Category: Joe Guzzardi

Uvalde Schools Shutdown 48 Times Due Illegal Immigration Issues

Uvalde Schools Shutdown 48 Times Due Illegal Immigration Issues

By Joe Guzzardi

Among three ongoing wars, the Biden administration concerns itself with only one, Russia’s invasion of Ukraine. That faraway conflict, which has no national interest associated with it, spawned an inflation-spiking $53 billion U.S. taxpayer infusion into corrupt Ukraine. Biden rode roughshod over Congress, demanding that the final bill get to his desk “in the next few days,” and added that “we cannot afford to delay in this vital war effort.”

Two other incursions, both on U.S. soil, aren’t on Biden’s radar. The first is the Southwest Border war, a different battle than the Ukraine conflict since no bombings or tanks are involved. Nevertheless, the invasion of foreign nationals from more than 150 nations is a war against U.S. sovereignty, and Biden isn’t interested enough to travel to witness first-hand the nation-busting events that he has allowed to develop. In his January 2022 story, Washington Timesreporter Stephen Dinan wrote that “more than 44% of encounters with unauthorized migrants in December were with people from beyond Mexico, Honduras, Guatemala and El Salvador. A year ago, that number was just 11%.”

Second is the war against the communities – and specific to this analysis – waged against the local school districts along the border. The establishment media has devoted extensive, merited print coverage and hours of broadcast updates on the Robb Elementary School massacre. Little coverage, however, has been given to Uvalde Mayor’s Don McLaughlin’s statement to Texas Department of Emergency Management officials that, as of Oct. 21, 2021, the academic year’s first few months, Uvalde Consolidated Independent School District officials had to lock down schools “48 times this year due to high-speed pursuits and migrants fleeing from law enforcement.” Mayor McLaughlin had previously said that Biden’s border neglect created a series of robberies and car thefts that further stained his economically depressed city.

Uvalde Schools Shutdown 48 Times Due Illegal Immigration Issues

For children subjected to school shutdowns, their experience is traumatic. In the late 1980s, the period which included the Stockton, Calif., Cleveland School shooting that killed five school children and wounded 32, I taught at a Stockton primary school. During that era, Asian gang drive-by murders and home invasion robberies that often included gun violence were widespread as were the subsequent lockdowns. The school’s front office issued an intercom alert, and teachers gathered their students, directing them to move as far away from the classroom door as possible. There they huddled together in the dark until the alert was lifted, about an hour later. Since the children lived in the neighborhood, they knew the potential consequences could be fatal. Lockdowns in what should be safe places like neighborhood schools is what Biden’s border agenda has brought to Uvalde’s children – American kids living in an American city in Texas, an all-American state.

Biden makes no effort to hide his scorn for border enforcement. Even though off-duty Customs and Border Protection agent Jacob Albarado killed the Robb Elementary gunman Salvador Ramos, and thereby doubtless saved dozens of lives, Biden insultingly disinvited 73 of 80 CBP, mostly from the tactical BORTAC unit, to a photo-op with the president. The event was scheduled for a large open-space facility, but administration officials cited space as a reason for the retracted invitations.

Biden is back in the White House, and Capitol Hill is making angry noises about tough gun control legislation. As for the border, no changes will be forthcoming. Once the memorials and burials are over, Uvalde and other border cities will continue, for at least the duration of Biden’s presidency, as stop-overs for illegal alien invaders. Citizens whose lives have been inexorably damaged because of Biden’s criminal disregard for his oath of office are, to him, inconsequential, collateral damage incurred on the woke path to destroying America.

PFIR analyst Joe Guzzardi writes about immigration issues and impacts. Contact him at jguzzardi@pfirdc.org and joeguzzardi.substack.com.

Uvalde Schools Shutdown 48 Times Due Illegal Immigration Issues

D-Day Hero Morrie Martin Pitched For The Philadelphia A’s

D-Day Hero Morrie Martin Pitched For The Philadelphia A’s

By Joe Guzzardi

Baseball fans who came of age during the 1950s, the National Pastime’s Golden Era, remember Morrie Martin as a journeyman left-handed pitcher who had limited success during his ten-year career. Pitching mostly for the basement-dwelling Philadelphia A’s, Martin’s career record was 38-34. Martin was credited with 23 wins as an A’s; the remaining 15 were spread out among the Brooklyn Dodgers, the Chicago White Sox, the Baltimore Orioles and the St. Louis Cardinals. The stout lefty from Dixon, Mo., made brief appearances for the Chicago Cubs, but didn’t earn a decision.

Martin was much more than a middling MLB hurler who walked more batters, 252, than he struck out, 245. Before Martin was inducted into the U.S. Army on June 2, 1943, he compiled above-average minor league credentials, 16-7, in Grand Forks, N.D., with the Class C Chiefs and in St. Paul, Minn., with the American Association’s Saints, two Chicago White Sox affiliates. Martin’s pitching stints with the Saints represented the last times he touched a baseball until his return home from WWII in 1945.

As Gary Bedingfield reported on his “Baseball in Wartime” website and pursuant to information drawn from Stan Opdkye’s Society of American Baseball Research essay, “Morrie Martin,” Martin entered military service with the Army at Jefferson Barracks, Mo., and then served overseas with the 49th Engineer Combat Battalion where he took part in amphibious landings as part of Operation Torch at North Africa, Operation Husky at Sicily and Omaha Beach on D-Day, June 6, 1944.

