Category: Joe Guzzardi

End the H-1B—Count the Reasons Why

By Joe Guzzardi

Since President Donald Trump told Fox Network television host Laura Ingraham —and reiterated multiple times—that the United States needed “certain talent,” a reference to H-1B employment visas, thousands of outraged words have been published defending U.S. tech workers.

The America First commentaries rightly scorned Trump for his dismissive opinion of U.S. tech workers’ skills and how the visa displaces thousands of employed Americans and poses an insurmountable roadblock for recent university graduates with science, technology, engineering, and math degrees. To add insult to the painful injury of job displacement, tech employers shamelessly fire existing staff, then cry to Congress that, to stave off financial ruin, they urgently need the annual H-1B lottery, which will yield 65,000 of the world’s “best and brightest.” In truth, the foreign nationals are mostly average-skilled workers from China and India.

While the annual arrival of 65,000 international workers coming to usurp Americans’ white-collar jobs is disgraceful and most directly and dramatically affects tech employees, that represents only a fraction of the harm caused by continuing the practice of welcoming foreign-born workers via a random visa lottery.

The H-1B is a dual intent visa, meaning that the guest worker can either return to his native country or remain in the U.S. after his employment document expires. He thereby gets in line for permanent residency and eventual citizenship. Such misplaced generosity means more pressure on already-bankrupt Medicare and Social Security programs and a further collapse of the failed K-12 public schools.

Birthright citizenship and chain migration make a bad situation worse. Guest workers who start new families or expand existing families before entering permanent residency will still benefit from birthright citizenship, an anchor that makes the child’s parents more difficult to deport when they lose their legally present status.

Chain migration allows the foreign-born petitioners to select America’s future population, regardless of talent or education. Once approved, a legal immigrant can bring his or her nuclear family, consisting of a spouse and minor children. After that, the chain begins. When the original immigrants and his or her spouse become U.S. citizens, they can bring in their parents, adult sons and daughters along with their spouses and children, and their adult siblings, creating a potentially never-ending chain—all possible from one immigrant.

Immigration, mostly through chain migration, is population growth’s main driver. Consider Frisco, Texas, an IT hub that has hired a large H-1B workforce. In 1990, the year Congress passed the Immigration Act, Frisco’s population was 6,100. Fast forward to 2025, and the town’s population soared to 243,300. The Census Bureau projects that by 2029 Frisco will have 275,800 residents. The dramatic population growth has significantly altered the town’s demographic composition. The Frisco Independent School District, for example, has a 65,000 enrollment; 43 percent are Asian, mostly H-1B workers’ children. Again, using 1990 as the benchmark, FISD enrollment that year was 1,500. Today, to accommodate the non-English speakers, FISD offers two sections of English as a Second Language classes. Immigration and, more specifically, the H-1B visas have converted Frisco from a quiet little Texas town into an unrecognizable diverse community that natives neither approved of nor wanted.

No H-1B investigation is complete without a reference to its illegitimate child, the H-4 EAD for spouses. Historically, the H-4 excluded work permission, but in 2015, the Obama administration via executive order authorized spousal employment. Unlike the H-1B holder who is tied to his visa-sponsoring employer, the H-4 EAD holder, predominantly women, can work anywhere. The Supreme Court recently refused to take up the H-4 EAD’s legality, which means that only congressional action or a regulatory change can end the Executive Branch’s ability to issue work authorization to nonimmigrant categories that are not statutorily authorized to work in the U.S.

In summary, all three government branches—Legislative, Judicial, and Executive—have demonstrated indifference to the harm the H-1B has inflicted on U.S. tech workers and sovereign America.

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Joe Guzzardi is an Institute for Sound Public Policy analyst. Contact him at jguzzardi@ifspp.org

Trump‘s H-1B Advocacy Infuriates His Base

By Joe Guzzardi

As then-presidential candidate Ronald Reagan said with a smile to incumbent Jimmy Carter in their 1980 debate, “There you go again.” The simple sentence that helped Reagan win 44 states and 499 electoral votes came to mind when President Donald Trump insisted to Fox News host Laura Ingraham that the United States needs “to bring in more talent,” a reference to H-1B visa holders. To the disappointment of his MAGA base, Trump has too-often indicated that he favors an H-1B expansion. The unfair, anti-U.S. tech worker H-1B is a serious national problem and does not deserve a smile like Reagan’s in response to Carter’s propaganda.

“H-1B visa thing won’t be a big priority for you? If you wanna raise wages for Americans, you can’t flood the country with thousands of foreign workers,” Ingraham asked. Trump replied, “You have to bring in talent.”

Ingraham pushed back and correctly noted that America’s universities and colleges have graduated plenty of skilled IT workers, all eagerly looking for jobs. Every year, MIT, Georgia Tech, Cal, and myriad other universities turn out top-notch talent. Trump is wrong to promote, on national television, more foreign-born Indians and Chinese to displace Americans from their well-paid, white-collar jobs.

Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent, in his unsuccessful attempt to help Trump out, later said that what the president meant was that Indian engineers would travel to the U.S., train Americans, and then return home. Ironically, the existing H-1B program means that Americans train the arriving overseas workers and then head to the unemployment line. When Trump’s ill-advised H-1B advocacy spread throughout the Internet, his MAGA base was understandably shocked and outraged.

