Category: Joe Guzzardi

Trump-Vance Must Restore Fairness To Betrayed American Workers

By Joe Guzzardi

The Donald J. Trump-J.D. Vance ticket gives promise to working Americans who the Biden administration has maligned through its open border agenda, and improper granting of parole with work authorization to millions of illegal immigrants. The legal and illegal immigrants that have arrived since President Joe Biden’s first days in the White House have dominated job creation in the monthly Bureau of Labor Statistics report. Center for Immigration Studies Steve Camarota’s research into jobs data found that since 2019’s fourth quarter, the period just before COVID-19 devastated the U.S. economy, 2.7 million more people are working. The raw statistics give false credence to the Biden administration’s boast that the U.S. economy is strong.

But immigrants, not U.S. workers, led in job gains totals, an important fact omitted from the White House’s glowing economic press releases. Simply stated, since 2019, all the net job growth has gone to immigrants. The number of working immigrants since 2019 is up by 2.9 million, while 183,000 fewer U.S. citizens were employed during the same period.

The GOP ticket—Trump and Vance—have an opportunity to right three decades of wrongs perpetrated against American workers. Low-skilled Americans are forced to compete with under-educated illegal aliens for entry level jobs that would help them support their families and get a foot in the labor market, essential for moving up the socioeconomic ladder. Black American workers are the biggest victims of mass immigration, and not only on the hiring line. Kathleen Wells, Black America for Immigration Reform’ s Executive Director, observed that in New York City, America’s most expensive city in which to rent a hotel room, 135 of its 700 hotels provide taxpayer funded housing to illegal immigrants. Prepaid debit cards add to the generous benefits package available to illegal immigrants, but not to black Americans. Similar injustices play out across America—in Chicago, Boston, Denver, Los Angeles, and Portland.

Skilled U.S. workers are not immune from foreign labor job displacement. A wide variety of employment-based visas provide jobs for hundreds of thousands of professional employees that will work in tech, accounting, and education. The most commonly used visas are the H-1B, the J-1, and the L-1. The overseas employees—read, cheaper— take well-paying, white-collar jobs from more experienced American workers.

The time is overdue for American workers’ resumes that reflect their skills and experiences to return to their rightful position at the top of employers’ inboxes and not be cast aside in favor of candidates that unscrupulous employers will hire for the lowest wage. Trump and Vance are aware that new jobs must be filled by U.S. citizens. In his GOP convention address, Vance reminded the audience that he grew up in Middletown, Ohio, “a place that had been cast aside and forgotten by America’s ruling class in Washington.”

Continuing, Vance said:” When I was in the fourth grade, a career politician by the name of Joe Biden supported NAFTA, a bad trade deal that sent countless good jobs to Mexico. When I was a sophomore in high school that same career politician named Joe Biden gave China a sweetheart deal that destroyed even more good American middle-class jobs.” For more than a quarter of a century, the craven, D.C. privileged has done the bidding of donors and consistently spurned working Americans in pursuit of their own narrow self-interests. Biden may be gone but whoever replaces him at the top of the Democratic ticket will have the same global agenda. Trump and Vance can end the harm done to American workers; reversing the anti-American sentiment must be their first priority.

Monday, January 20, 2025, Inauguration Day, is the time to for Trump and Vance to begin to keep their campaign pledges to U.S. workers.

Joe Guzzardi is an Institute for Sound Public Policy analyst who has written about immigration for more thirty years. Contact him at jguzzardi@ifspp.org

Trump-Vance Must Restore Fairness To Betrayed American Workers

Lowering Political Temp Not Hard

By Joe Guzzardi

Every day for the last ten years, I’ve given daily thanks that I grew up when I did, in the 1950s, and where I did, Los Angeles County, at the time one of the nation’s leading agricultural producers. Those wonderful days are long-gone and will never return. Compared to today and considering the assassination attempt on former President Donald Trump, I have difficulty believing that such a time and place ever existed in America. I’ve lived through many presidential elections where hostility between the Republican and Democratic candidates ran high. But the rhetoric that one candidate and his media supporters directed at the opposition never reached the level that the Democrats have attained against Trump. Through his infamous Daisy ad, 1964 incumbent Lyndon Johnson inferred that his opponent, Arizona Senator Barry Goldwater, would drop a nuclear bomb to end the Vietnam War. Goldwater’s name didn’t appear in the ad. Johnson’s campaign portrayed Goldwater as an unstable extremist, not only because of his Vietnam position but also for his opposition to the Civil Rights Act and for his support of a voluntary Social Security system. In private, Johnson called Goldwater “nutty as a fruitcake” while, at the same time, he projected himself “as this source of order and calm and composure” who would “keep everyone safe.” Johnson didn’t publicly direct personal attacks on Goldwater’s character.

Roughly 40 million Americans saw the “Daisy” ad the first time it aired and that, thanks to replays, 100 million Americans had viewed it by the end of the first week it aired. The spot was a long way from Eisenhower’s 1952 and 1956 tame “I like Ike” spots. In television’s ancient days, only three channels existed, ABC, CBS and NBC. To get the same market penetration today, advertising experts estimate that television stations would have to show Johnson’s ad 1,000 times. Because of lingering sympathy for the assassinated John F. Kennedy, Johnson was considered a shoo-in. But he exceeded expectations. Johnson won the election in a blowout, securing 61 percent of the popular vote and losing only Goldwater’s home state of Arizona and five southern states. The Democrats also gained congressional seats which gave Johnson a mandate to push forward with his war on poverty and his Great Society agenda

Johnson’s success encouraged more aggressive political spots, but again they centered on issues, not personalities. In 1972, with the nation’s citizenry still conflicted about Vietnam, President Richard Nixon’s campaign produced the “McGovern Defense” ad which pictured the Democratic challenger as weak on national defense. Nixon won in a landslide. In 1980, Ronald Reagan ran on “Morning in America” which promised voters that his administration would end rampant crime, high taxes, and double-digit inflation. Reagan’s victory over the incumbent Carter was an electoral vote rout. He tallied 489 votes to Carter’s 49. These were victories achieved on policy, not character assassination.

