Category: Joe Guzzardi

Biden Agenda Excludes Black Workers Concerns

By Joe Guzzardi

On his first day in office, President Biden signed an Executive Order to advance racial equity and to support underserved communities, an admirable goal, and one that most Americans share. Unfortunately for residents of those struggling communities, many of them African-American, on the same day, Biden signed several other Executive Orders that fundamentally changed how the new administration would deal with immigration. Those Executive Orders sent a message around the world that amnesty is on the table, and enforcement, for the most part, was off the table.

Although few could foresee how impossible to carry out Biden’s equity agenda would become once his immigration Executive Orders were implemented, the results are clear now. The huge influx of illegal immigrants at the border – an anticipated 2.1 million this year – legally admitted Ukrainian and Afghan evacuees, and more than 1 million legal immigrants admitted every year on autopilot have made employment conditions tough for underserved black Americans to find employment or to move up from their entry-level jobs into well-paid middle-class positions.

No president genuinely concerned about equity and black Americans’ futures could open the Southwest border and reward foreign nationals who have willfully and knowingly violated U.S. immigration laws with work authorization.

Since Biden took office through July 2022, about 4.9 million illegal immigrants, including about 900,000 gotaways, have crossed the border and entered the interior. For those among the 4.9 million who are working age, which the Bureau of Labor Statistics defines as 18 to 64, many if not most will receive work permission. Evacuees and legal immigrants also receive employment documents. Those who don’t could enter the underground economy, always fertile ground for unscrupulous employers.

But the purposely porous border isn’t the only culprit that suppresses black, Hispanic and other minority workers from moving up in the social strata. The Biden White House allows unnecessary employment-based visas to persist. Dozens of visa categories displace or put at a disadvantage Americans seeking low- and high-skilled jobs in the areas of leisure, landscaping, forestry, technology and medical science. Neither the donor class nor whomever occupies the White House blinks when talented, experienced Americans lose their jobs and have to train their foreign-born replacements. Deeply-in-debt university graduates are behind the eight ball when they’re forced to compete with cheaper overseas labor. The donor class wins; U.S. workers lose.

But the uncomfortable truth is that establishment Washington prefers foreign-born workers. Writing in Newsweek, Pamela Denise Long, a descendants of U.S. slaves advocate, asked why black dreams don’t matter. “Are descendants of U.S. slaves not supposed to notice how we and our countrymen are negatively affected by yet another bastardization of ‘social justice’?”

In her opinion article, Long wrote that “the immigration industrial complex built up around legal and illegal migration has abandoned what is patriotic and pro-American.” She references the 2010 Commission on Civil Rights report which found that the abundance of overseas workers expands the labor market, which eventually led to a 40 percent decline in employed low-skilled, native-born black men. Long called the Biden administration’s policies “the most expansive federal giveaway to legal and illegal migrants since President Reagan’s amnesty of 1986.”

Although Newsweek categorized Long’s essay as opinion, she wrote undeniable truths about the devastating effect that persistent high legal immigration and unchecked illegal immigration have on American workers, especially those with only a high school diploma or less. Long’s essay concluded with this admonition: “By supporting brain drain policies [importing foreign workers], Democrats, and officials who are Republican in name only are traitors against the American people. We see you!”

In his book, “Back of the Hiring Line,” author Roy Beck titled his final chapter, “Prioritize Descendants of Slavery?” Beck concluded that the most helpful immigration policy for non-college educated blacks will also be the correct immigration policy for other vulnerable Americans, including recently arrived legal immigrants. To put all Americans on a path to greater wealth, mass immigration must be dramatically reduced.

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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 Agenda Excludes Black Workers Concerns

July Labor Report Hides Truth

By Joe Guzzardi

The July Bureau of Labor Statistics report was a blockbuster. The economy created 528,000 jobs, and unemployment dipped to 3.5 percent, well ahead of Dow Jones’ 258,000 new jobs and 3.6 percent unemployment estimates. Wage growth also rose; average hourly earnings increased 0.5 percent for the month and 5.2 percent year-over-year, higher than, respectively, the .03 percent and 4.9 percent Wall Street estimates. A .05 percent increase, however, keeps consumers getting poorer as inflation last month proceeded at an 8.5 percent rate.

But no federal government report merits more skepticism than the monthly BLS. If the jobs market were truly booming, then the labor participation rate should be climbing. Instead, the participation rate is falling.

The number of Americans not in the labor force, those who neither have a job nor are seeking employment, climbed past the 100 million mark again in July, hitting 100,051,000, a 239,000 increase from June. From May to June, the previous 2022 reporting period, Americans detached from the labor force increased 510,000. The July report showed that labor participation was 62.1 percent.

A Congressional Budget Office analysis found that a lower labor force participation rate is associated with lower gross domestic product (GDP) and lower tax revenues, with larger federal outlays because people who are not in the labor force are more likely to enroll in certain federal benefit programs.

