Category: Joe Guzzardi

Lockout Gives Fans Chance to Enjoy Real Baseball

By Joe Guzzardi

Totally disgusted, indignant fans have a message for near-universally detested MLB Commissioner Rob Manfred, multi-billion-dollar net worth owners, Major League Baseball Players Association’s Executive Director Tony Clark, and the pampered, overpaid, multi-million- dollar-earning players. Take your overpriced tickets, tasteless hot dogs, warm, flat beer, launch angles, exit velocities, pitch counts and stuff them. The commissioner, owners, union and players have grievously misjudged the baseball nation’s post-pandemic, inflation-ravaged, Ukraine war-anxious mood. The last thing baseball bugs want to hear is well-heeled, privileged elitists carping about their lot and the perceived injustices they’re suffering.

The whiners have forgotten that fans have plenty of baseball options, all better than getting fleeced and bored stiff at the old ball yard where game time averages 3:10. High school, junior college and NCAA college games are underway. Parking at some venues is free, and the proceeds from concessions go right back to the athletic department to help buy equipment and defray travel expenses, not to further enrich billionaires.

Junior college provides a launching pad for players who aspire to Division 1 and represents an opportunity for them to get bigger, stronger, better and catch the attention of scouts. Among the JUCOS who became MLB superstars are Jackie Robinson, Albert Pujols, Kirby Puckett, Curt Schilling, Mike Piazza, Jorge Posada and Bryce Harper.

At D-1 baseball, the skill level is high. Last weekend, No. 1 ranked Texas and UCLA, Tennessee, Louisiana State and Oklahoma State – all major programs – played in the nationally televised Shriners Children’s College Classic. The teams played nine inning doubleheaders. The Longhorns have a rich history that sent Roger Clemens, Brandon Belt, Huston Street and others to the bigs. The Bruins have placed 28 UCLANs in the Big Show, including standouts Brandon Crawford, Gerrit Cole and Trevor Bauer. Take today’s young players out of their collegiate uniforms and put them in MLB jerseys, and few fans would notice any drop off in the quality of play. Pitchers throw 90 mph-plus; the fielders make wide-ranging plays, and batters hit with power.

At the collegiate level, coaches stress fundamental baseball, something sorely lacking in the big leagues. University of Southern California’s late, legendary coach Rod Dedeaux’s guiding philosophy: “Never make the same mistake once.” Dedeaux’s students listened. During his 45 years as USC coach from 1942 to 1986, Dedeaux’s teams won 11 CWS titles, including five in a row. Many Trojans went on to stellar MLB careers: Tom Seaver, Randy Johnson, Mark McGwire, Dave Kingman and Fred Lynn.

For televised baseball, viewers have lots of offerings. ESPN will air the top NCAA teams between now and June 27, the date the College World Series ends. If MLB isn’t back in action for the summer months, then fans can check out the 76 Independent League teams. The season ticket package for the Independent League Chicago Dogs is a better value than a single seat at the Cubs’ Wrigley Field, average ticket price $83. The casual, fun times that Independent League baseball offers are available from coast to coast: the Bakersfield Train Robbers, the Kansas City Monarchs, the Milwaukee Milkmen and the New York Boulders. Some teams offer “kids eat free” games, an anathema to MLB owners who charge eye-popping prices for food and beverages. True fans know that the game is the thing, not the guys who play it.

Negotiations between the owners and the players are going poorly. They resent and distrust each other. Even though they sign the checks, the owners can’t believe the salaries players earn. Contracts signed pre-lockout include 37-year-old Max Scherzer’s $130 million, three-year deal with the New York Mets, a record-setting $43 million per season. When last heard from, Scherzer begged off from a crucial World Series pitching turn: “arm fatigue.” Money flows so freely in baseball that the Washington Nationals’ 24-year-old outfielder Juan Soto rejected a $350 million, 13-year extension. Soto’s reasoning: when he becomes a free agent after the 2024 season, he anticipates he can ink a $500 million deal.

No one knows when the ugly, take-no-prisoners negotiations will end. The only certainty is that baseball, already losing fans to professional football, basketball and soccer, has sustained another black eye, something it can ill-afford. The old-fashioned, field of dreams romantic vision of baseball as the national pastime, with fathers and sons playing backyard catch, is gone forever. In its place stands the image of nasty haggling over whether players’ minimum annual salaries can reach $755,000 or whether they’ll have to settle for the owners’ $640,000 offer.

Enough! More can be gained from focusing on the great college teams and their coaches’ insights. Bob Leach, who played for Dedeaux on the Trojans’ 1974-1976 teams wrote this about his coach: “Most of us players thought we were in training to become major leaguers. In reality, we were all serving an internship for life. In addition to making great baseball teams, he was more importantly passing on his wisdom and experience so that we could succeed in any setting.” Too bad that Dedeaux’s understanding of the human condition hasn’t reached Manfred, Clark, Scherzer, et al.

