Category: Joe Guzzardi

Congress Makes Last-Ditch Amnesty Push

By Joe Guzzardi

Emboldened by their better-than-anticipated mid-term election performance, the Democratic Party is entering the Lame Duck session with an aggressive agenda that includes one of it favorite goals – amnesty. Democrats will control the Upper Chamber during the 118th Congress, but the GOP by the narrowest margin – a handful of seats – will have the edge in the House.

The Democrats’ strong showing inspired President Biden to unequivocally pronounce that he plans to do “nothing“ differently during the two years that remain in his first term. Biden interprets the election results as an endorsement of his policies, especially at the border and with his quest to legalize as many illegal aliens as possible.

The status quo, especially as it relates to enforcement, is exactly what’s happening. Just days after Biden’s stand pat commitment, the Border Patrol reported that agents had at least 230,678 known October encounters, exclusive of nearly 1 million known gotaways, compared to 159,113 last October and 69,032 in October 2020. The October 2022 total, driven by Cubans and Nicaraguans, is the highest in Department of Homeland Security history.

Immediately after the Thanksgiving recess, all eyes will be focused on the Lame Duck session that will provide a chance for Biden to finalize his legislative objective. And Republicans may be willing to lend a helping hand, a possibility enhanced with the re-election of pro-amnesty Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell. Although amnesty goes against most Americans’ wishes, Congress dismisses voters’ concerns, and presses on.

Common sense dictates that already present illegal aliens shouldn’t be granted amnesty until, at a minimum, the DHS seals the border against the new illegal alien wave that includes thousands of unaccompanied minors. But looking ahead to a possible 2024 re-election bid, the president’s advisors are scratching together a possible slogan, “Promises Kept.” Since immigration doesn’t fall into the “kept” category, at least in the White House’s view, Biden’s advisors perceive the need to forge ahead on amnesty.

Earlier this year, the House laid amnesty’s foundation when it passed the American Dream and Promise Act and the Farm Workforce Modernization Act, amnesty for about 2.1 million illegally present farm workers. Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals – DACA – and farm workers are the two top amnesty priorities. Democrats have already written a game plan to send DACA legislation to the Senate that would amnesty more than 4 million illegal immigrants before their House majority expires. A sidebar: legislation to grant amnesty to deferred action recipients has, since 2001 when it was first introduced, consistently failed to get congressional majorities.

Just behind deferred action legalization’s priority are the farm workers who would be tied, if the amnesty passes, to agricultural employment for years – indentured servitude – with the carrot being eventual citizenship. Despite the bill’s title which suggests modernization, no such feature is included. Modernization means using artificial intelligence, the bane of donors who support keeping the ag industry dependent on cheap, stoop labor.

Both DACA and the farm act require ten Senate yeas which the House is unlikely to get. Without the ten necessary upper chamber votes, amnesty advocates could attach either or both DACA and the farm act to must-pass, omnibus legislation – the landmine that immigration restrictionists most fear.

Nothing stops the amnesty lobby – not 9/11, not the mortgage crisis and not dismal employment markets. When amnesty advocates have friends in high places such as the White House, the Senate and the House, pressure for passing amnesty is, as proven during the days leading to the 2022 Lame Duck, intense. Amnesty recipients obtain lifetime valid employment permits, a coveted affirmative benefit that expands the labor market and hinders blue-collar Americans, including blacks, Hispanics and other minorities, the constituency that Congress deceivingly purports to care about.

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

Congress Makes Last-Ditch Amnesty Push

Record Immigration-Driven Population Surge In Canada

By Joe Guzzardi

Canada’s Immigration Minister Sean Fraser recently announced a bold immigration plan that has serious long-term deleterious consequences for the nation’s population growth and environmental degradation.

Fraser’s goal is, by 2025, to add 1.45 million permanent resident immigrants to address what he and other government officials claim is a critical labor shortage; allegedly 1 million Canadian jobs are unfilled. Fraser said: “Make no mistake. This is a massive increase in economic migration to Canada.” The Minister’s new plan projects a flood of new arrivals that will see 465,000 foreign nationals in 2023, rising to 500,000 in 2025. By comparison, 405,000 permanent residents were admitted last year.

Fraser’s immigration vision to admit a record-breaking number of immigrants is inspired by Prime Minister Justin Trudeau’s sentiments. Following his 2019 election wherein he campaigned on more immigration, he followed up with welcoming messages to refugees. Defending his massive immigration increase, Fraser repeated familiar refrains about an aging Canadian population and a low birth rate. Without immigration, Fraser foresees a Canada that won’t have the financial resources to fund schools, hospitals and other services. In short, Fraser used scare tactics to deceive Canada’s citizens.

