Category: Joe Guzzardi

Mayorkas Now Subverting Labor Market

By Joe Guzzardi

Department of Homeland Security Secretary Alejandro Mayorkas isn’t content with criminally and unconstitutionally throwing open the Southwest border to all comers, disrupting the lives of border state residents and putting Americans at risk of hostile enemy attacks. Doubling down on his inconceivably blatant disregard for the nation’s well-being,  Mayorkas has independently and without congressional approval chosen to reward some of those aliens during fiscal year 2022 with an additional 20,000 temporary seasonal employment-based H-2B visas that will lead to good American jobs. Among those jobs are landscaper, lifeguard, forestry worker, housekeeper, waiter, cook, amusement park worker, among jobs in other employment sectors where Americans have traditionally worked.

The DHS press release announced that “the supplemental H-2B visa allocation consists of 13,500 visas available to returning workers who received an H-2B visa, or were otherwise granted H-2B status, during one of the last three fiscal years. The remaining 6,500 visas, which are exempt from the returning worker requirement, are reserved for nationals of Haiti and the Northern Triangle countries of Honduras, Guatemala, and El Salvador.” Those nations are among the largest senders of illegal aliens.

Mayorkas also hinted that more H-2Bs are on the way. The press release included this warning: “In the coming months, DHS will seek to implement policies that will make the H-2B program even more responsive to the needs of our economy….” In conclusion, Mayorkas said what many consider a brazen pack of lies, the most glaring of which is that DHS will protect American workers and existing visa holders. The current U.S. Citizenship and Immigration Services cap is 33,000 for workers who begin employment in the first half of the fiscal year, Oct. 1 – March 31, and 33,000 for workers who begin employment in the second half of the fiscal year, April 1 – Sept. 30. USCIS is an operational component of DHS, and is ultimately accountable to Mayorkas.

In his declaration, the always disingenuous Mayorkas falsely claimed that the extra visas would “help fuel the nation’s historic economic recovery” even as millions of unemployed Americans want to re-enter the labor market, assuming they could earn a decent wage.

Consider the message that Mayorkas is sending to the millions-strong worldwide community of prospective illegal aliens: Come! We won’t deter you! Once here, we’ll give you a federally issued work permit to lay out the red carpet that will smooth your way into the employment market. Neither DHS nor the Department of Labor give a hoot about unemployed American workers who might lose the opportunity to compete for a good job. We care about you, foreign nationals who knowingly and willingly broke U.S. laws!

A thumbnail sketch of Mayorkas’ disastrous year-long tenure as America’s alleged protector-in-chief: by the end of 2021, more than 2 million aliens from countries across the globe will enter the U.S., and be released into the general population, some are COVID-19 infected. Border patrol agents have identified other aliens as U.S.-convicted rapists, thieves or general “undesirables.” Drug and child sex traffickers ply their criminal multi-billion dollar enterprises with abandon while the White House looks the other way. CBP has apprehended two Yemeni and one Saudi “known or suspected terrorists;” others may be among the 600,000 “got-aways.” Yuma, Ariz., and Del Rio, Texas, declared states of emergency to deal with the alien surge.

Before his Senate confirmation hearing, many Capitol Hill skeptics cautioned against Mayorkas’ appointment. Serving as President Obama’s USCIS director, Mayorkas helped foreign investors with ties to prominent Democrats, including then-Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid, Democratic National Committee Chair Terry McAuliffe, and former Pennsylvania Governor Ed Rendell, secure coveted EB-5 investor visas. In March 2015, the Office of Inspector General, Department of Homeland Security issued a scathing report that itemized in exhaustive detail Mayorkas’ misdeeds. Nevertheless, Mayorkas was confirmed, 56-43. Despite the alarm bells about Mayorkas’ questionable character and his partisan bias, six Republicans voted “yea.” The six are Shelley Capito, West Virginia; Susan Collins, Maine; Lisa Murkowski, Alaska; Dan Sullivan, Alaska; Rob Portman, Ohio, and Mitt Romney, Utah.

A president who cares about U.S. security and the future of America as a sovereign nation would demand that Mayorkas be impeached immediately. Sadly, Mayorkas’ destructive agenda is par for the America-last course that Biden and his cohorts fully embrace.

Joe Guzzardi is a Progressives for Immigration Reform analyst who has written about immigration for more than 30 years. Contact him at jguzzardi@pfirdc.org.

Mayorkas Now Subverting Labor Market

Parliamentarian Christmas Gift To USA

By Joe Guzzardi

After nearly a year of watching President Joe Biden and Department of Homeland Security Secretary Alejandro Mayorkas ride roughshod over federal immigration laws, trample the U.S. Constitution and their oaths of office, Senate Republicans finally scored a victory.

Senate Parliamentarian Elizabeth MacDonough gave the GOP a huge helping hand when she rejected for the third time Democrats’ bids to include an amnesty for 8 million illegal immigrants in the administration’s Build Back Better bill. MacDonough said the Democrats’ proposal, as written, would violate the Byrd Rule, which requires all provisions included in the budget reconciliation legislation to be primarily related to budget matters.

