Category: Guest Authors

Chinese Sending Baseball Players To USA

By Joe Guzzardi

The New Year we’re moving into this week under the Chinese Lunar calendar is the Year of the Rabbit, considered the luckiest of the 12 animal signs to be born under in the Chinese zodiac. While some may be born to it, others’ luck is made through lucrative CCP deals.

In 2021, Major League Baseball extended its contract with Tencent, a Chinese tech company that broadcasts NBA games and has an audience of more than 1 billion. Through its international WeTV service in Thailand, Malaysia and Indonesia, Tencent’s viewership will expand. China’s baseball interest is at unprecedented levels, and intensifying. Baseball is played in more than 80 Chinese colleges and universities, and dozens of new baseball facilities have been built in recent years by local governments and individuals.

Always anxious to enlarge its $11 billion industry, in 2017 MLB and Beijing Enterprises Real-Estate Group Ltd. (BEREGL), a major Chinese state-owned enterprise, announced a 10-year relationship to further promote baseball in China. Jim Small, MLB’s Vice President, Asia Pacific division, said that MLB’s objective is to provide first-rate facilities and coaching for the increasing number of Chinese baseball players and that MLB is “honored,” his word, to team up with what he called one of China’s most forward-thinking, innovative and successful companies.

BEREGL and MLB plan to build nearly two dozen MLB-branded baseball facilities throughout China. Most of the new projects will be labeled MLB-BEREGL Baseball Development Centers and will provide top-notch facilities for talented Chinese student athletes in grades 7–12. The curriculum will offer mainstream academic instruction and baseball fundamentals. MLB maintains three development centers in Wuxi, Changzhou and Nanjing. No such facilities exist in U.S. for middle-school kids or any other age group.

MLB will continue to send, as it has in past years, visiting professional players and coaches to instruct all levels of Chinese players and teams. Previous MLB visiting instructors have included Prince Fielder, Curtis Granderson, Mark Melancon, Jeremy Guthrie and Jim Lefebvre.

In the globalist design that MLB developed with BEREGL, more Chinese players are on their way from the development centers to the U.S., either through the international draft, arriving on P-1A visas for professional athletes or by attending U.S. universities on nonimmigrant F-1 visas. In 2015, the Baltimore Orioles signed Gui Yuan Xu, the first development center graduate. Xu, a position player nicknamed Itchy because of his affection for Ichiro Suzuki, played 73 games over three seasons in rookie and Class A ball before being released. The Boston Red Sox, the Pittsburgh Pirates, the Milwaukee Brewers and the Philadelphia Phillies signed six other development center graduates; five of them were released after failing at the lowest minor league levels.

Many Chinese MLB aspirants prefer the college university route where more nationwide scouts will evaluate their skills. DJ, for example, is a 24-year-old native of Qinghai, a province in an autonomous Tibetan region. His visa documents identify him as Fnu Suonandajie. Fnu, however, is not a name, but initials that stand for First Name Unknown, a term the State Department assigns to foreign nationals with an unknown given name. And Suonandajie is not Fnu’s family name, but rather an appellation a Tibetan monk gave DJ, as his friends know him, when he was a child.

MLB, constantly prowling for promising athletes for their middle school program, discovered DJ in 2011. After graduating from Nanjing’s development center’s high school program, DJ came to the U.S., earned a roster spot as a walk-on at Los Angeles Harbor College, graduated in 2021, and was soon given a full baseball scholarship at Kansas City’s Division II Rockhurst University. He hopes to enter MLB’s first-year player draft, a longshot for a D-II player.

Evaluating the cozy partnership between MLB and the state-owned Chinese real estate business, clear winners and losers emerge. The big winners are MLB which will tap into an exploding market for not only players, but also for billions in streaming income and millions more in merchandise sales to Chinese baseball fanatics. Chinese players also win. They’ll receive a visa to legally enter the U.S., even though their prospects for reaching MLB are infinitesimally low. The website FiveThirtyEight calculates any player’s chances to make it to the major leagues, including standout NCAA players, are 0.17 percent.

The losers are the U.S. prospects from NCAA universities or other amateur leagues. Arriving Chinese players expand baseball’s labor pool, diminishing the chances of those already in the pool. But the biggest losers of all could be the public at large. Chinese players entering in significant numbers could represent a national security threat. Historically, the State Department does a poor job of tracking visa holders, regardless of the threat they may pose. In baseball’s multi-billion-dollar business, globalism reigns. Everything else is a distant second.