A deeper dig into the July statistics found that leisure and hospitality led the way in job gains with 96,000, although the industry is still 1.2 million workers shy of its pre-pandemic level. Professional and business services were second with 89,000. Health care added 70,000 positions, and government payrolls grew 57,000. Goods-producing industries also posted solid gains, with construction up 32,000, and manufacturing adding 30,000. Despite repeated alarm bells sounded by Walmart, Target and other big box stores that consumer demand is weak, retail jobs increased by 22,000.

Superficially, the job growth looks encouraging. But the wages that those jobs pay can’t support a household of four, or perhaps not even the individual worker. Leisure and hospitality workers, which BLS classifies as cooks, bartenders, waiters, hotel housekeepers and food preparation supervisors, earn an average of about $30,000. Professional and business services earn $40/hour; health care, $29,000; goods producing industries, $30,000, and retail workers, $29,000.

In order for blue-collar workers to advance into the middle-class lifestyle, they need the labor market to get tighter, a challenge since the border is open; temporary guest worker programs are expanding, and legal immigrants receive lifetime valid employment authorization. During the Biden administration, nearly 2.5 million border crossers have entered the U.S. Biden’s intention is to give most if not all parole status that includes work permission. Over the last 15 years, the State Department has issued millions of guest worker visas to foreign citizens who perform blue- and white-collar jobs. In fiscal 2022, the U.S. will accept 2.1 million lifetime work-authorized legal immigrants, a record number, that will swell the labor pool.

To help U.S. workers, the labor market should be tight. Fewer immigrants would push wages higher and move Americans up the economic ladder. People would become more productive and less welfare dependent.

When Congress returns after Labor Day, campaigning for the mid-term elections will begin in earnest. Most of the politicians will promise to elevate the electorate’s lifestyles. But few will mention the important role that reduced immigration would play in boosting wages.

July Labor Report Hides Truth July Labor Report Hides Truth July Labor Report Hides Truth

Look At Newsom Before Leaping, DNC

By Joe Guzzardi

Despite Washington, D.C.’s August heat and humidity – perfect vacation weather – the nation’s capital is immersed in politics. A thorny two-part question consumes political insiders. The first part asks whether President Biden should run for re-election in 2024. And if the answer is no, the consensus response among nervous Democrats, the follow-up question is who’s the best candidate to replace him?

Apprehensive Democrats want Biden to step aside gracefully, but the president’s choice may be to go for a second term. Biden has repeatedly said that he’ll run because his party wants him to. Time will tell whether Democrats convert their cautiously anti-Biden rhetoric into action by launching primary challenges.

Since 1980, serious Republican and Democratic presidential challengers have failed – Ronald Reagan vs. Gerald Ford, Ted Kennedy vs. Jimmy Carter and Pat Buchanan vs. George H.W. Bush. The most important takeaway from the failed primary efforts is that incumbents Ford, Carter and Bush #41 lost their general elections. Unless Biden voluntarily retires, the only course left open to Democrats is to force him out, an ugly scene that would hurt the party.

Assuming that the party either puts Biden out to pasture or he bows out graciously, one way or another, his name won’t appear on the 2024 ballot. The second of the two questions will then move to the forefront: Who will replace him? As of today, the polls have identified California Gov. Gavin Newsom as the leading candidate with Michelle Obama a distant second. Predictably, Vice President Kamala Harris is nowhere. But before Democrats rush to embrace Newsom, they’d be well advised to vet him vis-à-vis the national electorate.

If voters are tired of privileged, elitist government, then the multimillionaire Newsom, who cavorts with billionaires, will have a hard time appealing to the working class. Billionaires were the major donors to Newsom’s gubernatorial campaigns. More important than Newsom’s donor base, however, are his politics. Democratic National Committee Chair Jaime Harrison should ask Newson for a preview of his campaign platform. For sure, Newsom’s stump speeches won’t include lines like this: “With your vote, I can convert America into 49 more California’s.”

Typically, candidates for high office point to their successes, and run on those accomplishments. In Newsom’s case, his feats fall into the negative column. For starters, California has the country’s lowest literacy rate. Only one in four Californians over age 15 can read and understand a simple sentence. Newsom’s open border’s advocacy contributes to sanctuary state California where 220 languages are spoken, and 44 percent of residents speak a language other than English at home. Seven million Californians cannot speak English well.

Math isn’t much better; about 40 percent of California’s public school students are proficient, but that pathetic ratio is explained away because math has been designated as racist, and its study is now based on critical race theory. Nothing is Golden about the state’s income and sales taxes; they rank with the nation’s highest.

Newsom ordered the first statewide COVID lockdown. Three protestors on a San Diego beach were arrested for violating Newsom’s stay-at-home edict. California is third in per capita homelessness behind Hawaii and New York. Median rent is $1,600 monthly, and homes sell for a median $538,500. Violent crime has spiked so high that the annual crime data’s publication is well overdue.

