Category: Joe Guzzardi

Lame-Duck Session Might Include Amnesty Push

Lame-Duck Session Might Include Amnesty Push

By Joe Guzzardi

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Lame-Duck Session Might Include Amnesty Push

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

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

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

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

Babe Ruth Promised Johnny Sylvester A Home Run And Kept It

Babe Ruth Promised Johnny Sylvester A Home Run And Kept It

By Joe Guzzardi

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

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

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

Babe Ruth Promised Johnny Sylvester A Home Run And Kept It
Babe Ruth and Johnny Sylvester

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Babe Ruth Promised Johnny Sylvester A Home Run And Kept It

Biden’s Cartel-Enriching Border Betrayal

Biden’s Cartel-Enriching Border Betrayal

By Joe Guzzardi

Only a handful of insiders realize the true magnitude of the border crisis and its consequences.

Those in the know include defanged Customs and Border Protection (CBP) agents, neutered Immigration and Customs Enforcement officials, journalists whose truthful reporting rarely makes national headlines, Department of Homeland Security Secretary Alejandro Mayorkas and his White House superiors. Otherwise, the dangers that open borders represent are kept tightly under wraps to avoid bad optics. The world, however, knows that accessing the U.S. interior is merely a matter of getting to the border, crossing and beginning the journey – often White House-aided and abetted – to the final destination for those who enter illegally. In President Biden’s eyes, the world is welcome.

In mid-August, for example, CBP caught ten illegal immigrant adults posing as the ubiquitous unaccompanied alien child (UAC). The phony minors, apprehended at Texas’ El Paso Sector, ranged in age from 18 to 26; by law, UACs must not have reached age 18. All were Guatemalans who claimed to be minors to avoid deportation.

Days later, at the Del Rio Valley Sector, agents stopped an 18-wheeler crammed with 150 smuggled aliens that included 17 gang members, one sex offender and one convicted of murder. MS-13 members were among the identified gangsters. This fiscal year, an estimated 130,000 UACs, some self-defined, have entered. The CBP press release on the DRV action concluded, vaguely: “All subjects were processed accordingly.”

Biden’s Cartel-Enriching Border Betrayal

The Coalition Against Trafficking Women, Latin American branch, estimates that 60 percentof Latin American children who embark on a U.S.-bound journey, either alone or with smugglers, are captured by cartels, and then forced into pornography or drug trafficking. In addition to enduring a moral nightmare, those migrants who successfully make it to the U.S. interior will have outstanding debts owed to the coyotes and cartels that will take them a lifetime to payoff. To make sure that smuggling accounts are settled, the aliens are forced to wear GPS wristbands so that the cartel can monitor their movements. Cartels are the world’s most powerful criminal organizations and have created the largest form of modern slavery. The New York Times estimated that cartel revenues reached $13 billion this year, up from $500 million in 2018, a 26x increase in fewer than five years.

Over the years, illegal immigration has reached such extraordinarily high levels that it begat more illegal immigration. Decades of porous borders, inadequate interior enforcement and the current welcoming environment have facilitated today’s historic and continuous wave.

In 2018, during interviews in Guatemala’s tiny 17,000 residents-strong Concepción Chiquirichapa, reporters learned that almost everyone has family, or knows someone with family, in the U.S. Think about what that amazing statistic conveys: individuals thousands of miles away from Los Angeles, Chicago and New York, and with few transportation options in their remote villages, have departed for the U.S., confident that they’ll get in, and will remain indefinitely.

But neither unlawfully present parents nor their children who are joining them, trafficked or not, deserve a free pass from the Biden administration. In previous UAC waves, 60 percent of the children were handed over to illegally residing parents. U.S. District Judge Andrew Hanen, in the Southern District of Texas, wrote of several instances in which parents “initiated the conspiracy to smuggle minors into the country illegally,” a reference to contracting with traffickers.

