Category: Joe Guzzardi

Labor Force Participation Rate Falling, Bigger Drop Coming

By Joe Guzzardi

Dramatic footage taken recently that showed thousands of migrants crossing the Rio Grande River, and walking into El Paso represents compelling evidence that the Biden administration’s immigration policy is out of control. A massive Border Patrol facility in El Paso erected to ensure immigrants were not detained outside in the elements has blown past its four-digit capacity. Hundreds of people were left to endure near-freezing temperatures, and to sleep on the street with small campfires their only warmth. Since December 12, El Paso border patrol agents have interdicted more than 10,000 aliens, as per data city officials shared. 

But the videos tell only a portion of the current immigration muddle. The other part of federal immigration policy plays out behind the scene in the abyss of obscure immigration legislation that gets little media play even though all Americans, especially workers, are directly affected. 

In early December, mostly unnoticed, President Biden and his Department of Homeland Security Secretary Alejandro Mayorkas extended Temporary Protected Status (TPS) to about 337,000 aliens from Haiti, Nepal, Sudan, Honduras, Nicaragua, and El Salvador. Originally slated to leave the U.S. on December 31, TPS holders got a re-up from DHS. The agency prolonged their residency period and their work permits until June 20, 2024, a benefit that allows them to compete with Americans in the U.S. labor force. In July, Biden extended TPSfor Syrians just as he had done previously for Cameroonians and Venezuelans before that. Again, more work permits all around—granted by executive decree. U.S. Citizenship and Immigration Services lists 16 nations that have been granted TPS including some countries hostile to the U. S.— Afghanistan, Somalia, Syria, Venezuela and Yemen.

From the macro perspective —the physical immigration component at the open border, and the administrative giveaways from Capitol Hill— working-age migrants are crossing undeterred, and the TPS community is rewarded with employment permission. By the time Biden’s first term ends, millions of foreign nationals will have work permits. Only the smallest fraction of the illegal immigrants “temporarily” protected or the illegal border crossers, many of whom will eventually receive asylum or parole, will return home. Instead, they’ll become a permanent part of the U.S. labor force. Those who don’t received federally authorized employment permits may work in the underground economy, ordered by Mayorkas as off-limits to Immigration and Customs Enforcement that might otherwise begin removal actions.

Rushing to provide work permission on a large scale to the newly U.S. settled worldwide immigrant population is terrible timing, and will have severe long-term labor implications. In addition to the estimated 6.5 million illegal immigrants who will have entered the U.S. during Biden’s four years in the White House, the administration has increased TPS recipients by 500,000. 

With the U.S. labor market struggling, adding thousands of work authorized immigrants will make employment conditions tougher for Americans. When the Bureau of Labor Statistics announced that in November the economy created 263,000 jobs, the media was euphoric. But, buried in the news was the telling fact that the labor force participation rate had dropped to 62.1 percent from 63.4 percent nine months ago. The share of people working remains below pandemic levels.

An October Wall Street Journal story reported that 4.5 million Americans are working two jobs to keep apace with inflation. A Prudential Financial Inc. survey that the Journal also published found that 81% of Gen-Z and 77% of millennial workers said they have pursued gig work or are considering extra side work this year “to supplement their income…”

A dramatic influx of work authorized legal and illegal immigrants will exacerbate the problem that 100 million Americans are classified as “not in the labor force.” Moreover, one in six prime working age men, 25-54, has no paid work at all, a condition that economist Nicholas Eberstadt calls the rise of the “non-working class,” and its associated despair, “America’s invisible crisis.”

Biden’s multi-layered assault on U.S. workers—his welcome the world open borders that will include employment authorization and his administratively granted work permission for TPS designees demonstrates his callous disregard for American workers and their families.

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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.

Labor Force Participation Rate Falling, Bigger Drop Coming

Southwest Border Is An Environmental Crisis

By Joe Guzzardi

Ask the millions of migrants who have either entered the United States or are lined up at the border what motivated their journeys, and all will answer that they’re in pursuit of the proverbial better life. Translated, a better life means they’re longing to become consumers—consumers of housing, hard goods like cars, and natural resources such as water, electricity and natural gas. The migrants’ goal is great news for big businesses that never met a consumer they don’t love, but bad news for environmentalists who hope to preserve a vanishing America. As conservationists look ahead, the future they see is unsettling.

