Category: Joe Guzzardi

Panama Betrayal, Mayorkas, Blinken Scheme for More Illegal Migration

Panama Betrayal, Mayorkas, Blinken Scheme for More Illegal Migration

By Joe Guzzardi

In anticipation of regaining a congressional majority after the 2022 mid-term elections, GOP leaders are drafting the game plan to help them achieve their goal. Not surprisingly, the Biden administration and Department of Homeland Security Secretary Alejandro Mayorkas’ immigration actions since Inauguration Day sit atop the checklist of items that Republicans consider ripest for criticism. A 60-page Guidance Memo drafted by Ohio U.S. Representative Jim Jordan and posted on his Twitter page emphasizes Democrats’ immigration vulnerabilities, especially the sieve-like open border that’s certain to worsen when Title 42 is removed.
 
Mayorkas admits that “significant challenges” will arise once Title 42 is lifted. But the DHS Secretary insists that his department is ready to meet the inevitable illegal immigration spike which he created. Speaking in Panama City at a ministerial conference on migration and protection and accompanied by Secretary of State Anthony Blinken, Mayorkas’ comments are best summarized as happy talk with destructive undertones that will irreversibly harm the United States.
 
At no time did Mayorkas speak with credibility about ending the illegal immigration surge through stronger border and interior security, or stepped-up deportation. Instead, Mayorkas identified his solution to the immigration challenges he correctly foresees as inevitable to include building “legal, orderly, and humane pathways so individuals do not need to place their lives, their well-beings, the well-beings of their loved ones in the hands of smugglers and traffickers who only seek to exploit them for profit.”

Panama Betrayal

Blinken doubled down on Mayorkas’ so-called solution with nation-busting ideas of his own on how to manage, not end, migration. Said Blinken: “Here in Panama, we [the 22 nations represented] talked about some of the most urgent aspects of this issue, including helping stabilize and strengthen communities that are hosting migrants and refugees; creating more legal pathways to reinforce safe, orderly, and humane migration.” He added, speaking for himself and his craven administration, but not for U.S. voters, that finding a solution to illegal immigration is a U.S. “priority.” Translation: More immigration that U.S. taxpayers oppose but will fund as they watch, helpless and voiceless, in the nation’s destruction.
 
The total disregard for immigration law that Biden, Mayorkas, Blinken, Vice President Kamala Harris and others too numerous to mention have demonstrated over the last 15 months raises the point that, given open borders, DHS is pointless and should be dismantled. The department’s $52.2 billion budget is a waste, and too many of its 240,000 employees, starting at the top, have as their mission America’s subversion.
 
Enacted after 9/11 to protect the nation, DHS and the programs that it spawned – the Transportation Security Administration, the Visa Security Program, the terrorist screening database and the no fly list – are meaningless when unidentified foreign nationals can walk at will across the Southwest border, surrender to immigration agents and then be transported across the country secure in the knowledge that they’ll never be removed.
 
Based on camera traffic, drone traffic and sensor traffic that border patrol records but that the Biden administration prohibits responding to, in March, 67,000 gotaways entered the U.S. which brings the administration’s post-inauguration total to about 700,000. DHS doesn’t know and could care less where the gotaways are or what their intentions may be.
 
Capitol Hill scuttlebutt is gaining steam that should the Republicans prevail in November, a Mayorkas impeachment might be the party’s first matter of business. Given Mayorkas’ disregard for immigration law and public safety, an impeachment case against him is mandatory if sovereign American is to be saved.

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

Panama Betrayal, Mayorkas, Blinken Scheme for More Illegal Migration

Panama Betrayal
 

Bert Shepard Was A One-Legged WWII Hero who Pitched for Washington Senators

Bert Shepard Was A One-Legged WWII Hero who Pitched for Washington Senators

By Joe Guzzardi

Between August 1 and August 5, 1945, the Washington Senators played five consecutive double headers. In a normal season, a scheduling burden of that magnitude wouldn’t have mattered much to the lowly Senators. But in 1945, the “first in love, first in war, and last in the American League” Senators were in a neck-and-neck pennant race with the Detroit Tigers.

The Senators won nine of the 10 double header games, losing the August 4 night cap 15-4 to the Boston Red Sox. Motivated by the lopsided score, and unwilling to stretch his exhausted pitching staff further, Senators’ manager Ossie Bluege summoned his lefty Lt. Bert Shepard to the mound. In his Baseball in Wartime account of Shepard’s heroism, Gary Bedingfield wrote that on his 34th European Theater mission and while his P-38J Lightening was bombing an airfield near Ludwigslust, east of Hamburg, Shepard’s plane was hit by enemy flak. The shells blew Shepard’s foot off and tore through his right leg. Shepard: “I could feel my foot coming loose at the boot.” The 55th Fighter Group’s pilot’s plane hit the ground at an estimated 380 mph.

