Category: Guest Authors

America Last For Biden

By Joe Guzzardi

For the roughly 70 million disappointed America First voters, dark clouds have already formed over Capitol Hill. Former Vice President Joe Biden’s Attorney General and Department of Homeland Security Secretary candidates, rumored to be on his short list for those critically important posts, have political philosophies far afield from the mainstream.

California Attorney General Xavier Becerra is a leading contender to become the U.S. Attorney General. Before replacing AG Kamala Harris in Sacramento, Becerra was a 17-term U.S. Representative who represented Los Angeles, and at one time chaired the Congressional Hispanic Caucus. During his tenure as California’s A.G., Becerra has sued the Trump administration over 100 times. Becerra’s primary anti-President Trump litigation targets have been immigration related, and are issues that are well within the administration’s legal authority – primarily federal law enforcement, sanctuary cities, amnesty, refugee resettlement, the southwest border wall and deferred action for childhood arrivals.

Becerra advocates for decriminalizing illegal immigration, and once said that unlawfully present foreign nationals don’t act “violently or in a way that’s harmful to people. And I would argue they are not harming people indirectly either.” Such a statement is an emotional defense of illegal immigration and ignores the well-documented crimes, many of them violent, that aliens have committed in California, and the U.S. worker job displacement that their presence represents. Illegal immigrant workers are covered at taxpayer expense by all the protectionsstate and federal law provide statewide for all employees. California employers have hired an estimated 1.6 million aliens, the majority of which work in nonagricultural industries. In addition to his previous 100-plus lawsuits against the Trump administration, Becerra has promised to sue over any lame duck executive orders the White House may issue.

The irony is that Becerra and Gov. Gavin Newsom have repeatedly violated 8 U. S. C. §1324, a felony to “encourage or induce an alien to come to, enter, or reside” unlawfully in the U.S. For decades, the toothless federal government has allowed California and its local authorities to violate immigration law, and go unpunished. Should Becerra ascend to the U.S. Attorney General’s office, expect even more tolerance of illegal immigration.

In another sobering announcement, Biden’s transition team appointed Ur Mendoza Jaddou and Cecilia Muñoz to its staff. Jaddou was once U.S. Citizenship and Immigration Services counsel under then-President Barack Obama, and is currently the DHS Watch Director at America’s Voice. America’s Voice is one of Washington, D.C.’s most influential pro-immigration lobbies, and advocates for giving the nation’s illegal immigrant population, estimated from 11 million to 30 million people, a full path to citizenship. The establishment media cites the 11 million, but a more knowledgeable source, Mexico’s former ambassador to the U.S., puts the total at 30 million.

Before serving in the Obama White House, Muñoz spent two decades as the National Council of La Raza’s Senior Vice President for the Office of Research, Advocacy, and Legislation. La Raza, now called Unidos US, has promoted loose borders and amnesty legislation since 1968.

Becerra, Jaddou and Muñoz are surely jockeying for a high-level Cabinet appointment. But even if Biden selects others, those three will have significant influence over the final choices. Immigration expertise isn’t required to predict the Biden team’s disastrous consequences on border security and enforcement. Among the first of President Trump’s America improvements to go may be his Migration Protection Protocols (MPP) wherein Mexico agreed to hold asylum seekers from countries other than Mexico until U.S. federal immigration courts adjudicated their claims.

When nationals from El Salvador, Guatemala, Honduras and figured out that often-fraudulent asylum claims wouldn’t automatically mean release into the U.S. interior, they returned home. Analysts foresee a huge border surge that the coronavirus, deteriorating Central American economic conditions and the presumed lax Biden border policies have precipitated. Until President Trump, previous administrations had been unable to effectively manage border surges.

Biden’s immigration agenda is good for cheap labor-addicted employers, Wall Street and Silicon Valley billionaires who want no cap on H-1Bs, as well as other employment-based visas. The population increases that open borders create lead to more job competition, more school overcrowding, more urban sprawl and, for all but the 1% elite, a diminished quality of life. In Biden’s White House, corporate money will come first; Americans will finish last.

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.

