Category: Joe Guzzardi

Bussed Migrants Prove Limits to Inviting the World

Bussed Migrants Prove Limits to Inviting the World

by Joe Guzzardi

Emotions are raw; temperatures are heated, and embattled parties are exchanging strong statements. The uproar’s cause: illegal immigrants being sent to sanctuary cities. New York, Chicago and Washington, D.C. mayors Eric Adams, Lori Lightfoot and Muriel Bowser allege that Texas, Florida and Arizona governors – Greg Abbott, Ron DeSantis and Doug Ducey, respectively – are playing politics with migrants’ lives, and that racism motivates their actions.

After calling Abbott a racist, Lightfoot openly questioned the Texas governor’s Christian values. Bowser declared that the migrants’ arrival constituted a public emergency, and asked the White House to summon the National Guard, an ignored request. Fulfilling a promise he made in April and upping the ante in the immigration debate, DeSantis sent two planes with migrants, mostly Venezuelans, to Martha’s Vineyard, an elitist playground. In the spring, the Florida Department of Transportation received DeSantis’ approval to set aside $12 million to fly the aliens to Martha’s Vineyard and Delaware. Abbott sent two busloads to D.C.’s Naval Observatory, Vice President Kamala Harris’ residence.

DeSantis and the other governors counter the mayors’ political grandstanding charges by saying that the financial burden illegal immigrants create should be shared among the states. In the governors’ collective opinions, no destinations are better suited as new homes for aliens than sanctuary cities whose leaders have long avowed their willingness to accept them.

Days after the migrants arrived in Chicago – and the total 500 headcount is miniscule compared to the millions that have crossed into Texas – Lightfoot changed her hospitable tone. She shipped the aliens unannounced to suburban Elk Grove Village. Mayor Craig Johnson was as displeased as Adams, Lightfoot and Bowser with the influx of mostly poor, undereducated and unskilled into his municipality. Johnson asked: “Why are they coming to Elk Grove?”

Johnson’s question is valid. From the moment migrants cross the border, during their resettlement, and indefinitely into the future, taxpayers fund the exorbitant costs.

A new financial analysis from the Federation for American Immigration Reform found that to provide for the 1.3 million illegal aliens that Biden has released into the interior and the 1 million estimated gotaways, taxpayers will be assessed $20.4 billion annually, a sum that will be added to the existing $140 billion that’s allotted each year to the existing, long-term illegal alien population. FAIR estimates that each illegal alien costs American taxpayers $9,232 per year, and further calculates that the $20.4 billion could provide Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program (SNAP) benefits to more than 7 million additional needy families, fund and expand the entire National School Lunch Program, hire more than 315,000 police officers to combat the nation’s escalating crime wave across the country, and hire 330,000 new teachers, which would end America’s long-standing teacher shortage.

Bussed Migrants Prove Limits to Inviting the World

The billions of dollars spent on migrants is against a backdrop of unmet needs in American families. A Brandeis University study found that 35 percent of American families, despite working full-time, year-round, do not meet the “basic family needs budget” – the amount needed for rent, food, transportation, medical care and minimal household expenses. For black and Hispanic families, 50 percent cannot afford life’s fundamentals. The Brandeis survey showed that low-income families with children are struggling; more than two-thirds of full-time workers don’t earn enough to make ends meet. Those families would need to earn about $11 more per hour to fully cover basics costs, or about $23,500 in additional annual earnings. Black and Hispanic families would require a $12 hourly income spike, $26,500 annually, to meet the family budget.

Biden campaigned as Scranton Joe, working America’s champion. But as president, Biden has abandoned his commitment to lower- and middle-class families. Instead, Biden has rewarded illegally present foreign nationals with billions of dollars. As a result, Scranton Joe is as unpopular in his hometown as he is nationwide. In Pennsylvania’s 8th District that includes Scranton, Biden’s approval rating is 38 percent, indicative of his failures.

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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.

Bussed Migrants Prove Limits to Inviting the World

Secretary Walsh Confused About Facts

Secretary Walsh Confused About Facts

By Joe Guzzzardi

Give Department of Labor Secretary Marty Walsh grudging credit. Walsh may be the only honest man in President Biden’s administration. When asked to comment on the August Bureau of Labor Statistics jobs report and the alleged worker shortage, Walsh didn’t give a mealy-mouthed reply.

Instead, Walsh, supposedly appointed and confirmed to represent the American labor force, came right out and talked about the job market’s “inequity.” Walsh elaborated that in his discussions with corporate officials, they’re unanimously in favor of simplifying the visa process, and of “immigration reform,” well-known amnesty code words. True nirvana for Walsh and his corporate overlords would be more immigration, occurring more quickly, “the only way” to improve the economy, the labor secretary insisted.