Angry German farmers rushed out of their homes, wielding pitchforks, determined to kill Shepard, the American enemy. Luckily for Shepard, First Lieutenant Ladislaus Loidl, a physician in the German Luftwaffe, saw the wreckage’s smoke, and hurried to the site in time to hold off the incensed farmers. Loidl drove the critically injured Shepard to a hospital, but the “terror flyer” wasn’t allowed admittance. Eventually another hospital accepted patient Shepard, and his leg was amputated 11-inches below his knee. After recuperating, Shepard spent the next eight months in POW camps where a Canadian medic and fellow prisoner made Shepard a crude artificial leg from scrap iron, wood and rivets.

Slowly, Shepard, who as a youth moved from Indiana to California to play semi-pro baseball, began tossing the bulb around to get back a baseball’s feel. In California, Shepard’s skills were good enough to land contracts first with the Chicago White Sox and then the St. Louis Cardinals. His goal before and after his life-threatening WWII injuries was to pitch major league baseball.

A prisoner exchange returned Shepard to the U.S., and he was helped along the way to achieving his lifelong dream. At Walter Reed Hospital, Shepard met with Under Secretary of War Robert Patterson who asked about his future plans. Without hesitation, Shepard replied “to play baseball.” A skeptical but impressed Patterson contacted his friend and Senators’ owner Clark Griffith who agreed to give Shepard, now fitted with a new prothesis, a look.

As Shepard recalled, “Mr. Griffith did it out of sympathy more than anything.” But pitching in exhibition games, Shepard impressed – “got ‘em out each time,” he said. On the strength of his outstanding spring training, the Senators offered Shepard a contract with the promise that once he mastered his control, he’d be given a roster spot.

On August 4, Shepard’s big moment arrived. With the Senators getting hammered in game two 14-2 in the fourth inning and with the bases loaded, manager Bluege signaled for Shepard who promptly struck out George Metkovich for the last out. The 13,000 assembled fans, who had followed Shepard’s progress through the nonstop media coverage of the war hero’s progress, rose to their feet to applaud. Over the next five innings, Shepard surrendered only one run on three hits, and fielded his position flawlessly.

In a perfect world, Shepard’s saga would have continued to include his promotion to the starting rotation where he would have helped carry the Senators past the Tigers to win the AL pennant, and then defeat the Chicago Cubs in the October Classic. But the world is imperfect, and 5-1/3 innings with a 1.69 ERA were Shepard’s career MLB totals.

Bert Shepard Was A One-Legged WWII Hero who Pitched for Washington Senators

Bluege, hoping to eke out the AL flag from the Tigers, decided to finish the year with his established starters. In 1946, players returned from active WWII duty; Shepard didn’t make the team, but was offered a coaching job. Bored, Shepard asked to be sent to the minors where he pitched for several years at Chattanooga, Waterbury and Modesto. Along his minor league journey, Shepard returned to Walter Reed to have more of his leg amputated.

April is Limb Loss and Limb Difference Awareness month, and the Amputee Coalition is an organization that would celebrate Shepard’s rewarding life that included the Distinguished Flying Cross and Air Metal awards. Before he died in 2008 at age 87, Shepard worked as a Hughes Aircraft safety engineer and an IBM typewriter salesman, played in golf tournaments with his buddy New York Yankee shortstop Phil Rizzuto, and walked 18-hole golf courses. He flew his own plane to visit amputees across the nation. Part of Shepard’s visits included encouraging demonstrations like effortlessly running the 60-yard dash and dribbling a basketball. In his later years, Shepard advocated for amputee workers’ rights and designed an artificial ankle that allowed those with severe leg injuries like his more mobility.

Shepard’s remarkable story of perseverance and achievement has a heart-warming footnote. For years, Shepard wondered about the German physician who saved his life in Germany, “Who carried me from the wreck? Who saved my life?” In May 1993, a third party arranged a meeting between Dr. Loidl and Shepard. After they met, an emotionally overwhelmed Shepard said: “I prayed for this. And after half a century, my dream has incredibly come true.”

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

Bert Shepard Was A One-Legged WWII Hero who Pitched for Washington Senators

Bert Shepard

Better H-1B Visa Is On All Thinking Persons Wishlist

Better H-1B Visa Is On All Thinking Persons Wishlist

By Joe Guzzardi

Polling shows that 72 percent of likely voters think the country is headed in the wrong direction. No other conclusion could possibly be reached. Inflation is up 8.5 percent since March 2021. At the pump, AAA calculates that the average price per gallon is $4.12, compared to $2.86 a year ago. The Southwest Border is a sieve; record high numbers of illegal immigrants, including single adult males and unaccompanied minors, continue to enter at will. Despite White House denials, rumors persist that the U.S. will soon send soldiers to the Ukraine.

Inflation, the porous border and Russia’s invasion of the Ukraine have kept another persistent problem out of the headlines – the continued displacement of qualified U.S. tech workers from their well-paid, white-collar jobs. Attribute the blame to the cheap-labor-addicted employers who significantly underpay their foreign-born workers. In December 2021, an Economic Policy Institute report coauthored by Ron Hira and Daniel Costa found that thousands of skilled migrants with H-1B visas working as HCL Technologies subcontractors at well-known corporations like Disney, FedEx and Google have been underpaid by at least $95 million. The victims are the underpaid H-1B employees, the displaced U.S. tech workers and others in related fields whose working conditions are downgraded when employment-based visa workers are underpaid without consequence.