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

Lockout Gives Fans Chance to Enjoy Real Baseball Lockout Gives Fans Chance to Enjoy Real Baseball

Border Invasion Marches On Is Real State Of The Union

By Joe Guzzardi

After forcefully chastising Russia and its aggression against the Ukraine, claiming credit for ending the COVID-19 pandemic and creating jobs, promising to combat inflation and taking a bow for his Circuit Court of Appeals Judge Ketanji Brown Jackson Supreme Court nomination, President Biden finally in his State of the Union spoke about the Southwest border.

Biden’s mention of the border surprised many because his immigration policies are an unmitigated disaster and cannot truthfully be described otherwise. Many wondered what border Biden might have been referring to. From Biden’s speech: “We need to secure the border, and fix the immigration system.” Promising to “fix the immigration system” is widely recognized code for amnesty.

Predictably, Biden then segued into providing “a pathway to citizenship for Dreamers, those on temporary status, farm workers, and essential workers.” He continued to: “revise our laws so businesses have the workers they need and families don’t wait decades to reunite.” Decoding, Biden meant amnesty for deferred action for childhood arrivals and temporary protected status holders, agriculture workers and “essential workers” whose skills have never been identified. More employment-based visas are included in Biden’s immigration vision. The total number of amnesty recipients would be millions.

Biden defended his largess when he claimed that amnesty is “the right thing to do,” and he cited as fellow advocates for increased immigration the U.S. Chamber of Commerce, the nation’s biggest, deepest pocketed cheap labor lobby. In 2021, the Chamber spent $95 million lobbying the federal government, $23 million more than the second most powerful lobby, the National Association of Realtors.

So reality-detached were Biden’s immigration comments that viewers wondered what he was talking about. As the president, Biden has willfully allowed 2 million illegal aliens, and several hundred thousand “got-aways” from more than 100 nations, to cross into sovereign America where his Department of Homeland Security Secretary Alejandro Mayorkas has delivered them, either by air or land, into the interior of the United States.

Many different words are used to describe what Biden has sanctioned at the border – disaster, crisis, ruinous, calamity, tragedy and catastrophe. But inarguably the most accurate, most descriptive, most troubling word is invasion. With the full encouragement of DHS Secretary Mayorkas, Biden has overseen and given his blessing to the invasion which is still ongoing at this very moment. Border patrol agents have been stripped of their responsibilities to defend the homeland and are instead processing illegal immigrants, many whose true identities cannot be vouched for with cast-iron certainty.

On the other hand, what can be reported with 100 percent confidence is that Biden’s open borders have led to a financial windfall for Mexican cartels, the most ruthless and vicious criminals conceivable. The Drug Enforcement Administration estimates that drug and human trafficking is a multi-billion dollar business. Drug trafficking also has resulted in needless fentanyl deaths, especially among young Americans. In 2020, fentanyl deaths topped COVID, car crashes and suicide as the leading cause of deaths.

The extent of the invasion is, in large part, hidden from an unsuspecting America, and persists. Only individuals who make it a point to learn what’s happening will understand the reality. Here for example is data that Health and Human Services, the agency responsible for providing care for children under age 18 without lawful immigration status, provided to Arizona U.S. Representative Andy Biggs. Of the 146,248 unaccompanied children resettled since January 20, 2021, only 55,125 were placed with parents. Others were placed with siblings or distant relatives, and an alarming 19,726 sponsors could not be reached for a wellness check on the minor. The alien children’s physical and emotional conditions are unknown. While some are technically minors, some also claim MS-13 gang membership.

As Biden spoke, Vice President Kamala Harris and Speaker of the House Nancy Pelosi looked on, applauding and nodding in agreement. Harris, the so-called border czar, is a spectacular failure. The closest Harris has been to the border’s hot spot, the Del Rio Valley, is 450 miles away in El Paso. In the meantime, illegal immigration from Quito, Ecuador, 2,500 miles from the Del Rio Valley, has increased seven-fold since 2020. Because illegal immigration has spiked to record highs, aliens are adrift, struggling to find employment, even day labor jobs.

During the run-up to 9 pm EST, Biden practiced his speech, got input from his staff and his ghost writer, and yet went with an immigration narrative that he knew was deceptive, perhaps intended as a cruel, unfunny joke on his political opponents. Final takeaways from the president’s SOU: Biden has no plans to change course and has deliberately taken a path that, left unchecked, will destroy sovereign America.

Joe Guzzardi is a PFIR analyst who writes about immigration and its consequences. Contact him at jguzzardi@pfirdc.org and joe.guzzardi@substack.com.

Border Invasion Marches On Is Real State Of The Union Border Invasion Marches On Is Real State Of The Union

Tom Seaver Returned To New York A Winner

By Joe Guzzardi

When Washington Nationals’ 23-year-old Juan Soto rejected a 13-year, $350 million contract, he unwittingly exposed why MLB fans have had enough. By today’s ludicrous payroll standards, $350 million isn’t enough money for a kid who grew up in the Dominican Republic where the per capital income is less than $8,000.

But Fernando Tatis signed with the San Diego Padres for $340 million over 14 years. Hence, on the advice of Soto’s agent, Scott Boras, the young star should sit tight, and wait for an even larger offer when, at the 2024 season’s end, he hits the free agent market. A half a billion dollars could await Soto, perhaps from the bottomless money pit known as the New York Yankees, team value $5.2 billion. For Soto and Boras, the old axiom, “A bird in the hand is worth two in the bush,” is – wise though it may be – passé.