With Title 42 set to expire on December 21st, U.S. Rep. Tony Gonzales, (R-TX) whose district includes 42 percent of the Texas-Mexico border predicts a “hurricane” of illegal immigration. Everyone in his district, Gonzales said, is in “batten down the hatches” mode as they await a historic and unmanageable increase in migration—more eventual consumers. Border patrol agents advised Uvalde residents to expect about 150 daily migrant drop offs indefinitely, evidence which, Gonzales said, proves that the Biden administration has no meaningful plan to cope with the ongoing invasion. Because of the COVID-19 pandemic, Title 42 has been enforced since March 2020 to expel migrants at the southern border. But, in November, in his 49-page opinion, U.S. District Court Judge Emmet Sullivan, President Bill Clinton’s appointee, ruled that Title 42 is “arbitrary and capricious,” and violated federal regulatory law.

For FY 2022, an estimated 5.5 million aliens, a total that includes the 4.4 million that CBP reported, and 1.1 million gotaways, are in the U.S. interior. Princeton Policy Advisors’ analyst Steven Kopits, who correctly predicted the FY 2022 crisis, wrote that “… based on the last two months [October and November], 2023 should set yet another record for illegal border crossing — and by a substantial margin over 2022.” March, April and May 2023 will be, Koptis concluded, especially high as part of the illegal immigrant siege. Only if Republicans captured both congressional chambers, Kopits envisioned, could the migrant invasion be halted—wishful thinking as the mid-term results were tallied.

The red tsunami that Kopits saw as the vehicle that might level off illegal immigration turned out to be a mere trickle. The House will have a narrow margin, and the Senate remains under Democratic control. All 50 senators have, since 2020, an unbroken voting record that supports open borders. Many of those senators are captives of the corporate donor class that wants the steady stream of consumers to continue unabated.

Environmentalists should be front and center in the battle to preserve the nation’s green space and irreplaceable resources. But not only have congressional Democrats abandoned limiting immigration to sustainable levels, but environmentalists have also given up the battle. Although population surges destroy the ecosystems, wildlife habitat, and farmland that exists between their cities and towns, no large environmental group today advocates for saving natural habitat from relentless growth. The Census Bureau projects that by mid-century, immigrants and births to immigrants will drive more than 85% of U.S. population growth, and add more than 100 million people to its current 333 million population.

American has one of the world’s largest ecological per capita footprints, 8.04.  Any and all U.S population growth— let alone the massive multi-million-person border surge–will grow its existing footprint. The average U.S. citizen’s ecological footprint is about 50 percent larger than that of the average person in most European countries. The nation has more suburban sprawl and less public transportation than most countries, which means it burns more fossil fuels that adds to its per-capita carbon consumption, and uses more energy and water per person than most other developed countries.

No one in the Biden administration or in Congress or among the major environmental organizations has meaningfully addressed the open border’s long-term consequences even though they are potentially dire. E.O. Wilson, biologist and writer, expressed the ecological threat dramatically, but accurately: “The raging monster upon the land is population growth. In its presence, sustainability is but a fragile theoretical concept.”

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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.

Southwest Border Is An Environmental Crisis

Umpire Augie Donatelli Learned Trade In POW Camp

By Joe Guzzardi

During World War II, 130,000 American soldiers and nearly 19,000 U.S. civilians were prisoners of war. In all but the worst circumstances, usually the Japanese camps where POWs lived in brutally inhumane conditions, a little recreation was possible, and baseball was the preferred pastime.

In his book, “POW Baseball in World War II,” author Tom Wolter tells the stories of baseball played behind barbed wire in the most unlikely places that included Central Asia, along the Baltic Seacoast, in Indonesian jungles and in Japanese cities where guards challenged prisoners to games. Refusal would have been dangerous.

Games were played, said one POW, to avoid crushing boredom, and to create a “Little America.” Within the camps, the players formed leagues, and rivalries were intense. Umpiring disputes were heated, and ringer roster-stacking allegations common. Prison-run newspapers detailed the games in prose that would have made Damon Runyon proud.

Among those liberated from POW camps was Army Air Force Sergeant Augie Donatelli, a future National League umpire. Stationed in England with the 379th Bomb Group as a tail-gunner on a Boeing B-17 Flying Fortress, one of the Air Force’s most dangerous jobs, Donatelli’s plane, during the first daylight mission over Berlin, was shot down. Looking back, Donatelli said that “fighters [were] diving at us, 20-millimeter shells exploding all around. We flew into the clouds to hide. What action! That day 68 bombers were shot down.”

Donatelli, who previously had flown 17 successful missions, parachuted out but broke his ankle when he hit the ground. Trying to escape from the forest after his fall, Donatelli recalled that he heard a Nazi soldier yell, “Halt,” and was soon a Stalag Luft IV POW.

During his 14 months as a POW, Donatelli tried to escape twice, but was recaptured. Former National League umpire and friend Doug Harvey later recalled, “He always laughed when he talked about his second attempt. He was hiding in a haystack, but didn’t get all the way in. His rear was showing. One of the German guards got him out with a pitchfork.”