For more than 30 years since the Immigration Act of 1990 created the H-1B visa, Congress has winked at users’ rule-bending year after year. By ignoring the deeply rooted problems in how the H-1B employment-based visa is acquired, Congress invites more of the same manipulation. To wit, during 2022’s first few months, criminal charges were filed against Bay Area fraudsters – two pairs of two individuals each – who gamed the complex H-1B rules for substantial financial gain.

The first case occurred in February when federal government officials accused two South Bay residents, Namrata Patnaik and Kartiki Parekh, of submitting 85 fraudulent H-1B visa applications. The visa scam was linked to other crimes that eventually led to $7 million in ill-gotten gains. The indictment charged that from 2011 through April 2017 Patnaik and Parekh submitted the duplicitous applications for foreign workers sponsored by PerfectVIPs, a San Jose-based semiconductor company. The company CEO was Patnaik, and the human resources manager, Parekh. Patnaik laundered proceeds of the visa fraud. In all, the indictment included three counts of visa fraud and one count of money laundering.

The second case, perpetrated by Elangovan Punniakoti and Mary Christeena over the decade that ended in 2020, involved 54 fraudulent H-1B visa applications that were sponsored by an IT staffing firm, Innovate Solutions. Punniakoti and Christeena were chief executive officer and president, respectively. The accused swindlers also were responsible for stating in applications that a foreign worker would be working on an internal project for Innovate Solutions, despite knowing that no such project existed. Visa fraud and money laundering carry ten-year, or longer, prison sentences, and hefty six-figure fines.

Better H-1B Visa Is On All Thinking Persons Wishlist

The solutions to a more functional H-1B visa, or at least guidelines to the remedies, may sound straightforward, but would be difficult to put into effect. The powerful, deep-pockets Silicon Valley lobby has Congress wrapped around its little finger. Nevertheless, here are a few starting points to consider should a pro-American worker Congress take over in 2022: end the current lottery, and replace it with a merit-based system. Specifically and unequivocally define what task a specialty worker performs to prevent marginal workers with average skills from taking an American’s job, and strengthen the Department of Homeland Security’s onsite enforcement powers so that agents can assure that an H-1B worker is actually performing the job identified on his application.

More important, end the H-1B’s dual-intent feature that allows what should be temporary workers – nonimmigrant workers – to apply for a permanent Green Card. And most important, to remove the well-earned, accurate perception that the U.S. government sanctions modern day, indentured servitude labor conditions, take control of the H-1B visa away from the employer. As the H-1B regulations currently stand, the employee is beholden to his employer because he, the employer, controls the visa and therefore foreign-born workers’ immigration status. If, in the employer’s view, the employee isn’t toeing the company line, whatever it may be, the employer can threaten him with a call to DHS, and recommend removal.

The wish list for cleaning up the H-1B visa is long, and while the Biden administration is in the White House, a pipe dream. But for GOP optimists who are looking ahead to November, and envision stumping on American job creation, an H-1B overhaul that benefits U.S. workers would be a good platform to adopt.

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

Better H-1B Visa Is On All Thinking Persons Wishlist

American Workers Available Despite Labor Shortage Wailing

American Workers Available Despite Labor Shortage Wailing

By Joe Guzzardi

Depending on who is asked, the Southwest border invasion represents either sovereign America’s demise or the long-awaited answer to a national crisis. For citizens who watch the nightly news and see a flood of foreign nationals pouring over the border, then released into the general public, the imagery is deeply disturbing. But for the Chamber of Commerce, some employers and the establishment media, the U.S. needs more immigration, not controlled borders. In their eyes, the arriving migrants represent a labor market boost that will end the alleged too-few-workers mantra that dominates the business news cycle.

In her op-ed titled “Democrats Are Missing the Bigger Immigration Picture,” The Washington Post’s Catherine Rampell argued that more, not fewer, illegal immigrants should be President Biden’s goal. Rampell’s reasoning: the migrants “can fill critical labor market shortages.”

Not surprisingly, the economy, at least as it pertains to filling “critical labor market shortages,” is the exact opposite of how Rampell and other immigration advocates alarmingly describe the situation. The U.S. has a significant overage of potential 16-64 employment-age workers not in the labor force. The problem is that they’re sitting at home.

American Workers Available Despite Labor Shortage Wailing

In their March 2022 analysis of the unemployment and labor force participation among foreign and U.S. born that drew from the Bureau of Labor Statistics’ Current Population Survey (CPS) data, Center for Immigration Studies (CIS) researchers Steven Camarota and Karen Zeigler found that the labor force participation rate, 62.4 percent in March, has been in steep, long-term decline for decades. The fourth quarter of 2021 showed that only 73.2 percent of the working, U.S.-born were in the labor force compared to 77.3 percent in 2000. If labor force participation had remained the same in 2021 as it was in 2000, the researchers concluded, nearly 7 million more U.S.-born Americans would have been in the labor force in 2021.

The labor force participation decline is especially pronounced among the U.S.-born without a bachelor’s degree. Adding mostly unskilled, undereducated migrants with limited English skills, who appear to be the majority among the arriving aliens, would represent more job competition, and ultimately more unemployment for noncollege-educated Americans, particularly already underserved blacks, Hispanics and other minorities.