America Last For Biden

Scranton Joe and Immigration

 By Joe Guzzardi 

On the rare occasions that Joe Biden emerged from his basement into the daylight in the run-up to the election, he touted his Scranton roots. Biden’s tone was along the lines of, “Hey, it’s me, plain old Blue-Collar Joe, a guy from working-class Scranton who will make American workers’ concerns my administration’s priority.” Biden chided President Trump for playing golf with his wealthy pals, disingenuously inferring that that the president’s friendships with the elite meant that he’s incapable of defending everyday Americans.

But even a cursory analysis of Biden’s immigration agenda shows that his goals represent the most radically anti-U.S. worker agenda in presidential history. Especially harmed will be residents in cities like Scranton where people are struggling to stay afloat. The last thing needed by small-town citizens looking for employment or hoping to hold onto their jobs is competition from millions of newly work-authorized immigrants.

Biden has repeatedly vowed – “we owe them [the illegal immigrants]” – to grant amnesty to the existing illegal immigrant population, at least 11 million people, but possibly as many as 20 million. Also included in Biden’s wish list is increasing refugee resettlement from President Trump’s 15,000 to 125,000 annually, more generous asylum guidelines, quasi-open borders, freezing deportations during his first 100 days, and a restructured – read watered down – Immigration and Customs Enforcement agency.

In addition, Biden’s priorities include reviewing with an intention to expand foreign nationals who qualify for Temporary Protected Status, reinstating deferred action for childhood arrivals – DACA – and reversing President Trump’s travel ban on 13 nations that affected mostly Muslim countries. Under Biden, legal immigration would soar. Biden nonchalantly claimed that the U.S. could “in a heartbeat” absorb another 2 million legal immigrants per year which would put the annual permanent lawful residents intake to more than 3 million.

Biden’s appointment of Ron Klain as his chief of staff ensures more employment-based visas. Klain has lobbied on behalf of Silicon Valley for an endless inflow of H-1B visas that displace U.S. tech workers or deny recently graduated science, technology, engineering and math university students opportunities to vie for IT jobs. About 650,000 H-1B visa workers are in the domestic labor market at any one moment, and more than 85,000 U.S. tech jobs are at risk annually because of the H-1B visa.

While calculating the precise number of new lifetime valid work permits that would be issued under a four-year Biden administration, the total could easily reach or surpass 35 million, an outcome that would be bad news for Scranton residents and others who live in similar lower middle-class cities.

The most recent Census Bureau data shows that 85 percent of Scranton residents don’t have college diplomas, and only 56 percent of the working age population are employed. In 2018, the median Scranton household income was $39,000, the per capita income $22,000 and the percent of individuals living in poverty, 24 percent.

Nevertheless, Scranton voted overwhelmingly for Biden because, wroteThe Philadelphia Inquirer, he connected with Northeastern Pennsylvania’s working-class people in places like Northeastern Pennsylvania by touting his Scranton upbringing. The Biden family left Scranton nearly 70 years ago when manufacturing, mining and railroading were thriving. In his lifetime, Biden has never held a job outside of politics, and has had three failed presidential campaigns.

Like Biden, Scranton’s U.S. Representative, Matt Cartwright (D), is no friend to local workers. Although his website states that his “number one priority is to bring good-paying, family-sustaining jobs to Northeastern Pennsylvania,” Cartwright has since his 2012 election consistently voted in favor of amnesty enticements, more employment visas and less border enforcement.

The simple and indisputable conclusion is that more immigration, which Biden, Cartwright and others on both sides of the congressional aisle enthusiastically endorse, harms working Americans. Especially hurt are those with less than a college education and minorities, a fact that eluded Scranton voters and millions of others who cast 2020 ballots.

The takeaway going forward is that pro-America candidates must do more effective messaging – address the readily available Census and Department of Homeland Security information to connect higher immigration levels to more work-authorization documents. Pro-American isn’t anti-immigrant. Being a native son, like Pennsylvania-born Biden is, shouldn’t be the deciding factor that elevates a candidate who puts American interests last into the White House. But wily candidates like Biden capitalize on under-informed voters. As the old truism in political circles goes, “Every nation gets the government it deserves.”