Trump’s position on illegal immigration since his 2016 campaign has been clear. The president adamantly opposes illegal immigration in all its forms and has proven his opposition by immediately closing the border after his 2024 election. He also ended Biden’s parole programs that included illegally granting employment authorization for unvetted aliens and put into motion the removal of Temporary Protected Status recipients when their 18-month valid periods expired.

But Trump’s thoughts about legal immigration, especially regarding the H-1B visa scam, have always been muddled. A few weeks before his 2025 inauguration, Trump supported Vivek Ramaswamy and Elon Musk’s thinking that more H-1B visas were essential to keep the economy humming along. At the time, Trump said, “I’ve always liked the visas, I have always been in favor of the visas. That’s why we have them.” Ramaswamy left to campaign for Ohio’s gubernatorial office and Musk feuded with and then divorced the president, so nothing came of the DOGE duo’s influence.

Since the Immigration Act of 1990 created the H-1B, the visa has given license to employers to import cheap labor to displace Americans and at the same time discourage qualified American tech students from applying—a pointless exercise when corporate America has predetermined that job openings will be filled with Indians or Chinese. Essentially defined, the H-1B and other employment-based visas mean that a job will go to a foreign-born worker.

If Trump wants to make a big splash before the 2026 midterm campaigning begins in earnest, he should follow the advice of Center for Immigration Studies fellow, lawyer, and author John Miano, who wrote that the best H-1B solution is to end it. Killing the H-1B would also mark the end of the media gaslighting that has helped keep it afloat.

Statistics support the argument to end the H-1B. In 2023, there were 4,804,840 people working in U.S. computer occupations. By 2024, 4,786,660 people worked in the field. Over that year, the United States lost 18,180 computer jobs. Yet in FY 2025, the U.S. imported 77,000 computer workers on H-1B visas alone. The math proves that the H-1B is not filling shortages, as Trump and other immigration expansionists argue. Instead, the H-1B functions to displace Americans and satisfy tech mogul donors—exactly as Congress designed it.

Joe Guzzardi is an Institute for Sound Public Policy analyst. Contact him at jguzzardi@ifspp.org

USCIS Introduces New Citizenship Test

By Joe Guzzardi

President Donald Trump’s January 20, 2025 Executive Order (EO) 14161, “Protecting the United States From Foreign Terrorists and Other National Security and Public Safety Threats,” directed the Department of Homeland Security to promote lawful immigrants’ proper assimilation and to foster “a unified American identity and attachment to the Constitution, laws, and founding principles of the United States.”

In accordance with Trump’s EO, effective mid-October 2025, citizenship candidates began taking a slightly revised version of the U.S. Citizenship and Immigration Services (USCIS) test. USCIS administers the Naturalization Civics test pursuant to the statutory requirements found in the Immigration and Nationality Act (INA), section 312, which requires aliens to demonstrate knowledge of American history and civics as a basic citizenship requirement for naturalization. The law states that a naturalization applicant must have “an understanding of the English language, including an ability to read, write, and speak words in ordinary usage in the English language” and have a “knowledge and understanding of the fundamentals of the history, and of the principles and form of government, of the United States.”

EO and the INA have set reasonable, noble goals for lawful permanent residents who must have lived in the U.S. for five years or more; LPRs who gained their immigration status through marriage to a U.S. citizen have a three-year wait period. Most test-takers will pass and become American citizens. However, based on my personal 20-year experience in the California public school system preparing refugees and amnesty recipients for the citizenship test, most will not truly be competent in the required skills.

The Oral Civics Test is the main way the government checks U.S. history and government knowledge. Here’s how it works: Beginning in the middle of October 2025, those applying for citizenship will be expected to correctly answer 12 out of 20 questions that are randomly selected from an updated bank of 128 questions. Questions cover topics like the Constitution, government branches, American history, and citizens’ rights and responsibilities. The administrator asks the questions out loud, and the reply must be made out loud. Previously, applicants only had to answer 6 out of 10 questions correctly from a pool of 100 questions. With the change, the number of possible questions increases to 128, and applicants must answer 12 out of 20 questions correctly — twice as many as before. To ensure accuracy, the U.S. Library of Congress vets all questions and answers and again USCIS made all answers available so applicants could prepare.

The English test checks three skills: speaking, reading, and writing. The officer asks a simple question to evaluate verbal and comprehension skills. Then, the applicant must read one of three simple sentences. Finally, they must write one of those sentences. Two chances are offered to pass each section.

Note that USCIS offers generous exceptions.

The 50/20 Rule

If you’re at least 50 years old and have been a lawful permanent resident, a green card holder, for at least 20 years, you may be exempt from taking the English language portion of the test. You’ll still need to take the civics test, but you can take it in your native language, making it more accessible for non-English speakers.

55/15 Rule

Similarly, if you’re 55 or older and have been a permanent resident for at least 15 years, you’re also exempt from the English language test. Like the 50/20 exemption, you’ll still have to complete the civics test, but again, you can do so in your native language.