For decades, working age men have been disappearing from the labor force at record rates. In 1965, the participation rate for prime-age workers ages 25-54 was 96.6 percent – almost all adult men worked. Today, the reported participation rate is about 89.3 percent which means that, based on today’s prime-age 25-54 male population of 64.5 million, only 57.6 million prime-age men are working or actively looking for work – labor force-attached in BLS terms. About 6.9 million men are, therefore, neither working nor looking for work. Conclusion: despite advocates’ hue and cry for more foreign-born labor, millions of potential domestic workers are available; employers must pay fair wages, and offer competitive employment conditions.

The side effects of such a large nonworking adult population are many; all of them bad. People need work to maintain self-esteem and to gain a sense of community involvement. Joblessness has contributed to an increase in domestic abusebetween intimate partners and to alcohol dependency. The Center for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) warned that excessive alcohol consumption is responsible for more than 95,000 deaths in the U.S. each year, or 261 deaths per day. These deaths shorten the lives of those who die by an average of almost 29 years or a total of 2.8 million years of potential life lost. Alcoholism is a leading cause of preventable death in the U.S.

Drug-related deaths are at a record high; unemployment is a significant drug dependency risk factor. More than 100,000 people in the U.S. died of drug overdoses between May 2020 and April 2021, according to the CDC. This is an increase of 28 percent from the previous April 2019 to April 2020 period. Unemployment is also a variable in the rising homelessness population. If heads of households are unemployed for long periods, intergenerational poverty can become a long-term consequence. A child’s economic future is most often determined by his living circumstances until he reaches age 23.

The link between the border and U.S. jobs is inexorable. The CIS research team found that since 2000, legal and illegal immigration has added 8.8 million workers. Many in Congress advocate for more international workers even though millions of Americans are available to hire and, because they’re unemployed, are struggling financially and emotionally. Advocacy that ignores unemployment’s deadly consequences is misinformed, self-serving and dishonest.


Guzzardi writes about immigration issues and impacts for PFIR from Pennsylvania. Contact him at jguzzardi@pfirdc.org. Subscribe at joeguzzardi.substack.com.

Immigration Overages Hurt All In Era Of Shortages

Immigration Overages Hurt All In Era Of Shortages

By Joe Guzzardi

In Congress, an inverse relationship exists between the numbers of border crossers and a discussion about how millions of new migrants will be cared for. The greater the numbers, the less is said about open borders and the resultant negative long-term population consequences.

A report from the border indicates that immigration agents stopped about 7,100 worldwide migrants each day during a recent week. Department of Homeland Security officials predict that fiscal 2022 migration totals will surpass last year’s 2 million, plus an estimated 1,000-a-day “gotaways.” Once Title 42 is eliminated, the illegal alien surge will intensify because agents won’t be allowed to return migrants to Mexico based on COVID-19 grounds.

President Biden and those who advise him have privately agreed – they wouldn’t dare make a public announcement – that open borders are okay with them. In this era of shortages in oil and affordable housing and of supply chain disruptions causing product shortages everywhere, what will happen next to the migrants and to the U.S. environment after they settle? Limits to population growth exist, but are a taboo subject in Congress. Remember also that immigrants have multiplier factors like chain migration and increasing family size or starting new family units that must eventually be provided for.

Consider the most fundamental natural resource need that everyone requires: water, and the nationwide dire shortage of it. The National Drought Mitigation Center at the University of Nebraska-Lincoln, in partnership with the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration and the U.S. Department of Agriculture, has created the U.S. Drought Monitor that maps nationwide drought conditions and maintains historical drought records. Ranked according to drought severity, the top seven states include four that are primary migrant destinations: Arizona, New Mexico, California and Texas.

As of March, 90 percent of Texas is experiencing drought conditions with High Plains residents suffering from extreme drought. Forecasters warn that drought conditions could worsen, and some predict the possibility of unprecedented 10-year megadroughts that will bring hotter, drier and more extreme weather than normally seen. The University of Texas and its Environmental Institute analyzed the state’s water crisis and the probability of it expanding. Identified as one of the major contributors to water shortage was population growth. Texas’ population is expected to increase from today’s 29.5 million people to 51 million by 2070, with the majority residing in urban areas. Inarguably, the more people added to Texas’ population, the more difficult it becomes to overcome water shortage challenges.

The expected Texas population increase of 21 million people in less than 50 years is part of the U.S. total population growth of 70 million, to 404 million, during the same half decade. All will be daily consumers of water in multiple ways.

Those calling for increased immigration forget that growth is finite. Sir David Attenborough, the natural history filmmaker and biologist who advocated halving immigration into the United Kingdom to preserve as much of the landscape as possible once said, “I’ve never seen a problem that wouldn’t be easier to solve with fewer people, or harder, and ultimately impossible, with more.” Attenborough could have mentioned that water supply is an impossible-to-solve problem for any area when there are no limits to population growth.


