Category: Joe Guzzardi

Border Crisis To Accelerate or Come Under Control?

By Joe Guzzardi

Around financial markets, the conventional wisdom is to “let the trend be your friend.” What happens in the market on one day will also likely occur on the following. Investors, the theory goes, should ride the “trend” until it “bends,” then bail out.

The phrase sums up the southwest border crisis. The invasion continues seamlessly one day after another, and during 2023 has steadily ramped up to a record number of migrant crossings with a December seven-day average of more than 9,600, a Homeland Security official told CNN. The record-smashing figure represents the average across the nation’s entire southern border. In November, total encounters stood at 6,800, meaning that the southern border has seen a month-over-month influx of 3,000 more daily arrivals as migrants continue to pour through the border.

In FY23, Customs and Border Protection recorded more than 2.4 million encounters at the southwest border and more than 3.2 million encounters nationwide. During the current fiscal year, 169 individuals on the terrorist watchlist were apprehended attempting to enter the country illegally, and at least 1.7 million known gotaways have evaded apprehension since FY2021. Since President Biden took office, there have been 7.5 million encounters nationwide and 6.2 million encounters at the southwest border, in addition to 1.7 million known gotaways. 

Also in FY 2023, CBP arrested 35,433 aliens with criminal convictions or outstanding warrants, including 598 known gang members, 178 of those being MS-13 members, and CBP, including its Air and Marine Operations, seized enough fentanyl coming across the Southwest border to kill, the House Homeland Security Committee estimates, about 6 billion people.

The data are included in the committee’s fiscal year-end report titled “Startling Stats,” but it’s findings did nothing to influence the administration to end the invasion. Not only did the illegal alien influx remain steady, it accelerated unabated. If the House’s year-end summary had no effect on the Biden administration’s mismanagement of the border disaster, nothing will. Proof that the border crisis will continue unchecked: in December, CBP processed and released 302,000 aliens. Since the start of FY 2024 which began on October 1, 20023, CBP has encountered more than 785,000 aliens at the southern border alone.

As alarming as the raw CBP statistics that related to the multimillions of border encounters are, they understate the invasion’s inevitable consequences. Factor in chain migration and the certainty that arriving aliens will either start new families or grow their existing ones, and population growth will continue upward. Citizens who live in high density cities should brace for more overcrowding driven by Biden and Department of Homeland Security Secretary Alejandro Mayorkas’ criminal disregard of federal immigration laws. 

A Center for Immigration Studies analysis detailed that the Census Bureau’s Current Population Survey (CPS) showed that the total foreign-born or immigrant population, both legal and illegal, was 49.5 million in October 2023 — a 4.5 million increase since Biden’s inauguration and a new record high. At 15 percent, the foreign-born share of the U.S. population is the highest percentage recorded in U.S. history. Since Biden took office, the foreign-born population has grown on average by 137,000 a month, compared to 42,000 a month during Trump’s presidency, and 68,000 a month during President Obama’s two terms. These unsustainable population increases generate urban sprawl and drain already diminishing natural resources like water and farm acreage.

Creating an equitable immigration system under Biden that benefits citizens and migrants alike is a long shot, but still possible. Congress returns from its winter recess on January 8, and will resume discussions over numerous thorny issues. At the top of the House GOP’s to-do list is, before authorizing funding for Ukraine and Israel wars, to demand that the immigration provisions encompassed in HR-2, which it passed in May, must be included. Key among those provisions is mandatory E-Verify which would end the jobs magnet that lures thousands of foreign nationals to the U.S. with employment expectations and to curb the administration’s parole abuse. Parole is intended for extraordinary circumstances, usually granted to one individual, and not intended to be given out en masse. 

HR-2 represents the best chance that legislators have to restore operational control of the border. Otherwise, the invasion will continue until at least January 2025. Based on the latest CBP monthly statistics, without HR-2 another 3 million illegal aliens will cross during the 2025 calendar year.

Joe Guzzardi is a Project for Immigration Reform analyst who has written about immigration for more than 30 years. Contact him at jguzzardi@ifspp.org

Border Crisis To Accelerate or Come Under Control?