Salary squabbles of the multimillion-dollar magnitude, Soto/Boras versus multi-billionaire Nats owners the Lerner family, are a big turnoff to baseball fans. At least the 1977 New York Mets during its very public haggle with its superstar pitcher Tom Seaver gave its rabid followers drama aplenty that played out for months.

During the summer of 1977, Mets’ ownership staggered the baseball world when, after a long simmering salary dispute between Seaver and owner M. Donald Grant, it traded its future first ballot Hall of Famer to the Cincinnati Reds for four then-considered low-level prospects: pitcher Pat Zachry, second baseman Doug Flynn and outfielders Steve Henderson and Dan Norman. At the time, Seaver earned $1.2 million($5.6 million in 2022 adjusted-for-inflation dollars).

The ”Midnight Massacre,” as the trades became known, plunged the Mets into their darkest era. The team finished last in 1977 and lost 95 or more games in each of the next three seasons under manager Joe Torre, who would be fired after a 41-62 record in the strike-shortened 1981 season.

During the 1970s, I lived in Manhattan. I wasn’t a Mets fan, but like all New Yorkers, I followed every movement, allegation and counter-allegation made by Seaver, Grant and Grant’s pro-management tout, New York Daily News columnist Dick Young who spent 45 years on the baseball beat, the last one of them demeaning the Mets’ ace as a greedy ingrate. Seaver had been pleading with the penurious Grant to fork out the necessary money on available free agents to help lift the Mets into contention. Young and Grant may have been the only two baseball bugs in New York’s five boroughs who thought that Seaver didn’t deserve a salary bump.

Further infuriating Mets fans, Grant, besides dumping Seaver and his salary off to the Reds, made two other horrible deadline trades involving key players. Grant ordered general manager Joe McDonald to deal the Mets’ top home run slugger, Dave Kingman, who had also been involved in rancorous contract negotiations, to the San Diego Padres for Bobby Valentine. In a third trade, McDonald sent utility man Mike Phillips to the St. Louis Cardinals for outfielder Joel Youngblood.

Fun fact sidebar: In 1982, Youngblood made baseball history by getting a hit in two different cities, for two different teams, against two Hall of Fame pitchers the same day. As a Mets in Chicago, he singled off Ferguson Jenkins. Then, traded by the Mets to the Montreal Expos, Youngblood hopped a plane to Philadelphia in time to pinch hit a single off Steve Carlton.

To Grant’s dismay, Seaver flourished in his new Cincinnati environment. Over the balance of the 1977 season, he went 14-3 to finish his year at 21-6. Included among Seaver’s wins was what writers dubbed the “Shootout at Shea” that pitted “Atomic Tom” against his former teammate and friend, Jerry Koosman. On Sunday, August 21, a capacity crowd of 46,265 greeted Seaver with chants of “SEA-VER, SEA-VER!” while the stadium organ played “Hello Dolly, we’re so glad to see you back where you belong.”Seaver, who limited the Mets to six hits while striking out 11 in a 5-1 victory, pitched his best; Koosman (8-16), who volunteered for the thankless pitching assignment, struggled and gave up the game’s five runs before being knocked out in the eighth.

After the game, Seaver said, “I’m glad it’s over, very glad. I’m exhausted physically and mentally. It was no fun out there at all.” Koosman added: “It’s tough to pitch against a superstar. You know you’ve got to be at your best. I was kind of disappointed when it got out of hand. But let’s face it. Tom Seaver is the best pitcher in baseball.”

For the Mets, the post-trade era was a disaster. Attendance at Shea plummeted, and the Mets would not have another winning season until 1984. Seaver returned to the Mets in 1983 for one season and pitched effectively. Seaver then had a three-year stint with the Chicago White Sox, and a final year with the Boston Red Sox, but his best years were behind him. His combined four-year American League record was an unSeaver-like 38-35, ERA 3.69.

Seaver again returned to the New York scene when he broadcast Yankees’ games with the irrepressible Phil Rizzuto. The Rizzuto-Seaver tandem was baseball’s odd, but delightful couple. The University of Southern California golden boy and Rizzuto, who often called his booth partner a “huckleberry” while spontaneously extoling the pleasures of the cannolis fans brought him, worked together from 1989 to 1993. Then, after a six-year baseball hiatus, Seaver joined the Mets broadcast team from 1999-2005 before he returned to California to start Seaver Vineyards.

Seaver retired with a 311-205 record with an ERA of 2.86 and 3,640 strikeouts. He was elected to the Hall of Fame in 1992 with the highest-ever percentage of first place votes for a starting pitcher, 99 percent.

In 1988, the Mets retired Seaver’s number 41. Twenty years later, the Mets invited Seaver to Shea Stadium to throw out the final pitch before the team moved to Citi Field where he also threw out the 2009 Opening Day first pitch.

An ESPN poll that included HOF pitchers Bob Gibson, Juan Marichal, Jim Palmer, Nolan Ryan, Bert Blyleven, Don Sutton and Carlton voted Seaver their generation’s best pitcher. Hank Aaron added that in his 12,364 at-bats, Seaver was the toughest he ever faced.