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

Immigration Overages Hurt All In Era Of Shortages

Lying Spawned Border Invasion

Lying Spawned Border Invasion

By Joe Guzzardi


The hour is late to save America from the White House-sanctioned, sovereignty-busting illegal immigrant invasion. To draw a baseball parallel, patriotic citizens are in the bottom of the eighth inning, getting a 6-0 shellacking from the America-last Biden administration. Still, citizens have two at bats – six outs – remaining, time enough to battle back and overcome, assuming their rally starts immediately.
 
Some observers wonder how things at the border went so wrong, so fast. The explanation is simple: Cheating and lying from Biden, Department of Homeland Security Alejandro Mayorkas, Vice President Kamala Harris and the administration’s inner circle of unelected cronies – U.S. Domestic Policy Council Director Susan Rice, Obama Foundation interim president Valerie Jarrett and Michelle and Barack Obama, who have managed to amass $70 million in wealth since their days in the White House. They threw spit balls and stole signs, and no one holds them accountable.

Lying Spawned Border Invasion

Biden’s cheating at a criminal, unconstitutional level is indisputable. For his presidency’s entirety, Biden has knowingly, willingly and flagrantly broken numerous immigration laws. The president has defied the entire Immigration and Nationality Act, legislation that defines who can immigrate to the U.S., spells out the procedure for applying for a visa and from where the applications must be submitted, and specifies the rules that new immigrants are legally obligated to follow. These have been dismissed without conferring with Congress. King Biden rules by decree. Shamelessly, even when the courts rule against him, Biden’s brazen rejection of immigration law enforcement proceeds unabated.
 
In early March, the U.S. District Court of North Texas enjoined the Biden administration’s policy of excepting unaccompanied alien minors from Title 42, and it largely denied the administration’s efforts to dismiss the lawsuit that Texas and Attorney General Ken Paxton filed. The court’s final order found that the Biden administration’s actions are: “arbitrary, capricious … or otherwise not in accordance with law.” Biden ignored the court’s injunction. Instead, the administration continued to resettle significant numbers of UACs into the U.S. – 122,000 unaccompanied migrant children were put in shelters in 2021 – which has led to the largest wave of criminal child smuggling in human history. The flood of resettled illegal alien teens and minors will drain public school resources, overcrowd hospitals and provide a pipeline for Northern Triangle gangs like MS-13.
 
In another announcement that will, like increased public education and health care costs, add to taxpayers’ burdens, Biden’s DHS Secretary Mayorkas proposed a new rule that would allow migrants to use public welfare benefits like SNAP, CHIP and Medicaid while their Green Card applications are under review. Mayorkas’ proposal violates the public charge principal which states that newly arrived immigrants must be self-sufficient and not dependent on taxpayer subsidies.
 
Biden isn’t the least bit hesitant to publicly lie about his immigration agenda. In his State of the Union address, with 38 million television viewerstuned in, Biden said: “We need to secure our border, and fix the immigration system” – the chaotic “system” he and Mayorkas created. Since Biden’s January SOU speech, the border crisis has intensified, and will get worse in late May once Title 42 ends.
 
A healthy part of the blame for the border mess lies with voters who always get the government they vote for. Biden’s campaign commitmentsincluded halting illegal immigrant deportations for 100 days, ending the border wall construction and granting amnesty to unlawfully present aliens. Biden chose as his running mate Calif. Sen. Kamala Harris, whose Senate voting record was among the most liberal.
 
Before elected to the Senate, and speaking as California’s Attorney General, Harris said “an undocumented immigrant is not a criminal.” Since her appointment as faux border czar, Harris has shown that she, like her boss, can lie, too. Said Harris: “While we are clear that people should not come to the border now, we also understand that we will enforce the law and that we also – because we can chew gum and walk at the same time – must address root causes…” Identifying migration’s root causes, Harris concluded, will end illegal immigration. But migration’s root causes turned out to be the unprecedented, uninterrupted immigration lawbreaking of Biden and Harris.
 
What happens between now and the November 2022 mid-term election, a date that might mark a turning point for enforcement, depends once again on voters. Democrats have at least four vulnerable open borders incumbents on the ballot in Arizona, Georgia, New Hampshire and New Mexico, more than enough seats to flip the 50-50 deadlocked Upper Chamber, an important step in stabilizing the border invasion. At this historic low point in border enforcement, stabilization would represent a triumph.


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

Lying Spawned Border Invasion

Mose Solomon, ‘The Rabbi of Swat’

Mose Solomon, ‘The Rabbi of Swat’

By Joe Guzzardi
 

In 1866, Lipman Pike became the first great professional Jewish baseball player when he signed a $20-a-week contract to hold down the hot corner for the Philadelphia Athletics. Lip, as Pike was known, was a dominant power hitter who, in his 425 National Association and National League games between 1871 and 1881, hit .322 with a slugging average of .468. Accounts of those early games noted that Pike hit numerous home runs that soared beyond outfielders’ reach. When the popular Pike passed away prematurely at age 48, The Sporting News, baseball’s Bible, published a tribute that include these glowing comments: “Pike…was one of the few sons of Israel who ever drifted to the business of ball playing. He was a handsome fellow when he was here, and the way he used to hit that ball was responsible for many a scene of enthusiasm at the old avenue grounds.”