GOP Digs in On Border Enforcement

By Joe Guzzardi

Finally, after the first three GOP primary debates wherein the moderators scrupulously dodged asking questions about the southern border invasion, immigration surfaced in the fourth. As part of his response to a query about the open border, candidate and Florida Governor Ron DeSantis included in his answer an insightful observation about why the Biden administration has allowed millions of illegal immigrants to cross, and disappear into the interior: “I know the elites in D.C. They don’t care.”

In a nutshell, DeSantis summed up the challenge that Americans face. President Biden, Department of Homeland Security Secretary Alejandro Mayorkas, Vice President Kamala Harris, and the Cabinet are at best indifferent to and tolerant of open borders’ consequences or, at worst, content and pleased to remake the U.S. into a nation unrecognizable to its citizens.

The human and fiscal costs that the invasion has wrought are devastating. The list is long, ugly, and tragic. Included are drug trafficking that’s brought about an all-time high death total among mostly young Americans—106, 669 in 2021, up 14% from 2020; each day, 150 people die from synthetic drug overdoses. Human smuggling is rampant, and multiple federal agencies share the blame. Senator Marsha Blackburn (R-Tenn.) identified Health and Human Services, the State and Justice Departments as complicit through their silence and indifference in the booming $13 billion human smuggling business. Thirteen years old is the average age at which a child is sold for sex. Blackburn introduced The Stopping the Abuse, Victimization and Exploitation of Girls (SAVE Girls) Act which she hopes will garner bipartisan support. Mayors of Democratic stronghold cities New York, Chicago, Boston, and the District of Columbia are on their knees begging for more federal funding to cope with the migrant surge that’s destroying their communities. Big cities aren’t the only victims. The alien surge converted tiny Lukeville, Aziz. into a “toilet.” A group of 900+ aliens, mostly from mostly from Senegal, Guinea, Liberia, and Mauritania recently overwhelmed Lukeville. Since the border patrol doesn’t have the capacity to accommodate the migrants, they roam, and  while waiting to be processed and released, they’re defecating and urinating in the open spaces. 

As a result of the lawlessness at the overwhelmed border, U.S. officials temporarily closed the Lukeville crossing, and released a statement which said that port of entry was temporarily closed “in response to increased levels of migrant encounters at the Southwest Border, fueled by smugglers peddling disinformation to prey on vulnerable individuals.” Arizona Sens. Mark Kelly and Kyrsten Sinema and Gov. Katie Hobbs made a joint statement criticizing the decision to temporarily close the border and called upon the federal government to act. Kelly and Sinema have consistently voted with Biden for less border and internal immigration enforcement. Lukeville is the latest evidence that illegal aliens use border crossing sites as a dumpster. Center for Immigration Studies’ Senior National Security Fellow Todd Bensman reported from Brownsville that the Texas National Guardsmen who patrol the area call it “the mattress because the layers of discarded clothing and personal belongings here [are] so thick and rubbery.” Their trash will kill everything beneath it and destroy the area for wildlife.

Falling onto the so-called mattress could be fatal. Syringes, diapers, animal droppings, food, personal sanitation products full of chemicals, non-biodegradable trash, and human waste are left behind. Personal documents and identifications discarded, lest they tell a different story than the aliens will present to officials. 

Ironically, in September, the Government Accountability Office issued a report that the 458 miles of border barrier erected between 2017 and 2021 damaged flora, fauna, water flow, and Indians’ sacred sites. The official GAO position is consistent with the Biden administration’s: the wall is bad; open borders, however, go full speed ahead. The invasion continues, proving DeSantis correct in his evaluation that establishment Washington doesn’t care.

A faint glimmer of hope has arisen. The Republicans, under House Speaker Mike Johnson, and with the assistance of right-minded GOP Senators have been able to get a squishy enforcement commitment from Biden. In exchange for another Ukraine funding transfusion, he would be willing to expel migrants without asylum screenings, expand the credible fear guideline to a more provable level, and restart immigration detention and deportations. The major pitfalls are that Biden is untrustworthy, and that many House Republicans have drawn the line on Ukraine—no more money. Without Ukraine in the package, no deal seems likely.

The House should remain firm on its insistence on immigration enforcement. Before authorizing more money for Ukraine and Israel, the House must demand that the immigration provisions included in HR-2, which it passed in May, be included. Key among those provisions is mandatory E-Verify which would end the jobs magnet that lure thousands of foreign nationals to the U.S. with employment expectations and curbing the administration’s parole abuse. Parole is intended for extraordinary circumstances, usually granted to one individual, and not intended to be given out en masse. 