D-Day Hero Morrie Martin Pitched For The Philadelphia A's

As an engineer, Martin was among the first to reach shore. Shortly after the D-Day landing, and while on guard duty near Saint-Lô, France, Martin was hit by shrapnel in his neck, left hand and arm. Despite his injuries, Martin remained on the front lines. Late in 1944, he was engaged in the Battle of the Bulge in the Ardennes Mountains of Belgium and suffered frostbite in the bitterly cold temperatures. Nevertheless, Martin remained with his unit until 1945 when he suffered serious, near-fatal injuries.

After Martin took two more rounds of shrapnel wounds, he was buried alive in Germany when the house he took shelter in was shelled. Left for dead, Martin and two other soldiers clawed their way out to rejoin their battalion. At the Battle of the Bulge, Martin suffered a bullet wound to the thigh, and nearly lost his leg when gangrene set in.

Evacuated to a hospital in Saint-Quentin, France, Martin caught a big break. A nurse looked at his chart, saw that he was a professional ball player, and urged him to reject the doctors’ advice that he give his permission to amputate his leg. Instead, more than 150 penicillin shots saved Martin’s leg from amputation, and he slowly worked his way back to the big leagues. Discharged from the Army in October 1945, Martin joined the Brooklyn Dodgers in 1946, and worked his way up through Branch Rickey’s fiercely competitive minor league system.

On April 25, 1949, Martin made his first MLB start against the Boston Braves, the 1948 National League champions. Martin pitched seven quality innings, but his opponent, Bill Voiselle, who pitched a complete game shutout, was better. For the balance of his career, Martin shuffled back and forth between the majors and the minors. Martin peaked in 1951 with the A’s when he compiled an 11-4 record.

On May 25, 2010, in Washington, Mo., Martin died from lung cancer at age 87. For his service in World War II, he was awarded two Purple Hearts, four battle stars and an Oak Leaf Cluster. Prior to his death, Martin told a newspaper reporter how much he valued his wartime service to his country: “We had a job to do, and we did it. I don’t have regrets about the time I missed in baseball. I’m proud of what we did. I’d do it again.” Until that interview, Martin, like most of the Great Generation, was always willing to talk about baseball, but refused to speak about his war heroism.

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

D-Day Hero Morrie Martin Pitched For The Philadelphia A’s

Harvard Eddie Grant Was MLB’s First Fatality In WWI

Harvard Eddie Grant Was MLB’s First Fatality In WWI

By Joe Guzzardi

Eddie Grant, a Harvard Law School graduate and former Cleveland Indians, Philadelphia Phillies, Cincinnati Reds and New York Giants third baseman, was the first major league baseball player killed in World War I. In all, seven other major league players lost their lives in the Great War. They are Lt. Tom Burr, plane crash; Lt. Harry Chapman, illness; Lt. Larry Chappell, influenza; Pvt. Harry Glenn, pneumonia; Cpt. Newton Halliday, hemorrhages; Cpl. Ralph Sherman, drowned, and Purple Heart winner Sgt. Robert “Bun” Troy, shot.
 
Known affectionately among his teammates as “Harvard Eddie,” Grant debuted in the majors in 1905 after he graduated from Harvard where he starred at baseball and was the basketball team’s top scorer. Grant eventually would play 990 games as an infielder through 1915. An average dead ball era hitter, neither spectacular nor a detriment, Grant’s career average was .249 with five home runs. Grant’s best big-league season came in 1909 when he hit .269 as Philadelphia’s leadoff hitter and finished second in the National League with 170 hits. Opposition players considered him an above average fielder and particularly adept at handling bunts. In the 1913 World Series which the Giants lost to the Philadelphia Athletics, 4-1, Grant saw limited action. He pinch-ran and scored in Game 2, and in Game 4, he hit a foul ball pop up that the A’s catcher easily snagged.

Harvard Eddie Grant Was MLB's First Fatality In WWI
Harvard Eddie Grant

On April 6, 1917, two years after his baseball career ended at age 33, and with his law practice barely underway, Grant enlisted in the U.S. Army, the first major league player to sign up. In a letter to a friend, Grant proudly wrote: “I had determined from the start to be in this war should it come to us…I believe there is no greater duty than I owe for being that which I am — an American citizen.’’
 
Tom Simon, writing for the Society for American Baseball Research, recounts Grant’s fateful demise in his defense of America against the advancing Germans. On October 2, 1918, Grant’s 307th Regiment launched an attack in France’s Argonne Forest, a rugged, heavily wooded area with thick underbrush, deep ravines and marshes. Soon, Grant’s superior officers were killed, and Eddie took command. By the morning of the third day, October 5, Grant was exhausted. He hadn’t slept since the offensive’s beginning, and his fellow officers noticed him sitting on a stump with a cup of coffee in front of him, too weak to lift the cup.
 
One of Grant’s troops, a former Polo Grounds policeman, remembered: “Eddie was dog-tired but he stepped off at the head of his outfit with no more concern than if he were walking to his old place at third base after his side had finished its turn at the bat. He staggered from weakness when he first started off, but pretty soon he was marching briskly with his head up.”
 