Since Pike, many more Jewish superstars have excelled on the diamond. Most famous among them is Sandy Koufax, the Dodgers’ Hall of Fame lefty who was the first pitcher to win three Cy Young Awards, and the only pitcher to capture the award when it was given to just one major leaguer. Koufax won pitching’s Triple Crown – wins, strike outs and ERA, in 1963, 1965 and 1966, and hurled four no-hitters, one of them a perfect game.

Hank Greenberg is another Jewish baseball standout, and a World War II hero. Greenberg’s power statistics are on a par with Babe Ruth, Lou Gehrig, Ted Williams and Jimmie Foxx. After enlisting in the U.S. Army Air Corps, Greenberg rose to First Lieutenant, and was active in the China-Burma-India Theater. Al Rosen, a four-year World War II Navy vet and Cleveland Indians third baseman, is the only player to win both the Most Valuable Player, and the MLB Executive of the Year awards. Rosen, a successful amateur boxer with a vicious right upper cut who described himself as “one tough Jew,” unanimously won his MVP in 1953, and for his front office efforts that guided the San Francisco Giants’ from first to last place in 1987, he was elected Executive of the Year.

In baseball circles, Koufax, Greenberg and Rosen are well-known. But the compelling 1923 tale about Mose Solomon, the “Rabbi of Swat,” blends the long-gone Class C low minor Southwestern League’s Hutchinson Wheat Shockers with early 1900s Jewish immigration to New York, the World Champion Giants, its manager John J. McGraw and his desperate but ultimately futile search for a slugger who could match Babe Ruth’s home run power, thereby siphoning off Ruth-crazed bugs from the hated Yankees.

Mose Solomon, ‘The Rabbi of Swat’

In his book, “The League of Outsider Baseball,” Gary Cieradkowski wrote that when word reached McGraw that by September 1923 Solomon had blasted a then-professional record 49 homers, was hitting .421, leading the league in doubles, hits and runs scored, the Giants manager was convinced that the “Jewish Babe Ruth” would spearhead the Jints to financial success. Within the blink of an eye, the Giants paid the Wheat Shockers $4,500 for Solomon’s contract, and soon thereafter “The Rabbi of Swat” was riding the rail toward New York. But McGraw soon realized he had no place in the lineup for Kansas’ home run phenom. The Giants’ first base position and its outfield were populated by future HOFers George “High Pockets” Kelly, Casey Stengel, Ross Youngs and Hack Wilson. While Solomon rode the pine, the very vocal cranks demanded that the Jewish Babe Ruth be put into a game.

McGraw gave in, and on the season’s last home tilt Solomon hit a game-winning double against the Philadelphia Phillies. Solomon got into one more game in 1923, and ended his season – and his major league career – with three hits in eight at bats, a .375 batting average. The Rabbi’s problem was, as scouts said, “He could poke’em, but he couldn’t pick’em,” a reference to Solomon’s 31 errors in 108 games in Kansas. Solomon was promptly dispatched back to the minors where he resumed his lusty batting prowess – seven seasons of .300 or higher.

When Mose realized his baseball days were behind him, he took up semi-pro football, and played effectively until injuries sidelined him for good – a lucky break for the Rabbi as things turned out. Solomon and his wife moved to Miami where he started a long, lucrative real estate business until his peaceful 1965 death.

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

Mose Solomon, ‘The Rabbi of Swat’

California Bill Lets Illegals Enforce Law

California Bill Lets Illegals Enforce Law

By Joe Guzzardi

When the subject is California and the state’s extreme politics, nothing ever surprises. But even long-time California skeptics admit that Senate Bill 960 (SB 960) raises eyebrows for its audacity and disregard for public safety.

Introduced by State Senator Nancy Skinner, a Democrat who represents District 9 and its radical cities of Oakland, Berkeley and Richmond, the bill proposes to allow non-U.S. citizens to become California law enforcement officers. Skinner’s bill removes the condition that an individual must be a citizen or a lawful United States permanent resident to become a police officer, a step too far in many Californians’ opinion. Since Skinner’s legislation doesn’t specifically ban illegal immigrants from the non-U.S. citizen category, the conclusion that many have reached is that SB 960 would allow illegally present aliens to wear the badge. The bill originally passed committee 4-1, has been read twice, and will soon get a third and final reading before it can proceed to the floor for debate.

SB 960 has sparked controversy, and the first to speak out is Skinner herself. At a March 22 Senate Public Safety Committee hearing, Skinner insisted that her bill “only allows those who are living here legally and have the legal ability to work here – through a visa, a Green Card – to become peace officers.” She added, “I just want to be clear on that.” Despite Skinner’s insistence, SB 960 is at best murky on the permissibility of illegal immigrants becoming law enforcement officers.

To give Skinner the possible benefit of doubt, SB 960 may be the consequence of her district’s inability to retain police officers. The Mercury News reported that Oakland is the state’s “most watched police department with both a federal monitor and strong civilian oversight.” As a result of the intense oversight, officers are leaving the Oakland PD in unprecedented numbers, from an average of about four per month late last year to 10 or 15 a month since then.

