco has dropped from the national news, the story reflects another costly Newsom blunder. Four years ago, when Newsom unveiled his scaled-down concept for the bullet train, he proposed constructing a 171-mile starter line in the Central Valley that would begin operating in 2030 and cost $22.8 billion. Today, the projected costs are $35 billion, and exceed by $10 billion future committed funding. Adding to the bullet train’s woes: an official estimate of future ridership has dropped by 25%, and the operating schedule has been pushed further into the future. Waste, waste, and more waste on a project that Californians didn’t want, and few would benefit from.

Newsom’s gravest miscalculation is, during a sustained southern border illegal alien invasion, his immigration advocacy. California’s official government website prominently includes a section captioned “California for All” which reads as follows: “every person can achieve a better life regardless of where they start out,” an open invitation to illegal immigrants. Newsom is out of step with public opinion. At a time when the nation is coping with an estimated eight million aliens released into the interior since Biden’s inauguration and coming from more than 150 nations, Newsom as of January 1, will provide all low-income illegal aliens, regardless of age, with Medi-Cal, the state’s Medicaid program.

As many as 764,000 illegal aliens could be added to Medi-Cal, costing California taxpayers an extra $3.1 billion annually. The rub is that pursuant to the Illegal Immigration Reform and Immigrant Responsibility Act of 1996, illegal aliens are generally barred from receiving federally funded means-tested public benefits like Medicaid. Therefore, the burdensome cost falls solely on California’s residents, a foolish, inexplicable decision since the state is sinking under a $68 billion deficit.

Deservedly, California is synonymous with failure. Residents are fleeing for more hospitable states. Newsom would have to be a magician to sell his California as a model for the other 49 states. If Democrats examine Newsom’s résumé and conclude he’s not electable, then they may be stuck, like it or not, with an equally unelectable Biden.

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