By Joe Guzzardi Immediately after President Trump appointed son-in-law Jared Kushner as a Senior White House Advisor, the fur flew on Capitol Hill. On the most basic level, D.C. analysts couldn’t figure out what the politically inexperienced Kushner could bring to President Trump’s table. And on the legal front, critics argued that Kushner’s presence on President Trump’s staff violated the 1967 federal anti-nepotism statute that Congress passed shortly after President Kennedy tapped his brother Robert as his Attorney General. The statute ruled that nepotism potentially undermines presidential policymaking.
Kushner’s elevation to a key, influential White House position also violated President Trump’s Executive Order 13770 that he issued just days after his inauguration, in which the president wrote: “I agree that any hiring or other employment decisions I make will be based on the candidate’s qualifications, competence and experience.”
In an effort to slow the mounting fury over Kushner, and eventually over Kushner’s wife – the President’s daughter Ivanka, who also became a Senior White House Advisor – the Department of Justice’s Office of Legal Counsel concluded that, based on another statute, when the president hires White House employees, he’s exempt from the anti-nepotism law.
Regardless of legal arguments, President Trump’s addition of son-in-law Jared and daughter Ivanka to key White House insider positions raised questions about his judgment and demonstrated a remarkable political naiveté, especially for a man who had just shocked the nation with his 2016 win. Nothing positive could have come from President Trump’s decision to hire Jared and Ivanka. And nothing productive ever did evolve from Kushner and Ivanka.
Predictably, the love birds have been a thorn in President Trump’s side since Day 1. They have done everything possible to undermine the president’s strategy to tighten immigration, the platform that delivered the 2016 election to Trump. Kushner has persistently lobbied for more immigration, mostly in the form of employment-based visas, that would displace U.S. tech workers. In secret meetings with immigration advocates like the Chamber of Commerce, Kushner pressed for higher legal immigrant levels. More employment-authorized immigrants directly conflicts with President Trump’s “hire American” Executive Order. More than 40 million unemployed and desperate Americans haven’t dissuaded either Kushner, or the lockstep aides and assistants under his direction, from pushing their expansionist views.
Ivanka is all-in on her husband’s indefensible more-workers-are-needed philosophy. At the 2020 Consumer Electronics Show, Ivanka, the keynote speaker, said in reference to F-1 student visa holders, “We need to reach over the sidelines, draw them into our workforce.” Such a policy, if enacted, would greatly hamper the already formidable challenge that tens of thousands of U.S. tech graduates and prospective employment-seekers must overcome to get good white-collar jobs.
But credible rumors continue to swirl that President Trump has had his fill of Jared. In 2018, President Trump reportedly told then-Chief-of-Staff John Kelly and others among his close friends that “Jared hasn’t been so good for me” and that “he wished both Jared and Ivanka would return to New York.” Jokingly – or perhaps not – President Trump said that he wished Ivanka had married New England Patriots quarterback Tom Brady, but instead got Kushner. Some in the media have derided Kushner for subverting President Trump and have correctly noted that Jared finds his father-in-law’s supporters contemptible.
When the time comes for President Trump to dismiss those who have fallen out of his favor, he acts swiftly. Through May 20, 2020, about 415 among the president’s staff have been fired or have resigned under pressure.
Kushner could soon be gone too. Jared’s continued high-visibility presence, often in critical immigration negotiations, detracts from President Trump’s agenda, and greatly annoys the president’s base which he can ill-afford to lose.
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.
Globalist Push For More Worker Visas As Clock Ticks
By Joe Guzzardi
The May jobs report from the Bureau of Labor Statistics dumbfounded economists and made Wall Street analysts look foolish. Supposed experts expected that the huge job losses reflected in the April report, 20.5 million, would continue in May to the tune of 7 million Americans sidelined. Instead, the economy added 2.5 million jobs, and the unemployment rate fell to 13.3 percent from 14.7 percent
Put aside whether those jobs are newly created or furloughed workers returning to their former positions. The BLS data raises important questions about what President Trump will do when his Executive Order that paused some immigration expires later this month.
The expansion lobby, which includes immigration advocates and lawyers, has long argued that employers face dire labor shortages in virtually every BLS occupational classification. The “Buy American, Hire American” proponents – those who want to protect American jobs through a commonsense immigration policy – face a huge problem. They don’t have congressional support. But, the expansionists do. A recent example is seen in the letters members of the Senate and the U.S. House of Representatives sent to President Trump asking him to protect the H-2B visa, the vehicle used to import low-skilled, foreign-born nonagricultural workers.
The Upper Chamber wrote that “farming, forestry, packing, hospitality, healthcare, communications, and information technology rely on non-immigrant guest workers to survive.” And the House letter stated, “It is important that the H-2B program continue to be available to our seasonal employers as a fail-safe in the event that we see a rapid drop in unemployment and a return to the extremely tight labor markets of just a few months ago.”
This year, the Department of Homeland Security announced plans to implement a rule that would allow an additional 35,000 H-2B visas to the existing 66,000 cap. But after a voter rebellion opposing the proposed increase, DHS backed off. Around that time, about 50 million native-born and 10.4 million foreign-born age 16 to 64 were detached from the labor force, and businesses were entering the shutdown phase.
Given the May U-6 20.7 unemployment rate, which measures individuals who want and are available for a job and have looked for work sometime in the past 12 months, the Senate and House letters are brazenly misleading. Not only are the letters deceptive, they show a cynical disregard for America’s most vulnerable workers and a sellout to the pro-business, cheap labor lobby.