The proposed amnesty for illegal aliens required that they must have entered the U.S. before January 1, 2011; those who qualify would receive five-year parole, an immigration status that protects them from deportation, and provides them with affirmative benefits including employment authorization. Of note: legally, parole is issued temporarily and on an emergency humanitarian or significant public benefit basis to individuals residing outside the U.S. Parole should not be unilaterally granted to millions of illegal border crossers, all in one sweeping gesture.

An assist in blocking a Senate vote is owed to West Virginia Sen. Joe Manchin, a Democrat, who steadfastly refused to endorse BBB because he felt that the bill’s $1.75 trillion price tag is too costly in the current hyper-inflationary era. The Congressional Budget Office’s report that BBB would add, over the next decade, $3 trillion to the deficit also gave Manchin grave concern. Manchin also went on record as saying that he wouldn’t vote to overrule MacDonough, an option the Democrats were, and still are, mulling. Without Manchin’s yea vote on either an overrule or on the standalone legislation, defeat and the subsequent embarrassment to the administration were inevitable.

South Carolina Sen. Lindsey Graham predicted that BBB is “dead,” not just for 2021, “but forever.” In light of his decades-long experience battling Democrats with few victories to show for his engagements, Graham’s “forever” prediction is surprising. Immediately following the parliamentarian’s ruling, pro-amnesty advocates and some House Democrats began a campaign to pressure Senate Democrats to overrule or disregard MacDonough’s decision.

Mike Fernandez, American Business Immigration Coalition co-chair, bemoaned his rejected-for-the-third time amnesty expectations. With Fernandez and other immigration expansionists’ hopes now dashed, so too are their goals for permanent legalization and citizenship for 8 million deferred action for childhood arrivals, temporary permanent status holders, farmworkers and other vaguely categorized essential workers. “The Senate should not let that stand,” Fernandez railed.

Taking Fernandez’s cue, Sens. Dick Durbin (D-Ill.) and Bob Menendez (D-N.J.) hinted that Democrats might put forth a fourth attempt for more amnesty options to the parliamentarian for consideration. In a joint statement made shortly after MacDonough’s ruling, Senate Majority Leader Chuck Schumer (D-N.Y.) stated that he would “pursue every means to achieve a path to citizenship” in the bill.

Amnesty plus the unprecedented border crisis would be a devastating double-blow to Americans who want to protect U.S. sovereignty. Syracuse University data found that more than 70 percent of illegal immigrant border crossers remain in the U.S. despite undergoing so-called deportation hearings. But rarely is deportation the end results of the hearings. The Biden administration, by encouraging the illegal entry of 2 million aliens and 600,000 “got-aways,” as well as flying back President Trump-era deportees, is working feverishly to destroy the America that multiple generations treasure, and want to preserve.

Joe Guzzardi is a Progressives for Immigration Reform analyst who has written about immigration for more than 30 years. Contact him at jguzzardi@pfirdc.org.

Parliamentarian Christmas Gift To USA

Wage Thieves Steal $95M From H-1B Holders

By Joe Guzzardi 

Economic Policy Institute analysts Ron Hira, a Howard University associate professor, and his colleague Daniel Costa, EPI’s director of U.S. immigration law, international labor migration, farm labor and a forced migration specialist, recently published their research study titled “New Evidence of Widespread Wage Theft in the H-1B Program.” The title’s key words are “new,” because H-1B wage theft is a long-standing abuse, and “widespread” because incidents similar to those Hira and Costa exposed have occurred for years, and at some of the nation’s most well-known and deep-pocketed corporations.

A small sampling among the offenders includes Disney, Google, FedEx, Caterpillar and Facebook. The estimated, accumulated wage theft, Hira and Costa calculated, is $95 million, a devastating underpayment to H-1B holders. In this case, the Indian employer HCL, referred to as a “body shop,” cheated its fellow Indian nationals. Foreign-born visa holders aren’t the only victims. U.S. workers displaced by H-1Bs or who experienced wage depression because of the abundant availability of cheaper H-1B labor also lose.

The latest H-1B-related scandal came from the India-based HCL Technologies, full name Hindustan Computers Limited, an IT staffing firm that, in 2020, earned $11 billion. HCL’s Santhosh Jayaram, the company’s Global Head of Sustainability will, according to its website, enable the company “to refine and focus its current agenda and strategy in the key areas of environmental, social and governance (ESG).

Despite the lofty language, after EPI reviewed an internal HCL document, released as part of a whistleblower lawsuit against the firm, Hira and Costa found that large-scale and criminal illegal H-1B worker underpayment “is a core part of the firm’s competitive strategy.” The lawsuit’s discovery process revealed that HCL engaged in non-payment of Social Security, Medicare and federal unemployment insurance taxes on wages paid and that the company fraudulently used B-1 tourist visa holders as workers, and hired L-1 international executive visas, which cost less than H-1B workers. H-1B statutes mandate that employers pay their H-1B workers no less than the actual wages paid to their similarly employed U.S. workers.

But unscrupulous employers elude those federal guidelines by contracting with IT outsourcing firms. That tactic essentially puts outsourced H-1B workers in a different DOL category for evaluation, and allows them to avoid the wage requirements. The loophole that Hira and Costa identified is treating “contractor hires differently than direct hires when enforcing the wage and other provisions in the H-1B statute,” which leads to the extensive wage theft.