Significant parallels exist between Reagan and Trump. Both were outsiders, not part of the D.C. establishment, and Republicans. When inaugurated, Reagan was two weeks shy of his 70^th birthday, the oldest elected president until Trump, age 70 years, 220 days defeated Hillary Clinton. Both barely survived when would-be assassins shot them. Four months after Reagan’s inauguration, a deranged John Hinckley, Jr, shot the president in the chest.

The presidential elections I’ve observed have been largely devoid of the vicious invective that has been a cornerstone of Biden’s administration and especially his re-election campaign. Long-time observers of Washington are not surprised at the assassination attempt. Trump’s rivals have tried to neutralize him through impeachment and lawfare. For months, politicians, the media and talking heads have escalated reckless rhetoric. That includes claims that Trump is an authoritarian fascist, determined to kill democracy, unleash death squads and make homosexuals and reporters “disappear.”  The media routinely suggests that Trump is a Super-Hitler, the embodiment of everything evil. He must be stopped, demand his detractors. Even Biden’s most patently false statements about the border go unchallenged. At his July 11 press conference, Biden said: “Working with Mexico, border encounters have gone down over 50%. The current level is lower today than when Trump left office.” The truth: in June, CBP encountered 84,000 illegal aliens; when Trump left office, the total was 75,000. But Biden’s raw numbers are only part of the border story. Biden’s totals exclude illegal aliens who entered via the non-congressionally approved CBP One app, and were then paroled, also illegally. As the illegal aliens are processed, they receive notices to appear which are mostly disregarded. Yet reporters didn’t push back on Biden’s false narrative, even slightly.

Biden has stoked rage with his irresponsible oratory. In 2022, Biden delivered a vicious speech in Independence Hall where he vilified 50% of the nation, Trump supporters, as enemies of the people. He said: “MAGA forces are determined to take the country backward…Trump is a clear and present danger to democracy.” Biden recently referenced the Independence Hall speech and has embraced the claims that 2024 could be the nation’s last democratic election. Instead of outlining his vision for America’s future, he’s unrelentingly maligned Trump. The suspected assassin, Thomas Matthew Crooks, was 20 and had been listening to anti-Trump hysteria for half his adult life.

Former Attorney General Bill Barr, no fan of his former boss, said “the Democrats have to stop their grossly irresponsible talk about Trump being an existential threat to democracy. He is not.” Toning things down wouldn’t be hard. Journalists should adhere to their profession’s standards of fairness and balance. Candidates for high office should tell the public what their vision for the future is and how they would achieve it. Nearly four months remain until the November election, time enough to change course and embark on civility while campaigning.

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

Lowering Political Temp Not Hard

Lowering Political Temp Not Hard

Legendary Bill Veeck Was Showman And War Hero

By Joe Guzzardi

No Major League Baseball franchise owner entertained his fans better than Bill Veeck, Jr, a true showman. Holiday doubleheaders, especially those played on Independence Day, provided Veeck with six hours to delight his fans. As owner of the Cleveland Indians, he gave away red-white-and-blue straw hats to every man who entered the ballpark, dressed ushers as founding fathers John Adams, Thomas Jefferson, and Benjamin Franklin, and had them distribute copies of the Declaration of Independence. No cost was spared to put on pyrotechnic displays that were second to none. Veeck knew that for baseball fans young and old, Independence Day was better than Christmas. School was out, Mom and Dad had days off, the weather was warm, patriotic flag-waving parades with marching bands traversed Main Street. Independence Day didn’t begin with gifts around the Christmas tree, but, as pennant races heated up, everyone’s favorite team would play two games in a single, sun-drenched afternoon.

During his six decades in professional baseball, Veeck owned Major League Baseball’s Cleveland Indians, St. Louis Browns and Chicago White Sox. Veeck’s father, William, Sr, was the Chicago Cubs president from 1919 until 1933, and built two pennant winners in 1929 and 1933.  Bill, Jr liked to say: “I am the only human being ever raised in a ballpark.” At age 10, he worked as a ticket taker and popcorn vendor. When Veeck, 27, bought his first franchise, the AA Milwaukee Brewers, he launched what would be lifetime of gaudy baseball promotions. He gave away prizes almost every night and specialized in handing out animals: live lobsters, pigeons, chickens, guinea pigs, and his favorite, a swaybacked horse. Most of Veeck’s promotions were not announced in advance; he wanted arriving fans to wonder what the evening’s door prize would be. Veeck scheduled morning games for overnight war plant workers and served cornflakes breakfast to all the tired, hungry fans. Veeck believed trips to the ballpark should be fun, the fans, kings and queens. During World War II when nylons were hard to come by, Veeck distributed pairs to Ladies’ Day attendees. If Veeck couldn’t get nylons, he substituted orchids.

In 1951, after Veeck acquired the St. Louis Browns, he orchestrated his most memorable escapade. Browns’ manager Zack Taylor sent three-foot-seven-inch Eddie Gaedel to lead off against the Detroit Tigers. Gaedel crouched to create a non-existent strike zone as the Tigers’ pitcher dropped to his knees and delivered four straight balls. Five days later, Veeck displayed his ingenuity again with Grandstand Manager Night. Ushers handed out placards printed with “Yes” and “No” to cranks sitting behind the home dugout, and at crucial points they were asked to call the plays: Steal? Bunt? Hit-and-run? Manager Taylor watched from a rocking chair, puffing his pipe as the Browns beat the Athletics, 5-3. But Veeck shrewdly built winning teams and helped integrate MLB. His 1948 Cleveland Indians, led by former Negro Leagues’ stars Satchel Paige and Larry Doby—the American League’s first black players—won the World Series. Paige and Doby were eventually enshrined in the Cooperstown Hall of Fame.