Once Congress, through its expansive guest worker visa legislation, allowed employers to become dependent on foreign-born labor, those same employers stopped looking for Americans to hire. In the ag industry’s case, with an abundance of cheap labor available, thoughts of moving from stoop labor to more efficient mechanization have all but vanished.
Last year, the Department of Homeland Security granted more than 900,000 temporary work visas. In other words, the federal government allowed 900,000-plus foreign nationals to deny American workers a fair shot at available jobs.
Every year, employers allege that they’re facing a worker shortage. And every year, nonpartisan think tanks debunk the employers’ claims. Tworeports from the left-leaning Economic Policy Institute published in back-to-back years found “no evidence at all” of labor shortages in the top H-2B occupations. And in its editorial, the pro-immigration New York Timesconcluded that labor shortage claims don’t stand up. The Times, applying Econ 101 basics, wrote that when labor is scarce, unemployment falls, and wages rise. The Times noted that H-2B workers are subject to exploitation and unemployment “is high in the major H-2B fields, which include landscaping, groundskeeping, construction, hospitality and seafood processing, while wages in those fields have long been flat or declining.”
In 1986, Congress created the H-2B visa as part of the Immigration Reform and Control Act. IRCA’s goal was to supplement the U.S. labor market through the H-2B when true shortages exist. But Republican and Democratic administrations abandoned the visa’s original intent. They granted H-2B visas to lifeguards, landscapers, hospitality workers, Vail ski instructors, football coaches and Cape Cod summer employees. Nobody can intelligently argue that ski resorts can’t find local instructors or that Cape Cod, surrounded by New England colleges, couldn’t find nearby workers. Giving skiing lessons in the Rocky Mountains or waiting tables on the Cape are a young person’s dream job.
The traditional solution to true job shortages, which employers refuse to adopt, is to pay higher wages, not import more pliable foreign-born workers.
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.
Globalist Push For More Worker Visas As Clock Ticks Globalist Push For More Worker Visas
Globalist Panic That Trump Might Cut Tech Foreign Workers
By Joe Guzzardi
Time is short to the (June 22) expiration of President Trump’s Executive Order that suspended some immigration, and expansionists are pulling out all the stops. At stake is employment-based visas’ short-term future, specifically whether the White House will permit this year’s annual 85,000 allotment of foreign-born H-1B workers to enter.
A recent Forbes story written by immigration advocate Stuart Anderson claims that since the tech sector unemployment rate is low and declining – 2.8 percent in April versus 3 percent in January – the Trump administration would be remiss to include the employment-based H-1B visa as part of a suspension strategy. To make his point, Anderson selectively chose data from the Bureau of Labor Statistics Current Population Survey that supports his perspective.
But the bigger picture that Anderson ignored is the most important one. Employment statistics vary from month to month; employers lay off U.S. tech workers, but retain cheaper imported workers. But the addition of 85,000 H-1B visa holders will represent a permanent fixture in the labor market, because the H-1B is a dual-intent visa, meaning that holders can enter the U.S. on temporary status while simultaneously seeking lawful permanent residency. In other words, the new H-1B visa holders aren’t going home.
If tech employers are truly stretched thin, as they allege, their first consideration should be to tap into the hundreds of thousands of U.S. workers that H-1B visa holders have, over the last three decades, displaced. The list of corporations that use the H-1B visa to exile U.S. workers to the sidelines, after forcing those fired Americans to train their foreign-born replacements, is longer than Wilt Chamberlain’s arm. Among them are nationally known names like Disney, Apple, Facebook, Starbucks, Uber and Walmart.
A newcomer to the list is the Tennessee Valley Authority which announced earlier this month that it would outsource 20 percent of its highly skilled, American-born technology workforce to Capgemini, CGI and Accenture, companies headquartered in France, Canada and Ireland, respectively.
At least 120 workers learned they will lose their jobs later this summer, and the TVA informed the Engineering Association/Local 1937 that eventually another 100 jobs will be outsourced. Last month, affected workers were advised that they too would be required to train their replacements, a procedure deceptively labeled “knowledge transfer.” The TVA is a federally owned corporate agency originally designed to bring jobs to the impoverished Tennessee Valley during the Great Depression. Although TVA employees are unionized, they still can’t escape the foreign worker displacement scourge. Similar public utility displacement programs played out in California when Southern California Edison and Pacific Gas and Electric fired their U.S. tech workers and either outsourced their jobs or imported H-1B workers.
Originally, Congress created the H-1B visa program to complement the U.S. workforce. Instead, loopholes encourage abuses, pave the way for employers to bump Americans and deny opportunities to recent college graduates. Moreover, a relatively new displacement vehicle that creates roadblocks for young Americans is the never-congressionally approved Optional Practical Training Program. Initiated by the Bush 43 administration, and kept through President Trump’s three-plus White House years, OPT allows a maximum three years of employment to alien U.S. college graduates with degrees in science, technology, engineering and math. OPT provides generous tax subsidies to employers and has mushroomed into a huge foreign-born worker bonanza. More than 1.5 million OPT STEM workershold jobs that should go to Americans.
Despite what elitists, globalists, immigration lobbyists and the American Immigration Lawyers Association claim with their misleading reports and cherry-picked statistics, no intellectually sound argument that favors more H-1B visas, or more of any employment-based visas, can be made.
The ball is in President Trump’s court. He can either fulfill his 2016 campaign promise to “forever end” the H-1B visa or allow himself to be ridden roughshod over by anti-American worker advocates that include his son-in-law and advisor Jared Kushner. Last year, more than 900,000 new temporary work visas were issued, and more than 1.8 million work permits were granted or renewed. That’s a total of 2.7 million overseas workers entering an economy that today has more than 36 million unemployed. Among those 2.7 million were nearly 190,000 in the professional category, mostly H-1Bs. They joined approximately 500,000 settled H-1B workers.
