Category: Joe Guzzardi

Pedal to the Metal For Afghan Resettlement

By Joe Guzzardi
 

The State Department has designated 19 U.S. cities as acceptable for refugee resettlement which made the Biden administration’s resettlement policy clear: pedal to the metal; damn the torpedoes, full-speed ahead. Afghan resettlement deserves maximum caution; the administration took the opposite road. The official argument for speedy resettlement is that our allies – those who purportedly worked side-by-side with the American military – are in grave danger, and must be airlifted out of Kabul immediately. No doubt, there’s some truth in that assessment. But Americans want guarantees that only friends receive invitations.

Since Americans are, by and large, trusting people who want to help at-risk strangers, most would be accepting of new refugees if confident that they had been properly vetted, and the good guys were weeded out from the bad guys. The White House assures a wary public that incoming refugees are being processed by “intelligence professionals or law enforcement officials.” The Biden administration insists the vetting is “rigorous,” and dedicated officials are working “around the clock” to safely process Afghan refugees.

Safely vetting 83,000 refugees in a matter of hours is impossible. Wisconsin Sen. Ron Johnson, a Republican, visited his home state’s Fort McCoy where Maj. Gen. Darrell Guthrie told him that many incoming refugees had no identification and weren’t Special Immigrant Visa holders. The administration classifies unidentified Afghans as part of a vulnerable population, are therefore granted humanitarian parole – once a rarely used DHS option, but now commonplace – and are admitted, no questions asked. Afghan advocates are lobbying for a 50,000-person humanitarian parole.

Biden’s resettlement strategy is slipshod, begs for abuse and could lead to tragic homeland consequences. Comprehensive refugee vetting is a six-step process that, according to the UN High Commissioner for Refugees’ website, should take between 18 and 24 months. First, the prospective refugee must register with the UN High Commissioner for Refugees who refers the individual to a U.S. Embassy. Then, the State Department steps in, and begins several security checks carried out through myriad federal security agencies.

The State Department’s Bureau of Population, Refugees and Migration will partner with other agencies to create an Overseas Processing Entity, a document ultimately given to a U.S. Citizenship and Immigration Services officer. Eventually, the officer interviews the refugee face-to-face to determine if he can be resettled. Finally, the case returns to the Bureau of Population, Refugees and Migration for the final approval, subject to medical screening. The bottom line on faux vetting: the Taliban controls the U.S. Embassy. Documents that might help validate refugee petitions are inaccessible or have been destroyed. Anything other fable that the establishment elites’ offer up is smoke and mirrors.

Blood has been shed of Americans and innocent Afghans; trillions of dollars have been squandered, and countless establishment lies over two decades have been told and shamelessly retold. After American deaths, mountainous waste and brazen deceit, Biden adds insult to injury when he boasts about airlifting Afghans out of Kabul while citizens are left behind. Then, Biden, having done irreparable damage, forces his poorly managed resettlement plan on a skeptical public still coping with COVID-19’s fallout.

Although Americans never voted on the potentially nation-altering resettlement, taxpayers will fund the hundreds of millions of dollars the process requires over a multi-year period. No administration official has sought the opinions of the residents who live in the 19 cities. The administration is brazenly indifferent to deep doubts about the hasty decision to aimlessly resettle Afghan nationals. The refugees are, like it or not, on the way. Resettlement Biden-style is potentially a deadly Russian Roulette game of chance where Americans could be the victims.

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.

Pedal to the Metal For Afghan Resettlement

Volags Getting Refugee Rich

By Joe Guzzardi
 

The State Department recently identified 19 U.S. cities as preferred destinations for Afghan refugees. Chosen because they’re “locations with reasonable cost of living, housing availability, supportive services, and welcoming communities with volunteers and resources,” the list includes Cleveland, Buffalo, Philadelphia, St. Louis and Baltimore, as well as other Southwest and Rocky Mountain cities like Salt Lake, Denver and Phoenix.

The usual suspects – the White House, the media, the bicoastal elites, 100 percent of congressional Democrats, and 80 percent of virtue-signaling congressional Republicans, a rough estimate based on how few in the GOP have objected – can barely contain their glee over what promises to be, at least in the initial refugee wave, between 22,000 and 30,000 Afghan arrivals. Even former President Donald Trump, who slashed refugee resettlement to historically low annual levels, advocated for resettling Afghans who assisted U.S. military, a category that’s broad enough to include office personnel and other nonessential workers.