Because DOL considers contract hires different than direct hires, the agency doesn’t view the abuses as actionable violations that would normally lead to sanctions. The outsourcing loophole allows firms like HCL and the big tech companies that use outsourcing firms to get around those provisions. Because of its failure to enforce the wage laws or close the outsourcing loophole, DOL is in effect subsidizing and encouraging the offshoring of high-paying U.S. jobs in information technology that once served as a pathway to the increasingly elusive middle class.

The question that Hira and Costa, as well as other H-1B critics and U.S. tech workers’ defenders, want answered is when will the Department of Labor acknowledge that employers have and will continue to commit crimes that violate federal law as long as the federal government aids and abets them. DOL has idly stood by, watched passively as H-1B abuses that harm middle-class American IT workers have piled up. DOL’s indifference has, in effect, subsidized the offshoring of white-collar jobs to overseas workers.

Companies like HCL that earn billions of dollars annually can afford to pay a fair salary to their employees without sacrificing much if anything to their bottom lines. But the blame isn’t all on HCL. DOL’s role in the ongoing H-1B wage scandal must be emphasized. DOL’s Labor Secretary is Marty Walsh, the former Boston mayor who once declared that his city would be a “safe place” for illegal immigrants. Walsh went further, offering his office as shelter for illegal aliens facing deportation. An open borders advocate like Walsh is the wrong person to appoint Labor Secretary.

In 2017, under President Trump, DOL announced actions to increase protections for American workers, and more aggressively confront entities committing visa program fraud and abuse. The Biden administration has unfairly and inexplicably dashed the goal of protecting U.S. tech workers and salvaging their jobs. With the recent nixing of the H-1B lottery rule that would prioritize selection based on highest wages, the new Biden standard is to use any of a variety of employment-based visas to add as many foreign-born workers as possible to the labor pool even though Americans will suffer. Look no further to the immigration provisions added to the House passed Build Back Better bill that Biden eagerly wants passed soon.

Joe Guzzardi is a Progressives for Immigration Reform analyst who has written about immigration for more than 30 years. Contact him at jguzzardi@pfirdc.org.

Wage Thieves Steal $95M From H-1B Holders

Wage Thieves Steal $95M From H-1B Holders

Clock Ticking On Biden Build Back Better
By Joe Guzzardi

If only Congress would take its winter break, then the rest of the nation – in other words, the non-elite – could enjoy the Christmas season. But, a congressional recess much before December 23 may be as improbable as a down-the-chimney visit from jolly Old St. Nick. Senate Majority Leader Chuck Schumer (D-NY), the quintessential Christmas grinch, has vowed to keep the Upper Chamber in session until Build Back Better (BBB) gets a full floor vote.

Schumer may be optimistic, but he’s also stubborn. Several road blocks stand in Schumer’s way. First, Senate parliamentarian Elizabeth MacDonough who has ruled twice against including amnesty in the $1.7 trillion social spending bill must be favorably swayed. The parliamentarian decides what can be included in Senate legislation, and has rejected two previous proposals. Most congressional Democrats, Senate and House, want amnesty as well as other affirmative benefits including work permission granted to about seven or eight million unlawfully present foreign nationals. But when amnesty is the goal, Democrats’ never-say-die commitment evolved into a third iteration for MacDonough’s review. Plan C’s fate is unknown.

Schumer’s second Senate hurdle is West Virginia’s Joe Manchin who has sent various signals that he’s leery. Most recently, Manchin said that he wouldn’t defy the parliamentarian’s immigration decision. Manchin: “The bottom line is the parliamentarian; you stick with the parliamentarian, that’s all. You stick on every issue. You can’t pick and choose.”

From the outset, Manchin has expressed concerns over what’s now a nearly $2 trillion package; he was influential in cutting the price tag from its original $3.5 trillion. But despite the $1.5 trillion cut, Manchin, concerned about hyperinflation and the nation’s tenuous economy, is still edgy. Manchin also reiterated his long-held concern that that Democrats are using budget gimmicks to conceal the true, higher cost of the president’s spending bill.

For months, President Biden assured Americans that BBB wouldn’t cost a penny. In September, Biden tweeted that his then $3.5 trillion BBB agenda “costs zero dollars,” a claim that Republicans bluntly labeled “a lie.” Rep. Claudia Tenney (R-NY) quickly countered Biden with the impossible-to-dispute calculation that a $3.5 trillion cost can’t possibly translate to zero dollars.

The nonpartisan Congressional Budget Office and the Joint Committee on Taxation gave Tenney a figurative A+ math grade. They projected that the modified version of the bill they reviewed would increase the national deficit by $3 trillion over the 2022 – 2031 period, a total that includes the effect of interest cost.

BBB’s amnesty provisions alone will cost taxpayers $124 billion over the first decade, and would create an additional $359 billion in net costs during the second post-passage decade, making amnesty’s total net cost over 20 years a whopping $483 billion.

As the Center for Immigration Studies observed, amnesty costs increase over time as illegal immigrants become eligible for more and more social programs, especially Social Security and Medicare. The millions of illegal immigrants that BBB covers will also immediately qualify for parole, an immigration status that includes work permission, protection from deportation and other affirmative benefits. An already-weak labor market that the latest Bureau of Labor Statistics report reflected will expand when millions of newly work-authorized immigrants enter the employment market to compete with or displace Americans.