American workers always deserve to come ahead of imported labor. Today, with the nation in the grip of the most painful economy since Herbert Hoover’s presidency, American employment must be the nation’s top priority.
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.
Globalist Panic That Trump Might Cut Tech Foreign Workers
Population and immigration-reduction activists (and everyone else) have a right – under ETHICAL journalism – to expect other than: news blackouts of critical topics, like immigration and population; deliberate misrepresentation of those and other issues; no focus on overpopulation as causal to most social, economic, environmental and, well, pandemic problems; blatant omission or distortion of immigration history (such as ignoring reports from the Jordan Commission and Clinton’s Council on Sustainable Development) or libelous characterizations, by reporters, of those concerned about over-immigration as xenophobes, racists or white supremacists.
We have, thanks to deregulation and “leaders” – a term I use advisedly – who refuse to fix the problem, media disturbingly like Pravda, the propaganda tool of the old Soviet Union. We’re indoctrinated, not informed.
We need media regulated, or more accurately, regulated AGAIN, since major media, not long ago, were heavily regulated!
“News media” – another term I use advisedly – are limiting what we hear and see, are putting forth unimportant stories and divisive stories to keep us distracted from the real issues, like the danger of a deregulated media. They are ignoring critical-issues reporting, such as legislation before Congress or why our political system is failing. And sometimes they are even lying – if population and immigration are examples – when it serves their ends, or perhaps more accurately, the ends of those who, again thanks to deregulation, own media.
Even though 11,000 of the world’s scientists – as they recently declared a climate emergency – insisted that we MUST deal with population, media did not give them – likely exactly because of that population reference – the lead-story, run-it-into-the-ground focus far lesser stories get, even as media are, seemingly, gearing up to mislead about the current census. After the last census, they headlined trivia – like Americans own more cats than dogs – but mostly ignored reporting on the real purpose of the census: population.
Media consistently ignore that ours is the world’s third most populated nation, or that our high per-capita carbon footprint makes us the equivalent in “carbon population” to China or India, even as they excoriate and vilify Donald Trump on climate – I’m not a huge fan of his, but fair is fair – and, an increasingly dangerous trend, use their power to vilify him and others. It is such actions by media that have reduced us to the equivalent of a national gutter fight.
Media almost universally depict that falling birthrates, both domestic and global, mean population decreases. They ignore a likely global increase from near 8 billion now to 10 billion by 2050 and even higher late century, and likely increases from 330 million to 430 million Americans – 100 million more – by the 2060s, as they put out “low growth” or even “negative growth” propaganda.
For example, CBS in the Morning featured an author predicting “under” population, with nary a mention that 92 percent of our, in fact, exploding population – increases of 28 million to 30 million a decade – is immigration driven. Meanwhile, every few months, as though carefully choreographed among networks, media headline falling birthrates, even as immigration reporting studiously ignores its impact on population.
Nor do media mention carrying-capacity crises, such as population’s part in the fact that iconic Lake Mead, the second largest reservoir in North America, might run dry and where, due to climate change, the Colorado River, upon which 50 million people depend, might have flows half of normal by 2050 as the region’s population doubles – again, immigration-driven.
Instead, media give us:
– The oxymoron of “news” stories rerun for days!
– Endless political-correctness indoctrination.
– Sensationalized coronavirus coverage, to the point of spawning hysteria, but without mention that our healthcare system, already strained by overpopulation, is not ready for even a bad flu season.
– Adversarial, hostile interviews unfairly forcing interviewees to endlessly defend themselves, absent any premise or exploration of innocence.
– Double standards. If the Trump administration loses an immigration court case, it’s headlined. When it wins, nothing, a double-standard common to many topics.
– Trivia, crimes of only local importance packaged as national news, endless political-correctness stories and celebrity news substituted for that which a democracy MUST have, the critical-issues coverage of the type that used to be the core of ALL news reporting.
– Accusations by advocacy groups like #MeToo absent media responsibility to INVESTIGATE before reporting them, as media instead lead what some call the “Indianapolis 500 Rush to Judgment.”
– Strictly “advocacy” or biased reporting that forgets journalistic ETHICS requiring that news must be separate from opinion. Once, reporters strove to report objectively.
– Consistently seek comment only from those confirming views journalists want advanced. Comments from objective news sources are a thing of the past.
– “Junk news,” like junk food, devoid of substance, and long-term, very dangerous.
WHAT WENT WRONG?
The public loath media, although for the wrong reasons. The left loath Fox News on the right. The right loath “liberal” media, both wrong and dangerous conclusions.
Lost on everyone is that media formerly was trusted, that media used to adhere to ETHICS in journalism and didn’t used to be about left or right – except on the editorial page – but about all views and information presented fully, inclusively, without an agenda, the type of reporting that builds common ground and stills the waters of division! Today’s reporting merely confirms our prejudices and assumptions – incites, rather than informs.
In the dawning days of broadcasting, leaders – back when we had leaders – saw huge potential for those who own media to misuse broadcasting. They also saw the public airways as a public resource that should serve the public good, so they heavily regulated broadcasting, a condition that prevailed for half a century, but that was lost when:
In 1987, Ronald Reagan pushed for and got revocation of the 1940s Fairness Doctrine which had banned bias in broadcasting, forbade broadcasters from blacking out or ignoring entire topics – like population – and mandated ethics in reporting, regulations with teeth because the public had the right to protest broadcast license renewals. One television station, for example, lost its license for consistently one-sided, pro-segregation reporting. The Fairness Doctrine was upheld by the Supreme Court which stated it didn’t violate press freedom, so the “problem” was solved legislatively by Reagan, et al.