But few are more thrilled than the “volunteers and resources” groups noted above, also known as “volags” – voluntary agencies – the so-called faith-based organizations, often disparagingly called the refugee resettlement industry. In her 2018 research report compiled from the latest publicly available data, senior researcher Dr. Nayla Rush of the Center for Immigration Studies found that the federal government funded the nine major U.S. volags at the rate of 58 percent to 97 percent. Taxpayer funds go to provide refugees support with housing, food, clothing, community orientation, English lessons, enrollment in various benefits and welfare programs, referral to social service providers including health care, and employment. Volags’ chief operating officers earned, at the time of Dr. Rush’s research, annual salaries that range from a low of $132,000 to a high of $671,749.

Although many resettlement workers may be motivated by good intentions, the indisputable conclusion is that, since volags are reimbursed on a per-capita basis, fewer refugees also mean fewer jobs and less income for the agencies and their employees. Logically, volags anticipate that the Afghan crisis represents a potential pot of post-Trump gold, and are pressuring Biden to expedite the maximum total of refugees. As Lutheran Immigration and Refugee Service’s president and CEO Krish O’Mara Vignarajah candidly said, “We’ve been screaming from the rooftops for months now that we need to get these allies to Guam or another U.S. territory.”

Earlier this summer, the Senate, in anticipation of what it knew would be a significant Afghan refugee influx, unanimously passed a bill that provided $1 billion toward easing the Special Immigrant Visa (SIV) application process. SIVs are issued to nationals of countries who have assisted U.S. military forces, often as translators. To coincide with the Senate bill, the State Department announced that it would confer Priority-2 (P-2) designation that grants access for permanent U.S. residency to certain Afghan nationals and their eligible family members that don’t or haven’t yet qualified for SIVs. Included would be Afghans who worked for U.S. government contractors, for U.S.-funded programs, or U.S.-based media or nongovernmental organizations, as well as their families.

John Kirby, assistant to the Secretary of Defense for Public Affairs, enthusiastically proclaimed that “we want to have the capacity to get up to several thousand immediately and want to be prepared for the potential of tens of thousands….We’re going to focus on getting as many folks [Afghan refugees] out as we can.” What total “many folks” might climb to, no one can predict. In a letter to Biden, U.S. representatives Barbara Lee (Calif.) and Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez (NY) urged the president to set the refugee cap at “no less than 200,000,” an increase of nearly 140,000 from the 62,500 established for 2021, and many thousands more than the 125,000 the White House previously said it would seek in 2022. Other advocates want 1.2 million Afghans resettled.
In Congress, the progressive caucus speaks loudly, and has significant sway with its receptive audience in the White House. Reaching 200,000 refugees in fiscal 2022 sounds like a stretch, but it would be consistent with the Biden administration’s America-Last agenda which has been on full display at the Southwest border since Day 1.
 
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.

Volags Getting Refugee Rich

Volags Getting Refugee Rich

Americans Fund Afghan, Border Blunders

By Joe Guzzardi

No sooner had the Taliban taken control of Kabul than the establishment demanded that thousands of Afghans be given immediate U.S. resettlement privileges. Allegedly, and likely at least partially accurate, some Afghans are friendly to the U.S. government, and worked with American military. Now, so goes the standard patter, with our allies’ lives reportedly endangered, the Biden administration has a moral duty to invite them to America to find safe haven.

In a bitter irony, the most passionate cry to immediately resettle Afghans came from former President George W. Bush whose fallacious “weapons of mass destruction” claim first drew the U.S. military into a 20-year long Middle East quagmire. Bush, a devoted immigration expansionist, urged Biden to “cut the red tape” to expedite Afghans’ safe and secure exit out of the now Taliban-controlled country.

As the old English proverb goes, and as history has proven, “There’s many a slip ‘twixt the cup and the lip.” The first hurdle in a resettlement plan is President Biden’s demonstrated inability to effectively manage any immigration-related issue. The Southern U.S. Border, where last month a 21-year high of 210,000 aliens crossed, is the most shocking example, but other instances, all still in progress, are Biden’s unconstitutional refusal to enforce existing immigration law, his proposed 96 percent budget reduction in border security assets and his gutting of Immigration and Customs Enforcement, the agency that protects the interior. Given Biden’s dismal immigration track record, only the most naïve could assume that his State or Homeland Security Departments could successfully vet tens of thousands of Afghans.