Since Veeck had defended America during World War II, Independence Day had special importance to him. After the 1943 Brewers’ season, Veeck enlisted in the U.S. Marines Corp and was stationed in the Pacific on Bougainville Island, Papua New Guinea. Approximately 216,000 Japanese, Australian, and U.S. servicemen died during the 1942-1945 New Guinea campaign. During an intense battle, anti-aircraft gun recoil smashed Veeck’s right leg. Veeck spent the rest of the war in hospitals. A few years after Veeck returned from war, infection set in on his wounded leg and doctors amputated below the knee. When Veeck’s artificial leg arrived, he threw a party to celebrate. But the infection slowly spread up Veeck’s stump, and he required 36 more operations in all. Veeck received the Bob Feller Act of Valor Award bestowed on 37 Hall of Fame members for their military service.

Veeck, once he took over the Chicago White Sox, added names to players uniforms and introduced the exploding score board, innovations that endure today. On Opening Day 1976, Veeck revisited the Independence Day meme. Veeck presented a Bicentennial-themed “Spirit of ’76” parade, casting himself as the peg-legged fifer bringing up the rear. But by 1981, he realized that the White Sox couldn’t compete in the free agent, high salary era. Veeck sold the team, his last venture as an owner. Then, he dabbled in announcing and wrote three autobiographical books. A heavy smoker, Veeck underwent two lung cancer operations in 1984. The surgeries were unsuccessful and, two years later, Veeck passed away. In 1991, the Hall of Fame inducted Veeck, a fitting tribute to baseball’s most creative mind.

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

Legendary Bill Veeck Was Showman And War Hero

Biden and Mayorkis Created Largest Child Trafficking Ring in US History Says Senator

By Joe Guzzardi

Unaccompanied alien children (UACs) who cross the border represent a crisis within a crisis, a devastating, contentious illegal immigration subcategory.  Many millions of illegal aliens have crossed the border— the unofficial Customs and Border Protection estimates total more than 10 million, including gotaways. As record numbers of illegal aliens continue to arrive, border authorities are also seeing higher numbers of minors traveling without a legal guardian. In response to the surge in unaccompanied youth, the Biden administration is releasing children to sponsors on an average of every 28 days. Prospective hosts can fill out their paperwork remotely and case workers rarely visit their home to evaluate the children’s safety. Officials are required, within one month, to follow up with the child via a phone call, a clear security risk. Lax monitoring has led to 85,000 UACs unaccounted for—lost in the federal system. 

Among the 10 million border surgers are about 430,000 illegal alien minors who have crossed the Texas/Mexico border since President Biden’s inauguration. The Congressional Research Service once estimated that 75 to 80 percent of unaccompanied minor immigrants are smuggled into the U.S. Others make the dangerous journey alone. Because U.S. immigration law requires CBP agents to transfer unaccompanied children who are not from Mexico to HHS custody, usually within 72 hours, parents entrust brutal cartel operators to deliver their children to the border where they assume the federal government will care for them and place them safely with family members.

After Congress passed the Trafficking Victims Protection Reauthorization Act of 2008 (TVPRA), UAC arrivals spiked. Section 235 of the TVPRA divvied up UACs into two separate groups: (1) children from contiguous Canada and Mexico and (2) minors from all other nations. Predictably, the number of UACs from non-contiguous countries soared, as parents and astute smugglers realized that section 235 virtually assured that any child who could make it illegally into the U.S. would be released into the U.S. to rejoin his family.

Look at the stats: the Congressional Research Service reported that in FY 2008, the fiscal year before the TVPRA was passed, CBP encountered fewer than 10,000 UACs at the Southwest border, mostly Mexican nationals. By FY 2009, when the TVPRA bill was signed, the UAC number grew to around 20,000, 82 percent of them Mexican nationals, and just 17 percent from the non-contiguous Northern Triangle countries of El Salvador, Guatemala, and Honduras. The number of UACs entering illegally kept growing thereafter, with Border Patrol apprehending more than 68,500 of them in FY 2014. By then, however, just 23 percent of UACs came from Mexico and 77 percent from the Northern Triangle.

UAC arrivals rose dramatically in 2021 when President Joe Biden exempted unaccompanied minors from Title 42, the COVID-19 no-entry policy that allowed immigration authorities to immediately return illegal immigrants to Mexico. In August, border officials referred an average of 431 children per day to the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services’ Office of Refugee Resettlement (ORR) which forced the Biden administration to reopen a former work site in Carrizo Springs, Texas to house children as traditional shelters reached capacity. This marked the second time in less than two months that HHS reopened a so-called “influx care facility” for unaccompanied children. Last month, HHS restarted housing migrant children at another former work camp for oil workers in Pecos, Texas, shuttered in 2021.

The number of children placed with distant relatives increased between 2021 and 2022, according to a June 2023 HHS audit. The audit also found that HHS released 344 children to sponsors who were already hosting three or more unaccompanied minors, contributing to advocates’ fears that some patrons allow children to be exploited for cheap labor, a concern that a New York Times investigative report confirmed. Among the jobs the minor children were tasked to perform, The Times found, were dangerous slave labor positions like mopping up on slaughterhouse floors, operating heavy machinery, and prostituting their under-age child prostitution. The minors obtained their industrial jobs by presenting stolen Social Security cards or falsified Social Security numbers.

Last year in a Senate Judiciary Committee hearing, Senator Josh Hawley grilled ORR director Robin Dunn Marcos about UAC exploitation. Hawley pressed for answers about the ongoing child migrant crisis at the southern border and the 85,000 children that the Biden Administration cannot locate. Marcos could not answer any of Hawley’s questions. But the hearing revealed that ORR routinely failed to perform background checks on the adults in the homes, does not do home visits, and that Xavier Becerra, HHS secretary, ignored and then fired subordinates who warned of risks in the placement process. The secretary told Marcos that if she “could not increase the number of discharges, he would find someone who would,” and “This is not the way you run an assembly line,” an inference that the priority is placing children, and their safety is secondary. Senator Hawley expressed dismay over the administration’s criminal neglect of UAC’s. He said “The kids are in danger. The kids are in slavery. They are being exploited. And it should not happen in the United States of America.” The senator concluded that the U.S. is, to its shame, the biggest child trafficker in the world, Last year, Senator Hawley introduced the Corporate Responsibly for Child Labor Elimination Act of 2023” and wrote to FBI Director Christopher Wray demanding that his agency locate the missing 85,000 children. But congressional hearings, investigative reports, and proposed legislation will not end the child border crisis. While Biden dawdles on border security, his administration will continue to allow criminal child abuse, human trafficking, and the enrichment of Mexican cartels.