In 2020, at age 75, Seaver passed away in his native California. See the Mets video tribute here to George Thomas Seaver, the player fans called “Tom Terrific.”

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

Tom Seaver Returned To New York A Winner Tom Seaver Returned To New York A Winner Tom Seaver Returned To New York A Winner

Hard Part of Afghan Assimilation Now Begins

By Joe Guzzardi

Afghan evacuee resettlement is now in Phase Three, the crucial stage where assimilation, the Biden administration’s forbidden word, will determine how their American lives evolve.

Phase One occurred when the Afghans boarded, some peacefully, others with force, outbound planes. Phase Two happened when evacuees were temporarily housed in U.S. military bases abroad and across America. And last week, the Biden administration announced that the last group of evacuees has been relocated from a New Jersey military site to more than 200 communities, joining 76,000 other Afghans spread across the U.S. since America abruptly withdrew from Kabul. Children comprise about 40 percent of the total evacuee population.

Since the evacuees first stepped foot onto U.S. soil, they’ve benefited from a special halal food menu, faith-based services, English language instruction, vaccinations for COVID-19 and other diseases including measles, assistance with immigration paperwork, and medical services for medevacked patients and pre-natal treatment for pregnant women.

For now, at least, the media, based on information given to it by the Department of Homeland Security and the Federal Emergency Management Agency is reporting that, with cooperation from nonprofit resettlement agencies and private citizen groups, the Afghans are transitioning smoothly into their new circumstances. “I think the biggest lesson for the administration to take away from this operation is that the American public is overwhelmingly in support of immigrants and refugees being a part of their communities,” said National Immigration Forum president Ali Noorani optimistically.

But now comes the challenging part of the Afghans’ long journey. From unpublished data CBS News obtained, of the more than 67,000 Afghans processed at the domestic military bases, 35,128 evacuees – or over half – have been resettled in Texas, California, Virginia, Washington, Pennsylvania, New York, Florida and Arizona. The evacuees’ presence will place additional burdens on the states’ already strained budgets for public schools, health care and other affirmative services, costs that will hit taxpayers in their pocketbooks. Individual states had no voice in the resettlement process. As of year-end 2021, analysts estimated that the cost to resettle Afghans was about $7 billion.

Another concern that officials continue to gloss over is how thoroughly the Afghan evacuees were vetted. Under intense questioning during a November Senate Judiciary Committee hearing, Department of Homeland Security Secretary Alejandro Mayorkas admitted that, despite some news reports to the contrary, “We are not conducting in-person, full refugee interviews of 100 percent” of Afghan evacuees. Those unvetted may pose a threat to the homeland.

The immediate urgency among the resettlement agencies is addressing the evacuees’ immigration status. For now, they’ve been granted humanitarian parole, usually reserved for individual, emergency cases, not granted to thousands at a time. Under immigration law, the Afghans aren’t eligible for permanent residency. Qualifying as refugees, potentially another option for a Green Card, takes years to complete. While their status gets sorted out, the evacuees will receive lifetime valid work permits, a benefit that will allow them to enter the labor market.

An important but unresolved question concerns the wisdom of removing people from their native land, culture, language, families and religion, and placing them literally overnight in an entirely different society and surrounding. In a Foreign Affairs article titled “Help Refugees Help Themselves,” authors Alexander Betts, University of Oxford Professor of Forced Migration and International Affairs, and Paul Collier, a British development economist, wrote that an effective refugee policy should “improve the lives of the refugees in the short term” and the prospects of the region [from where they migrated] in the long term, and it should also serve the economic and security interests of the host states.

Restated, Betts and Collier think refugees, or in this case, evacuees, should return home to build back the country that they fled. Collier expanded on his concept in The New York Times when he wrote that the U.S. priority should be to design refugee policies that will “reconcile our duty of rescue with the legitimate concerns of post-conflict governments to attract back the people who could rebuild their countries.” Lawful permanent residency does the opposite; it keeps people anchored to the U.S.

The solution of Betts and Collier has support from, among others, the Dalai Lama, the Tibetan spiritual leader who said of refugees at a conference in Sweden, “Receive them, help them, educate them … but ultimately they should develop their own country.”

Talk has already started about how to frame a Ukrainian resettlement policy should the Ukraine’s conflict with Russia escalate. The Biden White House as well as future presidential administrations should realize that the U.S. has limits to growth and to its capacity to correct, through resettlement, all that ails the world.

Joe Guzzardi is a PFIR analyst who writes about immigration and its consequences. Contact him at jguzzardi@pfirdc.org and joe.guzzardi@substack.com.

Hard Part of Afghan Assimilation Now Begins

Don Newcombe Used Alcoholic Tragedy To Heal Others

By Joe Guzzardi

Late in his long and memorable life, Brooklyn Dodgers ace Don Newcombe said that helping people get sober meant more to him than all his baseball accomplishments. Considering that the 6’4”/240-lb. Newcombe won the 1949 Rookie of the Year award, captured the first Cy Young Award in 1956, and in that same year was named the National League’s Most Valuable Player, his statement about the importance of helping others is powerful.