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.

Scranton Joe and Immigration Scranton Joe and Immigration

Nancy Pelosi Albatross Or Hero?

By Joe Guzzardi

To some Democrats, House Speaker Nancy Pelosi seems invulnerable. This year, two Pelosi events that would shame average Americans, and cost them their jobs, were like water off a duck’s back.

First, Pelosi foolishly and brazenly ripped up President Trump’s State of the Union address, which some asserted broke the Federal Records Act. Second, Pelosi was caught mask-less at a San Francisco hair salon. In-person hairstyling violates San Francisco’s COVID-19 safety policy, a crime. Nevertheless, throughout it all, the 80-year-old Pelosi kept her $223,000 a year job, buttressed by her bulging stock portfolio, that contributes to her $114 million net worth, all while the salon’s near-bankrupt owner closed her doors after 15 successful years.

The two incidents represent unprofessional, haughty bad messaging from Pelosi, and are part of the reason so many Democrats are quixotically plotting to remove her as Speaker, a position she’s held twice during nonconsecutive termsfrom 2007 to 2011, and again from 2019 to today.

After the Election Day smoke cleared, Pelosi, who had boasted that the House would gain at least 20 seats, witnessed instead lost representation. Pelosi, say many critics, is solely to blame.

Ross Baker, a Rutgers University political science professor, said that House Democrats who lost their seats wondered why Pelosi, with the November 3 election just days away, wouldn’t compromise with President Trump on a COVID-19 relief bill. Baker pointed out that even though a compromise would appear to give President Trump a victory, an imperfect bill that the representatives could have taken back to their constituents would have been better than nothing.

As events unfolded, Pelosi’s defiance and bad karma – at least outside of San Francisco and other ultra-progressive hubs – resulted in the loss of seven incumbent seats to Republicans with potentially more to come when the final tally is in. To Pelosi’s detractors, the gap between a projected 20-seat win and the real world seven seats lost to Republicans is unacceptable.

But the harsh reality is that Pelosi isn’t going anywhere. Pelosi is a prolific fundraiser for her Democratic allies. After nearly two decades in leadership, Pelosi is on target to raise about $1 billion for her party – an eye-popping sum. This election cycle Pelosi raised $227.9 million for Democrats – most of it for the House campaign arm – but she also redirected $4 million for Biden from an August event and sent nearly $5 million to the state parties.

If nothing else, Pelosi is a savvy political operator who has built her three-decade long House career around correctly reading the tea leaves. In the November 3 election Pelosi, as she always does, crushed with nearly 80 percent of the total votes cast for her over House opponent and fellow Democrat, Shahid Buttar. Pelosi’s election campaign strategy is, to say the least, unorthodox. Since her first 1987 campaign Pelosi, a virtual shoo-in, has steadfastly refused to debate Republicans, Green Party members and progressives like Buttar. Not only won’t Pelosi face opposition candidates, but her staff refuse to answer questions about why the speaker won’t engage.

Should the Democratic House caucus vote to remove Pelosi, and many insiders think she can’t garner the necessary support, the leading candidate to replace her is, say those purportedly in the know, New York’s Hakeem Jeffries, House Democratic Caucus chair.

From the perspective of Americans who oppose amnesty, open borders, entitlements to illegal immigrants, fewer employment-based visas, sensible refugee and asylee programs, Jeffries has the identical nation-busting vision as Pelosi. Since 2013 when Jeffries was first elected, in his 77 immigration-related votes, he came down in favor of more immigration and more affirmative benefits to illegal immigrants 99 percent of the time.

As strange as it sounds, pro-enforcement Americans, which polls show are in the majority, might be better off with the polarizing Pelosi. While Jeffries is obscure, the mere mention of Pelosi’s name raises the hackles of moderate Democrats, and could lead in 2022 to the GOP regaining the House majority.
 