When the Germans pressed forward, Grant yelled at his men to seek cover while he remained standing, waving his arms to call for stretchers. Grant’s courageous effort to save his fellow soldiers cost him his life. Maj. Charles Wittlesey, Grant’s friend who led the 77th Division in the battle historians call “the Lost Battalion,” said: “When that shell burst and killed that boy, America lost one of the finest types of manhood I have ever known.’’ When the battle ended, Grant’s fellow soldiers, realizing their leader had been killed, were overheard saying, “The best man in the entire regiment is gone.”
 
Grant is interred at France’s Meuse-Argonne American Cemetery along with more than 14,000 American soldiers. World War I historian Mike Hanlon has led tours of the war’s battlefields and the cemetery where he talks about Purple Heart recipient Grant.
 
Then-MLB Commissioner Kenesaw Mountain Landis wanted Grant added to the Hall of Fame for his service to the country. Although Landis’ fine idea was rejected, Grant had a Bronx highway named after him, and a ball yard in his hometown Franklin, Mass. The Giants, Grant’s last major league team, placed a bronze plaque in his honor on the center field fence of the Polo Grounds on Memorial Day 1921. The plaque identified Grant as Soldier – Scholar – Athlete, doubtless the order in which Eddie would like them listed.
 
 
Joe Guzzardi is a Society for American Baseball Research and Internet Baseball Writers Association member. Contact him at guzzjoe@yahoo.com.

All Ukraine All the Time, America Forgotten

All Ukraine All the Time, America Forgotten

By Joe Guzzardi

If only President Biden and Congress loved the U.S. with the same passion the federal government demonstrates toward Ukraine, then inflation-stricken, poorer-by-the-day taxpayers wouldn’t be saddled with $53.6 billion debt that has no ties to their national interest. While in South Korea, Biden signed a $40 billion emergency bill to help Ukraine defend its border against Russia’s incursion. The $40 billion, bumped up from Biden’s original $33 billion request, represents nearly three times the $13.6 billion that Congress approved in March for Ukrainian military and humanitarian aid.

Upon hearing the news that the huge U.S. funding package would be on the way, Ukraine’s President Volodymyr Zelenskyy said, “The war will be bloody, there will be more battles,” which translates to “more U.S. taxpayer money will have to be sent.” One thing is certain: another round of funding for Ukraine will be rushed through Congress without a meaningful exchange with Americans who deserve to know what’s really in these bills, how Ukraine accounts for the billions of dollars, if at all, and the net cost to beleaguered taxpayers to fund a faraway war with no end in sight, and without a defined, tangible mission.

Examples of how rushing into foreign entanglements went awry in Iraq and Afghanistan should be burned into the memories of Biden and members of Congress. A fact sheet that congressional Democrats distributed said that the funding will be used to assist Ukrainian military, national security forces and to provide weapons, equipment, training, logistics and intelligence support. But, to repeat, no one truly knows how the billions of dollars will be spent or who’s accountable.

All Ukraine All the Time, America Forgotten

Equally as troubling as the failure to learn from the past and a high likelihood of no accountability, the U.S. is sending money it doesn’t have. The nation’s current debt is $30.5 trillion or about $91,500 per every single person in the country. Not only is the U.S. “leadership” saddling its citizenry with an enormous debt burden, America’s Southwest border is wide open to all comers from countries near and far.

Taxpayers fund every aspect of the Southwest border invasion – housing, transportation and much more. While record-breaking 8.5 percent inflation has driven millions of low-income families to the brink, Americans watch on their nightly television news broadcasts the embarrassing spectacle of ranking congressional officials bowing and scraping to Zelenskyy. On separate trips, House Speaker Nancy Pelosi and Senate Minority leader Mitch McConnell traveled to Ukraine with their respective delegations to express their support. Pelosi’s office sent what it described as an “unmistakable and resounding message to the entire world: America stands firmly with Ukraine.” McConnell spoke about Ukraine’s defense of its sovereignty and its unity, ironic when the U.S. border remains open to foreign nationals, fentanyl-pushing drug cartels and human traffickers that earn $150 billionannually preying on the vulnerable.

The huge Ukraine funding packages made the headlines and drew the attention of many concerned, weary Americans. But in related news that provides enormous insight into where Congress’ priorities lay – hint: not with American citizens – look at the fine print in the “Additional Ukraine Supplemental Appropriations Act, 2022” that authorized Ukraine’s $40 billion cash cow. Buried in the bill was a proposal to provide the 70,000 unvetted Afghan evacuees with green cards which would mean that, in all probability, they’ll never return home. Department of Homeland Security Secretary Alejandro Mayorkas improperly used parole to admit the unvetted Afghans into the U.S. The Immigration and Nationality Act permits parole to be granted only on a case-by-case basis, and not granted to 70,000 foreign nationals.

Green cards for Afghans were struck from the bill’s final language, but is certain to reappear in future legislation. In the meantime, another parole program, “Uniting for Ukraine,” sailed through. Congress allocated $900 million for a Ukrainian relief fund through September 20, 2023, for “Refugee Entrance and Assistance.” Tellingly, many Ukrainian parolees had already been safely resettled in Europe where they had received temporary immigration status, work permits and free healthcare. The Ukrainians had a good deal; now, the Biden administration has provided a better one.