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

Biden and Mayorkis Created Largest Child Trafficking Ring in US History Says Senator

Today’s Boston Not JFK’s

By Joe Guzzardi

Journalists who cover the immigration beat have a maxim: “Never say you’ve been witness to every conceivable violation of immigration law; you’ll soon be proven wrong.” In her relatively short two-and-a-half-year period as Boston’s mayor, Michelle Wu has, with her outrageous anti-public safety positions, alienated large swaths of her constituents and established a new low for wokeness, a dubious distinction considering how extreme political correctness has devastated the country. Like the nation’s other uber-progressive mayors, New York’s Alvin Bragg and Chicago’s Richard Johnson, Wu has brought a once great and historic city into chaos. Wu supports decriminalizing shoplifting, larceny, disorderly conduct, receiving stolen property, driving with a suspended license, breaking and entering with property damage, wanton and malicious destruction of property, threats, a minor in possession of alcohol, marijuana possession, and possession with intent to distribute. Another way to consider Wu’s goal is that she champions legalizing shoplifting, larceny, etc.

Wu, a Taiwanese immigrants’ daughter, is a Chicago native who moved to Boston to attend Harvard University and then Harvard Law School. At Harvard Law, Wu became Elizabeth Warren’s protégé and a campaign assistant in her former professor’s successful 2012 U.S. senate bid. Growing up in Chicago, Wu was a big league Senator Barack Obama aficionado; her affiliation with Warren added the final touches to Wu’s radicalization.

In 2013, Bostonians elected Wu to the City Council. By 2018, she had easily ascended to City Council president. When the 2021 mayoral election rolled around, Wu was an established Boston darling. After filling out Progressive Massachusetts’ “2021 Boston Mayoral Candidate Questionnaire,” the Boston electorate had no doubts about Wu’s soft-on-crime agenda. Progressive Massachusetts’ identifies as an organization that “intends to transform Massachusetts into a bold laboratory for progressive state initiatives.”

A sampling of the questions and Wu’s answers: Q. Do you support shuttering the Boston Police gang database? A. Yes; Q. Do you support…the do-not-prosecute list that includes robbery and other crimes currently subject to prosecution? A. Yes. In the questionnaire, Wu also outlined her other progressive ideas including giving illegal aliens voting privileges in local elections. Despite Wu’s well-known radical agenda, she ran virtually unopposed; Wu coasted to victory.

Bostonians cannot be surprised then when Wu kept her promise to radicalize their city. Wu has been ripped over her tone-deaf and frivolous plan to give kids as young as 11 and illegal aliens voting rights when it comes time to decide how millions of dollars in public funds are doled out. The city’s new proposed participatory budget voting process, which will go into effect in July, gives ordinary Bostonians the ability to decide how a portion of the city’s budget will be spent, the Boston Herald reported. Last month, during a committee hearing reviewing Wu’s fiscal year 2025 budget, City Councilor Ed Flynn, a Democrat, slammed the mayor’s proposed new process, specifically the involvement of children and illegal aliens. Flynn also aired his grievances in a letter to the Office of Participatory Budgeting’s director, Renato Castelo, in which he flagged his “unequivocal and vehement opposition” to the looming process. “During this time of great fiscal uncertainty — with a study warning that remote work policies and the city’s declining commercial property values may cost us $500 million in revenue annually, as well as a subsequent proposal to also tax commercial property at a higher rate — now more than ever, it is critical that we show the taxpayers of Boston that we take our financial responsibilities seriously,” Flynn wrote. “Allowing children [and illegal aliens] to decide the usage of taxpayer dollars would do just the opposite, and be viewed as tone-deaf, unserious and wholly inappropriate by my constituents.” Boston reportedly has 672,000 residents with 28.2% being foreign-born, according to the city website.

The Boston Policy Institute confirmed Flynn’s grim outlook on Wu’s potentially crushing problems. In its analysis, BPI concluded that Boston is likely to face a cumulative revenue shortfall of more than $1 billion in the next five years, and with no clear prospect for recovery, budgetary deficits could persist for decades, triggering a long-term decline in public services and economic vitality. Boston has few ways to compensate for lost tax revenue. Massachusetts precludes cities from introducing local sales and income taxes; fully offsetting the decline in commercial real estate would require a 25 percent to 30 percent increase in residential property taxes.

The illegal alien population that Wu is eager to grant voting privileges has taken over Boston’s predominantly black Roxbury neighborhood. Thanks to President Joe Biden’s open border agenda and Wu’s collaboration, Roxbury has lost its community recreation center. Roxbury is nearly 57 percent black, almost 30 percent Latino, and only six percent white; its $30,654 median income is less than Boston’s $52,433. More illegal alien arrivals and therefore more Boston citizen displacement goes on every hour of every day. “We [Boston] continue to see migrants at the airport. They come to Logan [Airport] a number of ways. They also arrive at Logan at all hours,” a Massport representative told Boston 25 News. The numbers of migrants being housed at Logan often spike to more than 100. Envision the mess Boston will be after illegal immigrants cast votes that will, with Wu’s blessing, determine the city’s financial future.

For now, Wu’s push to legalize dozens of previously punishable crimes, as well as promoting voting privileges for illegal aliens and sixth graders put her in undisputed first place for the mayor who has consistently proven that she has no regard for Bostonians’ personal safety. Wu’s other and more compelling problem is that violating 8 U.S. Code § 1324 – “Bringing in and harboring certain aliens,” is a felony. Wu is clearly guilty of harboring, not that anyone in the Department of Justice cares. In anticipation of the 2025 election, Wu’s critics have launched a “Save Our City” campaign. The scuttlebutt about who, if anyone, would be willing to face Wu has already started. Some speculate that Wu’s greatest challenge may come from the left, a move toward governance that Boston could not survive in any form that John F. Kennedy could recognize.