The road ahead to a fair and just immigration system is long, rocky, and uncertain. To begin the journey, with its destination protecting the sovereign American nation, the House must remain firm.

Joe Guzzardi is a Project for Immigration Reform analyst who has written about immigration for more than 30 years. Contact him at jguzzardi@ifspp.org

GOP Digs in On Border Enforcement GOP Digs in On Border Enforcement

Remembering Hyman Solomon ’s 77 Years in Baseball

By Joe Guzzardi

In 1901, Hyman Solomon, aka Jimmie Reese, was born in New York City to Russian-Jewish immigrant parents. After Hyman’s father died, the Solomon family moved to Los Angeles where the youngster worked as a newspaper boy, took his new name and fell in love with baseball. By the time Reese died at age 92, he had spent 77 years in baseball and is the oldest-ever person to have regularly worn a professional team’s uniform.

During nearly eight decades on the diamond, Reese threw batting practice fastballs to Lou Gehrig, roomed with Babe Ruth when the two were New York Yankees teammates, hit fungos to Nolan Ryan and gave fielding tips to Jim Edmonds. Referring to his time spent with Ruth on Yankees road trips, Reese memorably said that he didn’t room with the Babe in the traditional sense; he roomed with his suitcases.

Reese’s baseball life began as a boy when he finagled his way into the Pacific Coast League’s Los Angeles Angels practices, becoming at age 12 the team’s batboy, a job he gleefully carried out for six years. Chicago Cubs first baseman and Hall of Famer Frank Chance managed the Angels and worked with Reese to develop his skills. Reese was recognized as his high school’s most valuable player.

From high school, Reese moved up to semi-pro where his slick fielding impressed the Oakland Oaks who signed him in 1924 and launched him to the big leagues. In 1928, the Yankees purchased Reese’s contract from the Oaks. The year prior to Reese’s promotion to the star-studded Yankees, Reese hit .337 with one homer, 65 runs batted in, 24 stolen bases, and led all PCL second basemen with a .979 fielding average with 622 putouts in 190 games. Reese’s peers recognized him as one of the smoothest fielding second basemen in the game with near-acrobatic skills at the keystone corner.

In 1932, the Yanks sent Reese to the America Association’s Triple-A St. Paul Saints. The St. Louis Cardinals quickly picked him up to fill in for the injured Frankie Frisch. In 90 games with the Cards, Reese batted .265, hit two homers and drove in 26 runs. And so ended Reese’s three-year major league career; 232 games played with a respectable .278 batting average, eight homers and 70 RBIs.

Litle did Reese realize in 1933 when the Cards sold him to the PCL Angels that his baseball career still had six decades remaining. Reese enjoyed outstanding seasons with the Angels and San Diego Padres. He compiled a PCL career batting average of .289 in 1,673 games and holds the league record for most putouts by a second baseman, 4,771, and most assists, 5,119. In 1937, Reese was chosen as the starting second baseman on the All-Time Pacific Coast League team, and in 2002 was elected to the International Jewish Sports Hall of Fame.

Between 1938 and 1994, Reese worked for minor and major league teams as a coach, manager and scout. With a one-year baseball hiatus in 1944 when he served in the U.S. Army during World War II, Reese was continuously in baseball’s employ. In 1972, at age 71, Reese asked the Angels for a job and was hired as conditioning coach – a position he held until his death in 1994. Angels’ owner Gene Autry had given Reese a lifetime contract.

After the 25-year old righty Nolan Ryan was traded to the Angels from the New York Mets, he befriended Reese. Years later, Ryan said, “He’s the finest human being I’ve ever met.” Ryan’s second son is named Reese in Jimmie’s honor.

At the time of Reese’s death, he was still on the Angels payroll. A year after Reese passed, the Angels encased his locker in tinted Plexiglas. Inside were his beloved fungo bat and his uniform. His number 50 was retired, joining Ryan, Gene Autry and Rod Carew whose numbers no future Angels player would ever wear. The Angels retired number 26 in Autry’s honor. Baseball rosters had 25 men; Autry became the Angels “26th man.”

