Category: Joe Guzzardi

Pending EAGLE Act Subverts Tech Workers

By Joe Guzzardi

Beware media-promoted bipartisan immigration bills. Strictly speaking, such legislation is bipartisan because a Republican and a Democrat introduce it. In reality, however, the Republican is often as much of an immigration expansionist as his Democratic colleague.

Such is the case with the Equal Access to Green Cards for Legal Employment Act of 2022, or the EAGLE Act, which Senators Kevin Cramer (R-ND) and John Hickenlooper (D-Colo.) introduced. Proponents claim EAGLE benefits the U.S. economy by allowing American employers to focus on hiring immigrants based on their merit, not their birthplace. The current 7 percent per-country limit on employment-based immigrant visas would be phased out over a nine-year period, and the 7 percent per-country limit on family-sponsored immigrant visas – Green Cards – would more than double to 15 percent. This would mean that Mexico, the country with the highest backlog of family-based immigrant visa petitions would get the largest share of the pie at the expense of other countries. Population-busting chain migration would accelerate.

The bill doesn’t directly increase the total number of Green Cards for the employment-based category, but it does speed the adjustment of mostly already-present Indian nationals on H-1B and L-1 visas, while slowing the rest of the world’s arrivals.

Kramer and Hickenlooper trotted out familiar excuses to defend their bill. Kramer: “It’s no secret that our immigration system is broken….” Hickenlooper: “Fixing our immigration system will help fix our workforce shortage and spur economic growth.” In the U.S. House of Representatives, Zoe Lofgren (D-Calif.) introduced a similar bill that has eight Republican cosponsors and 75 Democratic cosponsors.

Country caps prevent one nation from dominating the number of employment-based visas that the U.S. federal government issues. If the caps are eliminated, the majority of employment-based visas would be awarded to Indian nationals. The proposal of Cramer and Hickenlooper would harm Americans workers and reward those who have abused the H-1B visa program to displace American workers with Green Card holders. Most significantly disadvantaged are African Americans, Hispanics and women, who are largely underrepresented in most science, technology, engineering and math (STEM) occupations.

Cramer’s and Hickenlooper’s constituents elected them to the Senate to protect their best interests. Yet getting rid of country caps or expanding in any way employment-based visas directly harms U.S. workers and recent university graduates seeking employment. Millions of working-age (16 to 64) U.S. residents are detached from the labor force, either unemployed or underemployed. On the other hand, flooding the labor pool with international workers helps corporations and business elites.

In his Senate career, Cramer has voted four times to increase H-2B visas, a nonimmigrant category that allows those other than agricultural workers into the U.S. Included are workers in landscaping, forestry, hotels, seafood processing and lifeguarding – all jobs that Americans would do either part-time to defray expenses or pay university tuition. The U.S. Government Accountability Office found the H-2B program rife with fraud and abuse. Like Cramer, who has a cozy friendship with Microsoft, Hickenlooper has turned his back on his constituents in favor of his donor class, and voted in favor of more H-2B visa workers. Both voted to increase EB-5 visas, the so-called citizenship-for-sale visa.

Hickenlooper’s push for more immigration has an interesting twist. Denver, Boulder and Colorado Springs have been named among the premier tech hubs in the U.S., and would be obvious destinations for overseas H-1B visa workers. Yet the Colorado River reservoirs have declined so low that major water cuts will be necessary next year to reduce the risk of the water supply reaching perilously low levels. Increasing the state’s population, which has grown five-fold since 1950, would recklessly imperil Colorado’s fragile environment, and put its residents’ access to water in peril.

Increasing already record immigration levels by adding more employment-based visa holders won’t help unemployed and underemployed Americans. The U.S. doesn’t have a labor shortage. Black, Hispanic and other minority workers represent an underutilized segment of the employment market. Senators Cramer and Hickenlooper should represent Americans instead of advocating for more foreign-born cheap labor.

Pending EAGLE Act Subverts Tech Workers

Biden Wants ID Cards For Illegals

By Joe Guzzardi

President Biden’s eagerness to welcome millions of global illegal migrants is unlimited. Not only are people from every corner of the world welcome to come to and settle in the United States at taxpayer expense, but now Biden wants to issue each migrant official government identification cards. With quasi-official status available, mostly poor, unskilled, non-English speaking illegal immigrants will be more willing than ever to pay criminal cartel smugglers for their dangerous and often deadly northbound journeys.