The Zapple Doctrine, a lingering part of the Fairness Doctrine, was revokedin 2014. The equal-time rule (not part of the Fairness Doctrine) survived, but was so watered down by the courts that it has been described as a “courtesy” granted by broadcasters. Both regulations required broadcasters to give candidates or others “with standing” equal time for rebuttal, including rebuttal of network or station commentaries or “unfair” stories. As an example of how egregious things are, a district court ruled – in a suit brought, and lost, in the 1980s by the League of Women Voters concerned about media overstep – that a station could give airtime to one candidate, but not another.
Bill Clinton signed the 1996 Telecommunications Act, which removed laws that had kept media under diverse ownership – and extremely competitive and, thus, effective – and had banned conflicts-of-interest. Major media were owned by more than 50 entities. Today, Big Media are owned by just six tightly interwoven titans controlling movies, television, radio, publishing, much of the internet and, by extension, much of our perception of “reality” and our thinking. Most of what we hear, see and read passes through the narrow, dangerous bottleneck they control.
It should scare the bejesus out of us that the same entities may also own Big Medicine, pharmaceuticals, insurance, investing, transportation, weapons manufacturing and Big Ag, in contrast to when laws prohibited those owning media from owning ANY other enterprises. Should we be concerned, for example, that those owning media might also own companies making weapons, perhaps using their media power to encourage going to war? Has that already happened? Should we be concerned that the internet – as in China – might be, now or eventually, limited in what is there, that the great pool of “everything” might be gradually limited, censored or restricted, something that also falls in the “scare the bejesus out of you” category.
While most deregulation was about broadcasting, dysfunction has spread to print media. Hundreds of papers have ceased publishing, meaning diverse wire-service coverage from thousands of towns and news sources has shrunk appallingly. Surviving newspapers are often, like broadcasting, owned by Big Media – or the richest man in the world (The Washington Post) – with the same selectively picked news, junk news, bias and, perhaps, dangerous agenda as broadcasting. Appallingly, many newspapers have even ceased publishing letters or commentaries from the public, gagging a key part of the conversation that democracies require!
The irony of media deregulation is that it was justified under claims that regulation, especially the Fairness Doctrine, inhibited the free exchange of information. Yet, deregulation has had the opposite effect, proving that putting a fox in charge of any henhouse never works – except for the fox!
Teddy Roosevelt said it was government’s job to “control the excesses of business,” and nowhere are excesses worse than in media. Yet, the silence from “leaders” who should be speaking out and addressing the problem is deafening. Or is it that, thanks to media “censorship,” they are speaking out, but it isn’t being reported?
It’s profoundly disturbing that media are broken and dangerous as we confront crises like the coronavirus, a broken political system in Washington, D.C. – how many have even heard of the effort to pass a 28th Amendment to fix it? – two political parties unrecognizable from not long ago and a world environment in crisis.
That we have media so broken at a time of overwhelming global events, whether a pandemic or climate change – and all that we must do (personally, nationally and globally) to accurately understand and address them – is a situation that speaks of an urgent need for media re-regulation.
Kathleene Parker, of Los Alamos, New Mexico, spent decades in publishing and journalism, including 13 years as a correspondent covering Los Alamos National Laboratory for two major New Mexico dailies. She writes about population, immigration, water issues and “broken” media.
Ed Note: For the record we don’t agree with this a bit. OK, maybe somewhere in there a tiny bit, but only a teeny tiny bit. Most of this we say is very wrong.
A few years after President Bill Clinton signed the North American Free Trade Agreement, Rolling Stone sent investigative reporter Dan Baum out to pound the pavement to learn how the globalist-hyped deal was working on both sides of the border. When President Clinton promised during his 1993 signing that NAFTA, an agreement among the United States, Mexico and Canada, would create millions of domestic jobs and reduce illegal immigration within its first few years, skeptical blue-collar Americans couldn’t understand President Clinton’s tortured logic. Reform candidate Ross Perot accurately predicted that when Congress passed NAFTA, Americans would hear a “giant sucking sound” of companies fleeing the U.S. for Mexico where workers would be paid less and be without benefits.
Baum quickly learned that Perot had analyzed NAFTA’s fallout correctly. In his story, “The Man Who Took My Job,” Baum located David Quinn, a unionized Indiana auto parts worker who was one of 455 Breed Technologies employees to lose a job when the factory shut, then relocated to Mexico. Soon thereafter, more than 100 Indiana businesses followed Breed to Mexico – a great deal for cheap labor-addicted employers, but devastating to the U.S. domestic workforce.
By 2000, the $5.5 billion U.S. trade surplus with Mexico metastasized into a $16 billion deficit. Quinn and Baum traveled to Mexico where they eventually found “the man who took the [Indianan’s] job,” toiling longer work weeks for less money, few safety precautions and without union protections. During the next two decades, in part under Bush II, job losses continued to mount and deficits deepened; today the U.S. trade deficit with Mexico is $617 billi.
Bush 43 learned nothing from the NAFTA fiasco. Instead, he used the NAFTA template to create the World Trade Organization which opened up the U.S. market with China and led to more than a dozen bilateral trade treaties that have hampered America’s labor force. Congress is considering nearly 25 more agreements that may kill more U.S. jobs. Since 2001, the U.S. has lost 3.7 million jobs to China, and is currently running a $346 billion trade deficit with the Asian superpower.