Joe Guzzardi writes about immigration issues and impacts.

Chinese Sending Baseball Players To USA

Great Salt Lake Going Dry Due To Population Growth

By Joe Guzzardi

Utah’s Great Salt Lake may disappear within the next five years, experts predict. A Brigham Young University report found that as of January 2023, the lake is 19 feet below its average level. Since 1850, the Great Salt Lake has lost 73 percent of its water and more than half of its surface area.

BYU ecologist Benjamin Abbott, noting “unprecedented danger,” called for emergency measures to save the Great Salt Lake from further collapse. Abbott wrote that despite encouraging growth in legislative action and public awareness, “most Utahns do not realize the urgency of this crisis.”

At this point, and since 2020, the lake has lost more than 1 million acre-feet of water annually. Each acre foot represents about 360 gallons of water, nearly the size of a one-foot-deep football field. Today, only about 0.1 million acre-feet of water is returned to the lake each year.

Abbott pointed to worldwide examples which show that saline lake loss triggers a long-term cycle of environmental, health and economic suffering. He urges a coordinated rescue to stave off widespread air and water pollution, further losses from animals listed as part of the Endangered Species Act, and greater declines in agriculture, industry and overall quality of life.

If Utah Governor Spencer Cox hopes to deliver on his promise that the Great Salt Lake will not go dry on his watch, he’ll have to adopt some if not all of Abbott’s suggested measures, many of which will be unpopular among constituents. Specifically, the BYU scholars called on Cox to implement a watershed-wide emergency rescue plan that will set a requirement of at least 2.5 million acre-feet per year until the lake reaches its minimum healthy elevation of 4,198 feet. In conclusion, and in light of what the authors called an “all-hands-on-deck emergency,” the BYU analysis asked farmers, counties, cities, businesses, churches, universities and other organizations to “do everything in their power to reduce outdoor water use.” Utahns must, BYU counseled, adopt a “Lake First” approach to water preservation.

The Great Salt Lake’s rapidly dwindling water level is attributable to two factors: the ongoing drought that’s affected large swathes of the nation and an unprecedented population boom. Despite above average snowfall in 2022, most of Utah remains in severe to extreme drought mode.

The bigger culprit in the Great Salt Lake’s demise, however, is population growth. Between July 2021 and July 2022, Utah’s estimated population grew by more than 61,000, which marked the state’s largest spike in absolute growth since 2006, putting its total population at slightly more than 3.4 million residents. Of Utah’s 29 counties, 28 added population, except for Daggett, which declined by six people. Utah’s population growth is calculated by the standard formula: net migration accounted for an estimated 38,141 more residents, while natural increase — births minus deaths — accounted for another 23,101 residents. From 2010 to 2020, Utah was the nation’s fastest growing state. Utah’s growth will continue unabated. By 2060, Utah’s population will hit 5.5 million with intervals of 4 million between 2032 and 2033 and 5 million between 2050 and 2051.

Put another way, in the next 40 years, Utah’s population will increase 66 percent.

By the time the 2030 Census rolls around, Utah will have more Venezuelan migrants admitted under President Biden’s immigration policies. Already in Utah in significant numbers, Venezuelans are part of Biden’s program to grant immigration parole every month to 30,000 total Haitians, Cubans, Nicaraguans and Venezuelans. For Venezuelans who have family ties and prospective sponsors in Utah, the state becomes a magnet. And once settled, the migrant Venezuelans will start families or expand their existing families, thereby putting more pressure on Utah’s natural resources.

The Great Salt Lake is one of many disappearing U.S. lakes and rivers, victimized by overpopulation and mismanagement. Others in grave danger of drying up include the Colorado and California’s Lake Mead and Lake Tahoe. BYU’s environmentalists have rolled out a sound plan to save the Great Salt Lake. For its part, the federal government is irresponsibly adding population to states like Utah that are struggling to provide precious water and other resources for existing residents.

Joe Guzzardi writes about immigration issues and impacts.