Little if anything in BBB will enhance American lives. On the other hand, Biden, congressional Democrats, D.C. bureaucrats, the big businesses that hire cheap labor, illegal immigrants and the immigration lawyers they’ll hire to advise them will all gain significantly.

The best thing BBB opponents have in their favor, Republicans and Democrats alike, is that if Manchin votes “yea,” he’ll be out of his Senate job in 2024. In 2016, heavily Republican West Virginia rejected Biden; Trump carried the state by nearly 40 points, a margin that Manchin can’t hope to make up if he endorses BBB.

Joe Guzzardi is a Progressive for Immigration Reform analyst who has written about immigration for more than 30 years. Contact him at jguzzardi@pfirdc.org.

Clock Ticking On Biden Build Back Better

Afghan Resettlement Costs Mount

By Joe Guzzardi
 

As with many immigration-related matters, too much information is purposely hidden from public view.

We just witnessed an excellent example of the Biden administration’s immigration subterfuge. The must-pass continuing resolution bill to fund the federal government at its current level, and therefore avoid a government shutdown, included a completely unrelated $7 billion to help resettle evacuated Afghan nationals, mostly unvetted or, at best, superficially screened. The breakout of how the $7 billion will be spent was kept secret from the public – the very people that provide the money. As former Illinois Sen. Everett Dirksen said, perhaps apocryphally, “A billion here, a billion there, and pretty soon, you’re talking real money.”

Americans know as confirmed fact that the arriving Afghans are unvetted because Department of Homeland Security Secretary Alejandro Mayorkas, contradicting his earlier claim, sheepishly admitted to the Senate Judiciary Committee that he had no idea how many evacuees had been vetted. Pressed by Sen. Lindsey Graham (R-SC), Mayorkas confessed: “We are not conducting in-person, full refugee interviews of 100 percent” of Afghan evacuees.” Moreover, Mayorkas couldn’t provide Sen. Josh Hawley (R-Mo.) with specific data for how many Afghans went through full interviews. Mayorkas’ testimony exposes White House Press Secretary Jen Psaki’s deceptive statement assuring that “no one” has entered the U.S. without “a thorough screening and background check process.”

The federal government’s failure to properly protect Americans through the sensible requirement to vet foreign nationals from a country that is an avowed U.S. enemy has already, just weeks after the Afghan evacuation, had serious consequences. In September in New Mexico, the FBI began an investigation into a small group of male Afghans who, temporarily housed at the Doña Ana Complex, allegedly sexually assaulted a female U.S. soldier. Also in September, at Ft. McCoy, Wisconsin, two evacuees were charged, separately, with the alleged sexual assault of a minor using force, and spousal assault by strangulation and suffocation.

The individuals identified in these crimes hardly sound like they belong as part of “Operation Allies Welcome,” most of whom arrived on the six-week long airlift known as “Operation Allies Refuge” that moved 124,000 individuals out of Afghanistan, placing them around the country. Some of their destinations will be in areas that are struggling to recover from the pandemic, and have other long-standing societal woes engrained in their fabric before the evacuees’ arrival.

State Department data for the Afghan Placement and Assistance program obtained by the Associated Pressed showed that California is expected to accept more Afghan evacuees than any state, 5,200. Three months ago, California Gov. Gavin Newsom and the state’s legislative leaders requested $16.7 million in taxpayer funding to help resettle refugees. Contradictorily, the State Department promised to resettle Afghans in states with affordable housing. Yet California’s officials have for years bemoaned the shortage of that exact commodity. California is also plagued by high average gas prices, $4.68, and above-average state and local taxes at 10.9 percent of adjusted personal income. California’s income inequality level is among the five worst states, and the state’s K-12 public school system struggles with overcrowded classrooms that hamper teachers’ ability to effectively educate their students. For Afghans starting a new life in California, they’ll face many obstacles before they can hope to get on their feet.

For Americans keeping score on the dollar cost of the Afghanistan resettlement, here’s a partial tally. The 20-year war cost $2.3 trillion, with the estimated interest payments on that sum coming in at $925 billion. By 2030, estimated interest costs will ratchet up to $2 trillion, and by 2050, $6.5 trillion. Military equipment worth billions more dollars was abandoned during the hasty and incompetent U.S. retreat from Afghanistan. Those are painfully high sums. But no dollar amount can be attached to the loss of 2,400 American lives, the lives of 3,800 U.S. contractors and the thousands left behind to face an uncertain and possibly deadly future.

Now Americans will be required to finance Afghan evacuees’ U.S. resettlement, the $7 billion in the continuing resolution, plus mounting federal, state and local costs. The Center for Immigration Studies estimatedthat in their first five years of U.S. residency, each Middle Eastern refugee costs taxpayers $64,370, or 12 times what the U.N. estimates would be the cost to care for one refugee in a country close to his home. Regional resettlement never occurred to the Biden administration. There’s no reason it should when it has U.S. taxpayers to rely on.

Joe Guzzardi is a Progressives for Immigration Reform analyst who has written about immigration for more than 30 years. Contact him at jguzzardi@pfirdc.org.