Then, Hanen continued, instead of enforcing immigration laws, “DHS completed the criminal conspiracy…by delivering the minors into the custody of the parent living illegally in the United States.” Hanen’s message: Nonenforcement encourages parents to pay coyotes to bring their minor children north. UACs will continue to flock to the border as long as their illegal alien U.S. families can criminally bring their children to the U.S. without concern for their own removal. Judge Hanen’s criminal conspiracy allegation is tough talk, but accurate. And with the entire U.S. a sanctuary nation, nonenforcement’s failures and the fallout are painfully obvious.

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

Biden’s Cartel-Enriching Border Betrayal

The Acerra’s All-Brothers Baseball Team: Italian-American Heritage Month

The Acerra’s All-Brothers Baseball Team: Italian-American Heritage Month

By Joe Guzzardi

In 1997, the Cooperstown Hall of Fame honored the Acerra family, an all-Italian, 12-brother semi-pro team that played .700 winning baseball from 1938 to 1952. Between 1860 and 1940, 29 baseball teams were made up entirely of brothers; the Acerras played longer than any other.

Honored isn’t the same as inducted, so the brothers didn’t join the powerful Italian-American contingent that has Hall of Fame plaques: the New York Yankees’ Joe DiMaggio, Tony Lazzeri, Yogi Berra and Phil Rizzuto. More recently, Joe Torre, Tommy La Russa and Craig Biggio joined the Cooperstown greats. Among the Italian-American baseball standouts born too soon to benefit from today’s watered-down Hall of Fame standards were Sal “the Barber” Maglie, a New York Giants, Brooklyn Dodgers and Yankees pitcher, and Rocco Domenico Colavito, a nine-time All-Star with 374 career home runs.

The Acerras’ wonderful story is one of strong family ties, and exceptional baseball skills. Louis “Pop” Acerra coached his sons, part of his family of 17 children. The team consisted of Alfred and Edward as catcher, James and Robert on the mound, Charles at first base, Louis Jr. at second base, Fred at shortstop, Richard at third base and sharing outfield duties, Paul, Joseph, William and Anthony. Back then, girls didn’t play baseball, so Pop’s five daughters rooted from the sidelines along with the family dog “Pitch.” Neighbors couldn’t remember a time when the brothers weren’t out in their yard playing catch or hitting fungos to each other.

The age difference between oldest brother, Anthony, to the youngest, Louis Jr. was 25 years. While being scouted by major league teams, their playing ages were as young as 17 and as old as 40. For 22 consecutive years, the Long Branch High School baseball team fielded an Acerra brother.

The Acerra’s All-Brothers Baseball Team
The Acerra Brothers Baseball Team

Officially formed in 1938, and under Pop’s watchful eye, over the next 14 years, the team played throughout the East Coast. In 1948, the sibling squad challenged the New York Yankees to an exhibition game, an offer the Bronx Bombers rejected. During World War II, the team temporarily disbanded. Defending America’s freedom was more important than baseball. At different times, six brothers enlisted; when they all returned, the team resumed playing. The brothers turned down college scholarships and offers to play professional baseball. Alfred, the catcher, continued to play after losing sight in one eye. Attempting to bunt, the ball bounced off Alfred’s bat, and struck him directly in the eye. Within months, Alfred was back behind the plate. Brother Freddie said: “He was a pretty good catcher for a guy with one eye.”

In 1946, the Acerras joined the Long Branch City (New Jersey) Twilight Baseball League, and during the next six years, won the championship four times. When the Acerras played, the stands were always packed with fans.

Along their road to success, the Acerras became the talk of the town. In 1947, Life and Look magazines and Ripley’s Believe it or Not ran features on the brothers. The Acerras also appeared on the popular “Once in a Lifetime” nightly radio program.

By 1952, the brothers had married and were raising children. The team’s playing days were over. But 45 years after their last game, the seven still-living brothers accepted the HOF’s invitation to participate in its annual ceremony. James M. Accera, pitcher Jimmy’s son, donated his Dad’s uniform and glove which now are in the same museum with the artifacts of the lives of Babe Ruth, Ty Cobb and Willie Mays.