Yet, Republican and Democratic-led administrations put trade first, above working Americans. President Obama’s 12-nation Trans-Pacific Partnership would have the opened borders to millions of foreign-born workers in every employment classification. Shortly after President Trump assumed office, he withdrew the U.S. from TPP. Because of COVID-19 concerns and the relatively short time period for businesses to adjust to its new regulations, the president’s NAFTA replacement, the U.S. Mexico Canada Agreement, may be delayed beyond its June 1 starting date. U.S. Trade Representative Robert Lighthizer expressed his concern: “Let us not make long-term decisions in the midst of a crisis.”
A COVID-19 delay might be a lucky break for U.S. workers. The Economic Policy Institute is apprehensive that the U.S. International Trade Commission’s projections about higher U.S. wages and increased employment may be based, much like NAFTA, on “questionable assumptions.” Specifically, EPI doubts whether U.S. wages will rise as a direct result of improved labor rights enforcement in Mexico, a conclusion that the ITE model doesn’t validate.
NAFTA and other trade deals have been a disaster for American workers; America needs a better approach that will rebalance trade and level the playing field for U.S. workers and other participating countries. Despite two decades of White House bloviating about American jobs and railing against income inequality, the average worker isn’t as important to leaders as easing corporate trade.
Unregulated global trade consequences have led to worldwide criminal-level labor exploitation. Corporations set up sweatshops in Vietnam, China, South Korea, India, Honduras and Taiwan, all sources of plentiful cheap labor that enhance bottom-line profits.
Like NAFTA before it, USMCA has no real American worker protections. USMCA’s language refers to “temporary” immigrant entry to “supply services.” But as the old adage goes, nothing is more permanent than a temporary immigrant, especially when he supplies labor “services.”
President Trump has talked pro-American about trade and immigration, but he’s fallen far short of delivering the goods he’s so often promised.
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.
Gov. Tom Wolf has forced a lawless state on the citizens of Pennsylvania. He has criminalized behavior of law abiding, tax paying business owners and consumers alike.
Under his regime the rule of law no longer exists, it is now do what you feel bold enough to risk in response to his decrees and edicts while participating in a strange game of ‘Mother, May I’ allowing only baby steps and a contrived return to the starting line on every turn as part of his totalitarian rule book.
Business will be closed- many shuttered for good, livelihoods affected, years or decades of sobriety lost, lives literally ended due to despair all while an underground economy thrives and a shrinking revenue base leaves the state adding further irreparable damage to an already faltering economy.
Wolf is an authoritarian and a zealot. Every Communist revolution throughout history begins with an attack on a class of people. In our case the castigated and demonized are our neighbors and friends, our small business owners who simply wish to pursue Liberty and the animating contest of freedom to make their living in a manner they see fit.
I submit that Wolf has broken the fragile public trust that is the fabric of our civil society. He has seized property and possession with absolutely no due process rights by declaring “small business” must remain closed. He ignores the will of WE, the People and our elected representatives by vetoing nearly every bill that comes across his desk then proceeds to implement his unilateral edicts then changes them on a whim.
Wolf has proven beyond the shadow of any reasonable doubt that he is unfit to lead free men and women. He speaks of “democracy” yet refuse to acknowledge our Federal and State Constitutions, our Bill of Rights and the norms of our Representative Republic.
I believe Thomas Westerman Wolf must be removed from office and I am publicly and continually calling for immediate impeachment investigations for abuse of power and negligent criminal behavior. Tom Wolf is an enemy of a free people and as such has forfeit the privilege of serving as our governor. He must be removed from office before his lawlessness is forever enshrined in public policy.
We have two America’s happening right now guided by two completely different ideologies. States run by red Governors are largely working to open their states from the shutdown or have already done so. Western Journal reports, “15 days after restrictions started being lifted, Kemp indicated on Twitter that the emerging evidence supports his decision and proves his critics wrong. “Today marks the lowest number of COVID-19 positive patients currently hospitalized statewide (1,203) since hospitals began reporting this data on April 8th,” he posted Saturday. “Today also marks the lowest total of ventilators in use (897 with 1,945 available). We will win this fight together!” he added.”1. We have the ongoing deteriorating state of Pennsylvania with its citizens suffering under poor leadership. I had mentioned in a previous article published April 27 about how Gov. Wolf was ignoring representative government tactics of dealing with the potential of a major health crisis and was dictating policies with no input from legislators or private sector. Governor Wolf continues the same stance, acting as if he is the Supreme Leader in Pa answerable to none. He has no sense of urgency to help citizens regain lost time and revenue for business owners. Many counties in Pa have either not had a single case of COVID or 10 or less cases.
Covid response warrants Impechament
In speaking with Pennsylvania State Rep. David Zimmerman (R-99) concerning the overall handling of the COVID-19 situation in Pa, I share this report with you. The lesson that must be learned: Democrats cannot hold public office in this country. They do not respect representative government and defy rule of law, with little or no consequences.