The pilot program, overseen by Immigration and Customs Enforcement, will be called the ICE Secure Docket Card program. Today’s ICE agency is not the traditional one which protected U.S. citizens from the dangers that illegal immigrants potentially pose to the community. Rather, Biden and Department of Homeland Security Secretary Alejandro Mayorkas’ ICE have gutted interior enforcement and successfully ended expedited removal, the procedure by which DHS can remove, without a formal procedure, an alien who has entered illegally, or has sought entry without proper documents or through fraud. DHS authority has been an essential part of immigration law for more than a quarter of a century.

If approved, the new ID card will feature a photograph, biographic identifiers and what ICE calls “cutting-edge security features to the mutual benefit of the government and noncitizens.” Since “aliens,” a word used throughout immigration law, is forbidden in the Biden administration’s nomenclature, “noncitizens” or “undocumented” are used in its place. But with the ICE ID card, “undocumented” will also become passé. Illegal immigrants will not only have documentation, but official, federally approved and issued credentials. More than 1 million illegal immigrants have been released into the interior since Biden’s inauguration, each and every one of them potential ID card holders.

Brandon Judd, Border Patrol Council President, said that the cards won’t help immigration officials, but will, along with giving coyotes another magnet to lure their naïve clients into their web, allow illegal immigrants to report to U.S. Citizenship and Immigration Service to assist in processing their employment authorization documents.

ICE’s defense of its card – that it will provide “mutual benefit to the government and the noncitizens” – lacked tangibles, and is patently transparent. No benefits to the government were specified, but the benefits to the aliens are obvious. They immediately go from “undocumented” to fully documented, at least in the eyes of institutions that will benefit from recognizing the cards – most federal, state and municipal governments, commercial banks, mortgage lenders, landlords, some employers and others sympathetic to illegal immigration.

The ICE representative who spoke to the media about the ID card spun it in the most positive light. Illegal immigrants, the representative claimed, could use the card to check in and schedule reporting dates with ICE offices, and immigration court hearing dates. But the conclusion that the card will assist in scheduling immigration court hearings is a stretch. The Department of Justice’s fact sheet found that only about 49 percent of illegally present aliens show up for their hearings. With or without an ID card, that statistic is unlikely to change. And should illegal immigrants appear, and ordered for removal, that doesn’t guarantee that they’ll depart. With the ID card, they’re more likely than ever to remain.

Critics have concluded that, despite the risks to the nation that it would bring, the Biden administration’s ultimate goal is eliminating existing immigration laws. The ID card is the latest example. Retired career border patrol officer and Center for Immigration Studies board member Kent Lundgren explained why immigration laws exist – to protect Americans and legal immigrants. Those protections fall into four major categories: 1) public health, 2) public safety, 3) national security and 4) jobs and wages.

Biden, his cabinet, his administration and his advisors have ignored, at sovereign America’s risk, the core reasons why previous congresses have passed, and former presidents have codified, immigration laws.

Biden Wants ID Cards For Illegals

Pivotal Arizona Senate Race Up for Grabs

By Joe Guzzardi

A review of the 50 GOP United States Senators shows that only one is solidly committed to more sustainable immigration levels. Tennessee’s Marsha Blackburn, whose congressional career began in 2003 in the U.S. House of Representatives, has at various times voted to reduce chain migration, asylum fraud and anchor baby citizenship, as well as to end the visa lottery, sanctuary cities and executive amnesties.

Another group of about 20 GOP senators has mostly strong pro-U.S. workers and immigration enforcement positions. The most well-known among them include Ted Cruz (Texas) and Tom Cotton (Ark.). At the other end of the GOP spectrum, three senators have immigration voting records more akin to their Democratic colleagues: Lindsey Graham (S.C.), Lisa Murkowski (Alaska) and Susan Collins (Maine).

With the mid-term election stakes high, Republicans need to pull out all the stops to place unmistakably strong enforcement candidates first on the ballot and then send them on to Washington, D.C. In Arizona, such a primary race is shaping up. Arizona is a state so beleaguered by the open border agenda that residents have taken to placing BLM stickers on their cars’ bumpers. In their case, however, BLM stands for “Biden Loves Minors.”