Acerra said, “This just touches the surface of a family that stayed a family, behind all the baseball and athletic achievements. A family that never allowed sibling rivalry and infighting or success to tear them apart. Their team was a reflection of something greater, something that 14 years, many hardships, the lure of professional contracts, and even a World War could not destroy.”

Acerra’s loving memory stands as a reminder that the team’s accomplishments were more about family values than baseball, and how the national pastime unified them in brotherly love.

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

The Acerra’s All-Brothers Baseball Team

Clinton’s Post 1994 Mid-Term Immigration Awakening

Clinton’s Post 1994 Mid-Term Immigration Awakening

By Joe Guzzardi

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

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

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

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

Clintons Post 1994 Mid-Term Immigration Awakening

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

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

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

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

Clinton’s Post 1994 Mid-Term Immigration Awakening

Hispanic Voters Trending Red

Hispanic Voters Trending Red

By Joe Guzzardi

For the last several presidential election cycles, media messaging has been consistent: candidates who capture the Hispanic vote will win. The suggestion, often unstated, was that GOP candidates need to promote an illegal alien amnesty, pledge to curtail interior enforcement and promote expanded immigration. In 2022, however, Hispanics could indeed hold the key to a GOP victory, but not because they endorse amnesty. Hispanics, realizing that an open border creates job competition, classroom chaos and disrupts their communities, oppose President Biden’s immigration agenda.

The Hispanic shift toward Republicans has been slowly, but steadily building. In 2004 and 2016, Republican Presidents George W. Bush and Donald Trump scored well among Hispanics, 40 percent and 38 percent, respectively. Trump’s 2020 total was almost 10 points higher than his 2016 tally. But in the 20 months since Biden’s inauguration, the White House’s open borders agenda has accelerated the Hispanic shift to the GOP. Remember that Hispanics who vote are U.S. citizens, and their hopes and concerns are largely identical to other Americans.

In his new book, “Political Migrants: Hispanic Voters on the Move,” Jim Robb wrote that Biden’s refusal to enforce border laws, and instead to opt for catch-and-release, has been disastrous for all Americans, but especially legal immigrants and the 40-plus million American-born Hispanics.

This fall, indications are that Hispanics will vote Republican at a higher rate than they did in 2020: 41 percent plan to vote Republican against 45 percent who will support Democrats, with others undecided. Since only 29 percent of Hispanics voted Republican in the 2018 mid-term election, 41 percent would be a significant GOP move toward capturing an important demographic. In fact, 41 percent would be the highest mid-term election share Republicans have ever received from Hispanics.

On important life-affecting issues, Hispanics side with the GOP. Among likely Hispanic voters, 52 percent believe the government is doing “too little to reduce illegal border crossings and visitor overstays.” Only 15 percent believe the government is doing “too much.” Hispanic voters overwhelmingly agree that chain migration should be limited to spouses and minor children, that Congress should mandate E-Verify which helps assure that only citizens and lawfully present foreign nationals can hold jobs, that businesses should raise wages to attract American workers before hiring foreign nationals, and that legal immigration should be reduced from its current 1 million-plus annually inflow.

Hispanic Voters Trending Red

Other poll findings may vary, but tangible evidence exists that the Hispanic shift to the GOP is real and may represent the difference in November. In a special June election to determine who would represent Texas’ 34th congressional district in the illegal immigration-besieged Rio Grande Valley, Mayra Flores defeated Democrat Dan Sanchez. A citizen since age 14 and married to a border patrol officer, Flores represents a burgeoning breed of Hispanic officeholders who promote strict border enforcement. Flores is the first Republican to represent her historically blue district in 150 years, and the first woman born in Mexico ever elected to Congress. Just weeks after her victory, Flores called on her colleagues to impeach Department of Homeland Security Secretary Alejandro Mayorkas for his abject failures to enforce immigration laws which have caused the ongoing border crisis.

Texas gubernatorial challenger Robert O’Rourke, trailing Republican incumbent Greg Abbott, explained why Hispanics have abandoned Democrats. O’Rourke, harkening back to 2020, blamed Biden who “…didn’t spend a dime or day in the Rio Grande Valley or really anywhere in Texas….”