In fairness, though, Newsom’s candidacy would have, from the DNC’s perspective, an upside. Billionaires’ deep pocket donations and Silicon Valley’s censorship would be in play. Newsom would start out with 74 electoral votes in his back pocket, California, Oregon and Washington, and another 49 leaning his way, Illinois and New York. Conditions in Illinois and New York, however, are changing fast – so quickly that Biden is underwater in both states.

Weary from Newsom’s gubernatorial failures, Californians are fleeing the state, which should warn presidential voters that, if nominated, the slick, coiffed Hollywood darling is the wrong choice to replace Biden in the White House.

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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.

Look At Newsom Before Leaping, DNC Look At Newsom Before Leaping, DNC

Red Carpet Roll Out for Border Crashers

By Joe Guzzardi

In Washington, D.C., when taxpayers foot the bill, disregard for mounting costs is the norm. Nowhere is that axiom truer than when applied to the border crisis that’s allowed millions of illegal aliens to enter, and then resettle throughout the United States. Overstretched, inflation-embattled taxpayers, who have no voice in the invasion, nevertheless pay for its every step.

The latest: the Department of Homeland Security has deployed federal air marshals to personally escort border crossers and illegal aliens from the U.S./Mexico border processing facilities to Border Patrol agents’ custody before they’re released into the interior. Once released, which happens almost immediately, the aliens receive parole, an immigration status that historically is granted on a case-by-case basis, and to satisfy a humanitarian need or to provide a significant public necessity. President Biden has indiscriminately authorized parole, and the work permission that accompanies it, for thousands of aliens.

Biden has rolled out the red carpet for illegal aliens whose resettled total since his inauguration is estimated at 1.35 million. Not only do the migrants, who learned of Biden’s largesse months ago, demand parole, DHS is considering giving them Immigration Customs and Enforcement-issued identification cards, officially known as the Secure Docket Card, and has permitted 1,000 unlawfully present migrants to use deportation orders as well as civil arrest warrants to board commercial domestic flights. The Transportation Security Administration confirmed that warrants and deportation orders are valid IDs for illegal immigrants.

Moreover, U.S. Rep. Lance Gooden (R-Texas) learned that, before boarding, DHS gives the migrants a packet that includes flight information, Customs and Border Protection Notices to Appear, a list of pro bono legal service providers, maps of major U.S. cities and information on how to obtain legal assistance in Spanish. The packet also explains to the migrants how to enroll their children in school when they reach their destination.

Gooden wondered about the secrecy behind the massive organization required to carry out an invasion the magnitude of the one playing out at the Southwest Border. Other questions that concern Gooden and are shared by Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis pertain to vetting, accountability, safety and funding.

Last year, DeSantis’ office said that more than 70 “unannounced” flights into Jacksonville arrived with “no notice,” and therefore he had no ability to block the flights. As a result, a passenger on one of the unannounced flights was a 24-year-old Honduran national who told Border Patrol he was a 17-year-old unaccompanied minor. The Honduran, Yery Noel Medina Ulloa, was arrested and charged with murder last month in Jacksonville for the brutal stabbing death of a Florida man who had taken him in as a tenant. The victim, Francisco Javier Cuellar, 46, was father to four children. Biden’s border policy is to admit migrants who either are or claim to be unaccompanied minors.

Here are a few takeaways: first, the border crisis represents an unprecedented, historic assault on sovereign America. Voters are voiceless on Biden’s immigration agenda. If Biden-style open borders with work authorization for the unlawfully present were to appear on a ballot, it would be overwhelmingly defeated. Only the elite benefit from mass immigration. Second, millions of taxpayer dollars fund open borders and its consequences. Education, medical care and housing are on the taxpayers’ dime.

Third, unless the GOP captures Congress in the mid-term election, and makes good on its promise to impeach DHS Secretary Alejandro Mayorkas, the border invasion and the got-aways will continue at a record-breaking pace until Biden is out of office. By that time, assuming 1.35 million illegal immigrants annually, with about 500,000 got-aways arriving per year too, about 7.4 million aliens will have come criminally to the U.S. with Biden’s blessing.

In a partial win for enforcement advocates and constitutionalists, last month the U.S. 5^th Circuit Court of Appeals in Louisiana ruled that the Biden administration has to follow the federal laws put in place by Congress which state that all immigrants who commit certain crimes must be detained and removed. The Biden administration sought to develop its own criminal hierarchy for removal. Compared to the huge numbers surging the border, the victory is small potatoes, especially in light of Biden and Mayorkas’ disregard for long-standing immigration laws. Only the foolhardy would believe that Biden and his team would respect the 5^th Circuit Court when they’ve spent 18 months breaking established laws.

Red Carpet Roll Out for Border Crashers

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