Analysts who have followed Walsh’s political career aren’t surprised by his abandonment of American workers in favor of foreign-born labor. As Boston’s mayor, Walsh responded to President Trump’s threat to defund sanctuary cities like his with this brazen retort, defying immigration law: “If people [illegal immigrants] want to live here, they’ll live here. They can use my office. They can use any office in this building.” Walsh also pledged to support and expand the Mayor’s Office of New Bostonians [illegal immigrants] to increase access to City Hall services. As a state representative, Walsh voted “yes” on instate tuition for illegal aliens.

Through several administrations, labor secretaries have been prominent mouthpieces for illegal immigration expansion. In 2001, George W. Bush appointed Elaine Chao, married to Mitch McConnell, a Kentucky U.S. senator known for his immigration advocacy. Hilda Solis followed Chao. A California U.S. representative, Solis, 100 percent of the time, cast votes that would either expand immigration or compromise enforcement. After leaving the Cabinet, Solis became Los Angeles County supervisor chair, and unsurprisingly her immigration advocacy continued. After Chao and Solis departed, other immigration advocates followed: Thomas Perez, Alexander Acosta and Eugene Scalia.

We have to go way back to the Carter administration to find a labor secretary, Ray Marshall, who spoke the truth about immigration. In an interview about the H-1B visa, Marshall called it “One of the best con jobs ever done on the American public and political systems.” Unfortunately, Marshall only got around to telling it like it is decades after his appointment ended.

Secretary Walsh Confused About Facts

Returning to Walsh, the danger is that he’s wrong on his facts and is promoting a goal that will further undermine U.S. workers – more foreign-born labor. To keep voters’ eyes off the ball, the government doesn’t issue reports on the total number of temporary guest workers admitted each year. The aggregate, however, can be estimated through available data.

The U.S. has an abundance of immigrant labor, some on employment visas, and others who have entered either legally or illegally. Analysts estimate that about 1 million guest workers are in the economy, and each year about 1 million lawful permanent residents will receive lifetime-valid employment authorization. Roughly half of the guest workers are considered white-collar, including tech workers, accountants and bankers.

Included among the visas that facilitate international white-collar employment are H-1Bs, L-1s, J-1s, Optional Practical Training (OPT) and O-1s. The H-2A and the H-2B visas open up blue-collar jobs in agriculture, construction, forestry, leisure and hotel services for foreign nationals. Not accounted for in this broad overview is the ultimate effect that 2.1 million illegal immigrant border crossers will have on employment. Many have already received parole, an immigration status Department of Homeland Security Secretary Alejandro Mayorkas improperly applied, but which nevertheless includes employment approval.

The very high level of immigrant labor is not only hurtful to existing employment-age Americans, but also to the 4 million who turn 18 every year, and begin to look for permanent jobs or part-time positions to supplement family incomes or to save for college education. The U.S. doesn’t need to import labor to serve cocktails or to pour cement. A responsible labor secretary would protect Americans’ labor interests and not send out a clarion call for more immigrants to compete with U.S. workers. A pro-America labor secretary would promote mandatory e-Verify and demand strict internal job site enforcement.

Walsh is not that hoped for, but ever-elusive labor secretary. He’s just another immigration shill in an administration that, from top to bottom, is committed to undoing the sovereign American nation through open borders and imported labor.

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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.

Secretary Walsh Confused About Facts

NFL Starts Second Century; George Halas Remembered

NFL Starts Second Century; George Halas Remembered

By Joe Guzzardi

The National Football League has started its second century as the gridiron world’s highest achievable professional level. Formed in 1920 as the American Professional Football Association (APFA), it rebranded itself in 1922 as the NFL. Going back to the APFA’s birth, George Halas has been football’s most prominent and creative head coach. Moreover, had George Herman “Babe” Ruth not been slamming baseballs into outer space, Halas might have been the New York Yankees’ regular right fielder.

Halas’ success as a head coach began in 1921 when he led the Chicago Staleys to a 10-7 victory over the Buffalo All-Americans in an end-of-season league championship contest. For the next half-century, Halas was a player, head coach, owner and front office executive. Most well-known for leading the Chicago Bears, the “Monsters of the Midway,” to eight NFL titles, Halas also took credit for renaming his team. Halas had a close personal relationship with Chicago Cubs owner Philip Wrigley. In rebranding the Staleys, Halas concluded that since football players are much bigger than baseball’s Cubs, they must be “Bears.”