The August 2 Republican Senate primary will divulge whether the BLM stickers are a true indication of Copper State residents’ anger or just for show. The three contenders are Attorney General Mark Brnovich, business executive Jim Lamon, and venture capitalist Blake Masters. The winner will face off against Arizona’s junior Sen. Mark Kelly who won a special election to replace deceased John McCain. Kelly became Arizona’s first Democratic Senator since Dennis DeConcini was elected in 1976.

Kelly’s background is compelling. As a naval aviator, Kelly flew combat missions during the Gulf War before being selected as a NASA Space Shuttle pilot in 1996. He flew four space missions, his last in 2011 as commander of Space Shuttle Endeavour, its final mission. Kelly’s wife, then-Arizona Congresswoman Gabby Giffords, was shot and gravely injured in a 2011 assassination attempt. The mass shooting took six lives and wounded 18.

The primary outcome won’t turn on the candidates’ personal histories though, but rather on Arizona’s border crisis. Streams of illegal immigrants have been videotaped walking unchecked into Yuma. To date in fiscal year 2022, U.S. Customs and Border Protection has seized around 1,300 pounds of drugs in the Tucson and Yuma sectors, mostly methamphetamine and fentanyl. Yuma Mayor Douglas J. Nicholls said that drug traffickers who make it past CBP are “frequently” caught in his community. Nicholls said that 50 percent of the fentanyl that kills one American every eight and a half seconds “is coming through Arizona’s border.”

Kelly’s congressional voting record on border security is abysmal and indefensible. His votes against Remain in Mexico, against border fence funding, against interior enforcement, and against ending catch and release give his primary opponents fodder to challenge Kelly on a subject that deeply concerns Arizonans.

While all the Republican primary candidates have the familiar talking points about securing the border and enforcing immigration laws, Masters goes further. Since he announced his candidacy, Masters went on record that he wants to cut legal immigration by half – to about 500,000 annually – reform chain migration and abolish unnecessary guest worker visas. Masters, an associate of PayPal founder Peter Thiel, said that he’s open to eliminating the cheap labor H-1B visa which corporations have used to displace millions of American white-collar workers.

The latest Real Clear Politics polling has Masters leading Brnovich, his closest rival, by ten points, but trailing Kelly in a hypothetical match up by nine points. History has proven, however, that polls are untrustworthy. Even though Arizona’s two U.S. Senators are Democrats, and five of the nine U.S. Representatives are also Democrats, Republicans hold a slight edge in voter registrations, with new data indicating that GOP registrations are rising while Democrats are declining.

The border crisis and Kelly’s indifference to it have given Brnovich, Lamon and Masters a winning hand. The question is whether they can play their cards skillfully enough to pull off an upset win.

Pivotal Arizona Senate Race Up for Grabs

Pelosi Silent On Labor Abuse, Child Advocate? LOL

By Joe Guzzardi

Listen to House Speaker Nancy Pelosi, and everything is about “the children.”

In her video announcement that she would seek her 18^th congressional term, Pelosi made her priorities clear – she’s running to benefit the children. Through the years, Pelosi has reiterated that she’s in Congress to serve the children, the children, the children; “This is my story, and this is my song.” A few years ago, Pelosi appeared on MSNBC’s “Morning Joe” show and said that illegal alien children should be treated as if they were “the baby Jesus.” Both sides of the aisle agree that children and other unlawfully present migrants should be treated humanely, but to compare them to Jesus in a shameless attempt to lay the foundation for amnesty is a stretch.

Pelosi’s compassion for children, particularly illegal alien minors, is missing during the record border surge. Data obtained by Axios, a website founded in 2006 by former Politico journalists, showed that the federal government has lost track of one-in-three released minors. Between January and May 2021, phone calls placed to migrant youths or their sponsors were unanswered.