Yes, the Governor does have absolute power granted to him in health emergencies. Are we still in a health emergency? Well, we are seeing data manipulated and used and some of it later exposed for being false. Reader be aware! The Republicans hold the majority in both the House and Senate. Rep. Bryan Cutler is the House leader and has reached out, without success, to have Gov. Wolf meet jointly in planning sessions on how to get Pennsylvania moving again. This has been his way of “leading” throughout most of his 2 terms. Rep. Cutler would like to stop payment on some of his pet projects in order to force a conversation. Interestingly, before COVID-19 the state had close to a $1 billion surplus, 800 million of that is gone. Even more interesting, the money was directly appropriated by Gov. Wolf himself, bypassing the process of going thru the legislation process. I asked, where did that money go? Rep. Zimmerman listed off Human services projects, help for his campaign and it appears as though where other funds went is unknown. On March 19, the state was put into a 90 day lockdown. The latest day of opening again is June 4, two days after the Pennsylvania primary. Rep. Zimmerman is in complete agreement that Health Secretary Levine should step down and face criminal charges. Zimmerman owns several retirement communities in Lancaster county. One of them in Ephrata, Fairmount Home, was ordered by the Department of State to take a patient from a hospital who had COVID-19. Not the jurisdiction of the government. It’s a completely illegal demand and it never should have happened. Dr. Levine should be held accountable for this. Rep. Zimmerman does support Rep. Metcalfe’s call to impeach Gov. Wolf. Rep. Metcalfe’s call for impeachment are listed at the end of this article.
Legislation was passed in 1977 that allows a local disaster emergency to be declared by the governing body of a political subdivision upon finding a disaster has occurred or is imminent.
Each political subdivision included in a declaration of disaster emergency declared by either the Governor or the governing body of the political subdivision affected by the disaster emergency is authorized to exercise the powers vested under this section in the light of the exigencies of the emergency situation without regard to time-consuming procedures and formalities prescribed by law, according to the law.
“Gov. Wolf’s orders in response to the COVID-19 outbreak have violated a number of our God-given rights affirmed in the United States Constitution,” said Zimmerman. “In particular, his order mandating the closure of physical locations of all businesses that he has deemed ‘non-life sustaining’ has violated our citizens’ rights in many devastating ways.”
Zimmerman said Wolf’s order constitutes a taking of property from business owners without just compensation. “The lack of due process and judicial review permitted under his order also violates the Constitution. In addition, this order coupled with the stay-at-home order, has violated our rights to free speech and assembly,” he said.
Another troubling aspect of his mandates is the utter lack of transparency demonstrated by the administration, Zimmerman noted.
Agencies under his control have stopped responding to requests for records and his office has refused to provide vital information,” he said. “The waiver process established under the Department of Community and Economic Development resulted in arbitrary and capricious decisions about which businesses may stay open.”
Zimmerman said that the public, press and General Assembly all have the right to know about these decisions and how they have been made. “While the Wolf administration has finally slowly begun to release some of the relevant information regarding which businesses received waivers, they have yet to release any information about how or why these decisions were made,” he said. His delays and obfuscation have been, and continue to be, entirely unacceptable.”
Zimmerman also noted Wolf’s failure to adequately administer the unemployment compensation system. He said that countless Pennsylvanians have been unable to collect their benefits.
“His focus on restraining business is particularly disturbing, as the majority of deaths due to the pandemic have been residents of long-term care facilities,” Zimmerman said.” The governor should have focused his attention there, but he has entirely failed to implement a comprehensive state plan to protect our most vulnerable citizens who reside in nursing homes, which have had inadequate supplies of Personal Protective Equipment and testing kits throughout the outbreak.”
Zimmerman said impeachment is the only means to address the actions of Wolf.
“As Gov. Wolf has violated so many of our fundamental rights as citizens of the Commonwealth, I will be introducing a resolution impeaching the governor and exhibiting Articles of Impeachment to the Senate. His actions plainly constitute the misbehavior in office required for his impeachment under the Pennsylvania Constitution.
“While these are certainly challenging times, Gov. Wolf must be held accountable for his actions that have harmed so many of our citizens and violated so many of our rights. No individual or office is above the law.”
It is clear that this Governor is going to rule Pennsylvania as if her were Sovereign Lord. He is not. We are a representative government. All Americans need to know this and be aware, this can happen anywhere!• Take responsibility for your own liberty• Participate in peaceful, public demonstrations• Constantly write to leadership and tell them what is happening in your life as they take their good ole time opening the state. Remind them that you vote!• Exercise your Constitutional rights. https://constitutionstudy.com/2020/05/18/knowing-your-rights/• PRAY! The king’s heart is in the hand of the Lord, as the rivers of water: he turns it wherever he wills. Proverbs 21:1
By Congressman Paul Gosar and Kevin Lynn If the most conservative member of Congress can partner with the director of Progressives for Immigration Reform, then there is a real chance our nation can undertake true meaningful immigration reform. Prior to coronavirus laying waste to the economy, President Trump often correctly said that we have the “greatest economy in the history of the U.S.” We boasted about low unemployment numbers and celebrated new stock market highs, GDP growth and job creation. What looked promising on the surface belied serious flaws that lay beneath.
Even when unemployment was reported to be low, Americans were being displaced by foreign workers at alarming rates. Today a record 30 million Americans have filed for unemployment – most in the last six to eight weeks. For reasons only a few can fathom, the Administration seems hell-bent on bringing in more workers from abroad through our employment-based visa programs, such as the H-1B, H-2B and Optional Practical Training (OPT). In good times and bad, corporations and policymakers are unwilling to recalibrate employment visa quotas to current economic conditions. We saw this in 2008, and we see it now. It needs to change now.
At the time of this writing we face an unemployment rate that meets or exceeds the peak of the Great Depression. The institutionalizing of neoliberal policies that has enabled the unfettered movement of people and money across international borders so as to maximize profits has gutted the nation’s productive class. In the 1990s we were told there were jobs that didn’t have an economic right to exist and shipped a large portion of our vital manufacturing sector overseas.