Canada’s long-standing commitment to higher immigration levels has created an unprecedented population surge. In 2021, Canada’s population rose to 37 million people, up 5.2 percent from 2016, driven mostly by immigration, according to official government data. Downtowns and distant suburbs of large cities have experienced the largest growth rates.

Canada added 1.8 million people between 2016 and 2021, with nearly 80 percent of those new residents arriving from across the globe. Research from Statistics Canada (StatsCan) published in its Census 2021 release gives Canada the dubious distinction of being the fastest growing G7 country. Almost 90 percent of new immigrants settled in urban centers, Statscan said, edging up the proportion of Canadians living in large urban centers to 73.7 percent from 73.2 percent five years ago. During the five-year time period studied, Toronto’s population increased 16.1 percent, Montreal, 24.2 percent, and Vancouver, 7.4 percent. The report concluded that Canada continues to urbanize as large city centers benefit most from new arrivals to the country. But not all Canadians would use “benefit” as a descriptor for rapid, uncontrolled population growth.

Fraser’s plan is so ill-conceived that even the most basic and fundamental need of arriving immigrants – affordable housing – will be an insurmountable challenge. Canada is undergoing a severe housing crisis that has driven home prices out of the range for many buyers. Simply put, more people mean that more homes and more roads that lead to them must be built. And new home development creates urban sprawl.

Mike Moffatt, executive director of the Smart Prosperity Institute, outlined the crisis that exploding population has wrought for environmentalists. “What [land] isn’t being used for housing is either being used for nature, like the Greenbelt, or for farmlands, – and we’re already losing 175 acres a day in Ontario of farmland to development.”

Ontario environmentalists like Moffatt are fighting to save its glorious Greenbelt from ever-greater development and sprawl. Today, plans to run a highway through a portion of the belt are advancing.

Like most environmentalists in Ontario, Moffatt fears that at any time the government could decide to develop “little pieces” of the Greenbelt. Sooner or later, Moffatt fears, those little pieces could add up to great big chunks.

To be crystal-clear, the new immigrant total will far exceed 1.45 million. New immigrants will grow their existing families and petition certain family members. Princeton University scholars estimated, conservatively, that each migrant petitions three relatives living abroad. Within a generation, the 1.45 million new Canadians could swell to more than 3 million.

Trudeau and Fraser have concocted an immigration plan that will devastate Canada. Immigration isn’t a one-off. Arriving immigrants need nurturing, a compassionate exercise that often comes at the expense, at least partially, of the native-born population. The Canadian government and the corporate elite are all-in on more immigrants. But, if the population at large knew that the arriving 1.45 million immigrants would more than double during many of their lifetimes and degrade Canada’s natural beauty, it would be staunchly opposed.

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

Record Immigration-Driven Population Surge In Canada

Veteran And Hero Cecil Travis Of The Washington Senators

By Joe Guzzardi

Baseball history is rich with inspiring stories about Hall of Fame players who served with distinction during World War II, then returned to the diamond, and picked up their stellar careers exactly where they left off. In 1942, Marine Corp Captain Ted Williams hit .356; came back in 1946 to hit .342, the first of his 13 consecutive .313 or better seasons. Williams’ 1946 accomplishments earned him the American League MVP award, and, in 1949, he won his second MVP. New York Yankees’ shortstop Phil Rizzuto, after two productive years, joined the Navy, and served in the Pacific Theater from 1943 to 1946. Once reunited with the Yankees, Rizzuto excelled, won the 1950 MVP title, and played on five All-Star teams.

But for another shortstop, his World War II experiences brought an end to what certainly would have been a Hall of Fame career. The Washington Senators’ Cecil Travis broke into baseball with a bang. In May 1931, after hitting .356 for the Double-A Chattanooga Lookouts, the Washington Senators called Travis up. Travis got five consecutive hits in his first-ever game, quickly establishing himself as one of the American League’s most stellar players.

Playing shortstop and third base, Travis, age 18, compiled a .322 batting average in 1940, and his 1941 season, his ninth, was his best. Playing in all 152 games for the Senators, Travis batted .359, second only to Ted Williams’ incredible .406. Travis led the league with 218 hits and finished second with 19 triples. He also had a career-high 101 RBIs. Unfortunately, Travis, who hit .300 or better in eight of his first nine seasons, played for the perennial-losing Senators, a team that got little media attention. Otherwise, fans nationwide would have hailed Travis as a superstar.