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

Today’s Boston Not JFK’s

Senator Can’t Explain Vetting Process

By Joe Guzzardi

If Senator Lindsey Graham (R-S.C.), the Committee on the Judiciary’s ranking member, can’t properly explain the vetting process for illegal immigrants to a national television audience, then the border morass will deepen. Talking about the eight recently apprehended Tajikistan nationals with ISIS ties, Graham faulted immigration enforcement agencies for catching and releasing first, and then vetting. Graham is, to use the day’s popular phrase, “spreading disinformation!” More precisely, Graham is flat out wrong; meaningful vetting occurs only rarely after the illegal aliens have surged the border. Presenting a drivers’ license or a passport from a faraway country as part of a brief interview with an immigration officer is not vetting.

Immigration and Customs Enforcement, working in tandem with the Federal Bureau of Investigation’s Joint Terrorism Task Force, apprehended eight Tajikistan nationals linked to ISIS. The arrests occurred in New York, Los Angeles and Philadelphia. Seven Tajikistani nationals crossed the U.S. border with Mexico illegally, but one used the CBP One app, which the Biden administration created without congressional approval to allow illegal aliens to book asylum claim appointments. Neither Customs and Border Protection nor Department of Homeland Security screening uncovered suspicious background information. The potential terrorists, immigration officials assured the public after the fact, were “fully vetted.”

As one news story described a Tajiki who enter illegally through San Diego, he “…had crossed the border, was vetted by agents, then allowed into the country with a court date last year, according to sources.” Mohammad Kharwin, a foreign national who is also on a federal terrorist watchlist because of his associations with Afghan-based terrorist organization Hezb-e-Islami, was released from ICE custody into the Alternatives to Detention (ATD) program on March 12, 2023. He was initially arrested just two days prior in San Ysidro, California, after having illegally crossed the U.S.-Mexico border. Under the terms of his release, Kharwin was able to apply for work authorization and fly within the U.S. with no restrictions on his movements, under the sole condition that he was to periodically report to an ICE official over the phone. A year later, ICE arrested Kharwin in San Antonio, Texas after the FBI provided information that confirmed his membership in Hezb-e-Islami.

Vetting Tajikistanis and other illegal immigrants as they cross the border is impossible. Agents can only check crime and terrorism databases from allies willing to share information. That excludes most of the hundreds of countries from which the current surge is arriving. The greater the border crisis gets, the looser background checks become. At Jacumba, CA, Chinese nationals present a piece of white paper, a symbol of dissent against the country’s totalitarian government. The flimsy sheet of paper often serves as ID and allows the bearer to be released into the interior and eventually get an immigration court appointment. Illegal aliens’ movements between their release and their years-away eventual court date is anyone’s guess.

China is U.S.’s number one enemy. Department of Homeland Security Secretary Alejandro Mayoras, however, could not be more welcoming. Mayorkas instructed CBP officials to radically reduce the number of interview questions for apprehended Chinese illegal aliens from roughly 40 to just five. In April, the House Committee on Homeland Security released its “Starting Stats” fact sheet which found that in FY24, 24,376 Chinese nationals had been caught illegally crossing the Southwest border. Encounters of Chinese nationals in March 2024 increased over 8,000 percent compared to March 2021, and have surpassed last year’s fiscal total––just six months into FY24. March also showed a historic high for encounters along the busiest sector of the northern border, the Swanton Sector, which saw a 50 percent increase compared to the previous March, and more than a 2,000-percent increase compared to March of FY21. More than 1,000 Chinese nationals have crossed the northern border every month for the past five months, a statistic that should but does not alarm the White House.

Immigration vetting means assuring that each unknown migrant isn’t a confirmed terrorist and doesn’t have a criminal record, contagious disease, or prior immigration violations. In-depth vetting is important, since those currently being released are mostly young and will be living in U.S. for decades. CBP agents can only check crime and terrorism databases from the U.S. or some allies. Mayorkas’ DHS’ hands-off approach to processing illegal aliens is a far cry from how meaningful vetting is done. Vetting, properly carried out, involves multiple federal agencies conducting meticulous security screenings which include biographic and identity investigations as well as FBI biometric fingerprint and photographic collection. Medical screenings are mandatory. The National Counterterrorism Center/Intelligence Community and the FBI do final evaluations. From start to finish, a full vetting can take a year or more.

During the Afghan withdrawal, the White House gave repeated assurances that those boarding flights to the U.S. either had been or would be, upon landing, fully vetted. Months later, testifying before the Senate Judiciary Committee, Mayorkas admitted that “We are not conducting in-person, full refugee interviews of 100 percent” of Afghan evacuees. Biden issued a presidential directive ordering ground personnel to fill up the planes out of Afghanistan without vetting.

On homeland safety issues, Biden and his chief lieutenant Mayorkas have no credibility. With 10 million illegal aliens roaming around who knows where, the odds favor that America will suffer the consequences of the White House’s betrayal.

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

Senator Can’t Explain Vetting Process

Canadian Immigration Crisis On Multiple Levels

By Joe Guzzardi

Canada faces an immigration crisis on multiple levels. Years of Prime Minister Justin Trudeau’s endorsed over-immigration into Canada have pushed housing prices into the stratosphere, sent per capita income into a tailspin, and precipitated a brain-drain to the U.S. While skilled or semi-skilled Canadians are headed south, the millions of illegal aliens who have entered the U.S. in the last three years will head north should Donald Trump win the 2024 election.