Flores will be on the November ballot when she’ll face Democrat Vicente Gonzales who has consistently voted to support Biden’s open borders policy. Political forecasters maintain that the 34th still leans blue. But a Flores victory would confirm that the Hispanic trend to red is real.

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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.

Hispanic Voters Trending Red

White House Shrugs at Chinese Espionage

White House Shrugs at Chinese Espionage

By Joe Guzzardi

A federal jury in Chicago recently found Chinese national Ji Chaoqun, 31, a member of the U.S. Army reserves, guilty of conspiracy to act as an agent of a foreign government. The jury also found Chaoqun guilty of one count of making false statements to the U.S. Army during his application process. Ji enlisted in 2016 via the controversial Military Accessions Vital to the National Interest program (MAVNI) – an initiative allowing U.S. military offices to hire legal aliens deemed sufficiently useful for service. In light of Ji’s conviction, the MAVNI program should be re-evaluated.

In a statement, the Department of Justice said that Chaoqun worked for intelligence agents that operated within the Chinese government. In that capacity, he attempted to recruit engineers and scientists on behalf of the Chinese Intelligence Ministry.

Ji arrived in the U.S. on an F-1 student visa to study electrical engineering at the Illinois Institute of Technology which had forged ties with Chinese universities and colleges. During academic year 2020/2021, 317,299 Chinese students were enrolled in U.S. academic institutions. China is the major sender of international students to U.S. college campuses. Among all international graduates, more than a million have remained in the U.S. and work as part of the Optional Practical Training Program. They have displaced American information technology employees or aspiring college degree holders looking for jobs.

Chaoqun’s conviction is the latest in a growing list of Chinese nationals who have infiltrated, with little difficulty, the federal government, academia and U.S. corporations. Because of the victims’ high profiles, the two most well-known Chinese spy cases are Fang Fang, California U.S. Rep. Eric Swalwell’s mistress, and California Sen. Dianne Feinstein’s chauffer and aide for two decades. At the time, Feinstein was the Senate Intelligence Committee chair. When the FBI investigations heated up, the two Chinese operatives fled the country and returned home. No further information about them has been gleaned. The conclusion is, however, that if two low-level Chinese spies can access the U.S. Congress, then infiltration must be a snap.

White House Shrugs at Chinese Espionage

If China represents the biggest threat to the U.S., as FBI Director Christopher Wray and others insist, then tighter oversight on arriving Chinese nationals is paramount. Wray said that the Chinese Communist Party (CCP) has implemented a multi-layered, generational campaign with the goal to become the world’s economic and technological leader. Wray listed economic espionage, data hacking, intellectual property theft, bribery, blackmail and other coercive attempts “to sway our government’s policies, distort our country’s public discourse, and undermine confidence in our democratic processes and values.” The FBI director could have pointed to Swalwell and Feinstein as examples to drive his point home. In June 2015, Chinese hackers stole the personal data of 145 million Americans when they accessed the Office of Personnel Management’s servers.

With a warning from Wray, a top-ranking law enforcement officer, and documented case history to support his concerns, the federal government should, at a minimum, be on high alert to China’s efforts to undermine the government. Instead, the Biden administration proceeds blasély on its existing course, and may accelerate Chinese nationals’ admissions and their path to citizenship.

In February, the President’s Advisory Commission of Asian Americans, Native Hawaiians, and Pacific Islanders (AANHPI) held its first-ever meeting. Biden established the commission through a 2021 executive order and appointed Health and Human Services Secretary and U.S. Trade Representative Ambassador Katherine Tai to co-chair. The 25 individual commissioners have extensive involvement in diversity and equity issues. Six subcommittees were formed to advance equity, justice and opportunity, including a subcommittee to address immigration and citizenship. Whenever the Biden administration talks about immigration in the same breath with equity, justice and opportunity, the takeaway is more immigration which in turn means more employment permits granted to immigrants and fewer jobs for Americans.

AANHPI is toiling in obscurity and will be disbanded when a new Congress takes over in January 2023. But the commission reflects Biden’s mindset; equity for all except working Americans, and specifically border city residents whose communities migrants have overrun, and whose lifestyles have been altered, possibly forever, by the president’s unshakeable commitment to open borders.