Later, we were falsely told there were jobs Americans simply would not do, so we opened the floodgates to large numbers of legal immigrants and turned a blind eye to people coming here illegally who were only too eager to work for less money and no benefits. Now we are being told there are jobs that Americans can’t do. Almost as if the country that put a man on the Moon and invented the Internet could no longer produce skilled knowledge workers and needed to place its homegrown technology infrastructure in the hands of foreigners. The truth is Americans have always been among the most productive and hardest working people. But they should not have to work for below-market wages, kept artificially low by cheap foreign labor.
In the words of Lisa, a knowledge worker:
“I have degrees in math and computer science from the late 80s. Ditto my husband. He’s a database administrator. We’ve both been in IT our entire careers and are sickened to see what’s happened with all of the outsourcing. We are sick of training our Indian replacements.”
Another American wrote to us:
“I’m a 47-year-old database developer. I’ve been replaced multiple times (that I’m aware of) by OPT workers, and I’ve seen my entire IT department at a major corporation replaced by Indian H-1Bs. I do ‘have skills.’ I’m highly regarded and well-respected by my peers and boss, and I have a well-established work history. I’ve been fighting the work visa treason for years, and I never feel like anyone in Washington, D.C. cares about American workers.”
That is why Congressman Gosar has filed H.R.3564, the Fairness for High-Skilled Americans Act of 2019. It would eliminate the OPT program that is used to hire foreigners over U.S. citizens and pay them less. It is immoral and wrong. We encourage our students to get into STEM fields, but because of OPT, 50 percent of STEM graduates can’t get a STEM job.
The pandemic spotlighted that outsourcing and offshoring of jobs have not made America stronger, rather the country has been weakened, vulnerable to the whims of foreign interests. How can we stave off a pandemic when most if not all the components of personal protective equipment are produced overseas or when 90 percent of our antibiotics and antiviral drugs are produced abroad? This is not only an economic concern; it is a national security concern. At one point China threatened to withhold pharmaceuticals from Americans. This is no small threat when almost all are made in China.
But there’s more. The nation’s top financial services and insurance companies have offshored hundreds of thousands of IT and call center jobs, with many going to India. Does it leave us vulnerable having so many foreign nationals able to access our citizens’ sensitive data?
Coronavirus has exposed the greed and corruption of the neo-liberal system and its high priests. In the face of a pandemic, our healthcare system failed us. These efficient and complex global systems did not function well when stressed. Truth be told, the system was beginning to crack before the virus, and it was financialization – not productivity – that was propping up the world’s economy.
However, in the midst of all this chaos, could there be a silver lining? It is time for our elected officials to act and reform the system. This is a great opportunity to hammer out a plan that repatriates manufacturing and back-office operations to the U.S. Moreover, we can take this opportunity to implement immigration reform that puts American interests first. It is time to bring back America, and one way to do it is to make America first when it comes to hiring.
Congressman Paul Gosar represents Arizona’s Fourth District in Congress and has an America First platform that starts with ending cheap foreign labor. He is consistently ranked among the most conservative in Congress.
Cotton Seeks Restricting Student Visas For Chinese
By Joe Guzzardi
Sen. Tom Cotton (R-Ark.) said in a nationally televised interview that issuing F-1 visas to Chinese students to allow them to pursue “quantum computing degrees” is a self-defeating exercise. Studying Shakespeare and the Federalist papers would be okay with Cotton, a Harvard J.D. graduate, U.S. Army captain and Afghanistan war veteran. But educating Chinese nationals who become, as Cotton said, so many of the Chinese Communist Party’s “brightest minds” is “a scandal.”
Cotton’s comments set off a firestorm of criticism. The Washington Postwrote a scathing editorial that strongly rejected Cotton’s proposal; the Internet was abuzz with harsh retorts to limiting F-1 visas to Chinese students.
However, the facts support Cotton whose suggestion is actually too limited. The 2019 Open Doors Report on International Education released by the Institute of International Education and the U.S. Department of State’s Bureau of Educational and Cultural Affairs showed that 872,214 overseas students were enrolled during the 2017-2018 academic year, while another 223,085 were in Optional Practical Training programs (OPT). Chinese nationals comprised 369,548 of the 872,214 international students; India ranked second with 202,014 enrollees.
OPT’s history is a sad lament of a greed that leaves Americans on the unemployment line. At an elitist Georgetown cocktail party years ago, multi-billionaire Microsoft co-founder Bill Gates whined to then-Department of Homeland Security Secretary Michael Chertoff, his globalist friend, that the tech industry suffered from insufficient H-1B workers.
Congress couldn’t be swayed to lift the H-1B 85,000 cap, so tech lobbyists concocted the OPT scheme that allowed science, technology, math and engineering students to remain in the U.S. and take jobs that otherwise would go to Americans. Bottom line: without congressional approval, OPT which originates with the F-1 visa has, in recent years, ballooned into a major U.S. tech worker job displacer.
In 2017, Amazon hired about 2,400 OPT foreign-born workers, and placed them in white-collar jobs that should have gone to Americans. Amazon’s preference for OPT workers is easily explained: DHS data found that Amazon earned nearly $25 million in tax breaks by employing foreign workers. And since the long-ago Georgetown soiree, the self-serving Gates’ net worthhas doubled from $50 billion to $100 billion, while thousands of OPTs have bumped U.S. tech workers from their jobs.