California Bill Lets Illegals Enforce Law

Despite federal and municipal oversight, in 2021 OPD investigated 134 homicides, the most since 2012, and the city endured a 21 percent increase in shootings. Crime rates in Berkeley and Richmond are equally terrible. In Berkeley, a crime occurs on average once every 70 minutes; in Richmond, once every 158 minutes. Berkeley isn’t the only challenged city in the state. The Los Angeles Police Department has 296 vacant officer positions and almost 500 fewer on-duty officers than it did this time last year, according to LAPD reports.

Whatever the solution is to the Bay Area and sanctuary state California’s rising crime rates and its dwindling number of police officers on the payroll, rewarding illegal aliens with the vital job of enforcing the law isn’t the answer. One of the existing provisions to qualify as a California police officer is that the candidate complete a background check that confirms his or her good moral character. Since little information can be confirmed about an illegal immigrant’s life prior to voluntarily and illegally coming to the U.S., no meaningful background check can be performed. Known for certain, however, is that entering the U.S. without inspection violates U.S. immigration law which furthermore means that the prospective police candidate’s first action was criminal.

Blue states like New York, Illinois, Oregon, Washington and California have pushed to promote illegal immigrants to the same level as legal immigrants, a grave injustice to the foreign-born who followed the proper procedures to attain lawful permanent resident status. Opening up good, albeit dangerous, jobs like police officer to illegal aliens is a disservice all the way around – to citizens who want protection provided by the most qualified and best trained, to citizens seeking high-paying jobs with affirmative benefits, and to the U.S. homeland which is always imperiled.

Specifically, border agents have encountered 838,685 illegal aliens since October 1, fiscal year 2022’s beginning, to February; Biden has released 37.9 percent, or 318,700. Add to 838,685, hundreds of thousands more migrant gotaways not included in the official total.

Assuming the pace at which agents apprehend or encounter illegals keeps up – 167,737 per month pre-Title 42 removal – the alien encounter total by fiscal year end September 30 will exceed 2 million. And if Biden releases aliens at the same rate, another unsupervised 760,000 illegals will be at large. Skinner’s ill-conceived idea to give law enforcement jobs to noncitizens, a category that may include illegal aliens, is foolish and dangerous.


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

California Bill Lets Illegals Enforce Law

Migrant Surge Will Compound Housing Crisis

Migrant Surge Will Compound Housing Crisis

By Joe Guzzardi

The Alliance for a New Immigration Consensus, a cheap labor lobby with a fancy-sounding name, has set as its goal more immigration under the guise of helping employers find the workers they claim are in short supply.

The alliance’s letter to House Speaker Nancy Pelosi, Republican Leader Kevin McCarthy, Senate Majority Leader Chuck Schumer and Republican Leader Mitch McConnell starts with the dramatic statement that “at no other point in recent history has the need for immigration reform been greater than it is today. Simply put, the system is broken.”

These are familiar refrains from the cheap labor and ethnic identity hucksters. The letters’ cosigners included religious advocates, dairy farmers, pro-immigration, refugee resettlement organizations, the Chamber of Commerce – “We can no longer afford to delay!” – and the George W. Bush Institute.

The GWB Institute has an aggressive pro-immigration agenda that includes, reminiscent of 43’s White House days, promoting amnesty, accepting more refugees and asylees, and citizenship for deferred action for childhood arrivals, aka DREAMers.

For the Bush boys, George and Jeb!, the apple doesn’t fall far from their father’s tree. Bush #43 pushed for amnesty throughout his eight White House years. The dismal 2016 presidential campaign of Jeb! centered on expanded immigration – a Wall Street Journal story quoted Bush’s critics and called him “an apostle for amnesty.” Father of GWB and Jeb, George H.W. Bush, #41, signed the Immigration Act of 1990, disastrous legislation that paved the way over three-plus decades for millions of imported workers that displaced American workers. George and his wife Laura are, even during this unprecedented period of an ongoing border invasion, unbending immigration promoters who, along with the powerful, deep-pocketed Chamber of Commerce, ceaselessly demand more.

Migrant Surge Will Compound Housing Crisis

In March, Laura and GWB invited four deferred action for childhood arrival recipients, an immigration lawyer and the American Nursery & Landscape Association legislative chair to the George W. Bush Presidential Center where the former president doubled down on the broken immigration system meme. To be sure, the immigration system is broken, but for reasons never mentioned by Bush or other supporters of higher immigration levels. For decades, congressionally approved, presidentially signed immigration laws have been blatantly trampled on while Congress ignores and often rewards the violators.

When Biden and Department of Homeland Security Secretary Alejandro Majorkas lift Title 42 at the end of May, officials expect 18,000 daily illegal immigrant encounters, an approximate 500,000 monthly total that should, but doesn’t, satisfy the most ardent immigration advocates. Not surprisingly, the half a million per month illegal immigrants that take up U.S. residency will represent the largest contributor to the nation’s future population growth. They will compete with Americans for jobs, medical care and classroom seats, and will help exacerbate the affordable housing shortage, an issue of grave concern in border states like California, Arizona and New Mexico. California’s median home price is projected to rise 5.5 percent in 2022 to hit $834,000. Exorbitant housing costs represent an insurmountable problem for newly arrived aliens who need shelter.