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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.

White House Shrugs at Chinese Espionage

Border Surge Inundates School Districts

Border Surge Inundates School Districts

By Joe Guzzardi

As worldwide migrants continue to pour across the Southwest border, the financial and emotional toll on communities directly affected mounts.

In El Paso, officials reported that, during September, up to 1,500 illegal immigrants, mostly Venezuelans but also Cubans and Central Americans, arrive daily. Providing for the migrants’ needs has overwhelmed El Paso. Unable to keep up, El Paso created its own Migrant Support Services Center and authorized staff to negotiate a $6.9 million contract with a Virginia-based nonprofit that will manage the facility.

Humanely caring for the migrants and accommodating the illegal border crossers will require El Paso to spend $300,000 daily, or nearly $10 million, in September alone. The fiscal outlay that El Paso makes on the migrants’ behalf means that funds normally allocated for police and fire departments as well as other social services that the city routinely makes available to its residents are nearly depleted.

In a letter to Mayor Oscar Leeser, city council members implored him to issue a Disaster Declaration to help keep El Paso’s residents and its newly arrived migrant population safe. The council members’ letter noted that the current inflow is “unsustainable” and “simply unfair to our community.” A disaster declaration shifts the responsibility for the aliens away from El Paso and to the state and federal governments. In the end, however, whether funds come from municipalities, Texas or the federal government, taxpayers are on the hook for the bulk of the migrants’ resettlement costs. The Federation for American Immigration Reform calculated that the migrants’ resettlement will cost taxpayers $20 billion annually in education, healthcare, welfare, justice and law enforcement. Including got-aways, an estimated 5 million migrants have illegally crossed the border since Biden took the White House. Many have been relocated, also at taxpayer expense, into the interior.

The border crisis, and its inevitable fallout, will soon become apparent to parents with school-age children. Because the 1982 Supreme Court Plyer v. Doe ruled that public schools are legally required to enroll students regardless of their immigration status, K-12 classrooms nationwide, and the many teachers responsible for educating the children, will be overwhelmed.

In April, at the Austin Independent School District, teachers protested the 400-plus student influx of Central American students at two high school campuses. The educators complained that they had to give their lessons in hallways and conference rooms. Keep in mind that many of those students don’t speak English and may not speak Spanish either. While Spanish is the most common language, ten other languages are spoken throughout Central America, including Mayan dialects. For teachers, effective communication can be difficult.

Border Surge Inundates School Districts

Austin’s frustrated teachers have plenty of company. Los Angeles County, Florida’s Miami-Dade County, Texas’ Harris County and New York enrolled 4,579, 2,306, 7,170 and 11,000 migrants, respectively. Teachers will have to brace for more students, many unfamiliar with classroom learning. A Health and Human Services report showed that through July, 107,742 unaccompanied minors were released into their sponsors’ custody. The report is understated since it includes only cities that relocated 50 or more UACs (unaccompanied alien children), and would also exclude migrants not placed with families. In all, over the last four years, an estimated 2 million non-English speaking students have been added to the nation’s public schools, a costly and burdensome obligation with which teachers, school officials, parents and communities must grapple.

In the months immediately ahead, more illegal immigration will lead to greater pressure on school districts. And more illegal immigration is absolutely on the way – some estimates project a 7 million total by the time Biden’s term ends. Under oath, Border Patrol Chief Raul Ortiz, a Biden appointee with three decades of dedicated law enforcement, testified that he believes illegal border crossings will increase at an exponential rate.

The reason for Ortiz’s grim forecast is that there are “no consequences” imposed by the Biden administration on illegal aliens who break U.S. immigration law. But for sovereign America, the short- and long-term consequences of unchecked illegal immigration are many and irreversible. School districts’ immigration-spawned predicament is one example from many which exposes the contempt that the Biden administration has for America and her citizens.

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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 10-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.

Border Surge Inundates School Districts

Immigration Crisis Should Give GOP Upper Hand But Will They Act?