A month after Pearl Harbor, the Army inducted Travis and sent him to Georgia’s Camp Wheeler. By 1944, Travis joined the 76th Infantry Division’s Special Forces and was shipped to Europe for active duty. The 76th entered the European Theater in December. That winter, during the Battle of the Bulge’s final days and in pursuit of Hitler’s retreating German soldiers, Americans suffered through bitter cold. Travis developed frostbite on two of his toes and spent time recovering in a French hospital.

After the 76th was deactivated in June 1945, Travis returned home, and by September, manager Ossie Bluege inserted his name into the Senators’ starting lineup. But Travis never returned to his pre-war excellence, and his potential Hall of Fame career came to a screeching halt. Travis wasn’t the same player who had compiled a .327 career batting average before the war. That September, he hit .241, and .252 in 1946, his last season as a full-time player.

On August 15, 1947 at Griffith Stadium, the Senators celebrated “Cecil Travis Night.” At the ceremony, which former Supreme Allied Commander General Dwight D. Eisenhower attended, Travis was showered with gifts, including a fancy DeSoto automobile and a 1,500-pound Hereford bull. Travis officially retired after the 1947 season – he hit .216 as a part-time player – and then until 1956, he scouted for the Senators.

Travis, like most World War II veterans, refused to blame his military service for derailing his baseball career. Instead, Travis simply said that his four years away from the game were “too long.” He said, “We had a job to do, an obligation, and we did it. I was hardly the only one.” Bob Feller and Williams lobbied unsuccessfully for Travis’ Hall of Fame induction, and pointed out that Travis’ .314 career average ranked him favorably with other Hall of Fame shortstops. But as Travis philosophically said: “I was a good player, but I wasn’t a great one.”

At age 93, on his farm in his native Georgia, Travis, the player that umpires once named their favorite – that Feller considered one of the toughest batters he faced and that Williams labeled as an efficient pure hitter – died from heart failure.

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

Veteran And Hero Cecil Travis Of The Washington Senators

Lame-Duck Session Might Include Amnesty Push

By Joe Guzzardi

Between today and Jan. 3, when the 118th Congress convenes, the nation may undergo a shift away from the party that minimizes border security to the party that favors enforcement and a more rational immigration policy. The outcome will depend on more than the Election Night results.

A hotly contested lame-duck session that will include a major amnesty push will play a significant role in the political dynamic of the next two years. Voters have consistently rejected amnesty because legalizing illegal immigrants incentivizes future illegal immigration waves, immediately expands the labor market, thereby harming U.S. workers, most particularly the 4 million that turn 18 each year, and vulnerable low-skilled, American job seekers.

Lame-duck sessions represent opportunities for the outgoing Congress to make one final push for their pet causes, even though, despite their terms in office, they’ve been unable to legislatively achieve their personal wish list. From the defeated or retired legislators’ perspectives, since they’re no longer accountable to their constituents, they have nothing to lose.

Efforts to end lame-duck sessions, dating back 90 years, have failed. The 20th Amendment, approved in 1933, was originally drafted to eliminate the lame duck. The amendment’s proponents argued that lame ducks were subject to nefarious influences. Moreover, passing lame-duck legislation might contradict the voices of the people as expressed in the last election. But the 20th Amendment didn’t definitively prohibit lame-duck sessions. Instead, dodging its original intention, the amendment simply moved the date on which the newly elected President and Congress took office from March to January.

Since the 20th Amendment didn’t kill off the lame duck, Congress will have to deal with it. If Democrats prevail in November, then a disastrous amnesty and other immigration-expanding measures are possible. More immigration has a host of Capitol Hill allies: religious and academic institutions, special interest groups, social media, big business and lobbyists who spent $3.7 billion to influence peddle targeted congressional members.

Higher immigration levels mean more consumers, and more cheap labor, so naturally corporate interests favor higher immigration levels. Democrats are united and tireless in their commitment and determination to enact amnesty. Last year, Democrats tried to sneak amnesty into a larger budget bill. This bill was scheduled to go through the reconciliation process, meaning it would only require a simple majority to pass, and the problematic filibuster would have been avoided. But the Senate Parliamentarian had to confirm that the bill’s contents specifically dealt with the federal budget.