By lowering its immigration standards, Canada created insurmountable obstacles. Foreign nationals arriving on student visas are the biggest driver of Canada’s dramatic population growth. Student visa holders, many of whom obtain diplomas from uncredited schools, are eligible for a Canadian green card within 3 years; at the fourth year they can apply for citizenship assuming they have met permanent residency requirements. In 2022, Indian students, mostly Punjab, made up 54% of Canada’s international student population. Recently, Marc Miller, Minister of Immigration, Refugees, and Citizenship, announced policies that include a cap on study permit applications, stricter eligibility criteria for the post-graduation work permits, and limited access to open work permits for international students’ spouses, the equivalent to the U.S.’ H-4 visa. The government’s awakening is too little too late; Canada’s current population is 42 million, with immigration the biggest contributor. From 2016 to 2021, Canada’s population grew at almost twice the pace of every other G7 country. While growth slowed in 2020 because of the COVID-19 pandemic, it rose again in 2021 and, from January to March 2022, it was the highest of all first quarters since 1990.

Canada is bracing for a much larger immigration-fueled population spike. Official Statistics Canada, a government agency, projected in 2022 that “the Canadian population would reach 47.7 million in 2041, and 25.0 million of them would be immigrants or children of immigrants born in Canada, accounting for 52.4% of the total population…Canada’s population may reach…between 44.9 million and 74.0 million in 2068, according to the various projection scenarios.”

Over-immigration has created a Canadian housing affordability crisis. Demand for housing far outstrips supply. An exposé published by The Canadian Press revealed that federal public employees warned government officials two years ago that large increases to immigration could negatively affect housing affordability and services. Documents obtained by The Canadian Press through an access-to-information request showed that, as it prepared its immigration targets for 2023-2025, Immigration, Refugees and Citizenship Canada analyzed but ignored the potential consequences immigration would have on the economy, housing and services. Canada’s population increased by more than 430,000 during the third quarter of 2023, marking the fastest pace of population growth in any quarter since 1957. Mikal Skuterud, a University of Waterloo economics professor who specializes in immigration policy, said the federal government appears to have “lost control” of temporary migration flows, a reference to the student visa holders and migrant workers influx. Immigrant-driven population growth has a direct effect on housing. A Canada Mortgage and Housing Corporation report that focused on housing shortages concluded that “by 2023 over 22 million units will be required to achieve affordability for everyone living in Canada.” The national benchmark home price, which measures the price of a so-called typical home, was $735,900 in April 2024, a 0.8% monthly increase. In British Columbia, the benchmark price is a staggering $985,000.

Unchecked immigration and the fallout that followed in terms of increased housing prices and decreased per capita income has sent native-born and immigrants to Canada fleeing to the U.S. In 2022, a record 126,340 moved to the U.S., a 70% increase from 2012.While workers are leaving Canada in droves, former U.S. ambassador to Canada Bruce Heyman told a national security conference on June 3 that if Trump wins in November, “These people [U.S. illegal immigrants] aren’t just going to sit there and wait to be rounded up.” Should Trump win, Heyman said, they will immediately begin making plans to leave, and they will not go south, but north.

Like their U.S. expansionists’ soulmates, Canadian advocates like to parrot that more immigration lifts GDP, true but deceptive, and not the major factor in quality of life. More immigrants—more people—automatically creates a larger economy but depresses per capita income. If population growth drove economic growth, then countries like Canada and Australia that have among the highest rates of immigration and resulting population growth should vastly outpace a country like Japan, which has relatively little immigration and whose population actually declined over the last decade. Canada’s GDP per capita has fallen 0.4 per cent a year since 2020, the worst rate among 50 developed economies.

Immigration has been Canada’s downfall and proves how foolish and wrong Congress’ immigration cabal consistently is. In July 2021, the Subcommittee on Immigration and Citizenship met. Chair Zoe Lofgren (D-Calif.) wailed that the U.S. urgently needs to overhaul its “failed” immigration laws or risk losing “highly skilled” employees to Canada. Countering, Ranking Member Tom McClintock (R-Calif.), more rationally said: “Canada’s pre-pandemic GDP growth was 39 percent lower than the United States; their unemployment rate 60 percent higher; and their average wages 38 percent lower.” Lofgren embarrassingly and, as an immigration lawyer, purposely tried to mislead the public. Today, three years later, Canadians flock to the U.S. where, to their disappointment, they will find widespread IT layoffs. In April alone, 50 organizations including Google, Microsoft, and Tesla laid off 21,473 tech workers.

The harsh, inescapable truth is that too much immigration—the excesses plaguing the U.S. and Canada— hurts the native-born economically and societally. becomes unaffordable, socials services are strained, education diluted, and jobs lost.  In U.S. pre-election polling, immigration consistently ranks as voters’ major issue; in Canada, 63% think immigration negatively effects housing. Even though sovereign Canada and America are crushed under its burden, nothing stops both governments’ insatiable quest for more immigration.

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

Canadian Immigration Crisis On Multiple Levels

Alert US Military Thwarts Would-Be Terrorists

By Joe Guzzardi

In a high stakes gamble with Americans’ safety and security at risk, President Joe Biden is rolling the dice again. Capitol Hill insiders confirm that the administration is considering providing refugee status to Palestinians from the Gaza Strip via mass parole, an immigration authority the president has abused since he entered the White House. The Immigration and Nationality Act requires that parole status be granted only on a temporary, case-by-case basis to satisfy a compelling, urgent humanitarian need. In blatant violation of the INA, Biden has doled out parole en bloc to millions of illegal immigrants.

The Biden administration has amassed a long list of illegal, unconstitutional immigration crimes that endanger the public. Top among them is his red-carpet welcome to an unknown total of millions—perhaps ten million or more—of unvetted illegal aliens whose backgrounds and intentions are unknown. Municipalities have struggled to provide shelter, health care, education and other affirmative benefits to illegally present foreign nationals. So far, Biden has luckily avoided a terrorist attack, but his good fortune is running out. During FY 2023, 736 known or suspected terrorists were apprehended at either the northern or southern border. The gotaways, an estimated 1.6 million over a three year period, doubtlessly include dozens more terrorists.