NFL Starts Second Century; George Halas Remembered
George Halas baseball card

But Halas’ long run as NFL icon may never have happened – or would have been delayed by a decade or so – if he had won a New York Yankees’ starting outfield slot. The Yankees had been following Halas’ baseball career since his junior year at the University of Illinois. A three major sports star, Halas played end on the football team, could shoot a basketball and starred on the baseball team, where he hit for average, knew his way around the basepaths, and excelled in the outfield. Halas hit .350 during his sophomore season, good enough to impress Yankees’ scout Bob Connery, who invited him to join the Yankees at spring training. Halas declined, but promised to keep in touch after he earned his university engineering degree. Then, World War I intervened, and Halas enlisted in the Navy.

Discharged after the war, Halas honored his pledge to Connery, signing with the Yankees for a $500 bonus and a $400 monthly salary. Earlier, Illinois awarded Halas his diploma as a tribute for his war service. His college education completed, in the spring of 1919, Halas reported to the Yankees where he made an immediate impression. The New York Times scouting report: “He is swift afoot and is a heady and proficient base runner. He covers a lot of ground in the outfield, and best of all he is a world of enthusiasm for the game.”

But from the outset, Halas had cursed luck. In a spring training game, batting against the Brooklyn Dodgers Hall of Famer Rube Marquard, Halas, trying to stretch a double into a triple, injured his hip sliding hard into third, which put him out of commission for the season’s first few months. As Halas recalled: “That slide was the beginning of the end of my baseball career.” Halas’ bum hip slowly healed. In May 1919, he led off against the Philadelphia A’s and connected for his first hit, one of only two singles in his brief MLB career. In 22 at-bats, Halas hit .091 and was demoted to the AAA St. Paul Saints. By 1920, Ruth, a blossoming superstar, was a Yankee, and Halas was embroiled in a contract dispute with the Saints. Halas then accepted an offer from the A.E. Staley Co. to form football’s best semi-pro team.

Halas lived a rich and rewarding life. Not only did Halas co-create the NFL, but he also compiled a .671 professional coaching record and was named an All-Pro end. He served in World Wars I and II, earned the rank of Captain and was awarded a Bronze Star. With his unique T-formation, Halas’ 1940 Bears trounced the Washington Redskins 73-0 in history’s most lopsided NFL Championship game. And, however briefly, Halas proudly wore a Yankees’ uniform.

In 1983, at age 88, “Papa Bear,” as Halas was lovingly called, died after a brief battle with pancreatic cancer, one of his few losing fights.

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

NFL Starts Second Century; George Halas Remembered

Althea’s Accomplishments Transcend Serena’s

Althea’s Accomplishments Transcend Serena’s

By Joe Guzzardi

Althea Gibson represents to black professional tennis players what Jackie Robinson is to American blacks in Major League Baseball. Gibson, a 1950s era player, pioneered the way for Arthur Ashe, Zina Garrison and the Williams sisters, Venus and Serena. The difference between Gibson and Robinson is that most Americans instantly recognize Jackie’s name, while only a handful of septuagenarians who followed tennis decades ago remember Gibson. In 1950, Gibson broke the tennis color barrier when she became the first black to play in New York’s national tennis championship, now called the U.S. Open.

Gibson’s family migrated from South Carolina to Harlem in 1929. For Althea to become the world’s №1 ranked women’s tennis player 20 years later seemed improbable, but turned into reality.

In her early years, Gibson, a lanky six-footer, passed her time fighting with street gangs and shoplifting. Her father, a garage worker, wanted Althea to become a professional boxer. But Althea took to basketball and ping-pong. After she won the city’s paddle tennis championship at age 10, a Police Athletic League supervisor bought her two used tennis racquets. From that moment on, Gibson’s tennis career, although still limited to the black circuit, took off. Althea joined the Cosmopolitan Club, a local black tennis club where the most prosperous Harlem residents played. Gibson soon beat all comers. The impressed club members sent Althea on the nationwide, all-black American Tennis Association tour.

Althea's Accomplishments Transcend Serena's

By 1947, at age 20, Gibson won her first ATA title and went on to win 10 national championships, a still-standing record. By the end of the 1950s, Althea had collected 11 Grand Slam titles, including multiple championships at Wimbledon, the U.S. Open and the French Open, where, in 1956, she won titles in singles and doubles. After winning the 1957 Wimbledon title, New York City honored Gibson with a Broadway ticker-tape parade, an event normally reserved for international dignitaries and World Series winners.

After Gibson retired from tennis, she launched into golf, and in 1964 became the first black woman to join the Ladies Professional Golf Association. Gibson played 171 events between 1963 and 1977, but never won a title. Although she was one of the LPGA’s top 50 money winners for five years, over the course of her golf career, she earned a meager $19,250.25. But, as she did in tennis, Gibson opened doors for black female golfers like Shasta Averyhardt, Sadena Parks, Mariah Stackhouse, Cheyenne Woods and Ginger Howard. When she learned about Gibson’s groundbreaking LPGA involvement, Howard said that “breaking those barriers” (golf and tennis were played almost exclusively by wealthy whites) was “a huge step.”