Afghan Resettlement Costs Mount

Elon Wrong About Population Drop

By Joe Guzzardi
 

At The Wall Street Journal’s annual Chief Executive Officers’ council, Elon Musk, the world’s richest man whose net worth is an estimated $290 billion, sounded an alarm. If people don’t start procreating at an accelerated level, civilization will crumble, Musk trumpeted.

Musk worries about what he identified as the “low birth rate and the rapidly declining birth rate” which he attributes to COVID-19 and economic apprehension among the young. Elites, of which Musk is a ranking member, have promoted the “we need more people” meme for decades. Consumer goods manufacturers, retailers, developers, the ethnic identity lobby and Congress are united in their urgent pleas for more people. Domestically, cars can’t be sold, soda pop can’t be consumed, houses can’t be built, cheap labor can’t be hired and new voters can’t be created as long as potential buyers remain in Mexico, the Northern Triangle, Asia and the Caribbean. Immigrants’ search for a better life means that they come to the U.S. to become consumers, a mostly glossed-over fact in the immigration debate.

Musk’s concern was sparked by a Division of Vital Statistics report which found that the U.S. birth rate fell by 4 percent from 2019 to 2020, the sharpest single-year decline in nearly 50 years and the lowest number of births since 1979. But if Musk looked at the macro population picture, he could relax. Since 1979, an isolated point in time, the U.S. has boomed from 227 million to 334 million, a 107 million population explosion that historically high in-migration helped create. And more people are on the way. By 2050, the Census Bureau estimates that U.S. population will hit, assuming the low net migration projection, 423 million. A further point of interest for globalist Musk to ponder is that, by 2100, the world’s population will be closing in on 11 billion people, a 3 billion increase during the next 80 years.

Furthermore, if Musk is worried about stagnant population, he should take a trip to the U.S. Southwest border. Musk won’t need his SpaceX rocket to travel to Del Rio, Texas. The illegal immigrant border surge, more than 2 million and counting, exceeds the total population of these states, individually: Alaska, Montana, Wyoming, North or South Dakota, Vermont, New Hampshire, Maine, Rhode Island and Delaware. Neither President Joe Biden nor Department of Homeland Security Secretary Alejandro Mayorkas have given any indication that they will implement measures to control or stop the surge – good news for Musk and other “we need more people” advocates. Remember that the illegal alien totals, whatever they ultimately may be, are preliminary vis-à-vis the eventual totalities they represent. Princeton University estimated that the average immigrant petitions 3.1 family members, and many will begin new families, migration multipliersthat should delight Musk.

In November, the Center for Immigration Studies published a report which found that between September 2020 and September 2021, the foreign-born population, as defined by legal and illegal immigrants, increased by 1.6 million, attributable in part to the Biden’s nonenforcement border policy. The total foreign-born population in the U.S. as of September 2021 is 45.4 million.

The goal of growing the population, either through more natural births or immigration, is inconsistent with Americans’ views on how they want to live, and what kind of world they aspire to for their families. To lecture middle-class Americans, the elitists’ audience, about how many children they should bring into the world is the apex of arrogance, and compelling, indisputable proof that they have completely lost touch with the mainstream, most of whom are struggling in a hyper-inflationary era to meet their monthly obligations. Paying his bills isn’t a problem for Musk. His $269 billion net worth leaves him, his six children and future Musk generations worry-free when it comes to finances.

Polling consistently shows that Americans want less immigration. They also want government to enact sustainable immigration policy that enhances their lives, policies that the Biden administration has summarily rejected. A Harvard CAPS-Harris poll taken in late June had findings consistent with other recent polling: voters reject Biden’s open borders and long for the enforcement that President Trump’s administration implemented.

The question that population stabilization activists want Musk to answer is: Can we fairly and compassionately accommodate the arriving millions, let alone the millions more he wants to welcome, when the nation’s natural and fiscal resources are already over-taxed? Maybe Musk’s aerospace company will indeed find a way to colonize Mars and ease Earth’s population burden. In the unlikely event that might occur, it will be decades or possibly centuries away. The overpopulation challenge in the U.S. is immediate, and adding more people would exacerbate the existing, very real and growing problem.

Joe Guzzardi is a Progressives for Immigration Reform analyst who has written about immigration for more than 30 years. Contact him at jguzzardi@pfirdc.org.

Elon Wrong About Population Drop

Elon Wrong About Population Drop

Dems Face Biden Burden In Senate

By Joe Guzzardi

Washington, D.C.’s political class is focused on West Virginia Sen. Joe Manchin and which way he’ll vote on Build Back Better. Manchin, who in the past has hinted that he’s on the verge of caucusing with the GOP, might be in a bind. Although he’s not up for re-election until 2024, and the sitting Senator is dodging questions about whether he’ll defend his seat, Manchin is a career Democrat who will be campaigning in a state that President Donald Trump won by nearly 30 points.

Manchin has two years of breathing room, but three other swing-state Democratic senators aren’t as lucky, and will face voters in 2022. During a period of acute inflation, how constituents will feel if their senators vote in favor of adding nearly $3 trillion to the federal debt total, the estimate that two independent analysts made in early December, and granting amnesty to 6.5 million illegal immigrants will be pivotal.