Newcombe is the only player in baseball history to win ROY, MVP and Cy Young titles. In 1956, “Big Newk” went 27-7, an improvement over his 1955 20-5 record. For good measure, Newcombe during those two years, hit a combined .298, with nine home runs and 16 extra base hits. During his career with the Dodgers, the Cincinnati Reds and the Cleveland Indians, Newcombe won 163 games and had a stellar .614 winning percentage. Newcombe could always wield the lumber; his batting average for his 12-year Major League Baseball stint was .269 with 52 extra base hits that included 15 home runs.

Newcombe, the third black MLB pitcher after the Dodgers’ Dan Bankhead and the Cleveland Indians’ Satchel Paige, was a workhorse who routinely pitched on two days of rest, and in 1950 started both ends of a double header against the Philadelphia Phillies. In the opener, Newk hurled a complete game shutout and, in the nightcap, pitched into the seventh inning. Newcombe’s pitching line for the day: 16 IP, H 11, ER 2, BB 2, SO 3. During the Korean War, when the U.S. Army drafted the New York Giants’ Willie Mays and Newcombe. Dodger manager Chuck Dressen cried foul. “Losing Newcombe is worse than losing Mays. Where can you get a pitcher like that?” he asked.

As he dominated National League batters, unbeknownst to his teammates, Newcombe was deeply caught up in alcoholism’s throes. After the Dodgers moved to Los Angeles in 1958, Newcombe’s time with the team became short-lived. The pitcher had a fear of flying, and his fellow Dodgers noticed that he relied on alcohol to overcome his apprehensions. Society for American Baseball Research historian Russell Bergtold wrote that 1957 was a turning point for Newcombe. The Dodgers, 84-70, finished in third place, 14 games behind the Milwaukee Braves. Newcombe was an unimpressive 11-12, but made off-the-field headlines for the wrong reasons. On August 21, after pitching a five-hit shutout over the Cincinnati Reds, Newcombe was driving his father home when he struck a four-year-old boy with his car. A few months later, Newcombe and two of his brothers were accused of assaulting a former East Orange New Jersey policeman at Newcombe’s Newark tavern. The vehicle incident was settled out of court for $5,000, and the Newcombe brothers were acquitted in court trial.

Alcohol may have been the common denominator in Newcombe’s troubles with the law. In 1965, Newcombe told the monthly magazine “Ebony” that for many years “he was a stupefied, wife-abusing, child-frightening, falling-down drunk,” behavior that explained his temperamental, belligerent baseball outbursts and led to his 1960 divorce from wife Freddie Green. To finance his alcohol dependency, Newcombe sold his 1955 World Series ring and an expensive watch before he declared bankruptcy. Peter O’Malley, then-Dodgers vice president, bought back the ring and watch, and returned them to a grateful Newcombe. Finally, in 1966, Newcombe’s second wife, Billie Roberts, threatened to leave him, and take their two children unless he quit drinking.

Roberts’ ultimatum was the catalyst that put the pitcher on a life-long campaign to raise awareness about, and fight against, alcohol abuse. As a recovering alcoholic, Newk created the Dodger’s substance abuse awareness program, and became a National Institute on Alcohol Abuse and Alcoholism consultant, as well as the New Beginning Alcohol and Drug Treatment Program special projects director. Newcombe rejoined the Dodger organization in the late 1970s and served as the team’s Director of Community Affairs. In March 2009, he was named special advisor to Dodgers chairman Frank McCourt.

Looking back, Newcombe said that alcohol may have cost him his place in the Hall of Fame: “I was only 34 [when he retired], but the alcohol had taken its toll. I think it shortened my major-league career by about six or seven years. I regret that I didn’t take better care of myself in the latter part of my career because I would like to have made the Hall of Fame, where I think I belong.”

On his website, Newcombe wrote: “What I have done after my baseball career and being able to help people with their lives and getting their lives back on track and they become human beings again – means more to me than all the things I did in baseball.”

After a long illness, Newcombe died at age 92 in Los Angeles in 2019 knowing that he had helped many of his fellow Dodgers get sober and live happier, more fulfilling lives.

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

Don Newcombe Used Alcoholic Tragedy To Heal Others Don Newcombe Used Alcoholic Tragedy To Heal Others

Biden Violates Take Care Clause

By Joe Guzzardi

Finally! Vice President Kamala Harris, during a recent interview, said that the effects of the Biden administration’s border policy won’t be realized “overnight.” Let’s calculate just how accurate Harris is. Between now and January 2024, and using 2021 when 2 million aliens crossed into the United States as a model, the Biden administration will likely allow 8 million illegal immigrants to unlawfully enter and settle in the U.S. The “effect” on local communities, schools, transportation and hospitals will be incalculable.

The 2 million total excludes what border agents refer to as “gotaways,” individuals who evaded Border Patrol capture and now roam the interior freely. Once inside the U.S., they may or may not be found, or eventually deported.