65/20 Special Consideration

If you’re 65 or older and have been a permanent resident for at least 20 years, you’re eligible for special consideration. Not only are you exempt from the English language test, but you also qualify to take a simplified version of the civics test, which contains fewer questions, making the process less stressful.

Since USCIS oversees the process standards, it also has discretion over determining whether naturalization applicants meet the necessary requirements. Therein lies the rub. Like USCIS, which makes available the Naturalization Test and Study Materials and Resources for Educational Programs, I gave students applying under the Immigration Reform and Control Act of 1986 the probable questions and answers. The amnesty program required 40 hours of classroom English instruction and a passing grade on the INA oral exam. When the students completed their 40-hour minimum, I quizzed them to evaluate their test-readiness. The majority failed. Accordingly, I didn’t sign the INA form which confirmed that the students had completed both the hours requirement and the English exam. Not long thereafter, I received a call from the local INA office ordering me to sign regardless of the students’ failings. The INA had heard, no doubt through activist groups like MALDEF, that I wasn’t signing off. When I explained that the students were unprepared, I was ordered nevertheless to approve all applicants.

The USCIS administrators pass nearly all citizenship candidates. The 2022 initial plus re-test pass rate was 95.7%, inconsistent not only with my experience but also Census Bureau findings. About half, 47%, of immigrant adults in the U.S. have limited English proficiency, meaning that they speak English less than very well. Reasons for examiners’ leniency could include compassion for candidates who have little if any test-taking experience, and none in a second language. Extreme nervousness could encourage sympathy. But most of all, failing citizenship-seekers in significant percentages would stir up a hornet’s nest among the immigration lobby and lead to vocal charges that the test is purposely too difficult because the administration is anti-immigration — a distraction that Trump doesn’t need.

Joe Guzzardi is an Institute for Sound Public Policy analyst. Contact him at jguzzardi@ifspp.org

$100K Visa Fee Is Peanuts for Indentured Servitude

By Joe Guzzardi

President Donald Trump, on Sept. 19, issued his Proclamation entitled “Restrictions on Entry of Certain Nonimmigrant Workers” that imposes a $100,000, one-time fee for most new non-immigrant visa petitions filed after September 21 and restricts the ability of certain other H-1B visa holders to enter the U.S. The Proclamation applies only to petitions that have not yet been filed and not to aliens who already hold current, valid H-1B visas. Per the order, employers must now provide proof of payment when filing H-1B petitions, with enforcement overseen by the U.S. Departments of State and Homeland Security. The administration’s goal is to end the visa’s abuse and thereby ensure that only the most highly skilled foreign workers are selected for entry while encouraging employers to prioritize Americans.

The industry’s immediate response to the Trump administration’s abrupt but forceful action was widespread confusion as some H-1B visa holders cancelled plans to re-enter or scheduled return flights to the U.S. before the proclamation’s Sept. 21 effective date. However, for the H-1B’s countless critics who have been crying foul since the Immigration Act of 1990 created the American job-killing visa, cautious optimism prevailed.

The fee has had the desired effect of dampening employer enthusiasm for cheaper foreign labor. Walmart, America’s largest private-sector employer with approximately 1.6 million workers on its domestic payroll — a total that includes about 2,400 H-1B visa holders — announced that it would temporarily suspend hiring new H-1Bs.

Four decades ago, Congress, craven employers, and pro-immigration expansionists sold the visa as a vital stopgap measure for companies that could not fill essential jobs with domestic workers. But their fairy-tale vision contrasted sharply with reality. Using the H-1B program to facilitate the offshoring of U.S. jobs and replace U.S. workers is the exact opposite of the program’s advertised purpose of helping employers fill temporary labor shortages with workers possessing skills that are in short supply domestically. If it were operating as intended, the program should, when necessary, bring in skilled workers to complement the U.S. labor force. While in some cases H-1B workers are skilled and benefit the U.S. economy, the data showed early in the program’s history that a large percentage of visas were used to undercut and replace U.S. workers to boost corporate profits.

Prospective IT employers were understandably shocked at the new $100,000 fee. Before the Proclamation, the H-1B petition fee could range from approximately $460 to about $4,460. But visa critics were pleased at the hike because for decades, independently published research reports from conservative and liberal think tanks proved that unscrupulous employers underpaid and overworked their H-1B labor force. Ten years ago, President Jimmy Carter’s labor secretary Ray Marshall called the H-1B “one of the best con jobs ever done on the American public and political systems. The supporters argue that we have a shortage of college-educated workers. Well, there’s no evidence of that in the numbers…” During the decade since Marshall scorned the H-1B, the only significant change is that IT employers have gone on a dramatic firing spree, dismissing older, experienced native-born professionals while the annual lottery has admitted 85,000 new workers year after year. Some employers are exempt from the annual 85,000 cap, including universities and their affiliated nonprofit entities, nonprofit research organizations, and government research organizations. Because of the corporate exceptions, the arriving H-1B total far exceeds 85,000.

Of the top H-1B employers, many visas went to outsourcing firms — about one quarter of the annual 85,000 allotment. In 2024, at least 95,000 workers at U.S.-based tech companies were laid off; layoffs hit a peak in 2023 when around 200,000 tech workers were fired. Today, the tech job market is horrible. Over 200 tech companies have laid off 91,000 employees, yet the visa lottery persists as if the market were tight.