Broken down, here’s a list of calls made and their results. During 2021’s first five months of the year, care providers made 14,600required calls to check in with migrant minors released from Department of Health and Human Services shelters. These minors typically were taken in by relatives or other vetted sponsors. In 4,890 of those instances, workers were unable to reach either the migrant or the sponsor. The percentage of unsuccessful calls grew, from 26 percent in January to 37 percent in May, the data provided to Axios showed. The truth is that no one knows how rigorous the HHS vetting process is or, more important, what became of those unaccounted-for-minors.

The Office of Refugee Resettlement (ORR), the agency which first oversees the child’s well-being, evaluates potential sponsors’ ability to provide for the child’s physical and mental safety, and protects children from smugglers, traffickers or others who might seek to victimize or otherwise engage the child in criminal, harmful or exploitative activity.

The process for the safe and timely release of an unaccompanied child from ORR custody includes sponsors’ identity verification, background checks, and occasionally home visits and post-release planning. Sounds good, but if a sponsor can’t be reached, then the most well-intended evaluation process is meaningless.

Again, no one really knows what happens after a child is placed. But a recent exposé proves that at least some minors are placed into forced labor. After her release to her sister in Alabama, Guatemalan Amelia Domingo, age 16, the unsuspecting teen found herself laboring in a chicken processing plant to pay off her $10,000 debt to traffickers. Along with her older sister Rosa, Amelia used false identities and fake birth dates which they obtained from fraudulent documents specialists who prey on young aliens. Although several federal crimes are committed while getting Amelia and her sister hired, Pelosi, the avowed child defender, and Congress are mum.

The Reuters story about Amelia’s chicken plant travails concluded that the feds struggle with long-term follow-up to ensure minors aren’t sucked into a vast network of enablers, including labor contractors, who recruit aliens for big plants and other employers. At times, the news agency concluded, kids have been steered into jobs that are illegal, grueling and meant for adults.

Unaccompanied minors are an intensifying headache for the Biden administration. The Department of Homeland Security anticipates that, every day this year, an average of 441 unaccompanied children will cross the U.S.-Mexico border, and surrender to border patrol custody. In all, during fiscal 2022, between 148,000 and 161,000 unaccompanied minors will enter, their ultimate fates unknown.

Migrant child abuse, criminal employment and trafficking are surmountable immigration problems. Pass mandatory E-Verify to protect U.S. employees, and thwart unscrupulous employers. Tighten asylum guidelines to deter smugglers. In her career that exceeds three decades, the children’s self-appointed patron saint has voted more than 80 times against bills that would protect minors and punish the unprincipled.

Pelosi Silent On Labor Abuse, Child Advocate? LOL

Musk Wrong on Population

By Joe Guzzardi

For number crunchers, July’s second week offered eyepopping data. To begin with, the consumer price index shot up to 9.1 percent year-over-year, the highest spike in four decades. Truth be told, consumers may be taking a bigger than 9.1 percent hit. The CPI is a controversial index which many economists insist is manipulated to reflect fewer alarming price increases and, conversely, a stronger GDP. Taken together, those two variables, massaged favorably, help to keep a lid on investor panic, and to underpay on cost-of-living increases for Social Security recipients.

Since time immemorial, CPI was calculated based on a fixed market basket of goods. But in the 1990s, the Bureau of Labor Statistics introduced what it identified as geometric weighing – substituting lower-priced, lower-quality goods in the basket, while excluding more expensive, but still everyday items.

Most blue-collar, working Americans consider the CPI a government gimmick that purposely excludes their day-to-day necessities: energy, up 41.6 percent; gas, + 60 percent, eggs +33 percent; and public transportation, +23.7. A truer indicator of consumer pain showed up in the producer wholesale price index which hit 11.3 percent.

Inflation, which makes Americans poorer with each passing day, has an immediate and tangible effect on consumers’ psyches. But another report issued in early July is, taken over the long-term, more disturbing.

Inflation has its peaks and valleys, but the prediction by the United Nations that the global population will reach 8.5 billion in 2030 and 9.7 billion in 2050 represents an ongoing, and perhaps insurmountable, challenge. By the end of the century, the U.N. estimates that there will be 10.4 billion people on the planet. Today, the world’s population is just a tick under 8 billion, and has grown at an unsustainable rate.