Had Gibson played in today’s era alongside Williams, she would have earned vast wealth and Hollywood-like fame. Forbes placed Williams’ net worth at $260 million, and Serena, who has more than a dozen corporate partners, is even more successful off the court where she’s grossed more than $340 million. Today, Williams’ primary focus is Serena Ventures which has $111 million invested in 60 seed companies.

Gibson, on the other hand, was born poor and lived in poverty most of her life. Before she died in near-bankruptcy in 2003, her finances were so dire that fellow champion Billie Jean King helped her pay off her debts. During Gibson’s tennis heyday, prize money was not awarded, and she had no corporate endorsements. After her playing days ended, Gibson struggled to make ends meet by touring with the Harlem Globetrotters, representing a national baking company and giving tennis lessons.

But Gibson is finally getting her due. In 2019, a statue honoring her was unveiled outside Arthur Ashe Stadium. In Harlem, a street has been renamed Althea Gibson Way, and the U.S. Mint may soon produce a 25-cent piece with Gibson’s image. Remembering Althea, Billie Jean said that she “always felt connected to her and thankful and grateful for what she’s done for people of color and me.”

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

Labor Day and the Vanishing American Worker

Labor Day and the Vanishing American Worker

by Joe Guzzardi

Unemployed individuals, especially during sustained jobless periods, suffer from stress that is often so intense that mental anxiety ultimately affects their physical well-being. Losing the self-identity and confidence that comes from having steady employment and regular income creates an enormous physical and mental challenge. The physical setbacks most likely to occur after job loss are headaches, backaches, heart disease, high blood pressure and diabetes. Since the unemployed no longer have work-related health care coverage, desperately needed treatment goes wanting, and physical disorders may worsen.

With tens of millions of Americans jobless and without health benefits in their underemployed status, the nation is experiencing an accelerating health crisis. Yet for decades, the federal government has persisted in issuing employment-based visas to foreign-born nationals. To be completely clear, a visa is synonymous with a job – a job that an American or legally present immigrant will not receive, because of the ready availability of cheap, imported labor.

The State Department issues so many categories of work visas that the exact total can be a mystery even to the most well-informed. Including qualifying family members of the primary visa recipient, the total is roughly 35. Whatever the Bureau of Labor Statistics identifies as an occupation category, a visa is most likely available to a foreign national to take the job.

The donor class persistently lobbies Congress, claiming acute worker shortages, and demands more foreign employees when domestic labor is plentiful. Even visas that expressly exclude work permission, the B-1 temporary business visitor, have been used to displace Americans. Despite the potential availability of able-bodied U.S. workers, Congress often increases existing visa caps. The H-2B for domestic nonagricultural workers is an example.

Daniel Costa, the Economic Policy Institute’s Director of Immigration Law and Policy Research, analyzed recent H-2B data and found that although the visa has an annual 66,000 cap, Congress and the White House have supplemented the total during the past few years. In 2021, 117,000 H-2B workers were present; in 2022, however, the program will increase to more than 150,000, a record high. The H-2B program has indirectly encouraged employers in the main hiring categories in which the visa is used – landscaping, construction, forestry, food processing, restaurants and hospitality – to engage in unscrupulous practices. Department of Labor statistics that Costa studied showed that between 2000 and 2021, employers stole $1.8 billion from U.S. and foreign-born workers.

Wage theft in the H-2B program is a grave concern. The Government and Accountability Office, after analyzing ten diverse cases, found thatdifferent industries with employees in 29 states failed to pay promised wages, overtime and charged H-2B workers exorbitant fees. The GAO also uncovered employers and recruiters who submitted fraudulent documentation to government officials, evaded IRS payroll taxes and laundered money.

Labor Day and the Vanishing American Worker

The total count of potential workers climbs daily. The anticipated 2.1 million illegal aliens that will cross the Southwest Border will eventually, for the most part, either be granted asylum or parole; both come with work authorization. Sadly, few in Congress and no one in the White House cares when a foreign-born worker displaces an American. Since 2000, the total foreign-born population, a record 47 million, has grown by 50 percent; it’s doubled since 1990, tripled since 1980, and quintupled since 1970 – all workers or potential workers.

The U.S. doesn’t need 150,000 H-2B visas, the total Costa anticipates, to mow lawns, serve meals or hang dry wall. Americans can and will do those jobs, assuming a living wage. In his earlier reports, Costa wrote that “no labor shortages [exist] at the national level in the top H-2B occupations.” But the federal government and its Chamber of Commerce toadies are indifferent to displaced U.S. workers’ plights, their families or recently graduated job-seeking college students.