The five domestic corporations with the most H-1Bs include Amazon, Microsoft, Meta, Apple, and Tata Computer Services, with J.P. Morgan narrowly missing the top tier. Most enjoyed excellent fiscal 2024 net earnings: Microsoft, $88 billion, a 22% increase over 2023; Meta, $62 billion, up 59% year-over-year; Amazon, $60 billion. All could easily afford $100,000. But now the question the corporate titans must answer is why pay $100,000 for a foreign-born employee when recent college graduates or fired, unemployed workers could be hired for $0.00 and without immigration procedural headaches. Well-paid, white-collar IT jobs should go to Americans, not Indians who comprise 73% of the total or Chinese nationals, 13%.

$100,000 is a bargain basement deal for employers. Since the visa is valid for three years and includes an automatic three-year renewal, the company will pay about $16,666 per year over a six-year term for an indentured worker. Instead of serving its original purpose, the H-1B visa is a vehicle that suppresses wages, erodes job security, and sidesteps fair employment practices. For years, as it has laid off hundreds of thousands of talented, experienced U.S. engineers, the tech industry has vigorously lobbied Congress, pleading that without its annual overseas worker allocation, their businesses would teeter on the brink of collapse. So, put up or shut up. If the H-1Bs are as imperative to corporate survival as its advocates claim, then the $100,000 is pocket change.

Joe Guzzardi is an Institute for Sound Public Policy analyst. Contact him at jguzzardi@ifspp.org

Halloween 1924 Was Baseball Barnstorming At Its Best

By Joe Guzzardi

On Halloween night, parents now must decide between the traditional activity—taking the youngsters trick-or-treating—or a newer option: watching the World Series, the fall classic that once ended in mid-September. World Series viewing is only practical for West Coast kids; the Los Angeles Dodgers’ Tyler Glasnow threw Game Three’s first pitch at 8:42 PM EDT. Fans know that if MLB Commissioner Rob Manfred could have his way, the league would play regular season games on Christmas Eve in Auckland, New Zealand. Picture Manfred’s fantasy: robots calling the plays at all four corners and players’ uniforms adorned from collar to cleat with advertisements—walking billboards.

Until Manfred realizes his dream, he’ll content himself with adding new teams to the existing leagues. With expansion and the diluted talent pool anticipated before the end of the decade, there could be a major reshuffling of existing leagues to address concerns over brutal travel schedules. Candidates for new franchises include Nashville, Salt Lake City, a possible return to Montreal, or the long shot: Mexico City. Manfred will need to mandate domed stadiums before awarding new franchises. Post-season weather delays are inevitable as games are played later and later in autumn.

Disgruntled fans yearning for true baseball should turn back the pages to relive the greatest Halloween baseball ever played. On October 31, 1924, three Hall of Famers—Babe Ruth, Walter Johnson, and Sam “Wahoo” Crawford—played an exhibition game for the ages. Ruth won his only batting crown that year, hitting .378. He led the league with 46 home runs and drove in 121 runs. Highlighted by the Bambino’s cloud-busting 550-foot home run, with a second four-bagger added for good measure, Ruth, his otherworldly homer, and the game live on in legend in tiny Brea, California.

Johnson, the “Big Train,” was a local hero. His family moved from Humboldt, Kansas—Johnson’s birthplace—to Olinda, California, just east of Brea, a small oil boomtown. As a frolicking teenager, Johnson rode his black mare “Tar,” worked the rough-and-tumble oil fields, and began pitching for the Union Oil Wells, a company team where he forged his future as a MLB 417-game winner.

Just a few weeks after Johnson’s Senators won the 1924 World Series against the New York Giants, the 36-year-old “Big Train” faced off against Ruth, who toed the slab and pitched a complete-game 12-1 victory. The game, part of the Johnson-Ruth barnstorming tour, was played in brilliant Southern California sunshine. In honor of the big day, schools were closed, shops shuttered, Boy Scouts directed traffic, and fans from nearby towns rushed to see baseball played by the best. Though the evidence is lost to time, rumors persist that the Hall of Fame duo led the town’s first-ever Halloween parade. The Brea Bowl erected two thousand seats to accommodate the town’s 1,500 residents, but 15,000 showed up. Those without seats settled for gathering around primitive radio crystal sets. An Anaheim Bulletin headline—”All roads lead to Brea for Monster Athletic Contest”—summed up the pregame excitement. The Los Angeles Times dubbed it “the greatest deluxe sandlot game Southern California has ever seen.” After all, the Dodgers’ move from Brooklyn to Los Angeles and the Giants’ shift from New York to San Francisco were more than three decades away.

But Johnson, just days after his triumphant seventh-game World Series win, disappointed his hometown rooters with his substandard pitching performance. With only a day’s rest from an exhibition in Oakland and hampered by semi-pro catcher “Bus” Callan’s limited experience, Johnson was shelled—eight runs on eight hits, including four home runs. Later in his life, Callan revealed a secret about Ruth and his homers. Early in the game, Johnson told his catcher that the fans wanted to see Ruth do what he does best—hit the ball out of sight. During Ruth’s first two at-bats, Johnson grooved fat pitches that, to the fans’ glee, the Sultan of Swat blasted.