Today’s big baseball news is Shohei Ohtani’s $700 million, ten-year contract – “a record” as the headlines blare. But Ohtani’s mark won’t last long. Owners are printing money and, since they can jack up ticket prices at will and indefinitely, have no qualms about laying out cash. Reese’s 77-year baseball longevity record, however, will endure for ages and is a testimony to his love for the national pastime.

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

Remembering Hyman Solomon ’s 77 Years in Baseball Remembering Hyman Solomon ’s 77 Years in Baseball

Marines Play Mosquito Bowl on Christmas Eve 1944

By Joe Guzzardi

The endless college football bowl season is upon us. Beginning on Dec. 16 with the Mrytle Beach Bowl, and mercifully ending on Jan. 8 with the CFP National Championship game, 43 games will be played. But no football game ever played, or ever to be played, will exceed the drama surrounding the Mosquito Bowl, played on insect-infested Guadalcanal in 1944. The 4^th and 29^th U.S. Marine Corp regiments faced off before their next stop, Okinawa.

The Mosquito Bowl evolved from a bold claim that Brown University and eventual New York Giants superstar John McLaughry made to his father. McLaughry claimed that the 4^th Regiment could go toe-to-toe with the NFL champion Chicago Bears. McLaughry backed off a bit but still maintained that the 4^th and the 29^th combined could beat any team, anywhere.

To lift the Marines’ spirits, the brass okayed a football game between the 4th and the 29^th for Christmas Eve 1944. The regiments had long debated which would prevail if they ever met on the football field. By kickoff time, there was a regulation-size field with goalposts, programs with roster information, a marching band and more than a thousand spectators. The excitement was so high that the Marine Corps radio network broadcast the game, and wagering was at a feverish level.

With its six early round professional draft picks, the star-studded 29^th took the field against the 4^th which had players who had professional careers with the Detroit Lions, the Green Bay Packers and the Chicago Cardinals. Among the players were George Murphy, Notre Dame captain, a South Bend, Indiana clerk’s son; Tony Butkovich, a Purdue All-American, and one of seven sons of a central Illinois Croatian coal miner; McLaughry, a blocking back, and Brown’s heavyweight boxing champion; Robert Bauman, a Wisconsin Badgers tackle and punter. As a kid, after his father died, Bauman worked in onion fields near Chicago. David Schreiner was a Badgers All-American end whose German immigrant grandfather had established a prosperous family business.

The gridiron was dirt and gravel without a blade of grass. Two-handed tag, the official rule, was ignored. The Marines played in t-shirts and torn-off khakis. Although they came away battered and bruised, no one complained. The game, which ended in a 0-0- tie, distracted from training for the Okinawa invasion which they correctly described as being “bound for hell.”

Of the 65 Mosquito Bowl players, 56 played in colleges, including Notre Dame, California, Purdue and Wisconsin, and five were team captains. Fifteen died during the fierce Okinawa fighting, the Pacific War’s bloodiest battle. After 82 days of brutal combat, more than 240,000 people had been killed, a 3,000 daily average. The American loss rate was 35 percent of the force, totaling 49,151 casualties. Of those, 12,520 were killed or missing, and 36,631 were wounded in action.

Wisconsin teammates Bauman and Schreiner were among those killed in action. Heavy Japanese fire blindsided Bauman’s platoon, and a bullet to his head shattered his skull. Bauman, age 24, became the 12^th Mosquito Bowl player killed. On the day before Okinawa was declared secure, Schreiner was shot in the upper chest. Schreiner had weathered 81 of the 82 days that the battle lasted before dying in the hospital on the 82^nd day. Schreiner was the 15^th and final Mosquito Bowl fatality.

Ironically, Schreiner could have stayed behind. He rejected a medical school deferment and instead enlisted. Schreiner wrote in a letter to his parents: “I’m not sitting here snug as a bug, playing football while others are giving their lives for their country…If everyone tried to stay out of it, what a fine country we’d have!”

After learning of their sons’ deaths, the mothers of Schneider and Bauman corresponded. Bertha Bauman to Anne Schreiner: “Our two darling boys were real pals and went through everything together and seems they could not be separated and for that reason, God took them both.” Anne replied: “Are your days and nights getting any better, Mrs. Bauman? I find mine are getting harder and harder.”