In left-leaning New Hampshire, the “Live Free or Die” state, Sen. Maggie Hassan has a disastrous 33 percent approval rate, precariously low since in 2016 she displaced Republican incumbent Kelly Ayotte by a razor-thin 1,017 ballots. Hassan’s fate could depend on how effectively her as-yet-unknown opponent makes the case against her. Polling indicates that whoever Hassan’s challenger is, possibly Ayotte now that GOP Gov. Chris Sununu announced he won’t enter the race, will be well-positioned to defeat her. Hassan will have to defend the Biden administration’s failure in Afghanistan, especially since evacuees are, controversially to many Granite State residents, being resettled in New Hampshire.

Two purple state U.S. senators may face longer re-election odds than Hassan. In the first of the two, Georgia’s vulnerable Raphael Warnock is a prime GOP target. Warnock scored a special election win over Kelly Loeffler, Gov. Brian Kemp’s appointee after Republican Sen. Johnny Isakson retired in 2019. The Democrats’ hold on the Peach State is tenuous, at best. President Donald Trump carried Georgia in 2016 and in 2020, and Georgia had been reliably Republican until 2020. Warnock’s probable opponent is former University of Georgia Bulldog and Dallas Cowboys running back Herschel Walker. In the latest poll, the football hero and immensely popular Walker leads Warnock by five points, 46-41.

The steepest uphill climb to survive the 2022 mid-terms may be in Arizona where another Democratic special election winner, Mark Kelly, will most certainly be pressed to defend Biden’s wide-open border policy. Arizona has been the state most adversely effected by the refusal of Biden and Homeland Security Secretary Alejandro Mayorkas to enforce immigration laws. The Yuma Sector border crisis now dwarfs the more widely publicized Del Rio Sector immigration catastrophe. Yuma’s illegal immigrant border surge is 2,400 percent higher than last year, a direct result of Biden’s indifference to enforcement. Sector Chief Patrol Agent Chris T. Clem has been using social media to get the word out about the devastation in Arizona. In early October, agents captured a convicted child rapist. And as recently as late September, agents were encountering 1,000 illegal immigrants a day during the week.

Republican Gov. Doug Ducey said that “Arizona is a border state. We faced this [illegal immigrant surges] before, but we’ve never faced a crisis this large in 21 years.” Ducey may be understating Arizona’s problem. During the last fiscal year, illegal immigrants whose aggregate number is nearly equal to Yuma’s total population have unlawfully crossed the border. Kelly’s most likely challengers include Attorney General Mark Brnovich who, with attorneys general from Ohio and Montana, has filed suit against the Biden administration over its immigration policy.

Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell hopes that one of the four – Manchin, Hassen, Warnock or Kelly – will defy Majority Leader Chuck Schumer, and instead respect their constituents’ wishes, vote against BBB and thereby limit debt, deny rewarding illegal immigrants with a path to citizenship, and protect their political futures. Optimists hope that a BBB vote will be called before the winter recess; more realistically, negotiations over the bill’s land mines will drag into next year.

Joe Guzzardi is a Progressives for Immigration Reform analyst who has written about immigration for more than 30 years. Contact him at jguzzardi@pfirdc.org.

Dems Face Biden Burden In Senate

The Pineapple World Series

By Joe Guzzardi

During World War II, after the death and destruction from the December 7 Japanese attack on Pearl Harbor, the highest-level baseball was played on Hawaii, and reached its apex during the 1944 Army-Navy Pineapple World Series. To provide as much entertainment as possible and to boost morale for their fellow servicemen and the Hawaiian community, the teams agreed in advance to play all seven games even if the series’ outcome had been decided earlier. An additional four games were later added, making the series an 11-tilt affair.

In 1944, the Army and Navy squads had more than 60 players who were either on or would be on major league rosters; by 1945, the total grew to 150. Eventual Hall of Famers on the Army and Navy teams included Pee Wee Reese, Phil Rizzuto, Hank Greenberg, Johnny Mize, Joe DiMaggio, Stan Musial and Ted Williams. Pittsburgh Pirates’ seven-time home run leader Ralph Kiner’s baseball playing time was limited. Kiner’s duties piloting a PBM patrol bomber flying boat for 1,200 hours out of Naval Station Kaneohe kept him off the diamond.

Patriotism motivated some players like Kiner and Greenberg. DiMaggio, however, intensely resented the war. In his book, “Joe DiMaggio, a Biography,” author David Jones wrote that although the great Yankee Clipper never came within a thousand miles of a battlefield, the war robbed him of his prime baseball years. When he first donned his Army uniform, DiMaggio was a 28-year-old superstar. Discharged three years later, DiMaggio was 31, underweight, malnourished, divorced and bitter. His three lost World War II years robbed DiMaggio of peak earnings and a chance to add to his already HOF statistics.

As Gary Bedingfield chronicled in his wonderful book, “Baseball in Hawaii during World War II,” for both native Hawaiians and American service men, baseball was a way of life. In the New York Mirror, sports reporter Bob Considine wrote: “There’s probably more sports played here per capita than anywhere on the mainland.” Considine commented on the “bewildering number of leagues ranging through sandlot, schools, industrials, semi-pro, racial, etc.” The Hawaii League, which dated back to 1920, included teams like the All-Chinese, the Asahi Rising Suns, and the All-Haole or Caucasian Wanderers. Plantation baseball was intensely competitive with pineapple, sugar cane and coconut growers fielding teams, and giving players days off to prepare. Winning could result in celebratory days off, but bosses viewed losing as an intolerable embarrassment.