Not until around 1800 did the world’s population first reach 1 billion. But, only 130 years later in 1930, the second billion was reached, and the third billion in 1960, another 30 years later. Then, global population exploded. The fourth billion arrived 15 years later in 1974, and the fifth billion only 13 years after that. During the 20th century alone, the world’s population grew from 1.65 billion to 6 billion. For comparison, in 1970, there were roughly half as many people in the world as there are now. Every year, about 83 million people are added to the global population.

Eight nations will account for most of the growth between now and 2050: the Democratic Republic of the Congo, Egypt, Ethiopia, India, Nigeria, Pakistan, the Philippines and the United Republic of Tanzania. India is expected to surpass China as the world’s most populous country as soon as next year.

Those countries are thousands of miles away, and their difficulties unfathomable to most Americans, but U.S. population also is climbing at an unsustainable rate. The nation’s population is about 332 million now, but will reach 424 million in 2100, about 25 percent more people than live in the U.S. today. The consequences of too many people are grave, both in terms of more difficult human interaction in overcrowded surroundings, and lasting ecological damage to dwindling natural resources.

Ironically, the U.N. released its frightening population projections at about the same time that Elon Musk, claiming the U.S. faces an “underpopulation crisis,” pleaded for an increase in births. “A collapsing birth rate is the biggest danger civilization faces by far,” said Musk, who cited himself as a would-be role model. One of his love interests, Shivon Zilis, gave birth to twins this summer, bringing Musk’s total offspring to nine. To Musk, replacement level fertility, normally considered 2.1 children per woman, is an outdated notion.

Unfortunately, Musk’s message to promote a have-more-children agenda, via his huge social media following, reaches more people than the communications of stabilization advocates. Don’t listen to Musk! Census Bureau data reflects a net gain of one person – births and international migrant arrivals minus deaths – in the U.S. every 26 seconds, far too many to protect the nation’s already crumbling, overcrowded infrastructure and its imperiled ecosystems.

Joe Guzzardi writes about immigration issues and impacts. Find more at joeguzzardi.substack.com.

Musk Wrong on Population Musk Wrong on Population

China Closer To World Domination With U.S. Help

By Joe Guzzardi

The announcement that a Chinese company purchased about 300 acres of prime North Dakota property is the latest in an ongoing landgrab by one of America’s biggest threats. Historically, Chinese nationals are one of the largest purchasers of U.S. residential property, with an average of between 20,000 and 40,000 transactions annually.

On Capitol Hill, legislators worry that the Shandong, China-based real estate acquisition could create espionage opportunities with the Defense Department as its target. The property is close to the Grand Forks Air Force Base that houses sensitive drone technology. The base is also the home of a new space networking center that is the backbone of all U.S. military global communications. The Fufeng Group, which paid $2.6 million to three North Dakotans, produces flavor enhancers and sugar substitutes.

Despite the economic opportunities that the project represents – 200 jobs for locals and ancillary benefits to the community – the Republican and Democratic Senators are strongly opposed. Sen. Kevin Cramer (R-ND) said he’s suspicious of the Chinese government’s intent. Cramer noted that the U.S. “grossly” underestimates how effective the People’s Republic of China is at collecting information and using it in nefarious ways. “And so,” Cramer continued, “I’d just as soon not have the Chinese Communist Party doing business in my backyard.”

In a rare demonstration of true bipartisanship, both the Senate Intelligence Committee chair and the Republican ranking member told the media that they oppose the CCP putting down roots in rural North Dakota.

Chairman Mark Warner (D-Va.) said that his committee has been “loudly sounding the alarm” about China’s counterintelligence threat and its investments at sites close to military bases.

Sen. Marco Rubio (R-Fla.) agreed, calling it “foolish, dangerous and shortsighted” to allow the CCP to acquire land near military bases. Rubio reminded reporters that he’s cosponsoring legislation, the “Protecting Military Installation and Ranges Act of 2021,” that would give the Biden administration the power to block such CCP purchases.