Biden’s presidency is a bonanza for invading foreign nationals who Customs and Border Protection are forced to welcome. Drug traffickers and human smugglers, as well as Afghans and Ukrainians improperly paroled, are all welcome. Biden’s agenda excludes everyday Americans struggling to get along. Sixteen months into Biden’s presidency, most Americans would be encouraged to see the tiniest hint that the president cares about their futures, but they shouldn’t hold their breath.


PFIR analyst Joe Guzzardi writes about immigration issues and impacts. Contact him at jguzzardi@pfirdc.org.
 

All Ukraine All the Time, America Forgotten All Ukraine All the Time, America Forgotten

Biden Is Bad Transformation

Biden Is Bad Transformation

By Joe Guzzardi

In March 2021, The New York Times published a commentary about President Joe Biden and referred to him as “transformational.” Columnist David Brooks heaped praise on Biden for his economic agenda, and concluded that the government’s role in American life is changing. However, Brooks continued, Biden isn’t causing the shifts in government philosophy, “but he is riding them.”

Today’s “Bidenism,” compared to the formerly moderate Biden, has spurred “large numbers of thinkers” to cast aside their concerns about inflation, as well as other pesky, nagging economic and emotional doubts about government’s place in the lives of citizens. If given the chance, and considering 2021’s rough ride, Brooks might pull back on his flattering column.

During his campaign, Biden promised the nation a transformational government, and he’s delivered, although not quite in the manner some envisioned. Revoking the Keystone XL oil pipeline, halting development of the Arctic National Wildlife Refuge, rejoining the World Health Organization and the Paris Climate Accord, halting construction of the Southern border wall, signing the $1.9 trillion American Rescue Plan Act of 2021 and signing the $1.2 trillion Infrastructure and Investment Act are doubtless transformational. But they were not, as pundits like Brooks had envisioned, universally embraced.

On his pledge to transform America, Biden has delivered, more successfully but with greater damage to his presidency than his most ardent supporters could have envisioned. An NBC poll taken in mid-May showed the president’s approval rating at 39 percent, largely because for the year-long period ended April 2022, the annual inflation rate was 8.3 percent.

Biden Is Bad Transformation

Biden’s transformative immigration developments are never-ending. On back-to-back days, May 16 and May 17, two immigration-related stories broke that demonstrate how porous the U.S. border is and how indifferent the White House is to enforcement. First, the Department of Homeland Security announced that in April U.S.-Mexico migrant encounters hit a new historic high of 234,088; 110,000 were released into the U.S., while under Title 42 about 97,000 were returned.

On May 20, Judge Robert Summerhays, Western District of Louisiana Judge, granted a preliminary injunction blocking Biden from ending Title 42 on May 23. But Biden is defiant in his determination to end Title 42. The Department of Justice immediately announced they will appeal the decision. As Biden and his Department of Homeland Security Secretary Alejandro Mayorkas know, without Title 42, about 500,000 illegal aliens will overwhelm the U.S. border each month and then move into the U.S. interior.

During a Texas border tour, Mayorkas admitted that the U.S. will continue to welcome aliens who make what he mistakenly called a valid claim of asylum protection under U.S. laws. But aliens who travel from around the world are, as an MIT study confirmed, overwhelmingly economic migrants and as such don’t qualify for asylum. The ultimate consequence of Biden’s willful refusal to enforce immigration law: Before his four-year term ends, millions of illegal immigrants will have been admitted, family reunification will begin, and a major demographic transformation of the nation will be underway.

In another recent immigration development, U.S. authorities discovered a tunnel equal to the length of six football fields that drug smugglers had used for an undetermined but doubtlessly lengthy period. When authorities located the tunnel, they seized nearly 2,000 pounds of cocaine, meth and heroin. Because of indifference to border enforcement, U.S. fentanyl deaths exceeded 100,000 in 2021. Cartels, confident that the federal government won’t interfere, also profit from human trafficking, including transporting underage girls for prostitution.

As enthusiastic as Democrats may have been during Biden’s presidential 100-day honeymoon period, today they’re proceeding with caution. Many involved in competitive mid-term elections this fall are hedging, as any watchful politician would, as to the feasibility of accepting the president’s offer to join them on the campaign trail. Giving the appearance of endorsing Biden’s unpopular American transformation will lead to their defeat.


PFIR analyst Joe Guzzardi writes about immigration issues and impacts. Contact him at jguzzardi@pfirdc.org and joeguzzardi.substack.com.

Biden Is Bad Transformation Biden Is Bad Transformation

Population Surges Drying West

Population Surges Drying West

By Joe Guzzardi

The grisly discovery of human remains at the bottom of Lake Mead is a grim reminder of the Southwest’s growing drought crisis. In early May, a family on a boating outing found, partially buried in Lake Mead National Recreation Area’s muddy banks, a four-decades-old skeleton of a man, a suspected homicide, stuffed into a rotted-out barrel. Skeletal remains were also discovered in May at nearby Callville Bay.

Asked if the victim might have been a mob hit, Geoff Schumacher, the vice president of exhibits and programs at Las Vegas’ Mob Museum, said: “I have a feeling that as this water continues to recede, we’re going to be finding more interesting things at the bottom of Lake Mead.” Schumacher may have been referring to the B-29 Superfortress wreckage found in 2015 in Lake Mead’s 130 feet of water; in 1948, when the bomber crashed, Lake Mead’s depth was 260 feet.