After the game, Johnson and Ruth visited Hollywood, with Douglas Fairbanks giving the two a set tour of his latest movie, “The Thief of Bagdad.” The Brea exhibition was the last game of the barnstorming season, beating the November 1 deadline set by baseball commissioner Kenesaw Mountain Landis.

Ruth operated at full throttle on his swing west, playing to an estimated 125,000 fans in 15 cities. “He made 22 scheduled speeches, headed four parades, judged a boxing match, drove a golf ball 353 yards, visited eighteen hospitals and orphan asylums,” Marshall Smelser wrote in his 1975 biography, “The Life That Ruth Built.”

Postscript: When the Orange Freeway and the Brea Mall opened in the 1970s, the town turned into a magnet for shoppers and home buyers. Single-story houses now stand where the Brea Bowl once hosted Ruth and Johnson.

Compared to Ruth, Johnson is underappreciated. Consider this partial list of his records: nine consecutive 300+ innings pitched, 110 shutouts won, 35 1-0 shutouts, 65 shutouts lost, 12 seasons leading the league in shutouts, and highest batting average for a pitcher, .433.

Ruth and Johnson died too young. Johnson passed at age 59 from a brain tumor in 1946, and Ruth, aged 53, succumbed to cancer in 1948. Watch Johnson pitch to Ruth here.

Joe Guzzardi is a Society for American Baseball Research scholar. Contact him at guzzjoe@yahoo.com

Trump Unloads on ‘Woke’ UN

By Joe Guzzardi

Even President Donald Trump’s millions of critics cannot deny one central aspect of his character that has kept him at the forefront of U.S. presidential politics for more than a decade: Trump takes all questions, even from the most hostile reporters who have written bias stories about him. When Trump finishes his reply, everyone in the room knows exactly where he stands. Most politicians, as they climb the political ladder, encourage questions but then do their best to dodge actually answering them. Trump breaks this mold.

Trump’s candid speaking style enabled him to secure the 2016 GOP presidential nomination against overwhelming odds. The 13½-month primary campaign began on March 23, 2015, when Texas Senator Ted Cruz entered the race, and ended on May 4, 2016, when John Kasich, former Ohio governor and nine-term U.S. Representative, conceded to Trump’s inevitable victory.

Throughout the campaign, Trump proved nimbler on his feet than his 17 opponents, all of whom had more direct political experience than the newcomer. His rivals included Cruz, Kasich, Florida Senator Marco Rubio, Florida Governor Jeb Bush, Kentucky Senator Rand Paul, New Jersey Governor Chris Christie, South Carolina Senator Lindsey Graham, former Texas Governor Rick Perry, former Pennsylvania Senator Rick Santorum, former Arkansas Governor Mike Huckabee, and former three-term New York Governor George Pataki. The New York Times described the presidential field as “tough and talented.”

After defeating his Republican opponents and his Democratic nemesis Hillary Clinton in debates hosted by NBC, CBS, and Fox News never-Trumper Mike Wallace, Trump won the presidency. His electoral successes shared a common denominator: straight talk that audiences might disagree with but would always leave them knowing exactly where he stood.

This background sets the stage for Trump’s approach to international forums like the United Nations General Assembly, where member nations may have anticipated his direct style when he spoke to them recently but were likely unprepared for the bluntness of his remarks. Trump addressed two of what he considered the world’s most pressing challenges: climate change, which he condemned as a fraudulent, budget-draining “con job,” and illegal immigration, which he referred to as “migration.”

Speaking from his position of strength—having implemented strict border policies that shut down the southwest border—the president urged assembled nations to stop “ruining” their countries with unchecked that facilitate illegal immigration. Trump criticized the UN, London mayor Sadiq Khan, European countries facilitating “uncontrolled migration,” Russian President Vladimir Putin, countries recognizing Palestinian statehood, former President Joe Biden, renewable energy initiatives, and what he called the “climate change hoax—the greatest con job ever perpetrated on the world.” He promoted an anti-globalist agenda throughout his remarks.

“Europe is in serious trouble,” Trump declared. “They have been invaded by a force of illegal aliens like nobody’s ever seen before. Illegal aliens are pouring into Europe, and nobody’s doing anything to change it or get them out. It’s not sustainable. Because they choose to be politically correct, they’re doing absolutely nothing about it.”

Trump hammered the UN for “creating new problems for us to solve,” referencing its refugee agency UNHCR, which receives billions in U.S. taxpayer funding and provides cash debit cards to illegal aliens along migration routes, further enabling a mass immigration crisis that American citizens neither want nor can afford.

Citing statistics from the Council of Europe, Trump stated: “In 2024, almost 50% of inmates in German prisons were foreign nationals or migrants. In Austria, the number was 53%. In Greece, it was 54%. And in Switzerland—beautiful Switzerland—72% of prison inmates are from outside of Switzerland.”

Trump specifically criticized London’s Mayor Khan, calling him “terrible” and claiming that London “has been so changed” that “now they want to go to Sharia law, but you’re in a different country—you can’t do that.” He argued that both immigration policies and “suicidal energy ideas” would “be the death of Western Europe if something is not done immediately.”