In 1947, Anne wrote to Bertha again after Bauman and Schreiner’s fiancées had married. Although Anne was happy that Odette, a WAVE and her faithful friend throughout, now would have the chance “to build another future for the one that was taken away,” she was saddened because “she [Odette] had been David’s, and oh, oh, doesn’t it hurt?”

During the same year, the University of Wisconsin renamed two dormitories for Bob Bauman and Dave Schreiner. At the dedication, with family and friends present, tears flowed. Two years later, the U.S. military closed its Okinawa cemeteries, and Schreiner’s remains were returned home and buried in the family plot. Anne lived until age 105, and to her the Badgers were always “her boys.” Before she moved into a nursing home at age 99, she kept David’s room exactly as it was the day he left for the Marines.

The lucky, living 50 Mosquito Bowl competitors returned home, but most were never the same. After receiving a telegram her son John sent from San Francisco that read “short time, then home soon, love,” his mother picked him up at Grand Central Station. Gone was the Brown University swagger, replaced by, in his mother’s words, a reclusive, jittery man who was an “empty shell that held empty eyes.”

The three and a half hours long Mosquito Bowl that the 65 Marines reveled in may have been the last and longest sustained joyous moments the brave young soldiers ever experienced in their war-shortened lives.

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

Marines Play Mosquito Bowl on Christmas Eve 1944 Marines Play Mosquito Bowl on Christmas Eve 1944

House Gives Traitorous Mayorkas a Free Pass

By Joe Guzzardi

Even the lowest hanging fruit is beyond the hapless Grand Old Party’s reach. Department of Homeland Security Secretary Alejandro Mayorkas’ impeachment, a ripe peach waiting to be picked, never happened.

Since prior to the 2022 mid-term elections in which the GOP dramatically underperformed, Republican legislators have promised to restore border security which, under Mayorkas’ criminal, anti-constitutional, impeachable refusal to enforce immigration law, has devolved into chaos. At the time that then-House Speaker Kevin McCarthy released the Commitment to America, Mayorkas had allowed 3.8 million illegal aliens to cross, and 900,000 gotaways to escape into the interior. In all, foreign nationals from more than 160 nations had been processed and released. There are 195 countries in the world.

The invasion continues unabated. Over the past 12 months, Customs and Border Protection has encountered 3.2 million illegal aliens, and the gotaway total has likely doubled. A closer look at the 2023 statistics reveal more criminal disregard for Americans’ safety and security. In FY 2023, CBP caught 52,000 Chinese nationals. China is America’s greatest threat, according to the FBI directorand others. CBP also encountered a record-high number of aliens who appear on the FBI’s suspected terrorist watch list: 172. Of this number, 169 were attempting to evade capture at the southern border, and three were apprehended trying to sneak in through the increasingly porous northern border.

The DHS guideline for a secretary’s competency is whether his agency has “operational control” of the border. Operational Control, as defined in the 2006 Secure Fence Act, Section 2 (b), mandates that the secretary “achieves and maintains” operational control which means “the prevention of all unlawful entries into the United States, including entries by terrorists, other unlawful aliens, instruments of terrorism, narcotics, and other contraband.” The statistics cited above, and thousands of online and nationally broadcast videos, prove that unlawful entries have flourished since President Biden’s inauguration, January 20, 2021. Because aliens keep arriving, and continuously accessing costly affirmative benefits like medical care, education, housing and transportation, pinpointing the precise cost to citizen taxpayers is impossible. The House Committee on Homeland Security provided a dollar-cost range. But what a staggering range it is – from $150 billion to $451 billion annually.

Before Congress left on its Thanksgiving recess, the GOP had a golden opportunity to impeach Mayorkas, but it punted. Rep. Marjorie Taylor Greene (R-Ga.) brought Articles of Impeachmentagainst Mayorkas to the House floor as a privileged resolution which means that members would vote on it within 48 hours. But eight Republicans joined with Democrats to vote 209-201 to send Greene’s resolution to the House graveyard for possible consideration at some undefined future time.