The nation now knows that at least one likely active terrorist, a Jordanian national who crossed the California/Mexico border illegally in May, recently breached Virginia’s Marine Corp Base Quantico in a box truck. Accompanied by another Jordanian national whose F-1 student visa expired in May, another immigration crime that converts his temporary visa status to illegal immigrant, the pair claimed that they were Amazon subcontractors making a delivery. Amazon had no knowledge of the Jordanians as employees or subcontractors. DHS refuses to release the Jordanians names; the FBI and ICE are mum. But Dave Katz, a former DEA agent and federal firearms instructor at Quantico, warned that the box truck incident was likely “a dry run for driving a box truck that was not going to be empty the second time.” Katz called the failed attempt the Jordanians “equivalent of a feasibility study.”

The Jordanians are not DHS’s only national security concern. In North Carolina, two non-English speaking, illegal alien Chechen men were caught trespassing past sunset outside a U.S. Army Special Operations Command officer’s home. The men had cell phones with Russian language contacts.  One, Ramzan Daraev, claimed to work as a subcontractor for Utilities One, but had neither electrical equipment nor identification. Utilities One is a foreign-registered New Jersey-based company founded in 2016 by a young Moldovan CEO three years after he moved to the U.S.

When confronted near a power line in a wooded part of the property, an altercation ensued, and the Army officer shot and killed Daraev. Authorities questioned the second Chechen, Dzhankutov Adsalan and, despite being illegally present in the U.S., released him. The violated Special Op’s family told news outlets that the Chechens were photographing their children. To call the Quantico and North Carolina incidents suspicious, threatening and a threat to national security is an understatement.

Despite the frightening Jordanian and Moldovan incidents as well as the 30,000 unvetted Chinese who have surged the border but that no White House official cares about, Biden seems determined to invite more trouble. Accepting Gazan refugees would heighten national security risks to levels not seen since before 9/11. Before taking the drastic step that would admit Gazans as refugees, give them work permits, and put them on a path to citizenship, Biden and the State Department should familiarize themselves with an analysis The Washington Institute for Near East Policy published, “Teaching Terror, How Hamas Radicalizes Palestine.” The institute concluded that Hamas successfully radicalizes Palestinians not only to support and fund but to facilitate and participate in the group’s terrorist attacks. More than 25 years ago in 1997, the State Department designated Hamas as a terrorist organization. And even though Hamas is an organization that calls itself a local resistance group, it unsurprisingly targets foreign audiences from America to Malaysia with its web-based terrorist messages. Hamas raises the vast majority of its $2 billion annual budget abroad, including generous funding from Iran, United Nations agencies and so-called charitable groups.

Two-term Sen. Joni Ernst (R-Iowa), who served in the Iraq War and spent 23 years in the Army Reserve and the Army National Guard, wrote a pointed letter to Biden which 34 Republican Senators co-signed that demanded a full accounting of his Gazan refugee vision. Biden, to quote Ernst, “is blowing off my work to prevent an Oct. 7-related attack on our own shores.” The White House referred Ernst’s letter to the Department of Homeland Security which further blew her off with the false promise that “Any individuals from Gaza who have traveled or would travel to the U.S. are thoroughly vetted, as the safety and security of the American people is our top priority.” The reality is that the administration has no intention to track, much less remove dangerous actors posing as refugees. A new Department of Homeland Security Office of Inspector General report revealed how it has already failed to track the 77,000 Afghan refugees admitted into the country. The consequences of the Afghan withdrawal blunder remain to be seen.

Biden has hands full enough without tempting fate further with Gazan refugees. The White House’s first obligation is to rescue American citizens, not Gazans.

Joe Guzzardi is an Institute for Sound Public Policy analyst who has written about immigration for more than 30 years. Contact him at jguzzardi@ifspp.org

Alert US Military Thwarts Would-Be Terrorists Alert US Military Thwarts Would-Be Terrorists

The 1924 Immigration Act From A 2024 Lens

By Joe Guzzardi

A century ago, President Calvin Coolidge signed the Johnson-Reed Immigration Act, also known as the Immigration Act of 1924, which precipitated a two-generation-long pause in mass migration. Upon Coolidge’s signature, multiple benefits to citizen workers ensued immediately. Immigration dropped from 707,000 in 1924 to 294,000 in 1925. Within a year, more than 400,000 fewer job seekers entered the U.S. During the next 45 years, the same time length as the Great Wave which lasted from 1870 to 1924, immigration averaged 200,000 annually, dramatically less than earlier totals.

The immigration pause meant that those who arrived during the Great Wave had time to assimilate into a stronger, more cohesive nation. Monetary benefits—higher wages— accrued to blue-collar workers, and especially to black laborers who prospered at an even faster rate than their white contemporaries.  Black American leaders have been historically onboard with significant immigration reductions. Of course they are. Basic economics 101 dictates that a tight labor supply is good for workers. When the 1924 act cut off the large supply of foreign-born labor, employers had nowhere to turn except to American workers who they had previously underpaid and subjected to often abysmal on-the-job conditions. And without Congress authorizing a continuous stream of foreign labor into eastern and Mid-Atlantic factories and steel mills, roughly six million southern blacks migrated north to take advantage of newly created job opportunities. W.E.B. DuBois wrote in the 1929 issue of the NAACP magazine The Crisis that the 1924 legislation’s “stopping…the importing of cheap white labor on any terms has been the economic salvation of American Black labor.”

In 2020, the Brookings Institution issued a paper titled “Examining the Black-White Wealth Gap” that chronicled U.S. history’s multiple examples of black earnings being denied before it had a chance to grow and create generational wealth. At the time of the Brookings’ study’s publication, median black household wealth was less than six percent of white wealth. African American households, Brookings found, had too few net assets to withstand even temporary financial setbacks. A major cause that prevented blacks from moving up the economic ladder was more than fifty years of high immigration that began with the Hart-Cellar Immigration Act of 1965, which loosened labor markets and kicked off another immigration Great Wave which endures today.