One example is Geraldo Pando, a multiple-times deportee with a 35-page criminal history that includes felonies committed in Colorado. He was arrested for vandalizing the U.S. Capitol Police headquarters and released. A week later he was defacing Washington’s Union Station with swastikas. The Biden administration’s soft-on-crime policy and tolerance of unlawful immigration prevented Immigration and Customs Enforcement from processing Pando for deportation.

Official ICE statistics prove how passive the Biden administration is about deporting criminals. During 2021, according to a preliminary ICE release, only 55,590 immigration violators were removed. For comparison, deportations totaled 267,258 in FY 2019; under Biden, ICE removals have decreased by nearly 80 percent. Moreover, the first four months of FY 2021 occurred during the Trump presidency – a period when ICE removals were significantly higher. Approximately 28,000 of the FY 2021 removals of the 55,590 occurred while President Trump was still in office.

In the meantime, the worst criminal elements are laughing at the U.S. for its willingness to open its borders and to allow and encourage felonious behavior, including some U.S. citizen-perpetrated, that reaps billions in illicit cash. Wrong-doers, aware of the fortunes that can be gained through drug and human trafficking, devise increasingly clever schemes to smuggle aliens. Benign looking vehicles are the method of choice. Last year near the Texas border, agents seized a white ice cream truck with its flavors and Frito Pie advertised on the side. Inside, agents found 15 illegal immigrants, and two American citizens stacked on top of each other. Then in mid-February, agents found a child daycare van loaded with more than 20 Guatemalans. Agents also apprehended two aliens who had child sex offenses on their records and MS-13 gang members.

Nearly nonexistent enforcement and specifically the passivity of Biden, Harris and Department of Homeland Security Secretary Alejandro Mayorkas have created a nation-altering crisis. Mayorkas acknowledged that he’s allowed border chaos to fester. In an audio recording which agents taped during their January meeting with Mayorkas at the Yuma Sector, the secretary said that his job has grown increasingly difficult at the start of this year, more so than 2021, which he admitted was “very, very difficult.” Mayorkas added that with worldwide migrants surging the border, he expects no pause in alien crossings. In fact, warmer spring weather could exacerbate border agents’ overload.

Border agents don’t want to hear Mayorkas confess to his poor performance; they’re abundantly aware of his multiple failures. The agents hoped for, but didn’t get, his pledge to allow them to return to their duties – protecting the homeland, not processing family units for release into the interior.

Biden hasn’t so much as hinted at a course change that might deviate from his administration’s repeated federal immigration law violations and its dismissal of the Constitution’s Take Care Clause, which means the President has a duty to ensure that U.S. laws are faithfully executed. The president’s sworn duty is to make sure that those around him faithfully execute the nation’s laws, a responsibility that Mayorkas has blatantly shirked.

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

Biden Violates Take Care Clause

Amnesty Always Solution for Zealots

By Joe Guzzardi

Soon after 9/11, immigration activists began a full-scale lobbying effort to encourage Congress to pass an illegal alien amnesty. Their stance was that if illegal aliens received lawful permanent residency, then they would, in the advocates’ terminology, “come out of the shadows.” In the end, the narrative continued, newly legalized aliens would become citizens, embrace the American way, and those that once harbored ill-will against the United States, like the 9/11 terrorists, would eventually assimilate.

Amnesty just months after 9/11 was, on its face, an impossible-to-sell idea, mainly because most of the 9/11 perpetrators were not “in the shadows,” but legally present. In his report, “The Open Door: How Militant Islamic Terrorists Entered the United States, 1993-2001,” Steven A. Camarota found that at the time they committed their crimes, 16 terrorists of the 48 total involved, directly or indirectly, were on temporary visas, mostly tourist visas; 17 were Lawful Permanent Residents or naturalized U.S. citizens, and 12 were illegal aliens.

But amnesty is like the proverbial cork; right after it’s submerged into water, the cork pops back up. In the more than two decades since 9/11, amnesties large and small have been defeated, but swiftly reappeared in other bills. Some amnesties have been introduced in Congress, and were significant in their scope: the 2005 McCain-Kennedy bill and the 2013 Gang of Eight bill. Although heavily promoted as bipartisan and reformative, both nevertheless died in Congress. The most recent amnesty effort wasn’t as straightforward as the previous two. Although amnesty wasn’t advertised as its primary feature, Build Back Better still would have granted the biggest mass pardon in history, about 6.5 million aliens, and would cost taxpayers about $111 billion.

For today, BBB in its massive fiscal totality is stalled. Without missing a beat, however, the amnesty-or-bust crowd is back to work with another far-fetched angle that it should be embarrassed to advance. Their proposed solution to stall raging inflation: press on with BBB’s amnesty via a parole provision that would grant work authorization to illegal immigrants. Sen. Jon Tester (D-Mont.) tweeted that “a comprehensive immigration reform bill,” code words for amnesty, “would help cut inflation.” Sen. Dick Durbin (D-Ill.), who has spent his 30-plus years in Congress voting “yea” for the majority of the immigration expansion bills put before him, agrees. When reporters asked Durbin to share his thoughts about the new amnesty pitch, the Senate Judiciary Chair said: “Oh, most certainly … If there are more workers filling those jobs, it’s deflationary.”