If Warner, Rubio and others who sit on the Senate Intelligence Committee have heightened awareness of the danger the CCP poses to the U.S. interior, they’re unfashionably late to the dance. The reality is that Chinese national spies are everywhere, including U.S. Representative Eric Swalwell’s (D-Calif.) bed, and, for 20 years, driving U.S. Sen. Dianne Feinstein, then Senate Intelligence Committee Chair, around San Francisco. Journalists wrote that the Bay Area is a hotbed for Russian and Chinese espionage. As proof of Congress’ indifference to China’s infiltration, Swalwell kept his seat on the House Permanent Select Committee on Intelligence, and Feinstein remains on the Senate Intelligence Committee. No one knows what secrets Fang Fang learned during her pillow talk with Swalwell or what Feinstein’s unidentified driver, never charged with a crime, may have overheard.

The Swalwell and Feinstein cases are high profile. But a closer look confirms that thousands of Chinese nationals, possibly well-intentioned, but perhaps with dubious intentions, are in the U.S. at the federal government’s invitation. Chinese student enrollment, according to an overview of international enrollment at U.S. universities, “far exceeds” that of other foreign nations. Although the COVID-19 pandemic created a 72 percent decline in international enrollment, 382,561 Chinese students attended the most prestigious U.S. universities during 2020-2021. Aggregate international enrollment hit a pre-pandemic high of 1.1 million in 2017-2018.

International students arrive on F-1 visas for general coursework, M-1 visas for vocational programs, or J-1 visas for cultural exchange students. A large number of Chinese nationals return home after completing their academic course work. No one, however, knows what proprietary information the students may be taking back with them. Some who stay take advantage of the fraud-ridden Optional Practical Training Program that displaces qualified U.S. graduates. International high-skill employment has increased sharply in recent years.

The White House and Congress are strangely indifferent to the obvious risks like property theft that a significant Chinese presence in U.S. universities and employment in high-tech fields create. China makes no secret of its goal to become the world’s dominant superpower. As long as the federal government extends such a helpful hand in so many critical ways – education and white-collar employment – China will easily reach its objective.

China Closer To World Domination

Congress Tries to Slip Immigration Into Must-Pass Defense Bill

By Joe Guzzardi

With a final vote soon to come on the must-pass fiscal 2023 National Defense Authorization Act (NDAA), expansionists have filed a slew of immigration amendments unrelated to national security.

Backdoor immigration amendments that have no ties to defense spending are an annual distraction practiced by Republicans and Democrats alike. Time is running out for immigration advocates to get their pet legislation passed. The August recess is at hand, and after Congress returns, mid-term election campaigning will begin in earnest, which will minimize the chance of passing controversial immigration bills.

This year, two immigration amendments are front and center. The first is Rep. Deborah K. Ross’ (D-N.C.) that would grant amnesty to who she referred to as “documented Dreamers,” an estimated 200,000 young people who grew up in the U.S. as dependents on their parents’ employment visas. When DREAMers turn 21, they’re at risk for deportation. While Ross’ amendment has bipartisan support, and is said to be under Senate consideration, it hasn’t advanced in either chamber.

Ross’ proposal, if enacted, would send a message to smugglers and coyotes that Congress’ priority isn’t enforcement but to create more economic incentives for migrants and their families to risk their lives with dangerous border crossings. Congress’ urgency for deferred action for childhood arrivals must be to protect future young migrants from falling into the same immigration limbo status that has, for years, bedeviled current DREAMers. Such a plan would include mandatory E-Verify to eliminate the jobs magnet that lures illegal immigrants. Family-based chain migration should end. Adults shouldn’t be encouraged to use their minor children as anchors to keep them in the U.S. Since the White House has ceded operational control of the border to criminal cartels, strict enforcement laws are required to protect future migrants.

A second untimely and harmful amendment is Rep. Zoe Lofgren’s (D-Calif.) proposal to remove the numerical caps from certain science, technology, engineering and math degree holders (STEM) in national-security related fields. Lofgren, an immigration lawyer, chairs the House Immigration and Citizenship Subcommittee. If Lofgren’s amendment is included in the 2023 NDAA, high-skilled immigrants would more quickly become lawful permanent residents and the labor force would expand significantly. A larger labor pool creates a more challenging employment market for U.S. tech workers with STEM degrees, including recent university graduates, to obtain the white-collar jobs they’re qualified to hold.

Ross and Lofgren’s wished-for amendments read as if they were drawn up by the donor-based elite and immigration lawyers, both categories of which would profit immensely if the proposals became law. With 54 million working-age (16-64) Americans neither working nor looking for work, and millions more who are underemployed workers – they hold part-time jobs, but want full-time employment – proposed immigration laws should benefit them, and not foreign-born nationals. The most adversely affected when immigration expands are those without a college diploma, most often blacks, Latinos and women, but also white males.