As a young boy, Donatelli, the son of Italian immigrants, worked in Western Pennsylvania’s coal mines. Donatelli told the Society for American Baseball’s Oral History Committee, “It was dangerous and hard work, but what else were you going to do? I started even before graduating from high school.” But Donatelli began his 24-year career, which ended with him universally regarded as one of baseball history’s best umpires, when he presided over POW softball games.

Before Donatelli enlisted, something he said that his patriotic spirit compelled him to do, he had played shortstop in the Class D league for the St. Louis Browns. But Gus, as Donatelli’s friends called him, sensed that his skills weren’t up to MLB snuff. After graduating from umpire school, his new career began, and soon, he was umpiring in the big leagues where he became famous for his quick hook and the dramatic gestures that accompanied it.

By the time he retired, Donatelli had worked four All-Star games, five World Series, two League Championship Series. Donatelli was also behind the plate for four no-hitters, as well as when Whitey Ford set the World Series record for scoreless innings, 32, when Don Drysdale got the single season consecutive shutout innings in a season, 58, when Stan Musial hit five homers in a doubleheader, and when “The Man” got his 3,000th base hit, and when Nate Colbert hit five homers and had the most RBIs, 13, in a doubleheader.

In 1970, Donatelli helped organize the Major League Umpires Association which eventually led to today’s umpires earning an average $235,000 salary. When Donatelli looked back at his career, he pointed with pride to missing only one game in 24 years, and his patriotic World War II service; “I felt it was something I had to do, not to escape the mines but because you just felt it was up to you to get into it.” At age 75, Donatelli died at home in St. Petersburg, Fl.

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

Umpire Augie Donatelli Learned Trade In POW Camp

8 Billion People On Planet Earth

By Joe Guzzardi

The arrival of the planet’s 8 billionth human inhabitant, which the United Nationsexcitedly announced in mid-November, was greeted in some circles as a joyous event. UN Secretary-General Antonio Guterres hailed 8 billion people as an occasion “to celebrate diversity and enhancements.”

For other population growth enthusiasts, 2037 can’t come fast enough. By then, only 17 years from today, the world population will hit 9 billion. The Washington Post’seditorial board wholeheartedly agrees with Guterres. In its op-ed piece, disdainfully, the Post encouraged readers not to fret because population growth is “mostly inevitable anyway.” The editorial overlooked, perhaps purposely, other harmful population growth consequences, including, but not limited to, drought and its inevitable water shortages, megafauna extinction and ground subsidence, as well as pollution in its multiple forms.

Suddenly, or so it seems, everyone is advocating for higher birth rates, and hence more people, but without mentioning the obvious negative effects on the already eroding ecosystem and depleted, irreplaceable natural resources. Elon Musk, father of nine, is sounding alarm bells about what he refers to as a crumbling civilization, inevitable without a population spike.

Senate Majority Leader Chuck Schumer (D-NY) has joined the more people, the merrier crowd, and uses his advocacy as an excuse to defend the U.S.’s unprecedented and unlawful border invasion. Coinciding with the UN’s gleeful announcement that world population had hit 8 billion, Schumer urged his GOP congressional colleagues to join in the effort to “welcome” more immigration and to put existing illegal aliens, as well as, presumably, those pouring across the border every hour of every day, on a citizenship path. Schumer’s reasoning: the U.S. has “a population that is not reproducing on its own with the same level that it used to.” Therefore, Schumer warned, without immigration, the nation’s economy is doomed.

The magnitude of Schumer’s distorted vision is stunning. The existing illegal immigrants’ exact population is unknown. It is such a mystery that Schumer himself refuses to take a stab at the total. In his plea for a citizenship path for aliens, Schumer referred to “all 11 million or however many undocumented there are here.” Eleven million is the conservative end of the range that, in some estimates, extends upward to 30 million.

A word or two about the border invasion’s totals that must be evaluated as part of Schumer’s grand citizenship plan. Eight weeks into fiscal 2023, which began October 1, a record number of illegals have crossed the border. The number of gotaways — those seen crossing illegally but not apprehended — are on an unprecedented pace during FY 2023 to date: 134,649 since October 1, per CBP sources. Overall migrant encounters also are on an unparalleled pace, FYTD23: 349,216 compared to 275,624 this time in FY22. Assuming those statistics continue indefinitely — and there’s no reason to expect otherwise — at least 2,496 illegals per day will get away, and border agents will encounter 6,467 aliens daily.

Given that more than 5.5 million aliens have entered since President Biden took office, the U.S. population will have increased by roughly 10 million when Election Day 2024 rolls around. Schumer has nothing to worry about; family reunification will be the impetus for the 10 million total to go ever-upward.