Immigration Crisis Should Give GOP Upper Hand But Will They Act?

By Joe Guzzardi

With seven weeks remaining before the 2022 mid-term election, Republicans and Democrats have drawn their battle lines, and staked out what each party considers their opponents’ political vulnerabilities.

Last week, the GOP released what it called a “Commitment to America” that included many oft-made, unfulfilled promises to its base. GOP House Minority Leader Kevin McCarthy (R-Calif.), Minority Whip Steve Scalise (R-La.) and Conference Chair Elise Stefanik (R-N.Y.) vowed to fund border enforcement, end catch-and-release and mandate E-Verify, the online program that confirms whether a newly hired employee is legally authorized to work in the U.S.

President Biden swiftly rebutted. Speaking to the teachers’ union in Philadelphia, Biden called the “Commitment to America” thin gruel, and chided McCarthy for omitting references to issues that, in his view, voters most care about like a woman’s right to choose, Medicare, Social Security, gun violence and LGBT discrimination.

Enforcing immigration laws may help give Republicans a winning hand – border patrol agents have apprehended an estimated 4.9 million illegal immigrants during the 20 months since Biden’s inauguration. The variable in the November election is whether the GOP can unify behind its promises, traditionally a huge problem for Republicans, and press their advantages into a congressional majority against what will be solidly determined, no defectors allowed, Democrats.

Key to the Commitment to America is E-Verify. At first glance, the program should have universal congressional support – no one from either party can intelligently argue that citizens and lawfully present immigrants shouldn’t be protected against illegal immigrant employment. But the donor-base wants illegal immigrant employees, cheaper and more subservient. And because the corporate elites are so influential with U.S. representatives and senators, E-Verify has hit a congressional brick wall for nearly 30 years. Thus, E-Verify has never had the benefit of a full floor vote.

Immigration Crisis Should Give GOP Upper Hand But Will They Act?

Sadly, the Biden administration has moved dramatically away from E-Verify’s intention. Department of Homeland Security Secretary Alejandro Mayorkas’ October 12, 2021 memo prohibits Immigration and Customs Enforcement from conducting worksite enforcement raids that might turn up employed illegal aliens. Mayorkas’ memo is an administrative subversion of immigration law, and an open invitation for employers, penalty-free, to hire illegal aliens who will also be protected from enforcement consequences. Under existing but ignored law, employed illegal immigrants could be deported.

Despite insistence from immigration advocates that Americans won’t do most of the jobs that aliens are hired to do, the evidence proves the contrary. In 2017, ICE audited an industrial bakery in Chicago which forced the employer, Cloverhill Bakery, to fire 800 illegal aliens. The terminated employees were quickly replaced by mostly black Americans. Similar ICE cases targeted illegal employment at Mississippi chicken plants, at a trailer manufacturer in Texas and a meatpacker in Tennessee. Not only were hundreds of Americans hired to fill the now-vacant jobs, but the government indicted some directly involved managers. The cases’ common denominators were the aliens’ presence in the labor market, a problem that E-Verify would have averted.

The Commitment to America is encouraging, but skeptics wonder if there’s muscle behind it or if it’s more GOP smoke and mirrors. McCarthy, Scalise and Stefanik have what’s generously described as tepid voting records on reducing illegal presence and jobs. In the same illegal presence and jobs category, Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell scored a zero. About a week ago on the Senate floor, McConnell delivered a squishy speech about immigration’s importance; his tone didn’t reverberate with the Commitment to America theme.

During the campaigning, certain to be contentious, GOP leaders may have an awakening, and persuade undecided voters that American jobs and sovereignty must be saved. Time is short. At Biden’s current pace of admitting the world – including got-aways – the U.S. could have more than 7 million illegal aliens added to its population by 2024, an unsustainable total that will adversely affect every aspect of Americans’ lives.

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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.

Immigration Crisis Should Give GOP Upper Hand But Will They Act?