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

Identity Theft Occurs Every 2 Seconds

By Joe Guzzardi

In its 2018 analysis, the Immigration Reform Law Institute (IRLI) uncovered potentially 39 million identity theft cases between 2012 to 2016 that involved unlawfully present foreign nationals who stole the identities of American citizens. Illegal aliens frequently use stolen or falsified Social Security numbers to apply for, and often get, U.S. jobs. An estimated 8 million unlawfully present aliens work in the U.S. economy. Some among them vote illegally in state and federal elections.

After culling through more than 1 million tax returns from last year, auditors uncovered roughly 883,000 cases of employment identity theft. According to the Treasury Inspector General for Tax Administration (TIGTA) the Internal Revenue Service failed to notify 393,000 victims that included more than 133,000 minors whose parents are therefore then unable to protect against the continued use of their children’s Social Security numbers.

The Washington Times wrote that the IRS, citing privacy issues, steadfastly refuses to advise parents about their children’s data theft, a misguided policy that can lead to ruining, in the future, the children’s credit rating and their employment prospects. The IRS has another questionable practice: the agency only advises of repeat employment identity theft every three years, giving fraudsters carte blanche to continue to use their criminally obtained data.

After their identities have been stolen, victims often spend years and considerable sums trying to restore their good credit ratings. In one egregious case, for 20 years an illegal immigrant drug trafficker and sex offender used a Texas man’s identitywhich made it impossible for the victim to find employment.

Stealing Social Security numbers is a felony crime, and knowingly submitting a falsified I-9 form is also a felony. On every I-9 form that applicants fill out, the following grave warning appears: “I am aware that federal law provides for imprisonment and/or fines for false statements or use of false documents in connection with the completion of this form.”

Given the alarming identity theft statistics, a crime which occurs every two seconds and that TIGTA once labeled an “epidemic,” the federal government should be in hot pursuit of the perpetrators. Instead, the feds have shown little interest in prosecuting offenders.

Illegal immigration is often referred to as a victimless crime. But U.S. Attorney Mike Hurst took exception to the old canard. After an August 2019 Immigration and Customs Enforcement action at a Mississippi workplace that resulted in the detention of 680 unlawfully present aliens, and the prosecution of 119 for using false documents to gain their employment, Hurst issued a statement that defended ICE.

Said Hurst: Americans have been “directly harmed by the theft of their identities, resulting in citizens not being able to get loans or credit cards, obtain health insurance, and perform other basic activities.”

Identity theft could be stopped in its tracks if Congress could muster up its long-absent political will to take three steps:

a)      Mandate E-Verify, the free, online program that would immediately confirm whether a new hire is legally authorized to work in the U.S. E-Verify is available to employers nationwide, but since it’s voluntary, employers who prefer to hire cheap labor can hire illegal immigrants with impunity.

b)      Resume no-match letters, the practice that the Social Security Administration adopted in 2002 when it sent out nearly 1 million letters to employers that filed W-2s with information that was inconsistent with the agency’s records. SSA’s original intention was to correct clerical mistakes that had created large sums paid into the system going uncredited. Quickly, however, SSA discovered that the major problem was illegal immigrants who lied to their employers. Thousands of illegal aliens either left their jobs to avoid confrontation or were fired when they were found out. But the no-match letter campaign had various softened iterations before it ended entirely in 2012 when the Chamber of Commerce and immigration activist groups protested.

c)       Notify identity theft victims. SSA also should send letters to workers with more than one employer reporting wages to their SSNs. By sending letters to employees showing more than one employer, SSA would put the employees on notice that, unless they are actually working more than one job, they are identity theft victims, and should take immediate action to minimize the damage to their financial and work histories.

Congress’ unwillingness to intervene on behalf of U.S. citizens, and in the process protect illegal immigrant identity thieves, is consistent with its overall indifference to protecting Americans while incentivizing illegal immigration.

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.

Identity Theft Occurs Every 2 Seconds

One Billion Americans Is Crackpot Fantasy

By Joe Guzzardi 

 Glenn Beck, the well-known former Fox Network anchor, a self-professed conservative, and Blaze TV network owner, teamed up with ultra-liberal Matt Yglesias, the left-wing Vox editor to advocate for a U.S. population of 1 billion.