The worldwide migrant community has every incentive to keep coming. The administration gives free-to-them, but taxpayer-funded, airline tickets, train tickets, bus tickets, cell phones, welfare, public education and health care, purposely provided incentives that will help satisfy the seditious goal of Biden and Homeland Security Secretary Alejandro Mayorkas to destroy sovereign America. For Musk, Schumer and other population growth deniers, Biden’s open borders are a dream come true.

Joe Guzzardi writes about immigration issues and impacts.

8 Billion People On Planet Earth

Tech Workers Brace for Possible Omnibus Job-Killer

By Joe Guzzardi

Like the proverbial bad penny that keeps reappearing, lousy immigration bills are hard to kill off. Consider the EAGLE Act of 2022, also known as Equal Access to Green Cards for Legal Employment, or formally recognized as H.R. 3648. The newest proposed legislation is another iteration of the Fairness for High-Skilled Immigrants Act. Although it passed the House by a 365-65 vote, eventually it stalled in Congress.

Introduced by immigration lawyer, amnesty advocate, enforcement foe and expansionist champion Rep. Zoe Lofgren (D-Calif.), the new and the old versions of her proposed legislation both share the same ruinous-to-U.S. tech workers’ feature: the legislation would rob thousands of U.S. tech workers of access to well-paid, white-collar, high-skilled jobs in the science, technology, engineering and math fields, STEM jobs for which they are fully qualified.

Along with her like-minded congressional allies that include Rep. Tom Emmer (R-Minn.), who was just elected as House Majority Whip for the 118th Congress and thus became the third highest ranking Republican in the House, Lofgren has scheduled a vote on the EAGLE Act, which has bipartisan support, when Congress returns from its Thanksgiving recess.

Briefly explained, the EAGLE Act would dramatically revise portions of the Immigration Act of 1990. Almost any alien who has been on the visa waiting list for at least two years with an approved petition for an employment-based green card could apply for adjustment of his status which then wouldn’t count against existing numerical caps. Stated another way, employers can sponsor a temporary foreign-born worker for an H-1B nonimmigrant visa and convert that worker to permanent by merely sponsoring him for a green card. Aliens go from temporarily present to permanent residents. With the stroke of a pen, job searches become more challenging for U.S. tech workers – Congress’ twisted idea of sound legislation.

The bill also eliminates the per-country caps for employment-based visas, which means that within about a decade Indian and Chinese nationals will receive virtually all such visas, especially the H-1B; other countries’ nationals would have an uphill climb to obtain a visa. Under current law, no countries’ nationals can comprise more than 7 percent of any visa category. This provision ensures that skilled workers from around the globe have an opportunity to come to America. The EAGLE Act, however, seeks to entirely remove all caps from employment-based visas and more than double the existing family-preference visa from 7 percent to 15 percent, a hike that would, because of family reunification, ensure significant population surges. The proposed visa cap elimination is ironic because Lofgren and the EAGLE Act’s cosponsors claim to embrace diversity, but the bill heavily favors Chinese and Indian citizens to the exclusion of most others.

Moreover, dependent children of the aliens granted the new status would be allowed to retain their legal standing, a form of amnesty, as dependents of their parents for the duration of the green card application process; they would be protected from aging out while their parents move up in the backlog. An estimated 190,000 minors would be protected.

Time was when Democrats purported to care about America’s minority workers. But their empathy toward U.S. workers is long gone, and is now redirected to foreign nationals, particularly Chinese and Indians. Blacks, Hispanics and other minorities aspire to IT jobs, too. But they’ve had little luck in obtaining those coveted STEM jobs. Pew Research found that black workers make up 9 percent of the STEM workforce, while Hispanics also comprise about 9 percent. The low STEM representation among blacks and Hispanics is largely unchanged from 2016.

For rational thinkers, few and far between in Congress, a push for liberalized immigration laws and amnesty in light of the border surge and its 2 million-plus encounters in 2022 is beyond the pale. But those sound-of-mind types don’t understand the congressional mindset; nothing stops its amnesty drive. And if the EAGLE Act doesn’t get Senate approval, Lofgren always has the option to attach it to a must-pass Omnibus bill. With the 118th House about to transfer into GOP hands, EAGLE Act supporters view December as their last chance to subvert U.S. tech workers.

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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.

Tech Workers Brace for Possible Omnibus Job-Killer

Congress Makes Last-Ditch Amnesty Push

By Joe Guzzardi

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Congress Makes Last-Ditch Amnesty Push

Record Immigration-Driven Population Surge In Canada

By Joe Guzzardi

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Record Immigration-Driven Population Surge In Canada

Veteran And Hero Cecil Travis Of The Washington Senators

By Joe Guzzardi

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Veteran And Hero Cecil Travis Of The Washington Senators