American workers on Labor Day 2022 struggle with a labor market stacked against them. In theory, a solution could be implemented – immediately reduce, with an eye toward eliminating, unnecessary employment visas. Sadly, though, the White House has proven time and again that it refuses to put Americans first.

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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.

Minor League Victory Was Major Labor Win

Minor League Victory Was Major Labor Win

By Joe Guzzardi

Midway during the Major League Baseball owners’ lockout of its players, I promised myself that I was done. No more universal DH, ghost runner, launch angles, tender limbs, watered down Hall of Fame standards and – most of all – no more haggling between the billionaire owners, the multimillionaire players and meddlesome, anti-baseball Commissioner Rob Manfred. I pledged not to watch or listen to one-third of any inning of any 2022 game. Unlike more important self-help vows I’ve made, I stuck to my pledge – no small feat for a fan whose summers for the last seven decades have included daily baseball doses.

But another constant disappointment is the principal reason I’ve steadfastly refused to contribute one thin dime to baseball – its years-long miserly, shameful treatment of minor league players. Advocates for Minor Leaguers (AML) crunched numbers and found that the median annual salary for a minor league player today is $12,000. The federal poverty level is $12,800, and the 2021 average MLB franchise has a $1.9 billion value.

MLB team owners pay their minor hopefuls a standard $400 weekly salary at the Complex League level, $500 per week in Single-A, $600 per week in Double-A and $700 per week in Triple-A. Players are paid only during the regular season and playoffs, despite being required to perform year-round in off-the-field duties. Minor leaguers, whose numbers were slashed when Manfred mandated that 42 teams be eliminated, make an annual salary of between $4,800 and $15,400. Weekly payments for entry-level minor leaguers are less than what minimum-wage workers earn in some states for a 40-hour workweek.

Minor League Victory Was Major Labor Win

Unlike major-leaguers, minor leaguers don’t draw checks until their first regular season game. Professional baseball is specifically exempted from federal labor protections. However, teams still are subject to state wage laws which owners routinely ignored. Instead, owners contended that players should be classified as short-term seasonal apprentices similar to farm laborers, a specious argument that a federal judge rejected.

Harry Marino, who played four minor league seasons, and is now AML executive director, said: “Guys struggle with housing, nutrition and making ends meet on a fundamental level. The system is outdated, exploitative and needs to change.” Last year, one viral AML video showed how nearly a dozen St. Louis Cardinals Double-A affiliate Springfield players were forced to sleep on the floor of a hotel banquet room while on the road.

In 2014, three retired minor league players filed a lawsuit which claimed violations of the federal Fair Labor Standards Act, as well as abuses of state minimum wage and overtime requirements. Eight years later, MLB agreed in court to pay minor leaguers $185 million to settle. An early guesstimate is that as many as 23,000 players could share the money with an average payment to each of $5,000 to $5,500. MLB grudgingly told the court that it approves of the settlement.

Garrett Broshuis, the players’ lead lawyer and a one-time minor league pitcher, called the settlement a “monumental step” toward “fair and just” compensation for the players. Broshuis continued: “I’ve seen first-hand the financial struggle players face while earning poverty-level wages – or no wages at all – in pursuit of their major league dream.”

The minor leaguers’ court win is a refreshing victory for the good guys against the stuffed-pockets, Scrooge McDuck-type tycoons content to let their prospects subsist on a bologna sandwich and sleep on the floor while they eat wagyu beef aboard chartered jets. Good baseball is everywhere – high school, college, Little and Pony Leagues, and the Independent League. Fans shouldn’t support the MLB tightwads, and can find better, more enjoyable baseball outlets close to home.

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

Minor League Victory Was Major Labor Win

Migrant School Enrollment Begins; Less Teacher Time for U.S. Kids

Migrant School Enrollment Begins; Less Teacher Time for U.S. Kids

By Joe Guzzardi

New York City public schools are bracing for a significant enrollment of non-English speaking migrants. The recently arrived youths were bused to Manhattan from Texas, an ongoing transfer from Red to Blue areas of the country that has led to bombastic protests from New York’s sanctuary city Mayor Eric Adams.

The political implications for Adams and Texas Gov. Greg Abbott are yet to be seen. But the consequences for the 80,000 K-12 teachers are immediate and demanding. As Schools Chancellor David Banks said: “There are students coming in every day.” But Banks omitted some key elements of what he called a challenge. The new students have arrived illegally from around the world, about 150 different nations, and will need assistance in every facet of public education. That assistance comes at the expense of New York’s already enrolled student body, as well as its teachers and administrators. No teacher has enough time in his or her day to properly educate existing pupils and simultaneously transition the newcomers into classroom readiness.