Increasing immigration is the dominant talking point in the roiling immigration reform debate and has reached the point where advocates maneuver to include amendments in a must-pass defense bill. Few in Congress, and no one participating in the NDAA hearings, speaks on behalf of the millions of Americans whose jobs and livelihoods increased legal immigration threatens. Scholars from the University of California, San Diego and the Federal Reserve Bank of Richmond found that the H-1B visa led to an Indian tech boom – in India! At the same time, U.S. tech workers at Disney, Southern California Edison, Met Life, Wal-Mart and myriad corporations have been displaced by mostly Indian H-1B visa workers.

Immigration doesn’t belong in the NDAA. Advocates like Ross, Lofgren and others can introduce stand-alone bills to advance their agendas, not slip amendments into must-pass legislation. Congress should always protect Americans from an overage of legal, employment-based visa workers, but especially during this period of open borders and high domestic unemployment.

Joe Guzzardi writes about immigration issues and impacts. Read more at joeguzzardi.substack.com.

Congress Tries to Slip Immigration into Must-Pass Defense Bill

Amnesty No Laughing Matter for Cornyn

By Joe Guzzardi

No sooner had Texas Sen. John Cornyn finished taking bows for delivering the 15 Republican votes to pass the bipartisan gun safety bill, 65-33, than he began talking up amnesty.

Cornyn, a Judiciary Committee member, was overheard promoting amnesty with fellow senators and immigration advocates Alex Padilla (D-Calif.) and Kyrsten Sinema (D-Ariz.). Cornyn to Padilla: “First guns, now immigration,” meaning amnesty. Very quickly, however, Cornyn backed off, calling his comment a “joke.” Attempting to cover his tracks, Cornyn said, “The Democrats and their allies in the media really can’t take a joke.”

Nevertheless, the take-away among the GOP is if Cornyn was so quick to cave on the Second Amendment, and to deliver a major legislative victory for the opposition Democrats, more tent-folding, perhaps on amnesty, may not be far away. Because of the pride he took at cooperating with Democrats, at the Texas GOP convention, Cornyn was roundly booed.

Skeptics wonder about Cornyn’s immigration and amnesty credibility. Raising doubts regarding Cornyn’s duplicity and providing validity to his amnesty remark is his chummy relationship with Padilla, the former California Secretary of State who Gov. Gavin Newsom named to replace Kamala Harris as U.S. senator. The son of a cook and a house cleaner who migrated to the U.S. from Mexico, Padilla, immediately appointed as chairman of the Senate Judiciary subcommittee, is an avowed immigration expansionist who pledged to work on behalf of aliens to obtain citizenship. Padilla’s self-admitted mission is to make immigration reform “as bold as we can make it.”

The Padilla-Cornyn coziness includes having worked together successfully on a bill which will speed up the admission process by which Afghan interpreters and translators who allegedly assisted U.S. troops can enter the U.S. The odd couple also joined up to write a transportation bill seeking to use relief funds for natural disaster cleanup on roads, trails, bridges and transit systems. For true immigration enforcement advocates, Padilla should represent the enemy.

If Cornyn studied immigration history, he’d know that official amnesties, passed by Congress and signed by the sitting president, only encourage more illegal immigration. The 1986 Immigration Reform and Control Actgranted amnesty to about 2.7 million unlawfully present aliens, and promised to resolve a wide range of immigration problems like hiring aliens, and resolving the ag labor shortages. Today, 36 years later, about 15.5 million illegal immigrants reside in the U.S., one million of them arrived during Biden’s first year in office, and immigration-related issues are more vexing than in 1986. IRCA was a colossal failure, yet amnesty is always a primary congressional goal.