One hundred years after Coolidge, immigration is more contentious than at any other point in American history. President Joe Biden’s immigration agenda represents the worst of worlds. Millions of unvetted illegal immigrants, of which a significant percentage are working age males, have crossed the U.S. border apparently with few marketable skills in today’s technology-oriented society. Most seem to have come to the U.S. in need of affirmative benefits, or perhaps the benefits were the incentive. The consequences of Biden’s welcome-the-world immigration agenda are reflected in the Census’ report that the U.S.’s foreign-born population hit 46.2 million or 13.9 percent of the overall population in 2022, an all-time high. In 1970, the foreign-born numbered 9.6 million or 4.7 percent of the total U.S. population.

The largest population percentage increases from 2021 to 2022 by country were Afghanistan, up 229 percent; Venezuela, up 22 percent; Honduras, Nepal, and Kenya, each up 10 percent; Ghana, Brazil, and Colombia, each up 9 percent; and Ethiopia and Ecuador, both up 8 percent. The Center for Immigration Studies compiled the data which it collected from publicly available federal statistics. Too many people arriving in too short a period strains vital social services like medical care and education and depletes irreplaceable natural resources like water and agricultural land, exactly the outcome that the 1924 legislation prevented.

Because it imposed national quotas that favored northern Europeans and excluded other nations, the 1924 act was flawed. But its intention to reduce immigration to manageable levels was not. The 1924 Congress expressed the noble desire that the nation grow at a slower, more sustainable pace and that its citizens’ needs be prioritized. Since Biden and his inside circle have different, nefarious objectives, legislation like the Immigration Act of 1924 won’t happen during what remains of the president’s term. Even truly securing the border may be too much to hope for, but it would be a good starting point.

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

The 1924 Immigration Act From A 2024 Lens

VP Sweepstakes Coming into Final Stretch

By Joe Guzzardi

Former President Donald J. Trump is tied up a Manhattan court room but he’s active online. One of his fund-raising efforts asks his supporters to help him choose his Vice President. In a mass email, Trump asked “Which person would you select as your next Vice President? Type in the person’s name here.” Trump will make up his own mind, but the potential candidates list is long, and his choice is important. A significant faction of registered GOP voters dubious about Trump’s candidacy could be swayed toward the former president based on his VP selection. Even though Nikki Haley abandoned her presidential campaign in early March after losing all but one state in Super Tuesday’s primary races, she’s still managed to clinch 13%-18% of the GOP electorate in the battleground states of Arizona, Georgia, Ohio, Wisconsin, and Pennsylvania. Haley’s performance causes GOP insiders to question whether her supporters will ultimately back Trump, cross party lines or simply stay home.

Trump’s VP will, if history holds, debate Kamala Harris on September 25 at Lafayette College, a key event that follows the first scheduled presidential debate, September 16 at Texas State University. A look back: The first vice presidential debate occurred in 1976 between two seasoned Senators, Kansas’ Bob Dole and Minnesota’s Walter Mondale. The exchanges were lively; Mondale called Ford “a hatchet-man.” Both were veteran politicians, tough and loyal, Dole to the right politically of incumbent President Gerald Ford and Mondale to the left of the challenger, Georgia Governor Jimmy Carter.

Among the names being bandied about are three U.S. Senators: Ohio’s J.D. Vance, Florida’s Marco Rubio and South Carolina’s Tim Scott, as well as U.S. Reps. Byron Scott (R-Fla.) and Elise Stefanik (R-NY). Forget them. If Trump wins, he’ll need every congressional supporting vote he can get; to remove five certain yeas from Congress on his agenda would be folly. Another name mentioned is also a highly unlikely choice. Although Trump flew North Dakota Governor and one-time 2024 presidential hopeful Doug Burgum to his Wildwood, New Jersey rally, the moderate is, like the presumptive nominee, an old, white billionaire. North Dakota has three electoral votes, and in 2016 and 2020 Trump won the state by a 2:1 ratio. Trump would gain nothing from an electoral college angle if he added Burgum to the ticket.

That narrows the prospects down to Tulsi Gabbard who, in many ways, is an ideal VP choice. Gabbard is young, attractive, well-spoken, a former four-term House Democrat, an Iraq War veteran who has served in the Army since 2003 and was promoted to Major in 2015. In 2022, Gabbard abandoned the Democratic Party because of its shift to the far-left, or as she put it, is “now under the complete control of an elitist cabal of warmongers driven by cowardly wokeness, who divide us by racializing every issue and stoke anti-white racism, undermines Americans’ God-given freedoms, demonizes the police but protects criminals, encourages open borders, weaponizes national security for politics’ sake, and pushes the country ever closer to nuclear war.” In further explaining her decision to switch to the Independent Party, Gabbard added that she believes in a government that is of, by, and for the people. Unfortunately, she continued, today’s Democratic Party does not.” The 2020 presidential hopeful gave the keynote speech in March at Mar-a-Lago to the 1917 Society, a volunteer group dedicated to preserving the Constitution.

However, on voters’ top concern, immigration, Gabbard’s grade while she was in the House was as bad as Senate Majority Leader Chuck Schumer and former House Speaker Nancy Pelosi, F-. Gabbard was on the wrong side of every important immigration issue; she voted against stronger border and interior enforcement, and in favor of expanding worker visas that displace employed Americans. Her congressional votes showed that, at the time she cast them, she encouraged amnesty enticements and rewarded illegal aliens. Another irrevocable negative: Gabbard endorsed Bernie Sanders in 2016 and, after she ended her own presidential campaign, Biden in 2020.

Should Gabbard’s dismal congressional immigration voting record and her past presidential endorsements surface in her debate against Harris, the Hawaiian could point to her recent criticism of Biden’s open borders, her support of Israel and, in general, her more traditional values and say she’s evolved politically and socially since becoming an Independent. Trump promises to name his VP before the GOP national convention in Milwaukee, July 15-18. In the end, he may not choose Gabbard, but he absolutely cannot remove any of his congressional allies.

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

VP Sweepstakes Coming into Final Stretch