Mayorkas gets off, free to keep the status quo of wide-open borders alive and well. The eight who joined with Democrats are Colorado’s Ken Buck, North Carolina’s Virginia Foxx and Patrick McHenry, Oregon’s Cliff Bentz, Ohio’s Mike Turner, and California’s Darrell Issa, John Duarte and Tom McClintock. Colorado, North Carolina, Oregon, Ohio and certainly California have felt the fiscal burden of Mayorkas’ criminal neglect. All except Duarte have strong pro-enforcement voting records, but on the Mayorkas matter, they chose to join the other side.

The most curious nay vote was from McClintock, the influential Chairman of the Judiciary Committee’s Immigration Subcommittee. If the GOP can’t count on high-ranking officials like McClintock to support the overdue Mayorkas impeachment effort, then border security is a fantasy. McClintock’s defense of his vote overlooked the national crisis that Mayorkas has encouraged and enabled.

While McClintock acknowledged that Mayorkas had opened the border to drugs, terrorists and criminals, he concluded that those crimes represent policy disputes and didn’t rise to impeachment level. Then, traveling far afield from Mayorkas’ malfeasance, McClintock said the Republicans must not “allow the left to become our teachers,” a reference to the Democrats’ two unsuccessful impeachment attempts made on President Donald Trump. In McClintock’s view, drugs, terrorists and criminals are okay, but the sanctity of the House impeachment process is more important than protecting the homeland.

Even though the Senate would never have upheld a House vote to impeach, the opportunity missed was huge. Impeaching Mayorkas would show that the Republicans are serious about protecting Americans from the danger that unvetted migrants represent. A related takeaway from a successful Mayorkas impeachment would be that the GOP also has its eye on the soaring costs of funding illegal immigration, a concern that taxpaying Americans share.

The most devastating outcome: shelving Mayorkas’ impeachment means that, over the coming months, hundreds of thousands of aliens will be processed and released into the interior – not an exaggeration. In South Texas, to select one example among many, border officials reported encountering 1,200 migrants daily, exposing the treasonous handiwork of Mayorkas. By the time Inauguration Day 2025 arrives, likely more than 8 million people from locations across the globe will have been released into the general population in cities and towns across the U.S.

Joe Guzzardi is a Project for Immigration Reform analyst who has written about immigration for more than 30 years. Contact him at jguzzardi@ifspp.org.

House Gives Traitorous Mayorkas a Free Pass

NYC Mayor Adams’ Woes Mount

By Joe Guzzardi

The FBI is ramping up its criminal investigation into New York Mayor Eric Adams’ winning 2021 campaign. The New York Times reported last week that federal investigators seized at least two of the mayor’s mobile phones and an iPad just days before the newspaper published its story.

The federal probe centers on whether Adams’ campaign colluded with the Turkish government to solicit donations laundered through a Brooklyn construction company. Earlier, the feds raided the home of a former Adams intern and the mayor’s chief fundraiser, Brianna Suggs. A search warrant that The Times obtained showed that the agents grabbed two laptops, three iPhones, a manila folder labeled “Eric Adams,” seven files titled “contribution card binders” and other potentially incriminating hard copy materials. To obtain a search warrant, prosecutors must convince a judge that the electronic devices contain probable cause evidence of criminal offenses. In his statement, Adams said he would be “shocked” if any campaign team member had done anything wrong, adding that, for his part, he “had done nothing wrong.”

At issue is whether Adams, who had just won the city’s Democratic mayoral primary, pressured Fire Department officials to allow the new Turkish consulate across from the United Nations to open despite safety concerns. Turkey’s President Recep Tayyip Erdoğan called the $300 million, 35-story-tall building a “masterpiece” and presided over its September 2021 grand opening.

Despite his staunch denials, and citing long-standing ties to Turkey, Adams must be uneasy. Although Adams is not charged with personal wrongdoing, the FBI is playing hardball, a tactic that’s ended poorly for the agency’s previous targets – Roger Stone, Rudy Giuliani, the 1,200 citizens charged in the January 6 protest and, most notably, President Donald Trump.

Insider speculation is rampant that the feds don’t care much if at all about Adams’ potential involvement in an illegal campaign financing scheme. Around Washington, election financing irregularity accusations are barely newsworthy. At the root of Adams’ problems are that he’s spoken publicly, loudly, critically and repeatedly about President Biden’s open border policy and how the arriving illegal aliens are bankrupting his once proud city. Even prominent Democratic supporters like Adams can’t get away with such candor. Adams may have sealed his fate when, in frustration, he said that without federal assistance the illegal alien debacle “will destroy New York City.” He warned that he saw no end to the unmanageable, unending wave of needy human arrivals.