After an interview with Yglesias, who authored “One Billion Americans: the Case for Thinking Bigger,” Beck tweeted that a 1 billion population, triple of today’s 330 million, is a “noble goal” and “crucial” to keep China from overtaking America as the leading global power. Yglesias and Beck agree that the best way to add approximately 670 million new residents is through immigration.

The Beck/Yglesias concept is so mind-bogglingly outlandish that it barely merits a response. But since Beck and Yglesias represent Trojan Horses for globalist immigration expansionists, a counter is required. Delivered via Beck and Yglesias, expansionists’ sub rosa message to immigration restrictionists is that more people benefits America. Accordingly, Beck urges restrictionists to put jingoism aside, and instead welcome one and all.

But neither globalist puts forward an intelligent, tangible argument for how more people would actually play out on a practical, day-to-day level. No explanation was offered how the migrants would be selected, how they would arrive and at what pace would they come. Then, after the migrants reach America, how would they actually survive?

For his part, Beck repeated the tedious, insulting bon mot that immigrants work harder than “most Americans.” That is Beck’s opinion, factually unsubstantiated, and a direct slap in the fact to about 30 million unemployed Americans. But for the sake of meaningful discussion, Beck should explain where exactly the arriving immigrants would work.

COVID-19 has eliminated thousands of jobs, many of which will never return. Even the pre-COVID unemployment forecast was grim. In 2013, the Oxford Martin Programme on the Impacts of Future Technology found that at least half of all American jobs are vulnerable to computerization, a trend that’s well-underway in production labor and service industries. The jobs lost plus immigrants added equation means more cheap labor for the industries that may survive computerization, and severely depressed wages for Americans.

Assuming the immigrant labor issue could be resolved – a huge if – then follows the practical questions of where the new migrants would live, how they would transport themselves, how quickly new infrastructure could be built to accommodate them, and what post-migration America would look like. Despite the pandemic, building permits, housing starts and housing completions are moving briskly along. The nation’s highways are gridlocked nightmares, and the 1 billion Americans would live in a country unrecognizable from the one we inhabit today.

In her article, “The Flaw in the Statue of Liberty,” Karen Shragg laid out the compelling case to limit immigration to sensible, sustainable levels. Shragg wrote that more people make numerous negative environmental impacts regardless of their nationality. Since all people are consumers, Shragg said, their collective goal should be to consume less. But that’s unlikely as we all need water, energy, food, jobs and open land – all of which are in limited supply.

With an average multiplier of 3.1 persons per petitioner, chain migration would eventually grow the 670,000 new migrants into more than 2 million. TheNew York Times provided an excellent example of how chain migration functions as a population atomic bomb. In “One Face of Immigration in America is a Family Tree Rooted in Asia,” the Times reported that a young Indian engineer arrived in America at age 23, and settled in Nevada. Between the 1970s and the mid-1980s, he brought his wife, mother, five sisters and a brother to the U.S. from his native India. Eventually, his siblings sponsored their family members. Over three decades, more than 90 immigrants arrived in the U.S. who can link their presence back to one immigrant.

America needs thoughtful immigration laws that serve its citizens’ best interests, something that neither Beck nor Yglesias wants to promote. Immigration has already dramatically increased U.S. population. Between 1776 and 1965, immigration to the U.S. averaged 250,000 annually. But major legislative changes in 1950s, 1960s and 1990, sent immigration totals skyrocketing.

The Beck/Yglesias fantasy will never become reality. But more rational sounding yet dangerous proposals are routinely introduced in Congress. The latest is the 2,154 page Health and Economic Recovery Omnibus Emergency Solutions Act, the so-called HEROES Act, which offers amnesty, work permits and fast-track Green Cards to temporary visa holders and to illegal aliens. Knowing that few in Congress would read the lengthy bill, the HEROES sponsor, Nita Lowey (D-NY), made sure to bury the amnesty and work permit provisions on page 2,030. Obscure government is always immigration advocates’ stealth strategy.


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.