Clemson University energy and sustainability professor Mark Thies wrote a Newsweek opinion piece titled “The Democrats Plan to Fix Inflation: Squeeze Blue-Collar Americans” that chronicled the multiple fallacies in Democrats’ talking points, reiterated year after year but never proven, that immigration benefits Americans. This time around, Democrats illogically argue that more immigration and amnesty will help curb the 40-year high inflation rate that’s crippling the middle class. While it’s true that importing more foreign workers who will become U.S. consumers grows the economy and increases GDP, it’s equally true and much more consequential that more foreign-born consumers don’t increase per-capita GDP. Fundamental economic theory proves that the overwhelming majority of immigration-driven increases in economic activity goes to the immigrants themselves in the form of wages and other compensation. Immigration doesn’t benefit the native-born population.

Should the Democrats’ amnesty vision come true, every paroled or amnestied immigrant will receive lifetime valid work authorization that will enable him to compete with or displace an American worker. If BBB provides millions more work-authorized immigrants, then also add the 1 million lawful permanent residents who arrive annually, the roughly 750,000 temporary guest workers, the asylum and refugee arrivals, and the conclusion is that the U.S. has an immigrant labor overage at a time when millions of Americans are unemployed or underemployed. Not yet considered are last year’s 2 million illegal immigrant border surgers who will stay in the U.S. permanently, and will eventually get employment authorization or, alternatively, enter the underground economy. More cheap labor is a constant threat to working Americans’ job security, inconsequential to congressional Democrats.

Independent and undecided voters wonder what’s happened to the traditional Democratic Party that once prided itself as working Americans’ staunchest ally. The Democratic Party of old is long gone, and today is willfully determined to undermine U.S. citizens’ economic best interests in order to advance the elite donor class. With the 2022 mid-term elections less than nine months away, analysts wonder whether Democrats will shift to the middle to woo the swing voters they’ll need in order to keep their congressional majority. So far, no indication has surfaced that a course change is in the immediate future. So that all Americans may prosper, the U.S. needs Democrats of the mindset from an earlier era to return to the fold. As President Theodore Roosevelt often said, if federal policies don’t work for everyone, they don’t work for anyone.

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

Amnesty Always Solution for Zealots Amnesty Always Solution for Zealots

Texas Gov Race Is Ground Zero In Immigration Battle

By Joe Guzzardi

Texas will hold its gubernatorial primary March 1, with a runoff scheduled for May 24, if no candidate receives more than 50 percent of the vote. The question that Texas voters will face on Election Day, Nov. 8, is whether a Democrat, likely to be two-time loser Robert O’Rourke, with a failed 2018 Senate bid and 2020 presidential campaign run that went nowhere, and an open border apologist who favors Second Amendment restrictions, can win in Texas, illegal immigration’s ground zero.

The first hurdle for incumbent Gov. Greg Abbott is getting past the primary. No incumbent Texas governor lost his or her – Ann Richards (D) 1991 to 1995 – party’s nomination since 1978, when Gov. Dolph Briscoe (D) lost to then-Attorney General John Hill (D). Abbott, however, is facing strong primary challengers. They are Texas State Senator and real estate developer Don Huffines and Allen West, a retired U.S. Army Lieutenant who represented Florida’s 22^nd Congressional District in the U.S. House of Representatives from 2011 to 2013. Until he resigned to launch his gubernatorial campaign, West served as the Republican Party of Texas’ chairman. Huffines and West have criticized Abbott for his coronavirus restrictions that included mask mandates and business shutdowns that they view as unconstitutional, and an unnecessary obstruction to Texans’ freedom.

Abbott’s performance ratings are weak. The Hobby School of Public Affairs at the University of Houston and the University of Texas both found that 40 percent of Texans have an unfavorable opinion of the sitting governor. Nevertheless, Abbott is favored to prevail, and will probably meet O’Rourke in November, a match up that, because of their starkly different immigration positions, should favor the incumbent.

O’Rourke knows that in Texas immigration enforcement will be a game breaker, and he’s choosing his language judiciously. The O’Rourke of today may have a tough time escaping the O’Rourke that pursued the 2020 presidential nomination. Posted on his website, O’Rourke wrote that he wants Texas to have a “legal, orderly system of immigration and uphold our country’s asylum laws.” Texans recognize these words as code for amnesty, an O’Rourke goal that’s unchanged from 21 months ago.

At an April 2019 Iowa town hall, the former U.S. representative said that giving amnesty to all 12 to 25 million illegal aliens will make American citizens – and specifically, the Angel Families whose loved ones have been murdered by criminal aliens – “demonstrably safer.” O’Rourke’s premise that once aliens “get right with the law…come into the light of day [and presumably out of the ever-present shadows]… and contribute to the success of the country…” then everything will be fine. These platitudes have never been proven true.