Trump emphasized the importance of national sovereignty: “What makes the world so beautiful is that each country is unique, but to stay this way, every sovereign nation must have the right to control their own borders. You have the right to control your borders, as we do now, and to limit the numbers of migrants entering their countries—paid for by the people of that nation who built that particular country with their blood, sweat, tears, and money. Now they’re being ruined.”

Reform UK leader Nigel Farage offered perhaps the most insightful commentary, suggesting that with Trump, people should “never take what he says literally, ever, on anything, but always take everything he says seriously. Farage continued, “He makes a comment and you might disagree with the tone, you might disagree with the context, you might disagree with the number that he puts out, but you find that what he says has a point.

Joe Guzzardi is an Institute for Sound Public Policy analyst. Contact him at jguzzardi@ifspp.org

For Rosh Hashanah, Ron Blomberg Was First Designated Hitter

By Joe Guzzardi

Ron Blomberg, baseball’s first designated hitter, grew up in Atlanta where hearing anti-Semitic slurs was a regular part of his young life. As Blomberg recalled, “I heard it. I saw it. My parents [Billie Rae and Sol] had always told me you have to have a strong faith, you will always have adversities in life, people will be against the Jews, that I had to watch out for it and had to be a lot stronger. If somebody said something to me along those lines, it made me even stronger. My conviction was strong.” Blomberg’s childhood dream of playing for the New York Yankees and in front of the Bronx’s large Jewish population came true when the Yankees made Blomberg their first free agent choice in 1967. Said Blomberg, “To be able to play in front of eight million Jews! Can’t beat it. I lit everyone’s candles for every bar mitzvah in the city.”

It’s no fault of Blomberg’s that the designated hitter (DH) ruined baseball’s reputation as the thinking man’s game, a well-earned nickname. To understand, imagine that Pittsburgh Pirates manager Danny Murtaugh’s 1958 team is clinging to a 1-0 lead against pennant race rival Milwaukee in the bottom of the eighth. Starting pitcher Bob Friend is tossing a gem and has held Braves sluggers Joe Adcock, Hank Aaron and Eddie Mathews at bay. The Pirates have two runners in scoring position. But it’s Friend’s turn to bat and he’s a career .148 hitter. Sending in a pinch hitter is the obvious move, but Murtaugh’s bullpen is tired and his bench, thin. Murtaugh’s decision, right or wrong, is the stuff of great baseball high drama and will be debated on the air, in print and at the dinner table. The DH relegates one of baseball’s biggest appeals—second-guessing the manager, the old Hot Stove League pastime—to the dustbin.

The idea of a DH was first raised by Philadelphia Athletics manager Connie Mack in 1906. Mack saw the DH’s value not necessarily as an option to generate offense but to save wear and tear on his pitcher’s legs. Owners rebuffed Mack’s concept as too radical. Prominent pitchers also rejected the idea of giving up hitting. In 1910, Hall of Fame twirler Addie Joss stated, “If there is one thing that a pitcher would rather do than make the opposing batsmen look foolish, it is to step to the plate, especially in a pinch, and deliver the much-needed hit.” A 1918 article in Baseball Magazine quoted Babe Ruth, who stated, “The pitcher who can’t get in there in the pinch and win his own game with a healthy wallop isn’t more than half earning his salary in my way of thinking.”

The DH, which American League owners foolishly put into place in 1973, has taken much out of the game but added little, least of all the clutch hitting the rule was supposed to supply. Instead of more excitement, the DH created endless rounds of silliness as the American League adopted the idea first, but the National League didn’t follow until several years later. During the World Series, games played in American League stadiums used the DH; games in National League stadiums did not. The annual All-Star Game also juggled DHs depending on which league hosted the game. Finally, on February 10, 2022, Commissioner Rob Manfred, who never met a rule change he didn’t embrace, announced that a universal DH would begin with the 2022 season. The rule was ratified as part of a new collective bargaining agreement with the MLBPA.

An outfielder/first baseman, Blomberg’s career started with a bang. An injury to Yankees veteran Roy White opened a 1969 roster slot and Blomberg took full advantage. He started in right field in a home game against Washington on June 25 and went 2-for-5 with two hits, including a two-run homer, two RBIs and two runs scored in the Yankees’ 12-2 victory. Four days later he went 3-for-4 against Cleveland, driving in two more runs as New York pasted the Tribe, 9-2. He clubbed two home runs in a game at Minnesota on August 1 and two more round-trippers at Kansas City on August 28. In 64 games, Blomberg batted .322 with seven home runs and 31 RBIs.

By 1973, Blomberg had a new role as the Yankees’ DH. Unsure exactly what that involved, manager Ralph Houk explained to him, “You get up to bat, you take your four swings, you drive in runs, you come back to the bench, and you keep loose in the runway. You’re basically pinch-hitting for the pitcher four times in the same game.” The Yankees opened 1973 against arch-rival Boston at Fenway Park. Blomberg was penciled in as the sixth batter on manager Houk’s lineup card. Boston’s DH was Orlando Cepeda, the former NL star who signed with the Red Sox in the off-season after playing a year in Oakland in 1972. Red Sox skipper Eddie Kasko slated Cepeda to hit in the five-hole. Since the Yankee-Red Sox tilt was the first game scheduled on the AL docket, Blomberg was the first-ever official DH batter. With the bases loaded, Blomberg drew a walk from Sox starter Luis Tiant, which allowed the runner on third to score for an RBI. For the day, Blomberg went 1-for-3; Cepeda, an inglorious 0-for-6.