Great Salt Lake Going Dry Due To Population Growth

Biden Restoring America The Beautiful Program Is Misguided

By Joe Guzzardi

A week after Joe Biden became president, he signed Executive 0rder 14008 (EO) that announced his commitment to protect 30 percent of U.S. land and water – 41.5 million acres per year – by 2030. Then, on May 6, 2021, the Department of the Interior published “Conserving and Restoring America the Beautiful,” a preliminary report about what’s become known as the “30 x 30” plan. Under the Department of Interior’s direction, in collaboration with the Agriculture and Commerce departments and consistent with Biden’s EO, the report reaffirmed the mission to conserve within the next seven years at least 30 percent of the nation’s lands and waters. The order is tall, and time is short for the urgent undertaking.

As of 2023, the U.S. is going in the wrong direction if its intention is to preserve precious, irreplaceable natural resources. The growth and development mantra that the Chamber of Commerce, the media and most in Congress embrace have overwhelmed Americans who want to preserve what remains of the nation’s biodiversity.

The valiant battle against the powerful, wealthy, craven growth mongers is worth the fight. In the book, “Precious Heritage, the Status of Biodiversity in the U.S.,” the authors point out that the U.S. is, for species like salamanders and fresh water turtles, at the global center of ecological biodiversity. From Appalachia’s lush forests to Alaska’s frozen tundra, and from the Midwest’s tallgrass prairies to Hawaii’s subtropical rainforests, the U.S. harbors a stunning, unique ecosystem array. These ecosystems in turn sustain an incomparable variety of plant and animal life. Among the nation’s other extraordinary biological features are California’s coast redwoods, which are the world’s tallest trees, and Nevada’s Devils Hole pupfish, which survive in a single 10’ x 70’ desert pool, the smallest range of any vertebrate animal.

And yet, relentless growth continues. Between 2010 and 2020, the U.S. grew by about 20 million residents, the equivalent of Los Angeles x5. Today L.A. has 3.9 million people, and a density of 8,382 persons per square mile.

Since Biden’s EO, there have been few, if any, identifiable successes. A recently released Department of Interior preliminary report is best viewed as a guideline or a starting point two years into the venture. Details are few. Rather, the report repeats themes that have been bandied about for decades: “Pursue a collaborative and inclusive approach to conservation” and “conserve America’s lands and waters for the benefit of all people.” No one argues with those objectives or the six other so-called “central recommendations.” But the progress report lacks the specifics of how to accomplish the lofty goals and ignores the harsh reality that, on its current course, U.S. population will continue ever upward.

As encouraging as the White House’s awareness and conservation activism is, Biden’s EO makes not a single mention of immigration, the nation’s main population driver. And while discussions about immigration may be uncomfortable or even off the table for expansionists, no serious approach to conservation can exclude the controversial topic.

More than 1 million legal immigrants arrive annually, many beginning new families or expanding their existing families. Many eventually petition their relatives, the family reunification process that adds significantly to U.S. population growth. By 2030, the U.S. population is expected to reach about 350 million, up from today’s 334 million. By 2060, the Census Bureau predicts that population will hover around 400 million, more than 15 million more per decade, and a 20 percent spike from 2023. These figures were calculated pre-Southwest Border surge.

The obvious consequence is more development. More roads, hospitals, schools, stores and places of worship must be built.  With that, green spaces and open spaces are destroyed to make room for the inevitable sprawl that building creates. The establishment wants more immigration because more new residents mean more consumers. Despite elitists demands, at a minimum immigration must be slowed. Reduced immigration levels – fewer people – would help the White House Council on Environmental Quality move toward its conservation goal. Ignore immigration as a variable in population growth, and sprawl and environmental degradation will continue unabated.

In 2001, Senator Gaylord Nelson, Earth Day founder, called out faux environmentalists. Under that would fit today’s Biden administration’s interior, ag and commerce departments’ officials. Nelson spoke words as true today as they were two decades ago: “…it’s phony to say ‘I’m for the environment but not for limiting immigration.’”

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Joe Guzzardi is a nationally syndicated newspaper columnist who writes about immigration and related social issues. Joe joined Progressives for Immigration Reform in 2018 as an analyst after a ten-year career directing media relations for Californians for Population Stabilization, where he also was a Senior Writing Fellow. A native Californian, Joe now lives in Pennsylvania. Contact him at jguzzardi@pfirdc.org.