Department of Social Services Commissioner Gary Jenkins put on a brave, but foolhardy front. Jenkins said that his agency is going all out to smooth the way for the migrants, support their needs and quickly enroll them. Easier said than done, of course. The burden won’t directly fall on Jenkins, Banks or Adams. The already overworked and under-appreciated teachers will be responsible for educating illegal immigrants, some with no formal classroom background. Good luck to the soon-to-be overwhelmed teachers.

Mayor Adams, Chancellor Banks and Commissioner Jenkins are off to a bad start. With schools opening on September 8, the high-ranking trio felt compelled to do something – anything! – to give teachers, school principals and parents the impression that they have a clue. Adams introduced his short-on-details interagency plan to transition the students before their first day. The children received free-to-them, but taxpayer-funded, school supplies and mobile phones.

Migrant School Enrollment Begins

Few kids who live in an understaffed shelter as these do are prepared to begin a new school year in a new country and new environment. The child who is age-appropriate for the fourth grade, but has no first, second or third grade preparation is unlikely, public education experts concluded, to ever catch up, and are at risk for dropping out.

President Biden’s open borders agenda has hurt millions of already-struggling, poor Americans. Now, Biden’s brazen, illegal, unconstitutional immigration law-breaking will leave its mark on America’s classrooms. Among the biggest losers in the very long list of immigration policy victims that the Biden administration has willfully created are the students who will now have to compete for their teachers’ attention with non-English speaking migrants. Rita Rodriguez-Engberg, director of the Immigrant Students’ Rights Project at Advocates for Children, admitted that migrants who are learning English and living in shelters “will need targeted support in school, including programming to help them learn English and participate in class.” The city is dramatically short of bilingual English language instructors.

Consider that in the 2021-2022 academic year, New York’s K-12 1.1 million student-strong profile showed that 72 percent are economically disadvantaged; 20 percent had disabilities, and 14 percent are English language learners. Into that mix, teachers and education-hungry citizen kids must find a way to accommodate the migrants and create a productive classroom environment – a tough assignment that could spike teachers’ already-high attrition rate. In New York, the two-year teacher attrition rate is 25 percent; 18 percent leave in the first year. The national rate is 10 percent.

Because Abbott has bused illegal immigrants to New York, and Adams complained loudly, the fallout between them is headline news. But, remember, Biden has also authorized migrants’ release into the interior’s every corner. Other schools will soon be juggling teacher time and scarce resources between illegal aliens and citizen students. Coming off of two years of COVID-mandated remote learning, and then vying for teacher time because of Biden’s reckless immigration agenda, U.S. kids have to apply themselves if they want a sound education that will put them on a path to good jobs. But with Biden, American kids’ educations are a distant second to illegal aliens’ schooling needs. Putting U.S. kids second is consistent with Biden’s now well-established America-last agenda.

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JOE GUZZARDI

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.

Migrant School Enrollment Begins; Less Teacher Time for U.S. Kids

Kenny Washington Forgotten Black Pioneer Of Football

Kenny Washington Forgotten Black Pioneer Of Football

By Joe Guzzardi

The multi-billion-dollar NCAA football business begins on Aug. 27 when 13 games will be nationally televised. Three PAC-12 schools are on the richest list: University of Southern California, University of Washington and the University of Oregon.

Not all the preseason headlines, however, involve speculation about which teams might reach the 2023 National Championship Game. UCLA and USC stunned the football world when they announced that, in 2024, they’ll leave the Pac-12. But since UCLA didn’t advise the University of California’s Board of Regents, which includes Gov. Gavin Newsom, the Bruins’ grandiose plan could be scuttled. The Board doesn’t affect USC, a private institution.

Once, back in the PAC-8 days when the pre-season buzz in Southern California was about football’s star players, and not TV billions, no player thrilled fans more than Los Angeles Lincoln High School dynamo and UCLA superstar Kenny Washington. During the 1930s and 1940s, Washington was the Los Angeles area’s most popular athlete. When Washington first donned a UCLA uniform, college football had only 25 black players nationwide; the UCLA campus was 3 percent black.

In his new book, “Walking Alone, the Untold Journey of Football Pioneer Kenny Washington,” Dan Taylor chronicles the tale of a groundbreaking black football star who could have been, had he so chosen, the first to break baseball’s color line. Jackie Robinson, Washington’s UCLA baseball and football teammate, readily acknowledged that Washington was his superior on the diamond.

Kenny Washington Forgotten Black Pioneer

Instead of breaking baseball’s black player ban, in 1946 Washington became the first African-American player in 13 years to join an NFL roster, the Los Angeles Rams. On the field, Washington withstood endless taunting and racist slurs, so ugly that he refused to play in games held in the south. His opponents blatantly fouled him, but referees refused to penalize the rule-breakers.