While Schumacher isn’t a climatologist, he like other Far West residents is aware of the inevitable and irreconcilable clash between too many people and dwindling natural resources, primarily water. Lake Mead is the largest reservoir in the United States and part of a system that supplies water to at least 40 million people across seven states and northern Mexico. Today, it’s dropped to its lowest level since the Franklin Delano Roosevelt era.

As of August 22, 2021, Lake Mead was filled to just 35 percent of its capacity, and now is at 30 percent. The low water level comes at a time when 95 percent of nine Western states’ land is affected by some level of drought; 64 percent is considered extreme or worse. Shrinking capacity continues a 22-year megadrought that some experts consider the worst in 1,200 years. Megadroughts are defined as droughts that last two decades or longer, but they are not measured by their intensity.

Population Surges Drying West

Snowfall in the Rocky Mountains is Lake Mead’s primary water source. But Audubon Southwest’s policy director Haley Paul said, “Even when the Rocky Mountains get to near-normal levels of snowfall and overall precipitation, what we’ve seen in the last few years is below average river runoff.” Paul explained that drought and heat mean thirstier soils and plants that soak up more water before the precious commodity ever reaches rivers – a compounding domino effect that, because the West is on year 22 of an extended megadrought, will take 22 wet winters to climb out of the hole.

An underreported variable in Lake Mead’s water levels is the population explosion – not an exaggerated expression – in California, Arizona and Nevada. In 1950, the population of Arizona, California and Nevada were, respectively, 750,000, 10 million and 158,000. Today, Arizona, California and Nevada have 7.6 million, 39.7 million and 3.2 million residents. Their principal cities, Phoenix, Los Angeles and Las Vegas have, over the same 70-year period, grown from 221,000 to 4.7 million, from 2 millionto 12.5 million and from 35,000 to 2.8 million. Taken alone, the three states in the aggregate have about 40 million more people since 1950 bathing in, cooking with and drinking water. Housing complexes, luxury hotels, golf courses and mega-mansions are major water devourers.

No end is in sight to irresponsible water usage. The best California Gov. Gavin Newsom has come up with is a tepid, ignored suggestion that his constituents voluntarily limit everyday water consumption. The State Water Resources Conservation Board said that per-capita urban water usage rose 7 percent in March compared to last year, and rose 18.9 percent when compared to March 2020.

Although political correctness forbids identifying immigration as population growth’s major driver, Census Bureau facts confirm the reality. In their Center for Immigration Studies analysis that drew exclusively from Census Bureau data, Steven Camarota and Karen Zeigler predicted that, by 2060, immigration will add 75 million people to the U.S. population. In 2017, the U.S. had 35.8 million legal and illegal immigrants. Those immigrants had 16.9 million U.S.-born children and grandchildren.

In sum, immigration added 52.7 million people to the U.S. population between 1982 and 2017, accounting for a little over 56 percent of overall population growth. A related Camarota-Zeigler study, which also drew from Current Population Survey’s monthly data, found that in November 2021, 46.2 million legal and illegal immigrants lived in the U.S., the largest number of immigrants ever recorded in a federal government survey or census dating back to 1850.

No one controls rainfall, but the federal government can help alleviate the worsening water crisis by managing immigration to levels consistent with the available natural resources. If officials continue to shirk their responsibility, then an increasing number of West Coast communities will eventually run dry, and civil disruption over water’s absence will likely ensue.

PFIR analyst Joe Guzzardi writes about immigration issues and impacts. Contact him at jguzzardi@pfirdc.org and joeguzzardi.substack.com.

Population Surges Drying West

Ex Officials Lobby For More Foreign Stem Students

Ex Officials Lobby For More Foreign Stem Students

By Joe Guzzardi

In early May, nearly 50 former U.S. officials who held prominent federal government positions sent an urgent letter to Senate Majority and Minority leaders Chuck Schumer and Mitch McConnell, and to Speaker Nancy Pelosi and Minority Leader Kevin McCarthy. Also copied was the Bipartisan Innovation Act Conference Committee, a group that will reconcile differences in the Senate and House versions of separate bills which address America’s global competitiveness.
 
Included among the letter’s signatories are the former secretaries of the Department of Homeland Security, the Department of Defense and the Department of Navy, as well as the former U.S. Customs and Border Protection Commissioner, a CIA director, their assistants and undersecretaries and a two-term U.S. representative. The letter’s tone is alarmist.

Ex Officials Lobby For More Foreign Stem Students

Summarized, the letter bemoaned what the writers called “immigration bottlenecks” and their “self-inflicted drag…on American competitiveness.” Their predictable solution: more immigration in the form of attracting an ever-higher number of science, technology, engineering and math students, the so-called STEM fields. The House version, America COMPETES, exempts numerical limits and country cap quotas for green cards for international students with advanced STEM degrees. Without the green card lure, the writers warned, the U.S. will be unable to attract the “best and brightest” foreign-born STEM talent and will lose its innovative edge. The House bill also would create new but unnecessary visas which translates to more immigration, including the “W,” for start-up business owners, and the EB-4 for South Korean foreign nationals.
 
The bombastic letter indicates that none of the DHS, CBP, CIA or U.S. representative signatories have any concern that their panic to attract international students, including Chinese nationals. China is the U.S.’s leading rival for worldwide tech superiority, and importation of more Chinese nationals could lead to more national security breaches, intellectual property theft and stolen personal data. Evidence of China’s threat is abundant. A sampling: more than 24 Chinese nationals have been convicted of spying against the U.S., and the offices of Sen. Dianne Feinstein (D-Calif.) and Rep. Eric Swalwell (D-Calif.) have been infiltrated by People’s Republic of China subversives.
 