The Journal of Housing Economics researched immigration’s effect on housing costs, and concluded that an increase in the number of immigrants equal to 1 percent of a metropolitan statistical area’s total population was linked with a 0.8 percent increase in rents and a 0.8 percent increase in home prices. The same immigrant increase created a 1.6 percent rise in rents and a 9.6 percent rise in home prices in surrounding metropolitan statistical areas. The U.S. Office of Management and Budget defines a metropolitan statistical area as an urbanized area with a minimum 50,000 population.

Indisputable evidence – eliminating Title 42 as an illegal immigration deterrent – proves positively that more immigration is coming, although the final number, whatever that total may end up being, will never satisfy the Bushes, the Chamber of Commerce or the Biden administration. The donor class and elitists will score a big win. To Biden and his inner circle’s obvious satisfaction, unprecedented mass immigration devastates mainstream America.

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

Migrant Surge Will Compound Housing Crisis

Title 42 Going Out; Migrant Flood Coming In

Title 42 Going Out; Migrant Flood Coming In

By Joe Guzzardi


Since his first day in the White House, President Joe Biden has embarked on a nonstop journey to dismantle existing immigration laws, at first through Executive Orders, and more recently word of mouth. Biden’s criminal disregard for congressionally approved, presidentially signed immigration laws led to a 2 million-strong illegal alien invasion at the Southwest Border last year, plus 500,000 “gotaways” that eluded border patrol agents, and the numbers tick up daily.

On April 1, the CDC announced that it will end the Title 42 regulation on May 23. Title 42 allowed border patrol agents the wherewithal to expel, on the basis of COVID-19, some migrants who wanted to enter the U.S. and claim asylum. But at the same time, the agents processed family units and other so-called vulnerable migrants who were eventually bussed or flown to the U.S. interior.

The immigration crisis of the year past will soon look like a Sunday morning walk in the park. All hell is about to break out on the border. Immediately after the news broke about Title 42 and Department of Homeland Security Secretary Alejandro Mayorkas’ confirmation that the restriction would be lifted, Internet images of global migrants lined up to get past Mexican police, and proceed to the U.S. border, appeared on various sites.

Mayorkas, Biden’s co-conspirator in the dismantling of America, immediately began with double talk. Once the order is lifted, Mayorkas said that individuals will be processed under standard procedure. In a prepared statement, Mayorkas said that smugglers will spread misinformation about U.S. admission to take advantage of vulnerable migrants. But Mayorkas concluded with: “Let me be clear: those unable to establish a legal basis to remain in the United States will be removed.”

Sounds tough, but no one believes him. Mayorkas’ statement about removal directly conflicts with his earlier pronouncement that simply being illegally present doesn’t qualify an alien for deportation. In other words, current or future migrants have no concerns about being returned to their home countries. If they wish to stay, they’ll stay. Like his boss Biden, Mayorkas is a great one for making up new faux immigration laws as he goes along, but acting on them as if they are congressionally approved. Existing immigration law is crystal clear: those unlawfully present are deportable.

Title 42 Going Out; Migrant Flood Coming In

Despite pleas from his fellow Democrats to retain Title 42, Biden shows no sign of backing away from his open border tolerance. At least two Texas Democrats have asked Biden to delay ending the policy until Southern Border apprehensions and encounters slow. U.S. Reps. Henry Cuellar, a Laredo Democrat, and Vicente Gonzales, a McAllen Democrat, joined several of their Republican colleagues earlier this week in a letter to Mayorkas and Health and Human Services Secretary Xavier Becerra. In part, their letter read: “… small border communities lack the appropriate housing, transportation, and healthcare infrastructure to manage the ongoing release of migrant populations into their jurisdictions.”

Democratic Senators Kyrsten Sinema, Mark Kelly and Joe Manchin implored Biden to enforce Title 42, but to no avail. Sinema and Kelly urged Biden to formulate an as-yet-undrafted replacement plan for Title 42. Manchin called Biden’s move “a frightening decision” that will lead to record-breaking illegal immigration during the current fiscal year.

Arizona Sheriff Mark Dannels, National Sheriffs Association Border Security Committee chair, stated the obvious when he said that Biden has forsaken border law enforcement, that his Cochise County is “already beyond a crisis” and that border-related crime has cost local taxpayers more than $1 million. Under Biden, Dannels said that he’s seen the “erosion of infrastructure and the rule of law.” Checkpoints have been shuttered, and a Border Patrol station is down to a skeleton crew. In summary, Dannels, a 37-year law enforcement veteran, said what many Americans, whether they live on the border or in the interior, have already concluded: “We have been abandoned; let’s just say that.”

Veteran observers of D.C. politics can’t quite figure out Biden and his immigration policy. Mid-term elections are seven months away, Biden’s favorability polling among likely voters is in the tank; 53 percentdisapprove, and his immigration handling stands even lower at 59 percent disapproval. As unlikely as it may seem, the staunch America-last Democrats and Biden’s inner circle of globalists are content to lose their jobs, and take their party down with them, over an open border immigration policy that no one wants and harms everybody – first and foremost, blacks, Hispanics and other minorities.

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

Title 42 Going Out; Migrant Flood Coming In