Unless Cornyn is living in a vacuum, he must know that under Biden, amnesty is constantly ongoing although through executive fiat. Thousands of migrants released into the interior have received parole, an immigration benefit that allows aliens to secure work permits. Biden has abused parole – normally issued on a temporary basis to individuals to assist in cases of urgent, humanitarian need. Under Biden, Temporary Protected Status protections have been granted to or extended for  Afghans,  Burmese,  Cameroonians,  Haitians, Somalis, South Sudanese, Ukrainians, Venezuelans and Yemenis. In the aggregate, the TPS population under Biden increased by several hundred thousand foreign nationals. All will receive work permits, and few will ever return home.

At a minimum, whether he was joking or not, Cornyn’s reference to amnesty demonstrated extremely poor judgment. Open borders and illegal immigration have spun out of control under the Democratic White House and Congress. Because of open borders, fentanyl and human trafficking have reached epic proportions, and Americans are deeply concerned about the nation’s future, and overwhelmingly oppose amnesty.

Cornyn’s next re-election bid comes in 2026, enough time for him to wise up to what his constituents’ priorities are. To Texans, many of whose counties declared the border crisis an invasion, amnesty is no joking matter.

Joe Guzzardi writes about immigration and its consequences. Contact him at jguzzardi@pfirdc.org. Read more at joeguzzardi@substack.com.

Amnesty No Laughing Matter for Cornyn

Secure Border And Save Lives

By Joe Guzzardi

San Antonio officials last week reported the deaths of 53 migrants, a total that includes 40 men and 13 women. The senseless deaths are an international tragedy that plays out year after year. Migrant deaths near the border are common as people attempt to cross rugged terrain without adequate water, food or clothing. Before Monday, the worst smuggling-related mass fatality in recent Texas history was in 2003, when 19 people died after being trapped in an unrefrigerated dairy truck for hundreds of miles. The International Organization for Migration calculated that at least 650 migrants died crossing the U.S.-Mexico border in 2021.

In the latest heartbreaking incident, the migrants were trapped in a tractor-trailer; 46 were dead at the scene, and another five expired from heat exhaustion and dehydration, gruesome ways to die, at local hospitals. Five children were among the dead that included 22 Mexicans, seven Guatemalans and two Hondurans. Officials are working to identify the nationalities of the other victims.

The list of parties responsible for these needless deaths is long, and includes at its top the United States President, Joe Biden. Texas Governor Gregg Abbott tweeted, “These deaths are on Biden. They are a result of his deadly open border policies. They show the consequences of his refusal to enforce the law.”

Mexico’s President Andrés Manuel López Obrador also was highly critical of the Biden administration. Obrador placed the culpability on the U.S. border and interior failures which, he said, encourage trafficking. But Biden was quick to deflect blame. He called Abbott’s remarks “shameful” grandstanding, while he denounced “exploiting vulnerable individuals for profit.” Incredulously, the White House press secretary Karine Jean-Pierre said after the incident that “the border is closed.”

Biden has company on the most culpable list. Among them are Vice President Kamala Harris who has steadfastly refused to travel to the border even though the president specifically gave her that responsibility, and Department of Homeland Security Secretary Alejandro Mayorkas. On social media, Mayorkas promised that he’ll “take action to disrupt smuggling networks.” But Mayorkas’ inaction on border security is the very reason smugglers have thrived under his period as DHS secretary that has seen more than 1 million aliens, exclusive of got-aways, released into the interior.

The only smattering of good news is that four perpetrators, including Juan Francisco D’Luna-Bilbao and Juan Claudio D’Luna-Mendez, are in federal custody. Documents filed on June 28 confirmed that police went to a San Antonio address listed on the tractor-trailer’s registration and stopped a Ford pickup truck that was leaving the property. Police arrested both D’Lunas and charged them with illegal possession of multiple firearms. Both are Mexican citizens in the country illegally after overstaying their tourist visas. Visa overstays are another failure of the government. Department of Homeland Security statistics indicate that in 2020, there were 684,500 visa overstays, up about 1 percent from 2019.

The U.S. border with Mexico has essentially been open, albeit to different degrees, for decades. When the White House and Congress get serious about securing America’s Southwest border, and enforcing the immigration laws that provide citizens with a safe interior, then the smuggling business will slowly die out. The most humane, most life-saving border policy is one that rigorously secures the border.

Joe Guzzardi writes about immigration and its consequences. Contact him at jguzzardi@pfirdc.org. Find more at joeguzzardi@substack.com.

Secure Border And Save Lives