International students’ path to STEM degrees begins with an F-1 visa which allows them to enroll in a U.S. university. In the academic year 2020-2021, China was the leading contributor to overall international enrollment in U.S. schools with 317,299 students, a figure that COVID-19 reduced from the previous year’s 372,532 total. Nearly 40 percent of the Chinese 2020-2021 class studied STEM disciplines. A 2020 Center for Security and Emerging Technology study found that in pre-pandemic academic year 2018-2019, an estimated 122,000 Chinese nationals were pursuing STEM undergraduate, master’s and Ph.D. degrees.
 
How worrisome the high Chinese STEM enrollment depends on whether an analyst considers China friend or foe. President Biden has made conflicting statements about the China-U.S. relationship. On one hand, Biden called President Xi his “old friend.” On another day, however, Biden said that China believed it would eventually “own America” within 15 years.
 
If Biden believes China’s goal is to conquer America, then inviting thousands of Chinese nationals to study STEM at the nation’s most prestigious universities is self-defeating and would accelerate the nation’s demise. Chinese status as students gives potential agents cover, and if the PRC orders them to spy, they know that it’s in their best interest to comply.
 
But congressional elites are oblivious to the growing danger that Chinese international students represent to the homeland.
 
In 2020, Sen. Tom Cotton (R-Ark.) proposed that Chinese nationals be banned from coming to the U.S. to study STEM. Cotton suggested that in the interest of world harmony, young Chinese would be better served reading Shakespeare and the Federalist papers instead of mastering skills that they could use against America. Cotton called granting foreign students STEM degrees from U.S. universities “a scandal” because they return to China “to compete for our jobs, to take our business, and ultimately to steal our property and design weapons and other devices that can be used against the American people.”
 
Cotton’s straight talk, ignored by his colleagues and mocked by his detractors, is irrefutable. Weaponizing the enemy is folly. Yet, the letter’s signatories, officials supposedly well-trained in homeland security and once entrusted by the electorate to protect them from harm, insist on aiding the enemy which would accelerate America’s decline.


PFIR analyst Joe Guzzardi writes about immigration issues and impacts. Contact him at jguzzardi@pfirdc.org.

Ex Officials Lobby For More Foreign Stem Students Ex Officials Lobby For More Foreign Stem Students

 

Border Admissions Staggering Mayorkas Admits

Border Admissions Staggering Mayorkas Admits

By Joe Guzzardi

For immigration lawyers, these are heady times! Since January 2021, when the Biden regime moved into the White House, the Department of Homeland Security has, by Secretary Alejandro Mayorkas’ own shameless admission, released 836,000 illegal aliens into the interior. The staggering total includes 398,861 let go since October 1, the fiscal year’s start, and also counts 80,116 admitted in March alone. Excluded are the got-aways; estimates vary, but several hundred thousand fall into that category. This astounding admissions’ total exceeds the population of each of the cities of San Francisco, Denver, Seattle, Boston and Washington, D.C., and each of the states of Wyoming and Vermont.

Imagine the eager anticipation the immigration lawyer community must have when thinking of the fees those aliens might generate! At some firms, $1,000 an hour buys only a preliminary consultation. And the good times will keep on rolling! Once Biden removes Title 42, as he’s determined to do, an estimated 18,000 aliens are likely to cross into the United States daily, most in need of legal counsel.

Enterprising immigration lawyers could make a handsome living from Haitian alien applicants alone. Most Haitians, like others eagerly awaiting their post-Title 42 admissions, will apply for asylum. But a considerable percentage of Haitians who will file claims have already been granted asylum from South American nations like Chile, and have been long-time residents of those countries. But for the Haitians/Chileans, Biden’s lure to foreign nationals to live in America is irresistible. On their trip north, after reaching the bridge at Del Rio, Texas, the duplicitous Haitians/Chileans ditched their asylum documents into the river. The low-risk, but nevertheless fraudulent effort to eliminate any clue that they had already been granted asylum by a democratic, stable country may pay off one day with U.S. citizenship.

Border Admissions Staggering Mayorkas Admits
DHS Secretary Alejandro Mayorkas

Unbeknownst to the general public, asylum fraud is one of the biggest hoaxes in a U.S. immigration system where almost anything goes. The simple words “credible fear” spoken to an immigration official can be the first step to life in the U.S. Few, however, are fleeing true persecution or life-threatening violence. They’ve been coached, often by the smugglers to whom they’ve paid thousands of dollars, to say the magic words that will bring them, figuratively speaking, the keys to the U.S. kingdom.

The harsh reality is that among the thousands assembled at the border, and the thousands more on the way, few legally qualify for asylum. They are economic migrants seeking to improve their lives, and not as the Refugee Act of 1980 spelled out, persons with a well-established fear of persecution “on account of race, religion, nationality, membership in a particular social group, or political opinion.”