Injuries cut Blomberg’s Yankees time short, and in 1978, he finished up with one unhappy, unproductive season with the Chicago White Sox. His career statistics included a .293 batting average with 52 home runs and 224 RBIs. Blomberg’s stats are not up to Hall of Fame standards, but his first DH bat and the uniform he wore that historic day are on display. In retirement, Blomberg stays close to baseball. He runs the Ron Blomberg Baseball camp and is one of the most popular instructors at the Yankees fantasy camp. He does some high school and college scouting for the Yankees from his suburban Atlanta home. In 2007, Blomberg managed the Bet Shemesh Blue Sox of the first-ever Israel Baseball League. In 2008, Blomberg and Dan Schlossberg co-authored his autobiography, Designated Hebrew.

Blomberg, age 77, is in high demand as a motivational speaker, telling his story of perseverance and success. “Boomer,” as his Yankee teammates called him, works with the Israel Cancer Research Fund, where he serves as honorary chairman. He resides in Roswell, Georgia, where by all accounts he’s a great guy and generous to all.

Joe Guzzardi is a Society for American Baseball Research member. Contact him at guzzjoe@yahoo.com

Chicago Killing Fields

By Joe Guzzardi

Years ago, the Paul Butterfield Blues Band released a popular song titled ‘Born in Chicago.‘ Butterfield’s song talked about a group of young friends that, while politicians debated gun control, are shot to death on Chicago’s tough streets. Over the issue of safe Chicago streets, Illinois Governor J.B. Pritzker and Chicago Mayor Brandon Johnson have painted themselves into a tight corner. They cannot intelligently deny that crime is a huge problem in Chicago. Yet Pritzker and Johnson rail against the possibility that President Trump may send in the National Guard to stem citywide violence. Illinois Policy (IP) analysts found that Chicago residents reported 25,000 or more violent crimes since 2004. The 2025 summer was particularly deadly—June 22, summer’s first weekend, saw 23 people shot, 2 fatally; Independence Day weekend, 44 shot, 6 killed; Labor Day weekend at least 55 shot, 8 dead. IPI also found that black and Hispanic Chicagoans made up 95% of the city’s homicide victims during the past 12 months. Blacks were 20 times more likely to be homicide victims than white residents, while Hispanics were 4.7 times more likely. Chicago’s FBI head Doug de Podesta said that the agency had just wrapped up Operation Summer Heat, in which 25 murderers, gun runners, and fentanyl dealers were arrested. As IP summarized, crimes were up; arrests down.

Yet despite the carnage, resistance to federal intercession is fierce. Johnson, whose favorability rating recently bottomed out at 7%, signed an executive order establishing the Protecting Chicago Initiative and launching a Family Preparedness Campaign in multiple languages to educate families on how to prepare for potential detention by federal agents. Chicago, Johnson emphasized, “will be ready for anything and everything,” and he suggested that innocent grandmothers could be thrown into the back of unmarked vans and hauled away. Pritzker, a probable presidential candidate, said about President Trump’s commitment to send in the National Guard: “Let’s be clear, the terror and cruelty is the point, not the safety of anyone living here.” He insisted that there’s “no emergency” in Chicago that warrants federal intervention and argued that any federal action was not about fighting crime or making Chicago safer but instead about targeting blue and Democratic-led cities.

An alternative that neither Johnson nor Pritzker has considered could protect Chicago’s citizens, enhance their political futures, and save face. Accept the president’s offer to help. The mayor and the governor both know that National Guard intervention has not only made Washington, D.C., a safer place but has converted Mayor Muriel Bowser from skeptic to a true believer. On September 1, just before President Trump’s emergency order that tackled D.C. crime was set to expire, Bowser signed an order requiring local law enforcement to cooperate with their federal peers “to the maximum extent allowable by law within the District.” Bowser’s order extends through December. Last month, Metropolitan Police Chief Pamela Smith issued a similar order allowing her officers to cooperate with Immigration and Customs Enforcement to identify and detain illegal immigrants.  A baseless law suit that activist D.C. Attorney General Brian Schwalb filed on September 4 against the Trump administration doesn’t change the fact that Washington is a safer place and that the president, who presides over a federal enclave, has the authority to send in the troops.

Chicago minorities, located mostly on the city’s west and south sides where much of the violence occurs, want law and order. They want illegal aliens deported from their communities, where their unlawful presence has disturbed local lifestyles, disrupted schools and helped create a $1.15 billion Chicago budget deficit. In San Francisco, however, Judge Charles Breyer ruled that when President Trump sent in 300 National Guard troops to restore order during the ICE protests—which saw criminals throw rocks and Molotov cocktails at agents—he broke the law. While Breyer wrote that the National Guard members still in Los Angeles can remain and “continue to protect federal property in a manner consistent with the Posse Comitatus Act,” he stayed his ruling until the following week, giving Trump a chance to appeal. Breyer’s ruling presents a moment for the White House to reflect before moving on to Chicago or anywhere else.