On border issues, O’Rourke, because of his past support for amnesty, and his failure to meaningfully criticize illegal immigration, has boxed himself in. Abbott, even though his primary opponents argue that he should do more to stop the illegal immigrant border surge, has poured hundreds of millions to strengthen border security that includes sending Department of Public Safety troops and the National Guard to the Rio Grande. Hispanic voters, a key bloc, approve of Abbott’s immigration actions; 45 percent gave Abbott an approval rating on immigration, but only 37 percent gave Biden, from whom O’Rourke will have trouble distancing himself, an immigration thumbs-up. O’Rourke will not ask Biden to join him on the campaign trail, and said that his campaign will not be about anyone outside of Texas. He will, however, accept out-of-state donations. The O’Rourke coffers have nearly $9 million as of the most recent tally, about $40 million less than Abbott.

Other issues will play an important role as the campaigns of Abbott and O’Rourke shift into high gear: Texas’ power grid, a woman’s right to choose and inflation are also important to Texans.

The Dallas Morning News and the University of Texas Tyler poll has Abbott with a commanding 11-point lead. But running behind early in the game isn’t O’Rourke’s greatest concern. The border remains open and chaotic. Based on the 2021 statistics, between today and early November, hundreds of thousands of new illegal immigrants will cross into Texas, an albatross that even the most skilled campaigner can’t talk his way out of.

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

Texas Gov Race Is Ground Zero In Immigration Battle Texas Gov Race Is Ground Zero In Immigration Battle

America Competes Act Another Attack On American Workers

By Joe Guzzardi

Nothing stops the push by Congress for more immigration – not 9/11, not the mortgage meltdown and Wall Street crisis, not dismal Bureau of Labor Statistics job reports and not COVID-19. Despite the fact that about 1 million new lawful permanent residents get work authorization each year, that about 750,000 guest workers arrive annually in a typical year and that dozens of types of nonimmigrant visas include employment permission, Congress is never satisfied.
 
Congress insists, predictably and tediously, that without more foreign-born labor, the economy will collapse and small businesses will vanish. These baseless claims, consistently proven false, are repeated year after year after year.
 
Example: In 2017, mostly at the horse racing industry’s behest, the Senate introduced the Save our Small and Seasonal Businesses Act, and the House introduced companion legislation, Strengthen Employment and Seasonal Opportunities Now Act. The bills, with bipartisan support, predicted that without more H-2B nonagricultural visas, horse racing, as fans know the “Sport of Kings,” might become extinct. But, four years later, the Kentucky Derby and smaller races at other nationwide tracks continue to draw large, revenue-generating crowds.

Example: Last year, U.S. Rep. Zoe Lofgren (D-Calif.), Chair of the House Subcommittee on Immigration and Citizenship and immigration lawyer, introduced the Let Immigrants Kick Start Employment Act that would create a new temporary visa for founders of start-up ventures. In her press release, Lofgren said that more immigration leads to more American jobs, an often-made, but misleading claim. Although Lofgren’s bill went nowhere, Silicon Valley recorded record profits in 2021, and The New York Timespredicted that titans Google, Apple, Microsoft and other tech giants will be rolling in dough for years to come. From its July 2021 story: “The combined stock market valuation of Apple, Alphabet, Nvidia, Tesla, Microsoft, Amazon and Facebook increased by about 70 percent to more than $10 trillion. That is roughly the size of the entire U.S. stock market in 2002. Apple alone has enough cash in its coffers to give $600 to every person in the United States.”
 
The latest assault on American workers is an immigration train wreck coyly called the America COMPETES Act of 2022. Boiled down to the bill’s most harmful elements, the America COMPETES Act would:
 

1. Create a W nonimmigrant visa program for foreign investors of start-ups and entrepreneurs, their families and so-called but undefined essential foreign workers who work for them, also allowing their family members to receive work permits.
2. Create a one-year path to an unlimited number of Green Cards for any W visa holder who meets certain investment and ownership stake requirements.
3. Create an unlimited number of Green Cards for foreign citizens who hold a doctoral degree from a U.S. institution of higher learning or an equivalent degree from a foreign university.
4. Create a five-year program that creates 5,000 Special Immigrant Visas (SIV) yearly for Hong Kong residents, amounting to an additional 25,000 Green Cards over the five-year period.
5. Authorize an unlimited refugee/asylee program for certain Hong Kong residents.
6. Change existing law to treat Hong Kong as a separate state from China in determining per-country limits for existing Green Card categories.
7. Grant Temporary Protected Status with work permission for Hong Kong residents currently in the U.S., regardless of their existing immigration status which may include unlawfully present status.

 
Under the guise of promoting American innovation, the act’s hodgepodge of vague language makes almost anything possible. One thing is certain – the America COMPETES Act will massively increase legal immigration, flood the labor market, make job searches for Americans in all sectors more difficult, and have an adverse effect on recent U.S. college graduates hoping to begin their careers.
 
The America COMPETES Act intentionally harms U.S. citizens, but will be a bonanza for arriving foreign nationals, employers addicted to cheap labor and Silicon Valley multimillionaires. No greater gap exists between voters and Congress than on immigration policy. The thoroughly awful, destructive America COMPETES Act is one of the most powerful examples of why the immigration chasm is so wide.
 
 
A PFIR analyst, Joe Guzzardi writes about immigration issues and impacts. Contact him at jguzzardi@pfirdc.org and joeguzzardi.substack.com.

America Competes Act Another Attack On American Workers