Washington’s pro-football debut was inauspicious. Playing in the Los Angeles Memorial Coliseum in 96-degree heat against the Philadelphia Eagles and before 30,000 excited fans – the Rams had just relocated from Cleveland – Washington entered the game when Hall of Fame quarterback Bob Waterfield left in the second half. Most of Washington’s passes sailed over receivers’ heads. His coach moved Washington to running back where his stats improved. In his first game at tailback, Washington was, despite knee injuries sustained earlier in his career, the Rams’ leading rusher against the Detroit Lions.

After the 1946 season ended, speculation abounded that Washington, encouraged by Robinson, would leave the Rams to pursue a baseball career with the Brooklyn Dodgers. When Dodgers’ manager Leo Durocher passed on him because “his knee was on the bum,” Washington returned to the Rams, this time with more success. Through his first four 1947 games, Washington scored four touchdowns and had a 7.5 yards per carry average.

In 1948, Washington took another strong stand against bigotry. After its Hawaii training camp disbanded, the Rams headed to Dallas, Texas, a Jim Crow state, to play in an annual exhibition game. Washington refused to play. Eventually, Rams owner Dan Reeves worked out an agreement with the games’ organizers that would pave the way for Kenny and future blacks to play in the Dallas game. Washington played and became the first black to appear in Texas professional football.

Early in the 1948 season, Washington, beset by injuries, announced his football retirement. In previous off-seasons, Washington had starred in black films, and he opted to return to Hollywood. He also had another shot at baseball, a near miss.

Polyarteritis, a heart and lung disease, took Washington, only 51, in 1971. In 1957, speaking on behalf of the NAACP’s Fight for Freedom Fund, Robinson spoke about his friend Washington, calling him “the greatest.” Author Taylor concluded that Washington was a football trailblazer who helped the NFL reintegrate.

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

Kenny Washington Forgotten Black Pioneer

Biden Agenda Excludes Black Workers Concerns

Biden Agenda Excludes Black Workers Concerns

By Joe Guzzardi

On his first day in office, President Biden signed an Executive Order to advance racial equity and to support underserved communities, an admirable goal, and one that most Americans share. Unfortunately for residents of those struggling communities, many of them African-American, on the same day, Biden signed several other Executive Orders that fundamentally changed how the new administration would deal with immigration. Those Executive Orders sent a message around the world that amnesty is on the table, and enforcement, for the most part, was off the table.

Although few could foresee how impossible to carry out Biden’s equity agenda would become once his immigration Executive Orders were implemented, the results are clear now. The huge influx of illegal immigrants at the border – an anticipated 2.1 million this year – legally admitted Ukrainian and Afghan evacuees, and more than 1 million legal immigrants admitted every year on autopilot have made employment conditions tough for underserved black Americans to find employment or to move up from their entry-level jobs into well-paid middle-class positions.

No president genuinely concerned about equity and black Americans’ futures could open the Southwest border and reward foreign nationals who have willfully and knowingly violated U.S. immigration laws with work authorization.

Since Biden took office through July 2022, about 4.9 million illegal immigrants, including about 900,000 gotaways, have crossed the border and entered the interior. For those among the 4.9 million who are working age, which the Bureau of Labor Statistics defines as 18 to 64, many if not most will receive work permission. Evacuees and legal immigrants also receive employment documents. Those who don’t could enter the underground economy, always fertile ground for unscrupulous employers.

Biden Agenda Excludes Black Workers Concerns

But the purposely porous border isn’t the only culprit that suppresses black, Hispanic and other minority workers from moving up in the social strata. The Biden White House allows unnecessary employment-based visas to persist. Dozens of visa categories displace or put at a disadvantage Americans seeking low- and high-skilled jobs in the areas of leisure, landscaping, forestry, technology and medical science. Neither the donor class nor whomever occupies the White House blinks when talented, experienced Americans lose their jobs and have to train their foreign-born replacements. Deeply-in-debt university graduates are behind the eight ball when they’re forced to compete with cheaper overseas labor. The donor class wins; U.S. workers lose.

But the uncomfortable truth is that establishment Washington prefers foreign-born workers. Writing in Newsweek, Pamela Denise Long, a descendants of U.S. slaves advocate, asked why black dreams don’t matter. “Are descendants of U.S. slaves not supposed to notice how we and our countrymen are negatively affected by yet another bastardization of ‘social justice’?”

In her opinion article, Long wrote that “the immigration industrial complex built up around legal and illegal migration has abandoned what is patriotic and pro-American.” She references the 2010 Commission on Civil Rights report which found that the abundance of overseas workers expands the labor market, which eventually led to a 40 percent decline in employed low-skilled, native-born black men. Long called the Biden administration’s policies “the most expansive federal giveaway to legal and illegal migrants since President Reagan’s amnesty of 1986.”