Under the current administration, as voters head to the mid-term polling places, knowing the difference between refugees and legitimate asylum seekers is important. Refugees are – or were until Biden allowed admissions to mostly unscreened Afghans and Ukrainians – screened in depth before coming to the U.S. If found wanting, they can be denied refugee status before they step foot into this country. On the other hand, aliens who enter illegally and falsely claim “credible fear” have not been vetted or have been only superficially screened before physically entering the U.S. The current process is easily vulnerable to fraud and abuse. Fraudulent asylum cases, in addition to generous benefits given to those who may not deserve them, undermine and delay processing legitimate appeals from individuals who truly have credible fear.

The soaring numbers of migrants whether they’ve legally or illegally entered the country is a preliminary total. Once inside the U.S., chain migration – immigration’s major source – will increase the number by at least a factor of three. In 2018, The New York Times published a remarkable, but unexaggerated, story about one-single Indian immigrant who arrived in 1968 at age 23, and 50 years later, counts 90 family members who have joined him. Consider too that many of the resettled migrants will either add to their existing families or begin new ones.

Since citizens fund every penny of the migrants’ multiple and costly resettlement expenses, Americans justifiably wonder why, assuming border enforcement, they’re forced to underwrite their gradual but inevitable displacement.

PFIR analyst Joe Guzzardi writes about immigration issues and impacts. Contact him at jguzzardi@pfirdc.org.

Biden Immigration Parole Circumvents The Law

Biden Immigration Parole Circumvents The Law

By Joe Guzzardi

Twenty years ago, journalist Michelle Malkin wrote a column titled, “The Deportation Abyss: It Ain’t over ‘til the Alien Wins.” Written post-9/11, the nation yearned as it still does for a strict deportation strategy and for vigorous immigration law enforcement.

At the beginning of her commentary, Malkin quoted the late Barbara Jordan, a Texas Democrat who served in the U.S. House of Representatives and chaired the U.S. Commission on Immigration reform from 1993 to 1996. Jordan said, “The credibility of immigration policy can be measured by a simple yardstick: people who should get in, get in; people who should not enter are kept out; and people who are judged deportable should be required to leave.”

Jordan’s sensible immigration guidelines were ignored. Too many loopholes in the immigration system, too many squishy congressional representatives, too many lax immigration judges and too many spineless Board of Immigration Appeals’judges undermined legitimate deportations of criminals, including convicted murderers, sex predators, drunken drivers and aggravated felons, subverting Jordan’s sound solutions. Information on how to dodge immigration enforcement was readily available. The soup-to-nuts legal directory that advises aliens who “got trouble” is still operating 20 years later, doubtlessly thriving, and dispensing advice on how to avoid deportation.

In her worst nightmare, Jordan could not have imagined that a U.S. president would not only be inviting millions of illegal aliens from all around the world to come to American, but then rewarding them with air transportation, housing, food, mobile phones and, eventually, one of the most coveted documents that migrants seek from the instant they depart their homeland, employment authorization cards.

Biden is determined to undermine American workers with his reckless abandonment of border security, and his messaging to foreign nationals from around the globe that, despite DHS Secretary Alejandro Mayorkas’ protestations to the contrary, the border is open. The odds are extremely high that foreign nationals who get to the border will gain entrance. Parole may await them. At least, it’s the administration’s coveted goal to illegally grant parole to foreign nationals that don’t qualify for what should be a rarely approved immigration status.

Biden Immigration Parole Circumvents The Law

Since the mainstream media tosses the word parole around loosely, knowing exactly who merits the status is important to understanding the administration’s deport-no-one intentions. Writing for the Center for Immigration Studies where he’s a Senior Legal Fellow, former DHS Deputy General Counsel George Fishman, in an article “The Pernicious Perversion of Parole: the 70-year battle between Congress and the President,” explained parole’s proper place in immigration law. As Fishman’s title suggests, the decades-long battle has been mostly a lost cause for Congress and immigration restrictionists.

Parole’s history dates back to the Immigration and Nationality Act of 1952 which contained a provision that allowed discretionary power to the Attorney General to parole into the U.S. temporarily under such conditions as the AG may prescribe for emergent reasons or for reasons deemed strictly in the public interest any alien applying for admission to the U. S. All parole grantees are issued on a case-by-case basis, and cannot be granted en masse. (Emphasis added.)

In 1956, Republican Dwight Eisenhower became the first president to violate parole regulations when he permitted Hungarian refugees to enter en masse. Prior to 1956, parole authority had been used only to benefit individual aliens. But as Professors Adam Cox of the University of Chicago Law School and Cristina Rodriguez of New York University correctly concluded, presidents have used powers expressly delegated to them by Congress to advance their own immigration agenda in a manner that accomplished personal objectives Congress almost certainly did not intend and expanding or repurposing Congress’s original design.(Emphasis added.)

Parole should be granted only under the five following conditions: 1) for a medical emergency, 2) for organ donation to a family member, 3) to visit a family member whose death is imminent, 4) for an alien who has assisted U.S. law enforcement and whose presence is needed by the government or whose life is threatened or 5) for criminal prosecution.

Biden’s flagrant use of parole to admit thousands of aliens into the U.S. proves that Malkin’s thesis – the alien always wins – is truer today than ever. Many thousands more aliens remain gathered at or on the way to the border, confident that parole will be their easy ticket into the U.S.