The Pineapple World Series was the logical culmination of a Hawaii passionate about baseball, an abundance of available top-flight players, and the historic Army-Navy rivalry that dates back to the two academies’ football game first played in 1890.

On September 22, 1944, at historic Furlong Field with its wooden bleachers and swaying palm trees, 20,000 fans and thousands more listening over Armed Forces Radio waited with anticipation as the Detroit Tigers’ Virgil “Fire” Trucks took the mound for Navy. Williams had named Trucks as one of the five pitchers he most hated to bat against. The others: Eddie Lopat, Bob Feller, Bob Lemon and Purple Heart winner Hoyt Wilhelm. Trucks pitched a 4-hit, complete game shutout, 5-0, and gave Navy a 1-0, series lead. Navy reeled off five more consecutive wins, and took a commanding 6-0 Series lead. Once 11 games were in the history book, Navy had dominated, 9-2-1. The Navy standouts were Rizzuto, .387; Reese, .350, and Mize, .450. Trucks later recalled that the Army was initially thought to be the superior team. But Admiral Chester Nimitz recruited Navy superstars from the mainland, and those players provided the sailors with the winning edge.

When peace at last came to Hawaii, baseball continued to thrive; military leagues survived into the mid-1970s. The Lopat All-Stars arrived in 1946, and the Yankees, Brooklyn Dodgers and St. Louis Cardinals played exhibition games that thrilled locals. The Pacific Coast League Sacramento Solons, transferred to Hawaii, became the Hawaii Islanders, and enjoyed huge popularity for their 18 seasons even though they played their home games at the dilapidated but lovingly named the “Termite Palace.” Found to be “severely termite-damaged” and unsafe, the Stadium closed after the 1973 Hula Bowl game.

Although the circumstances under which World War II baseball was played were tragic – more than a million Americans killed, wounded or captured – the entertainment value it provided the soldiers, the players and fans provided ongoing comfort during a period of deep trial and tribulation.

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

The Pineapple World Series

Enemies Among Us Courtesy Of Biden Policy

By Joe Guzzardi

Only the most willfully obtuse on Capitol Hill would deny that the Biden administration’s neglect of wide-open borders might lead to a national security crisis.

Estimates vary on how many foreign nationals from numerous countries have unlawfully crossed the U.S. borders, but the independent news agency Axiosput the total at 160. Distance isn’t a deterrent. Many of those nations are avowed U.S. enemies like Yemen, Cuba, Venezuela and Afghanistan. Facebook airlifted some Afghans to Mexico with the probable intent to enable them to enter unvetted.

In testimony to Congress earlier this year, Customs and Border Protection confirmed that four apprehended individuals match names on the FBI’s Terrorist Screening Database. The watchlist is extensive and includes people “known to be or reasonably suspected of being involved in terrorist activities.” About 450 Chinese nationals also surged the border.

The Biden administration’s sanctioned border fiasco has been well documented, but the willy-nilly visa handout system, mostly unreported, also leaves the nation exposed to malfeasance.

To date, there have been at least three incidents where foreign nationals from unfriendly nations and with dubious intentions, specifically espionage, have accessed the highest levels of federal government. The most infamous is suspected Chinese spy Fang Fang, California’s U.S. Rep. Eric Swalwell’s campaign donations bundler and suspected lover who entered on a student visa, and connived her way to social acceptance with California U.S. representatives Judy Chu and Mike Honda, as well as other Midwestern government officials. When honey pot spy Fang Fang’s subversive purposes were under FBI investigation, she fled to China and took whatever confidential information she may have collected with her. Despite his well-known associations with a suspected Chinese agent, Swalwell is on the House Homeland Security, Judiciary and Intelligence committees.

Swalwell isn’t Congress’ only dupe. Senate Committee on the Judiciary, and Subcommittee on the Immigration, Citizenship and Border Security member, California Sen. Dianne Feinstein employed for two decades as her personnel chauffer a Chinese national that the FBI suspected of being a spy.

As with the Swalwell case, Feinstein’s office insisted that the driver, promptly fired when the truth emerged, never gained access to top secrets. The driver may be small potatoes in the Chinese Ministry of State Security’s long-range plans, but in June 2015, Chinese hackers stole sensitive personal data of 20 million Americans. This included Social Security numbers, addresses and more when they breached the servers of the Office of Personnel Management. That data treasure trove provided Beijing with countless opportunities to access military secrets and take advantage of unsuspecting citizens, or possibly blackmail them.

A Washington Examiner story about Feinstein and the breach pointed out that U.S. university campuses are “host to scores of Chinese assets and operatives.” As of the academic year 2018-2019, nearly 400,000 Chinese students were enrolled in American universities, a total that tripled over the last decade, and raised concerns about intellectual property theft. The 400,000 total is exclusive of Chinese students who completed, either officially or informally, their course work but haven’t returned home.