Although Newsweek categorized Long’s essay as opinion, she wrote undeniable truths about the devastating effect that persistent high legal immigration and unchecked illegal immigration have on American workers, especially those with only a high school diploma or less. Long’s essay concluded with this admonition: “By supporting brain drain policies [importing foreign workers], Democrats, and officials who are Republican in name only are traitors against the American people. We see you!”

In his book, “Back of the Hiring Line,” author Roy Beck titled his final chapter, “Prioritize Descendants of Slavery?” Beck concluded that the most helpful immigration policy for non-college educated blacks will also be the correct immigration policy for other vulnerable Americans, including recently arrived legal immigrants. To put all Americans on a path to greater wealth, mass immigration must be dramatically reduced.

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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.

Biden Agenda Excludes Black Workers Concerns

Sanctuary Mayors Cry Uncle; No Más Migrantes

Sanctuary Mayors Cry Uncle; No Más Migrantes

By Joe Guzzardi

Sanctuary cities are once again in the headlines. But this time, sanctuary cities, the bane of immigration law enforcement advocates, have a different spin. Since five-time deported illegal immigrant Jose Inez Garcia-Zarate murdered Kate Steinle in July 2015 on Pier 14 in San Francisco, state and city governments have persisted in welcoming illegal aliens and protecting them from Immigration and Customs Enforcement. San Francisco is a sanctuary city in the sanctuary state of California.

Despite a federal immigration detention request to hold Garcia-Zarate so immigration officials could take him into custody, San Francisco authorities freed the seven-time convicted felon just three months before he killed Steinle. Eventually, Garcia-Zarate was acquitted and sentenced to time served on an illegal firearms possession charge.

Between January 2014 and September 2015, the Center for Immigration Studies reported that sanctuary jurisdictions rejected 17,000 ICE detainer requests – 17,000 individuals who should have been deported but remained to potentially pose criminal risk to U.S. citizens. Claiming that migrants are fleeing poverty and persecution, local leaders have been willing to spend their constituents’ taxpayer dollars on affirmative benefits for the newly arrived illegal immigrants.

Sanctuary Mayors Cry Uncle

Suddenly, however, with President Biden and Department of Homeland Security Secretary Alejandro Mayorkas opening the Southwest border to foreign nationals from 150 countries and clandestinely flying them to faraway cities, attitudes are less welcoming. New York Mayor Eric Adams said that busing migrants from Texas to mid-town Manhattan, as Gov. Gregg Abbott has done, is “cruel.” About 4,000 unlawfully present migrants have entered New York’s shelter facilities since May, an ”unprecedented surge,” said Adams, who has unsuccessfully called on the federal government to intervene.

Washington, D.C. Mayor Muriel Bowser has made the same complaints as Adams, labeling the migrant flood “critical,” issuing identical rejected pleas for federal intervention. Since April, Gov. Abbott has sent more than 6,800 illegal immigrants to Washington. Bowser has begged for the National Guard to intervene “to help prevent a prolonged humanitarian crisis in our nation’s capital resulting from the daily arrival of migrants in need of assistance.” McAllen, Texas, Mayor Javier Villalobos mocked Adams and Bowser. Villalobos said: “The city of McAllen was able to deal with thousands of immigrants a day; I think they can handle a few hundred.”

Adams and Bowser should have known that pleading with the feds, especially Mayorkas, would be futile. At the January U.S. Conference of Mayors, Mayorkas tried to sell the assembled mayors on his new, mostly gutted ICE. But the attendees wanted to hear about border enforcement, a subject Mayorkas studiously avoided.

While it may be overly optimistic to hope for a change now that prominent Democratic mayors are experiencing first-hand the fiscal burden and public safety risks that sanctuary policies create, a shift is in the wind.

The mere existence of sanctuary cities is illegal. Local laws that protect illegal immigrants prevent routine cooperation among municipal, state and federal law enforcement agencies. President Obama’s Attorney General Loretta Lynch realized the importance of keeping law enforcement apprised about any individual’s immigration status. Lynch warned sanctuary cities that they would not receive Justice Department funding in the 2017 fiscal year if they did not comply with 8 USC Section 1373, which prohibits any agency from restraining “in any way” the exchange of information among federal, state and local agencies regarding foreign nationals’ immigration status. Despite saber-rattling from Lynch, and then-Attorney General Jeff Sessions, funding continued.

With millions of border crossers already released into the U.S. interior, and millions more anticipated during Biden’s remaining two and a half years in office, sanctuary cities will come under increasing pressure to provide for their unlawfully present alien residents, an untenable situation for the already underfunded, overcrowded municipalities.

Sanctuary Mayors Cry Uncle