PFIR analyst Joe Guzzardi writes about immigration issues and impacts. Contact him at jguzzardi@pfirdc.org

Biden Immigration Parole Circumvents The Law

DiMaggios Credited Mom With Their Successes

DiMaggios Credited Mom With Their Successes

By Joe Guzzardi 

Rosalie Mercurio DiMaggio, a Sicilian immigrant, bore nine children, three of whom became Major League center fielders. Since the boys’ father, San Francisco fisherman Giuseppe, considered baseball a “a bum’s game,” Rosalie covered for the Vince, Dominic and Joe Jr. so they could practice with other local boys. Then and now, the Bay Area was a hotbed of baseball talent that included Barry Bonds, Billy Martin, Keith Hernandez, Gil McDougald, seven-time All-Star Joe Cronin, and four-time AL batting champion Harry Heilmann.

Around San Francisco, scouts determined that, of the three brothers, Joe had the best bat; Dom, the best arm; and Vince, who wanted to become an opera singer, the best voice. Joe’s baseball achievements are legendary – his 56-game hitting streak, three MVP awards and his nine World Series championship rings. During the streak, the nation was obsessed with whether “Joltin’ Joe” had gotten a hit that day. An Army Air Force veteran, Joe soon became the talk of Hollywood and the national gossip sheets when he married screen starlet Marilyn Monroe.

DiMaggios Credited Mom With Their Successes
Joe DiMaggio with parents Roaslie and Giuseppi

For years after his Yankee career ended, DiMaggio remained an icon. Paul Simon’s 1968 hit song, “Mrs. Robinson,” contained this lyric which suggested that the nation yearned for the simpler America that DiMaggio represented: “Where have you gone Joe DiMaggio; a nation turns its lonely eyes to you.” DiMaggio’s reaction to the song: “What the hell does it mean?”

Dom, too, is well-known in the baseball world. For a decade, he ably flanked Ted Williams in the Boston Red Sox outfield, and hit with the best of them. An effective lead-off hitter, the “Little Professor,” so called because he was 5’9”, 160 lbs. and wore rimless spectacles, batted .300 four times, led the AL in runs twice and in triples and stolen bases once each. Dom also led AL center fielders in assists three times and in putouts and double plays twice each; he tied a league record by recording 400 putouts four times, and his 1948 totals of 503 putouts and 526 total chances stood as AL records for nearly 30 years.

Post-baseball, Dom founded several small companies that eventually merged into the Delaware Valley Corporation, a family-owned business still operational today. But despite teammate Ted Williams’ vigorous lobbying, Dom’s career stats, .298 average and 1,680 hits, they haven’t gotten him elected to the Baseball Hall of Fame’s veterans’ wing.

Vince, the oldest brother, had less plate success, but was more adept with his glove. He led the National League in strikeouts six times, and set what was then a single season record, 134 Ks for the Boston Bees in 1938. Vince compiled modest 10-year NL career stats with the Pirates, Reds, Phillies Bees and Giants: .249, 125 HRs and 584 RBIs. But Vince had a cannon arm, and said, immodestly, “Joe was a better batter, but I could play rings around him as far as knowledge of the game and plays in the outfield. I could smoke those throws. If you put a dime on second base, I could hit it from the outfield.”

In 1946, after splitting the season with the Phillies and Giants, Vince hung up his spikes, and meandered from one unassuming job to another – Fuller Brush salesman, milk truck delivery driver, and waiter at the family restaurant, DiMaggio’s Grotto on Fisherman’s Wharf. At the restaurant, customers urged Vince to sing. Without hesitation, Vince broke out in his tenor voice to sing operatic arias or popular love ballads. During those happy moments when Vince crooned to his customers, he rued his decision to play baseball instead of pursuing opera.

Vince, Joe and Dom were distant brothers, and often spent years-long periods when they rarely spoke. In a late-life interview, Vince said, “When the folks were alive, we were a lot closer.”

Rosalie was the DiMaggio family’s unifying force, always looking out for her children’s best interests. In their youth, Rosalie read Bible stories and set a high standard for moral behavior. At Rosalie’s insistence, the family moved from Martinez, Calif., to San Francisco. A school teacher in Sicily, Rosalie knew that the city had better schools; she wanted her children to have good educations, a benefit she knew would pay dividends throughout their lives. As Joe’s career was peaking, Rosalie traveled by train to New York to watch the Yankees. Once, she caught reporters off guard when she complained that the city was “boring,” and offered little to do. The truth was that Rosalie missed hearth and home.

In 1986, Dom convinced estranged brothers Vince and Joe to join him at a Fenway Park Old-Timers’ Game. A few months later Vince, whose final years were spent as a born-again Christian, died from colon cancer.

Joe was never out of the limelight. He appeared on television as a pitchman for New York’s Bowery Savings Bank and Mr. Coffee. Thereafter, the Yankee Clipper made occasional appearances at celebrity golf outings, card shows and Old-Timers’ games, where the public address announcer introduced him as “Baseball’s greatest living player.” After Marilyn’s death, Joe organized her funeral to ensure that it wouldn’t be besieged by autograph hounds, or craven Hollywood types. He ordered roses placed at her crypt twice a week. Always a chain smoker, in 1999, Joe died at home of lung cancer.

Dom, in addition to his business successes, cofounded the Boston Patriots AFL football franchise, and the BoSox Club, a fan organization that brings closer contact between the Red Sox’ players and the community. Dom died at age 92 after a bout with pneumonia.

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

DiMaggios Credited Mom With Their Successes DiMaggios Credited Mom With Their Successes