In February 2021, the CATO Institute published its study titled, “Espionage, Espionage-Related Crimes, and Immigration, a Risk Analysis, 1990-2021.” Cato concluded that although suspected Chinese spies had a significant presence during the period studied, restricting immigration or visa issuance would be more harmful to U.S. prosperity than helpful to national security. Congress’ goal for Chinese migration, and all other immigration matters, should be to strike a compromise solution with the primary purpose of advancing America and her interests without unduly restricting vetted, potential contributors.

Last summer, Arkansas Sen. Tom Cotton set off a firestorm of criticism when he suggested that Chinese students be banned from studying science, technology, math and engineering to protect against those disciplines ultimately being used against America. Cotton didn’t propose ending student visa issuance to Chinese nationals or even limiting the visa totals, but simply making sure that potential enemies didn’t take unfair advantage of U.S. immigration generosity to undermine America when they return home or to prevent recent American citizen graduates from getting white-collar jobs. The Bureau of Labor Statistics estimates that 300,000 foreign STEM and related non-STEM workers are in the economy performing jobs that should be American-held. But like other rational immigration recommendations that put Americans first, proposed but ignored in past years, Cotton’s idea went nowhere.

Obviously, the U.S. must do more than tighten student visa oversight to protect the homeland; border enforcement where illegal immigrants continue to arrive in historic numbers, and may reach 2 million during the current fiscal year, would be an excellent place to begin.

Abundantly clear ten months into Biden’s presidency is that neither he nor anyone in his administration has the slightest interest in national sovereignty or in advancing America, incomprehensible to most voters, but undeniable, nonetheless.

Joe Guzzardi is a Progressives for Immigration Reform analyst who has written about immigration for more than 30 years. Contact him at jguzzardi@pfirdc.org.

Enemies Among Us Courtesy Of Biden Policy

Enemies Among Us Courtesy Of Biden Policy

Enemies Among Us Courtesy Of Biden Policy

Black Mississippi Ag Workers Displaced By White South Africans

By Joe Guzzardi

For decades, agriculture employers have claimed that an inability to find willing American workers forces them to hire foreign-born labor. Sometimes the foreign-born workers are legally authorized and hold State Department H-2A, temporary, nonimmigrant visas. Other times, they’re illegally employed in the cash-only, under-the-table market.

The “jobs Americans won’t do” meme is convenient for employers who prefer to hire temporary visa holders who they know will work for lower wages than Americans. But too often, foreign labor displaces proven, long-standing American workers; they become cheap labor-addicted employers’ victims. Employers realize that the H-2A is a visa they can easily exploit, and for years, the unscrupulous among them have taken full advantage. Farm labor shortages nationwide, in part COVID-19 related, created an H-2A visa spike from 55,384 in FY 2011 to 213,394 in FY 2020.

In the Mississippi Delta heartland, where the unemployment rate hovers around 10 percent, H-2A ag visa workers from South Africa, mostly white, have slowly replaced American blacks who, for generations, have toiled faithfully in the fields. In a federal lawsuit filed by Richard Strong and five other ag workers against Pitts Farm Partnership (PFP), the plaintiffs allege that not only did they lose their jobs to South Africans, but the overseas workers earned higher wages than they had previously been paid. Paying the visa holders more than the displaced Americans is a variation from the norm, but more about that later.

The Mississippi Justice Center (MJC), whose mission it is to dismantle the policies that have kept Mississippians at the bottom of nearly every social and fiscal indicator of human advancement, charges that many corporate farms in the Delta cheat the local black workforce by illegally exploiting the H-2A visa program and that owners defrauded the government, violating U.S. immigration and civil rights laws.

Indeed, PFP directly violated one of the H-2A’s most fundamental requirements. Employers must, according to the U.S. Citizenship and Immigration Services website, “Demonstrate that there are not enough U.S. workers who are able, willing, qualified, and available to do the temporary work.” Demonstrating a shortage of available U.S. workers is impossible since dozens of farm workers were on the job when the South Africans arrived. Indisputably, that’s an obvious crime committed by the ag employers.

The other egregious employer crime that MJC should investigate is whether the visa holders are labor exploitation victims. A veteran black farm worker, grown older, cannot work as long or as quickly as younger South Africans. An employer can hire two overseas employees at $11.00/hour, work them extended hours, and thereby get more production from international hires than he likely could from three older $7.25 U.S. workers. How many hours and under what conditions the H-2As work are rarely investigated by the U.S. Department of Labor. Laborers are uncomfortable reporting abuses to the DOL since their employers can allege the overseas worker is not fulfilling the conditions of his visa, and deportation proceedings can begin. Over time, the link between a controlling employer and subservient employee becomes modern-day indentured servitude.

To American workers’ detriment, numerous industries staff H-2As as part of their business plans for landscaping, forestry, amusement parks, recreation, housekeeping, construction, au pairs and camp counselors. As long as Congress makes overseas workers readily available and keeps few tabs on their employers, U.S. workers will be shunned. Congress should mandate that ag employers mechanize, like so many other Western countries have done. Technological advancements in farming have helped decrease the amount of labor-intensive work and have increased yields by up to 100 percent. Machines, after all, can work 24/7, seven days a week, and 365 days a year.


Joe Guzzardi is a Progressives for Immigration Reform analyst who has written about immigration for more than 30 years. Contact him at jguzzardi@pfirdc.org.

Black Mississippi Ag Workers Displaced By Visa Holders