Adams made his truthful but ill-advised warning about New York City’s potential destruction more than two months ago. Since then, conditions have grown significantly worse. The latest in New York’s constantly eroding fiscal situation, which pits spending on migrants against funding for legal resident programs, is Adams’ announcement that parents might have to volunteer to keep Big Apple schools nonviolent. Hundreds of trained safety agents were fired because migrant-related overhead, an estimated $12 billion and counting over the next three years, has crippled the city. Working 9-t0-5 parents howled about the task’s impossibility, and nonworking parents decried the injustice.

Boiled down to its bare bones, nothing will stop Biden from his lawless, unconstitutional, treasonous open border commitment. Tens of thousands of words have been written about how, to citizens’ detriment, cartels have trafficked humans and deadly drugs through the border.  Add to the sad list that, because Adams has to fund illegal aliens’ housing and food, the city can’t pay school security guards. Without experienced personnel, children will be at greater risk. Only months into the 2023-2024 academic year, three students have been slain so far, and at least 18 others have been stabbed or shot, victims of gang rivalries and ever-younger gun-toting kids who take advantage of the state’s forgiving judicial system.

Ironically, in April, Biden tweeted that “our children are our nation’s future” and that the “White House will always have their backs,” the president’s sad, dishonest cliché that he passes off as compassion.

Joe Guzzardi is a Project for Immigration Reform analyst who has written about immigration for more than 30 years. Contact him at jguzzardi@ifspp.org.

NYC Mayor Adams’ Woes Mount

Europeans Experiencing Migration ‘Compassion Fatigue’

By Joe Guzzardi

An article published in The Spectator, a British weekly and the world’s oldest magazine, should raise eyebrows in the U.S., especially among voters who consider the Southwest border disaster a national security threat. The story, “In Europe, opposing mass migration can be a crime,” summarizes a bleak demographic future for the EU. “Europeans will vote for politicians who want to stop the migration, and they may even come into office, but the situation will not change,” adds the subhead.

All across Europe, citizens are ringing alarm bells to convey their apprehension about mass immigration. This summer, long-serving Dutch Prime Minister Mark Rutte resigned after the government coalition he led disagreed on how to stem the refugee flow into the Netherlands. Rutte’s departure is the latest example of migration politics as an increasingly challenging predicament for European officials, with conservative parties using their rising influence to promote reduced immigration in campaign platforms.

For Europeans, the stakes are high. Over centuries, national identities have been formed with commonality in heritage, language, religion, custom and history. Immigration threatens to destabilize or destroy those commonalities. With one coalition already toppled in the Netherlands, experts say similar issues face leaders in Germany, Italy and perhaps France and Spain. A Pew Research report found that majorities or pluralities in most EU nations want less immigration into their countries. Many that Pew polled believe that immigrants remain distinct from the broader culture, and they further worry that immigration increases terrorism risks.

Much like the immigration crisis that began when President Biden assumed office in 2021, five years ago more than 1 million people crossed into Europe, mostly from Syria, Afghanistan and Iraq. The migrants took huge risks, embarking on dangerous journeys in search of better lives. All said that they had no future in their native countries. But some died along the way; others once they arrived at their destination could not find meaningful employment.

Receiving countries, however, adopted then-German Chancellor Angela Merkel’s “Wir schaffen das” or “We can manage” philosophy. With significant grassroots volunteer assistance, the countries did indeed get by, at least in the beginning. But as the numbers of incoming migrants grew, so did compassion fatigue. Merkel eventually dropped her slogan. In the end, asylum requests far outnumbered approvals at about a 4-1 ratio, meaning that only a small percentage of migrants had valid claims to remain in countries they hoped would embrace them.

As with opposition that grew in the EU, resistance to Biden’s open borders has grown in the U.S. In areas where migrant overflow has most severely affected communities, the backlash is significant, although not yet a crime as The Spectator story inferred it might one day be. New York, Chicago, Washington, D.C., Boston and Denver have pled for federal assistance, a plea consistently ignored by the administration.