One Billion Americans Is Crackpot Fantasy

TPS Not Temporary Protection

By Joe Guzzardi

Since the Immigration Act of 1990 created Temporary Protected Status, the program has become vampire-like in its inability to be killed off. Like most immigration laws, the original intentions behind it appear compassionate. But also like most immigration laws, abuses become common. Yet, 30 years later, the status quo grinds on.

TPS is a protected status, the “P” and the “S,” granted to certain foreign nationals whose home countries are embroiled in war or ravaged by natural disasters which makes returning home perilous.

So far, so good.

But the “T” for temporary is a mirage, and usually means permanent. Overwhelmingly, TPS recipients never return home. Nationals from ten countries, a total of about 320,000 people, are enjoying the benefits of lawful permanent residency, most notably, employment authorization documents. The ten countries are Haiti, El Salvador, Syria, Nepal, Honduras, Yemen, Somalia, Sudan, Nicaragua and South Sudan.

TPS has a relative – Deferred Enforced Departure – that’s awarded to individuals that TPS previously covered, but which subsequently expired. Liberia is a prime DED example that expanded into a potential avenue to permanent lawful residency, a provision that’s included in the National Defense Authorization Act for Fiscal Year 2020 and known as the Liberian Refugee Immigration Fairness Act.

LRIFA is an amnesty that has nothing to do with national defense, but which, at Rhode Island Sen. Jack Reed’s urging, was nevertheless snuck into the most recent NDAA. Against the wishes of many of his supporters, President Trump signed NDAA, and thereby granted amnesty to about 4,000 Liberians.

President Trump’s TPS record is a mixed bag – a kind of close but no cigar. El Salvador, for example, was TPS-designated in 2001 after a major earthquakerocked the nation. U.S. Citizenship and Immigration Services has granted El Salvador several extensions. Nearly two decades after El Salvador received TPS, the country has become a favorite tourist destination. In 2018, El Salvador welcomed close to 1.68 million tourists, up from 1.56 million the previous year.

Since returning to El Salvador today is generally risk-free, in 2018 President Trump announced a proposed TPS phase out. But a California judge, ruling on a lawsuit that the American Civil Liberties Union filed, blocked the Trump administrationwhich then, in February 2019, extended TPS for El Salvador and other nations until January 2020. In October 2019, President Trump extended employment authorization for Salvadoran TPS holders until January 4, 2021, and also lengthened TPS for 365 days from the date that the multiple TPS-related lawsuits have been concluded.

The TPS merry-go-round follies involving President Trump’s attempts to repatriate foreign nationals, but the courts blocking his efforts, have played out similarly to El Salvador’s example with cases involving Sudan, Nicaragua, Honduras and Haiti.

The Trump administration has amassed a dismal TPS failure record with the courts that matches his overall high failure rate on other immigration-related issues. Given the Trump administration’s poor history with the judicial system, the Ninth Circuit Court of Appeals 2-1 decision that the president could end TPS for El Salvador, Nicaragua and Sudan surprised analysts. A New York judge’s ruling that Haitians cannot be deported remains in place.

The appeals court majority opinion read, in part, that “The decision to designate any foreign country for TPS begins and ends with the [Department of Homeland Security] Secretary, so long as certain limited statutory criteria are met.” A Justice Department representative hailed the decision, and noted that the 2018 injunction “prevented the Department of Homeland Security from taking action that Congress has vested solely within the discretion of the Secretary of Homeland Security – action that is statutorily precluded from judicial review.”

For federal immigration law to retain at least a shred of credibility, the most basic conditions must be met. If a program that grants affirmative benefits to its participants is labeled “temporary,” then it must be short-term. But some TPS recipients have lived in the U.S. for two decades, a laughable outcome for a “temporary” program.

TPS requires that nationals return home once in-country conditions warrant it. President Trump’s efforts to end TPS have been described as harsh and uncaring. Critics fail to note the benefits to the struggling home countries once their nationals return from the U.S. where many learned English, acquired skills and developed a strong work ethic. Those talents are in short supply in TPS-granted nations, and the returnees can help boost their home nations to greater economic success.

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.

TPS Not Temporary Protection