Democrats unconvincingly argued that giving millions of illegal aliens legal status was a budgetary matter. Nevertheless, the Parliamentarian ruled against all three amnesty attempts.

Big business, anticipating December, is hard at work with a multifaceted game plan that includes multiple immigration provisions in unrelated amendments that it wants to include in the must-pass National Defense Authorization Act. The amendments would give more low- and high-skilled workers legal U.S. work permission.

Other amnesty schemes are afoot. California Senator Alex Padilla, appointed to replace Vice President Kamala Harris, is working in concert with Illinois Senator Dick Durbin to change registry laws to allow illegal immigrants to apply for permanent residence after they’ve lived in the U.S. for at least seven years, legalizing about 8 million illegal aliens. Padilla’s proposal reflects Democrats’ mindset – all roads can lead to amnesty.

When the lame-duck period begins, one fundamental principal should guide the GOP – no amnesty deals! The U.S. has more immigration than the nation can manage. More than 1 million lawful permanent residents arrive annually; millions more enter on employment visas, and fiscal year 2022 ended with a staggering 2,378,944 migrant border encounters, the highest ever recorded, but exclusive of the 599,000 known “gotaways” that Customs and Border Protection agents estimate eluded capture, but including an estimated 78 on the FBI’s terrorist watch list.

Since the only way to ban the lame duck would be through another constitutional amendment, Democrats and Republicans could adopt a civil tone if just for a few weeks. The parties could agree that a lame-duck session cannot create major legislation and simply let the next Congress take up leftover business.

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

Babe Ruth Promised Johnny Sylvester A Home Run And Kept It

By Joe Guzzardi

Baseball is rich with legend and lore. At the center of many of the most well-known stories is Babe Ruth. The Big Bam’s 1932 called shot off Chicago Cubs pitcher Charlie Root is still contested today. But in the 1926 World Series, when New York Yankees faced off against the St. Louis Cardinals, details about Ruth’s promise to a hospitalized young boy, Johnny Sylvester, have, over the elapsed decades, become muddled.

Charlie Poekel’s book, “Babe and the Kid,” sets the record straight. Eleven-year-old Johnny, kicked in the head by a horse and considered at death’s door, was a huge New York Yankees fan. His father, a well-connected New Jersey executive, got word to the Yankees that his son’s spirits would be lifted if the team could do something special for Johnny.

The Yankees received the message and sent an autographed ball to Johnny in care of his father’s New York office. One side read: “We’re glad to know you knocked the bug for a home run.” On the ball’s other side, Ruth wrote, “I’ll knock a homer for you on Wednesday’s game.” The Cardinals also sent an autographed baseball that included 14 players and Rogers Hornsby’s signature: “Hoping you will soon be batting 1,000 percent in good health.” Historians consider Hornsby baseball’s best-ever right-handed hitter; the “Rajah” hit .400 or better three times.

Although many accounts have Ruth at Johnny’s bedside when he made his promise, on game day October 6 the Bambino was in St. Louis where he hit three home runs, and led the Yankees to a 10-5 victory that tied the series 2-2. Johnny’s doctors noticed that his temperature miraculously dropped two degrees, and within a few days, the boy was back home. Then followed an even greater surprise for Johnny. Ruth strode into Johnny’s room where he spent about half an hour. When a shocked Johnny finally could form words, he expressed regret that the Yankees lost the series. Tactfully, Sylvester didn’t mention that Ruth made the seventh game’s final out when he was caught stealing, the greatest baserunning blunder in the sport’s history.

While the Ruth baseball was Johnny’s most treasured possession, Lou Gehrig sent a signed game-used ball; Wimbledon tennis champion “Big” Bill Tilden and football great Red Grange, the University of Illinois’ “Galloping Ghost,” gifted an autographed football and a tennis racquet. Each wrote personal letters to Sylvester.

As Johnny grew into adulthood, he attended Princeton, starred on the university’s varsity hockey team, and once scored a hat trick, three goals in a single game. In 1942, his application to serve as an apprentice in the U.S. Navy was accepted, and he spent most of World War II in the Pacific Theater as a lieutenant commanding submarine chaser 520s that patrolled offshore for enemy activity.

Johnny ended his naval service in 1945, and two years later, April 27, 1947, the nation celebrated “Babe Ruth Day.” Attention then returned to the by-now familiar Ruth-Sylvester saga. Ruth, however, had recently been in New York’s French Hospital for 81 days; no visitors allowed. Cancer had cut Ruth’s time short. The Daily News brokered a reunion – 21 years after their initial meeting – that included Ruth, Sylvester and his wife Marita. Babe to Johnny: “The last time I saw you, you were a skinny little kid.” Johnny to Babe: “I’m all grown up now, thanks to you.”