Time will tell whether President Biden’s open border agenda will topple his 2024 re-election bid. The three recent debates with GOP candidates skirted immigration, and the expansionist faction stifles meaningful discussion. Any suggestion that poorly managed and too much immigration contributes to unsustainable population growth and overcrowding, placing an estimated $20 billion financial burden on taxpayers, is shouted down with allegations of racism and xenophobia. This sophomoric, but too-often successful tactic, often sways crucial, independent voters.

The question that The Spectator raised – “Will the situation [immigration] change?” – is the crux of the matter. Whatever the eventual presidential nominees may have said on the stump, the elected president is only part of the immigration equation. Although Biden has ignored virtually every enforcement-related immigration law, marching down his own unconstitutional path, Congress has the sole responsibility to lead the way.

A year from now, voters will need to focus on electing congressional candidates who genuinely want an immigration policy that’s designed to help America, a huge challenge. Today, Congress is mostly split on immigration along party lines, although the House GOP has several representatives who bow to the donor class that wants more cheap labor delivered via immigration.

Overcoming five decades of lax enforcement is a steep mountain to climb, as is voiding legislation designed to attract more immigration, such as the spate of employment-based visas that President George H.W. Bush signed into law with the Immigration Act of 1990.

At the risk of sounding alarmist, the 2024 election could be America’s last chance to retain its sovereignty. Maintaining the status quo means that, assuming the current migrant entry rate, by the 2028 election between 15 and 20 million unvetted illegal immigrants would be residing in the U.S., a treasonous act.

Europeans Experiencing Migration ‘Compassion Fatigue’

Speaker Johnson’s Moment Of Truth

By Joe Guzzardi

With a Nov. 17 deadline looming to pass a new budget, and with lingering GOP divisions over former Speaker Kevin McCarthy’s ousting, House Speaker Mike Johnson faces a tall challenge. But, in the short time that he’s has been Speaker, Johnson has built significant good will among his peers and generated excitement among the GOP voting base.

One thing Johnson can’t afford to do in the budget discussions is come away empty-handed. With the border wide-open, and terrorism suspects easily infiltrating the interior, the budget squabble is the ideal time to insist that the strong border enforcement HR-2 bill be included in any legislation that provides funding for the Ukraine-Russia conflict.

House Republicans have slowed their Ukraine enthusiasm, understandably so. Reports from the U.S. State Department Office of Inspector General and the Committee for a Responsible Federal Budget showed that, to date, the U.S. has approved about $113 billion in aid to Ukraine. Biden vowed in his September speech to the UN that the U.S. will “continue to stand with Ukraine” indefinitely. Many House Republicans reasonably question where, with a $33 trillion deficit, the money will come from.

The open-borders’ negative effect on Americans is ongoing and continuous with a dramatic, adverse impact on schools, hospitals, communities and crime. Countless millions of illegal aliens, literally, have been processed at the border, with some flown during the middle of the night into major airports, compliments of an unlawful Biden program, the CBP-One app. Others have snuck in. These gotaways have alluded the otherwise occupied Customs and Border Patrol officers. CPB agents are processing, not arresting, removable aliens.

HR-2 would 1) prevent the Biden administration from continuing its policy of catch-and-release, thereby discouraging future illegal immigrant waves, 2) stop the surges of family units and unaccompanied alien children which would protect them from cartel and traffickers’ criminal exploitation, 3) enforce expiration dates on visas and ensure that nonimmigrants depart on a timely basis, actions that would deter overstays and 4) end parole abuse in which the administration has illegally rewarded aliens with work permission and other affirmative benefits. Crimes related to parole have all been committed in violation of the Immigration and Nationality Act.

Biden and his aide-de-camp, Department of Homeland Security Alejandro Mayorkas, have been, since Inauguration Day 2021, negligent, incompetent and criminal in their disregard for national security, with tragic consequences inevitable. The spotlight now falls on Johnson whose impressive voting record promotes a pro-America agenda. Johnson has consistently voted for stronger border and interior security, tighter asylum laws and eliminating amnesty enticements.

Within the GOP conference, stopping Biden’s border invasion has near-unanimous support, great news for Johnson. Even immigration apologists want immediate action to end the invasion. Johnson’s moment of truth will arrive soon. If Johnson doesn’t make good on his agenda, to quote verbatim an Arizona CBP border officer when Biden ended Title 42, America is “screwed.”

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.

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