Captain Hank Greenberg, A Rosh Hashanah Remembrance

Captain Hank Greenberg, A Rosh Hashanah Remembrance

By Joe Guzzardi

Simply put, Hank Greenberg is the most prodigious Jewish Major League Baseball slugger ever. Greenberg’s .313 career batting average, four AL home runs and four RBI titles plus two MVP awards earned the 12-year Detroit Tigers’ first baseman a Hall of Fame plaque in 1956 as the first Jew to enter Cooperstown. Had Greenberg not lost the entire 1942-1944 seasons, about 2,000 at bats missed during his peak performance years, Hank’s totals would have been loftier.

Few sacrificed a larger percentage of their careers to serve and protect their country than Greenberg. Hank played for nine and a half seasons, and was in uniform for four and a half years. Had Greenberg played during those war years, Sabermetrics indicates that he would have ended his career with 525 homers and 550 RBIs, instead of 331 and 1,274.

Greenberg always excelled athletically. At the Bronx’s James Madison High School, the 6’4” Greenberg dominated in baseball, basketball and soccer. After a year at New York University, in 1929 Greenberg signed with the Tigers for $9,000. Hank quickly worked his way through the minors with stops in Hartford, Evansville and Beaumont.

Captain Hank Greenberg, A Rosh Hashanah Remembrance

By September 1930, Greenberg was up for a cup of coffee with the Tigers, then hit .301 in his 1931 rookie season. By 1935, he was the American League’s MVP, helping steer the Tigers to the World Series title. In 1938, Greenberg’s 58 home runs were just two shy of Babe Ruth’s then-record. Greenberg achieved his diamond feats even though once outside the heavily Jewish Bronx, he was targeted for anti-Semitic, Jew-baiting slurs. Few were more vociferous than Detroit’s Henry Ford who blamed Jews for problems in the U.S. and Europe.

Throughout his career, Greenberg played baseball on the Sabbath, but never on the High Holy Days, Rosh Hashanah and Yom Kippur. But in 1934, with the Tigers clinging to a narrow lead over the surging New York Yankees, a crucial game fell on Rosh Hashanah. Torn between his faith and his teammates, Greenberg, after consulting a rabbi, chose to play. Hank socked two homers to lead the Tigers to a 2-1 victory.

While Greenberg may have been conflicted about playing ball on High Holy Days, he had no reservations about enlisting to defend his country. In his book “Baseball in Wartime,” Gary Bedingfield wrote that after Greenberg was drafted in 1941, he was honorably discharged when Congress released servicemen age 28 years and older. After Pearl Harbor, Sergeant Greenberg volunteered to join the U.S. Army Air Corps. “We are in trouble,” Greenberg told The Sporting News, “and there is only one thing for me to do – return to the service.” Greenberg predicted, incorrectly, that his enlistment meant the end of his baseball days, and that he was leaving the game with a “pang.” Assigned to the first Boeing B-29 Superfortresses’ group to go overseas, Greenberg spent 1944 flying in the India-China-Burma theater.

On July 1, 1945, Greenberg returned to Detroit’s starting lineup, and before 47,729 fans, homered to lead the Tigers over the Philadelphia A’s, 9-5. Greenberg’s presence in the daily lineup propelled the Tigers to a come-from-behind A.L. pennant. Greenberg kept on slugging. In 1946, he led the league with 44 home runs and 127 RBIs. After a contract dispute, Greenberg spent his final 1947 season with the Pittsburgh Pirates. After his retirement, Greenberg inexplicably fell short for Hall of Fame induction for nine consecutive years until Cooperstown elected him in 1956.

In 1986, at age 75, Greenberg, an American patriot, baseball superstar and inspiration to Christians and Jews alike, died from liver cancer. Before Greenberg passed, he wrote his wife Mary Jo a love letter that he stored in a safe deposit box for her to read after his death. When Mary Jo gathered the emotional strength to open Hank’s letter, she read his words of thankfulness to God that for 25 years he had been blessed with her devoted companionship, and of his gratitude for his Detroit Tigers’ heyday. Greenberg left Mary Jo this message: “Shed no tear for me…I’ve had a wonderful life, filled with personal success, and good health.”

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