A few minutes of friendly banter followed as Johnny pulled out the ball that Ruth signed. Seeing the signatures again, Ruth spoke wistfully about his 1926 teammates. When their time together ended, Johnny observed to Marita that Ruth had lost weight, and, dressed in pajamas and bathrobe, was gaunt. As he took one last look around before leaving Ruth’s apartment, Johnny said: “Ain’t he a swell guy.”

On a sweltering August 19, 1948, thousands lined up around St. Patrick’s Cathedral to pay their final respects to Ruth. Inside, at a service presided over by His Eminence Francis Cardinal Spellman, and assisted by 44 Roman Catholic priests and 12 altar boys, sitting front and center was Johnny Sylvester, linked forever in baseball lore to Babe Ruth.

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

Babe Ruth Promised Johnny Sylvester A Home Run And Kept It

Clinton’s Post 1994 Mid-Term Immigration Awakening

By Joe Guzzardi

Every now and again, both during and after his two-term presidency, Bill Clinton espoused sound immigration thoughts that focused on the nation’s best interests. Most recently, Clinton, without naming Joe Biden, took direct aim at the sitting president’s open border fiasco.

On a CNN podcast, and in response to a question about economic migrants who are, in the host’s description, “gaming” the asylum system, Clinton replied that “there’s a limit” at which point open borders will cause “severe disruption.” Clinton added that the established immigration protocols, presumably a reference to the traditional agencies that assist incoming immigrants, function on the assumption that border conditions would “be more normal.”

“Severe disruption” may be the kindest way to describe the chaos in the Rio Grande Valley and other entry points along the Southwest Border. And severely disrupted is an understatement to define the conditions in sanctuary cities New York, Chicago and Washington, D.C. where the mayors are grappling unsuccessfully to accommodate the migrants that Texas and Florida governors Greg Abbott and Ron DeSantis send north. New York Gov. Kathy Hochul summoned the National Guard to help Adams with his plan, still in flux, to relocate the migrants to a Randall Island tent city. Adams, who declared the incoming migrants’ need for assistance “a humanitarian crisis,” pleaded to no avail with Biden for a minimum $500 million emergency aid infusion. Having no money to deal with incoming migrants is as disruptive, to use Clinton’s word, as conditions get.

Clinton has long been aware of over-immigration’s effect on American citizens. In his 1995 State of the Union address, given shortly after Republicans picked up eight Senate seats and a net 54 House seats post a GOP mid-term rout to win congressional control for the first time in four decades, Clinton spoke about the anxiety Americans experience during periods of unchecked immigration. Clinton listed many dangers that illegal immigration presents to Americans that included illegal hiring, the subsequent U.S. job losses and providing costly social services. Clinton’s word-for-word conclusion: “It is wrong and ultimately self-defeating for a nation of immigrants to permit the kind of abuse of our immigration laws we have seen in recent years, and we must do more to stop it.”

During his SOU speech, Clinton mentioned Barbara Jordan, the former U.S. representative who chaired the U.S. Commission on Immigration Reform. The commission’s goal was to establish “credible, coherent immigrant and immigration policy.” The African-American Democrat from Texas endorsed significant legal immigration reductions with an emphasis on high-skilled admissions, fewer refugees, more deportations and a chain migration overhaul that would limit sponsorship to nuclear family members. Jordan distilled her immigration vision in a sentence: “Those who should get in, get in; those who should be kept out, are kept out; and those who should not be here will be required to leave.

However, Jordan died just months after releasing her report, after which a civil rights, Hispanic advocacy coalition opposed to Jordan’s immigration goals strong-armed Clinton into backing away. Had Jordan lived, her presence would have kept Clinton committed to her commonsense immigration reform rules.

Should the GOP manage to recapture Congress, no sure thing, the results won’t spawn a 1995-style immigration awareness in Biden similar to Clinton’s. As Vice President, Biden continuously hailed “constant” and “unrelenting” immigration stream “in large numbers” as America’s source of strength. Given the red carpet welcome Biden has extended to millions of illegal immigrants and got-aways, complete with, in many cases, parole and work authorization, a presidential immigration awakening is highly improbable.

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

Clinton’s Post 1994 Mid-Term Immigration Awakening