To be clear, fair-minded Americans want to help allies who have supported us in the extended Afghan War. But Americans don’t want the Afghan Special Immigration Visa (SIV) program to devolve into a similar situation to that of the fraud-ridden Iraqi SIV program. In June, Reuters reportedthat 4,000 Iraqis are suspected of filing fraudulent resettlement applications. The State Department is re-examining 40,000 cases that involve more than 104,000 people, 95 percent of them still in Iraq, and has frozen those applications until further clarification. More than 500 already-admitted Iraqi refugees have been implicated in the fraud and could be deported or stripped of their U.S. citizenship.

Despite documented fraud in the Iraqi SIV program, Biden initiated a similar program for Afghanistan. The Department of Defense reportedly will, post-Kabul, place 30,000 Afghan refugees in Wisconsin’s Ft. McCoy and Texas’ Ft. Bliss. Assistant to the Secretary of Defense for Public Affairs John Kirbyannounced that, “We want to have the capacity to get up to several thousand immediately, and want to be prepared for the potential of tens of thousands.” Kirby’s inevitable undertaking will cost American taxpayers tens of billions of dollars.

The border crisis is expected to result this year in 2 million aliens, unvetted and some COVID-19 positive, allowed into the country. On August 17, the Department of Homeland Security unveiled a new “Case Management Pilot Program” to pay cities, counties and nongovernmental organizations to offer “cultural orientation,” medical screening, mental health services, legal orientation programs and other assistance for illegal immigrants who have been caught and released. U.S. taxpayers will fully fund the administration’s program, a version of which the Trump administration canceled because of cost inefficiency.

The 2 million-plus border surge, added to the as-yet-undetermined tens of thousands of Afghan refugees that will be resettled, will ensure that the nation’s transformation will continue unabated. Census Bureau datashowed that immigration, births to immigrants, the opioid epidemic and lower-than-anticipated birthrates among millennials after the Great Recession have contributed to a more diverse America.

The border fiasco and the Afghanistan mess are the direct consequences of wholly misguided, power-crazed elitists and inept military leadership. But, as always, Americans pay the financial tab and must adapt to whatever cultural changes and fallout that accompany the irresponsible politics that Washington, to citizens’ detriment, insists on forcing upon them.

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.

Americans Fund Afghan, Border Blunders

Americans Fund Afghan, Border Blunders

Woke Against Democracy

By Joe Guzzardi

On July 28, The New York Times published an op-ed titled, “There Is No Good Reason You Should Have to Be a Citizen to Vote.” The Times described Atossa Araxia Abrahamian’s opinion piece as “part of a series [‘Snap Out of It, America’] exploring bold ideas to revitalize and renew the American experiment.”

Bold, revitalize and renew are the misleading words that the Times chose instead of the more accurate: radical, audacious and subversive. The American experiment that the Times boasts proudly of championing is overthrowing America’s existing, time-honored voting system which legally excludes voting rights for noncitizens.

Abrahamian, the Canadian born author of “The Cosmopolites: The Coming of the Global Citizen,” and who holds Swiss and Iranian citizenship, proposes, among other extreme concepts, that voting rights be given to foreign nationals residing in the U.S. on temporary work visas, and Green Card holders. Those immigrant categories would include non-English speakers and those who have briefly lived in the U.S. Ironically, Abrahamian’s proposal would also extend to illegal aliens who have knowingly and willingly broken U.S. law, and presumably would also be granted to the estimated 2 million aliens who will surge the Southwest Border this year.

The Illegal Immigration Reform and Immigrant Responsibility Act of 1996, however, expressly barred noncitizens from voting. But the 1996 act has been steadily chipped away at and criminally disregarded. A San Francisco 2016 referendum joined a few other municipalities to give illegal immigrants voting privileges in local school board elections. The supporting argument was that about one-third of San Francisco school district pupils had foreign-born parents. Whether those parents were legally present was not part of the debate. Advocates also speciously argued that participating in the electoral process gives unlawfully present immigrants a greater sense of community involvement.

Illegal immigrants have, fraudulently and feloniously, registered to vote and have cast possibly deciding ballots in federal elections. In its essay, “Aliens and Voter Fraud,” the Center for Immigration Studies wrote that when Old Dominion University (ODU) and George Mason University (GMU) researchers analyzed noncitizen participation rates from the Cooperative Congressional Election Studies’ 2008 and 2010 data, they estimated that roughly 620,000 noncitizens were registered to vote prior to the 2008 election.