Many of the foreign-born OPT students matriculate at public universities like the University of California’s Davis, San Diego, Berkeley and Irvine campuses. In 2016, Chinese students made up 34 percent of that year’s Berkeley admissions. Penn State, Michigan State and Iowa State universities are also among international students’ preferred destinations. PSU, MSU and ISU are land-grant schools, state taxpayer-funded institutions specifically for local citizen-residents’ advancement in the agriculture, science, military science and engineering disciplines. At no time since President Abraham Lincoln signed the 1862 Morrill Act that ceded federally controlled land to the universities has the legislation designated that international students be admitted while rejecting U.S. citizens.
Foreign student high enrollment means that qualified U.S. high school graduates are shut out, an inarguable fact. Only a fixed number of freshman seats are available each academic year, and Americans must have the first priority.
Universities are the major culprit in the steadily soaring international admissions injustice. The Wall Street Journal reported that aggressive recruiting abroad has led to a 79 percent international enrollment increase over the last decade, and has created a financial bonanza for the universities. At UC Berkeley, for example, in 2020 undergraduate fees and tuition was $14,253 for residents; out-of-state, $44,000, more than three-times what locals pay.
The F-1 visa was originally intended to provide overseas students with an opportunity to obtain a quality U.S. education. Upon graduation, the students were expected to return to their native countries and apply the skills they learned in the U.S. to improve their home nations. Instead, the F-1 visa has devolved into a job-eating force that’s ballooned out of control. Moreover, and to Cotton’s point, the federal government has no ability to track international students after they arrive. Many of them routinely vanish. An alarmed FBI has urged universities to review ongoing research involving Chinese students and researchers whose academic pursuits could have defense applications.
Cotton’s call to restrict F-1 visas to Chinese nationals is a good start. But Cotton needs to include other countries like India whose presence denies education and employment opportunities to deserving Americans. Congress won’t give Cotton much support, if any. President Trump needs to intercede with an executive order.
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.
Cotton Seeks Restricting Student Visas For Chinese
The handful of journalists who have spent decades on the immigration beat have a saying: “Never say never.” Translated, the maxim means that no matter how outrageous or illegal federal, state or local lawmakers’ outreach is to unlawfully present aliens, a more shocking development will soon supersede it.
As an example of the inherent wisdom of never say never, turn to Eric Garcetti, the legacy mayor of Los Angeles. With Garcetti’s wholehearted endorsement, Los Angeles city officials are accepting applications for pre-paid debit cards, including from illegal aliens. The cards, funded privately, will have values of $700, $1,100 and $1,500, depending on the applicants’ household income, assuming that annual earnings fall below the federal poverty line and that the household’s head has a 50 percent income reduction directly related to COVID-19. As of this writing, 450,000 people have submitted applications for what Garcetti calls Angeleno cards.
No one argues that being down and out in Los Angeles, and with limited prospects for significant lifestyle improvements, is awful. But neither can anyone disagree that Garcetti’s action, and the actions that precipitated the cards’ issuance, involves multiple federal immigration offenses. Employers are guilty of hiring illegal immigrants, the aliens are guilty of falsifying employment documents that may involve identity theft and of working without legal authorization, and Garcetti is guilty of harboring aliens. Specifically, Title 8, U.S. Code 1324 prohibits proving direct cash assistance to illegal aliens that enable them to remain in the United States. Nevertheless, Garcetti said, “Applicants will not be asked anything about their immigration status. We are all Angelenos.”
For more than 20 years, California’s Republican and Democratic governors Gray Davis, Arnold Schwarzenegger, Jerry Brown and Gavin Newsom have disregarded immigration laws. During that period, the governors, along with mayors like Garcetti, San Francisco’s Willie Brown and Ed Lee, and Oakland’s Libby Schaaf, have willfully turned their backs on U.S. workers.
The Migration Policy Institute estimates that Los Angeles County has more than 1 million unauthorized residents; 80 percent fall into the prime working-age demographic, 16 to 54. Furthermore, MPI found that 66 percent of Los Angeles’ civilian, over-16 population is employed – a total that includes unlawfully present immigrants. Contrary to the old, discredited saw that illegal immigrants do jobs that Americans won’t do, Los Angeles’ alien population is nearly exclusively employed in manufacturing, food services, construction, professional services and retail. In an increasingly tight employment market, most Americans would eagerly take jobs in those employment sectors.
A University of Southern California Dornsife Center for Economic and Social Research study found that more than half of Los Angeles’ residents are unemployed. Within the next three months, the USC study estimates about 33 percent of those unemployed residents will run out of money, and will be unable to meet their financial obligations. Chaos will likely follow.
As Los Angeles slowly reopens its economy – an event that, given Garcetti’s hardline “we will shut you down” stance, may be weeks away – U.S. citizens and lawfully present immigrants are entitled to have the first opportunity to fill jobs as they become available. Since there is literally zero likelihood that California’s state or municipal officials will prioritize American workers, mandatory E-Verify is the best and perhaps only chance U.S. citizens and legal permanent residents will have to get back on the road to economic stability.
President Trump has consistently punted on E-Verify. During the employment crisis, now is the time for the president to step up and put his office’s full weight behind the companion House and Senate bills, the Accountability Through Electronic Verification Act, which Senate Finance Committee Chair Chuck Grassley (R-Iowa) and U.S. Rep. Mo Brooks (R-Ala.) introduced. The legislation would permanently reauthorize E-Verify. Within a year, all employers would be required to use the program, and existing employees would have to be E-Verify-checked. Employers that refuse to adopt E-Verify would be subject to fines up to $2,500, and risk further penalties.
Congress should do everything in its power to protect the jobs and wages of hard-working Americans. The Accountability through Electronic Verification Act would be one part of that elusive goal.
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.