But Johnson and Pritzker have a path out: call President Trump to request that he send in the troops. If the National Guard fails, the mayor and governor can claim victory—federal involvement changed nothing. But if crime decreases, they can still declare a win—they recognized that strong steps had to be taken, and they took them. Back in the White House, President Trump can also take a bow. Winners all around are the best way to dampen hostility.

Joe Guzzardi is an Institute for Sound Public Policy analyst. Contact him at jguzzardi@ifspp.org

Trump Must Slash Employment Visa

By Joe Guzzardi

President Donald Trump has a second golden opportunity to end the H-1B visa program that, since it became commonly used in the early 1990s, has displaced millions of qualified Americans.

During his first presidency, Trump—who campaigned on a “Hire American” platform—let the opportunity to cut 85,000 H-1B visa foreign nationals from the labor market and replace them with U.S. tech workers slip through his hands. In 2017, President Trump’s first year in the White House, the H-1B visa represented a grave threat to U.S. tech workers and recent college graduates seeking entry-level, white-collar technology jobs. Today, the tech job market is more dire.

A recent social media post revealed depressing statistics that America First supporters should note. President Trump must examine these numbers closely and end the job-destroying H-1B program. In 2024, 384 tech companies—including Cisco Systems, Intel, mMicrosoft, Meta, and Amazon—laid off 124,000 workers. Combined with the 428,449 tech workers who lost their jobs in 2022 and 2023, plus those laid-off in 2025, the employment picture is ominous. In the current year to date, 100,000 jobs were cut. Meanwhile, H-1B petitions hit the fiscal year cap within six months, and foreign nationals received 82% of all new tech jobs. Offshoring has reached record highs, with entire shadow economies emerging worldwide to replace American tech jobs which led to office closures across the nation. Meta, Microsoft, Instagram, and Walmart Tech have shut offices in Austin, Portland, Menlo Park, and other IT centers. U.S.-based employers have expanded hiring abroad faster than domestically for the past seven years—a trend especially evident among tech and consulting firms.

Salesforce, having recently announced major Bay Area workforce layoffs, provides a good example. Concurrently, over the past five years, the company has shifted its employee base increasingly to international hires. Salesforce is not alone: U.S.-headquartered multinational enterprises that employ workers both abroad (offshore) and domestically (onshore) have grown their offshore workforce faster in recent years than their onshore workforce. Among these companies, the number of offshore workers grew by 32% since 2019, while those employed onshore grew by 16.7%—a net 15.3% increase in offshore employment.

President Trump has done outstanding work securing the Southwest border. Within six months, border apprehensions dropped to zero—an all-time monthly low. Now is the time for the president to turn his attention to ending the dozens of temporary non-immigrant visas that include work authorization. He should start by curtailing the H-1B, an idea that first came to him in June 2020. More than five years ago, President Trump signed an Executive Order that directed the Secretaries of Labor and Homeland Security to take appropriate actions within 45 days to protect any adverse effects on wages and working conditions caused by H-1B visa holders including doing work at 3rd party sites.

Nothing productive came of that EO perhaps because by November President Trump would be a lame duck. At a recent White House AI summit, however, President Trump hinted that he’s again leaning in the right direction. For too long, the president said, much of America’s tech industry has pursued “radical globalism” that left millions of Americans feeling “distrustful and betrayed.” Many of our largest tech companies, the president continued, “have reaped the blessings of American freedom while building their factories in China, hiring in India, and shifting profits to Ireland. All the while dismissing [via H-1B hires] and even censoring their fellow citizens right here at home. Under President Trump, those days are over.”

Congress has also taken notice of the negative impact the H-1B visa has in academia. Representatives Tom Tiffany (R-WI) and Andrew Clyde (R-GA) introduced the Colleges for the American People Act, or CAP Act, which would end the long-standing H-1B visa cap exemption for U.S. colleges and universities. If enacted, all prospective foreign hires seeking to enter on a U.S. visa—including administrators and professors—would be required to compete under the existing visa cap. Wisconsin Right Now found that the University of Wisconsin System employs nearly 500 foreign workers on H-1B visas, earning salaries totaling almost $43 million annually—income that could have gone to qualified U.S. citizens.

Guest worker visa programs have operated on autopilot for so long that both Republican and Democratic administrations have either forgotten about or stopped caring about its collective and devastating effect on the domestic labor market. In 2024, an estimated 740,000 H-1B holders and an additional 100,000 H-4B visas designated for H-1B holders’ spouses were issued. Another j500,000 work-authorized foreign nationals with temporary, unnecessary visas compete with Americans for employment in a shrinking labor market.

For President Trump to fulfill his America First agenda, he must slash legal visas that allow temporary workers easy access to blue and white-collar jobs yet rarely require them to return home. He should take aim at the biggest offender—the H-1B visa, which President Jimmy Carter’s Secretary of Labor Ray Marshall called “one of the best con jobs ever done on the American public and political systems.” Ample evidence from left-leaning and conservative think tanks supports Marshall’s brutally honest assessment of the H-1B visa.

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Joe Guzzardi is an Institute for Sound Public Policy analyst. Contact him at jguzzardi@ifspp.org