The researchers then turned their attention to the 2008 North Carolina presidential results as well as to the Minnesota senate race. By comparing the noncitizen turnout to the vote margin needed to win the elections, ODU and GMU analysts concluded that noncitizen voting likely won the elections for the Democratic Party candidates in both instances. In the North Carolina election, the ODU and GMU authors wrote that “it is likely … that John McCain would have won North Carolina were it not for the votes for Obama cast by noncitizens.”

The Minnesota senate election was one of the most crucial congressional races in the 2008 election cycle, given that it ensured a 60-vote filibuster-proof Democratic majority. Notably, after a mandatory recount, and eight months after Election Day, 312 votes determined the Senate winner. Highlighting the paper-thin margin in which Democrat candidate Al Franken defeated Republican incumbent Norm Coleman, the authors wrote that “participation by more than 0.65 percent of noncitizens in MN is sufficient to account for the entirety of Franken’s margin. Our best guess is that nearly ten times as many [noncitizens] voted.”

A University of Alabama study, “Immigration Status, Immigrant Family Ties, and Support for the Democratic Party,” concluded that immigrants, their children and theirgrandchildren are all more likely than Americans without close immigrant relatives to support the Democratic Party. If the entire illegal alien and temporary resident population were granted voting rights, Abrahamian’s goal, years if not decades will pass before the GOP won enough federal elections to make a difference.

To all but the woke, a group that includes the Times, globalist Abrahamian and far too many Washington, D.C., elites, sovereign American and inalienable voting rights that go with citizenship are treasured values to defend, fight and die for.

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.

Woke Against Democracy

Woke Against Democracy

Border Surge And Drought Are Incompatible

By Joe Guzzardi

The federal government’s U.S. Drought Monitor indicates that nearly half the nation is suffering from abnormally dry drought conditions. States in the West are the most adversely affected, but parts of the Midwest and the East are classified as experiencing extreme, severe or moderate drought. The Pacific Northwest had not seen a spring this dry since 1924, and this is the second driest March to June on record for Washington, Oregon and Idaho.

In California and Nevada, reservoirs are low, approaching but not quite matching 2012 to 2016 levels. Continued drying increases wildfire risk throughout the region, reflected in several recent out-of-control incidents in northern California, which has more than 200 vulnerable communities. The Dixie Fire, California’s second largest in the state’s history, destroyed iconic Greenville, burned hundreds of homes and forced evacuations in the adjacent 48,000 acres. As of August 8, Dixie has torched more than 463,000 acres and is only 21 percent contained.

Nevada and California, both states in 100 percent drought conditions that range from moderate to exceptional, had record warm temperatures in June which escalated the severe effects, including fire potential, water temperature impacts on fish and increased evaporative demand. Drought impacts on pasture conditions, ecosystem health, water supply, recreation and fire potential have intensified and expanded.

Just as the National Weather Service predicts no relief in sight, neither do population analysts foresee a reduction of the numbers of new arrivals that will drink, cook with, bathe in, irrigate or flush with the increasingly scarce water normally available for everyday activities. California Gov. Gavin Newsom asked residents to voluntarily cut water use by 15 percent. Many but not all will comply. Posh resorts, golf clubs, baseball diamonds, college football fields as well as the rich and famous like the Kardashians likely won’t do their share. Post-pandemic California anticipates millions of visitors this summer season, and through 2023. Out-of-state tourists who pay an average $2,757 per week to visit California may take their 15-minute shower and opt for freshly laundered linens.

Whether California residents heed Newsom or whether visitors pay attention to their lodgings’ pleas to consume less water is beyond anyone’s control. But controlling the millions of future water consumers pouring across the Southwest border is well within the federal government’s power. At the current pace, by the end of his first year in office President Biden will have overseen and unconstitutionally sanctioned the unlawful entry of more than 2 million illegal immigrants. Add those 2 million to the autopilot annual 1 million lawful permanent residents and hundreds of thousands who arrive on employment-based visas but rarely return home, and more than 3 million new arrivals will join the country’s already overcrowded 330 million.

Here’s the simple formula: too many people will equal not enough water. Some areas have been dramatically hurt by too little water, and too rapid population growth. The Texas Commission on Environmental Equality found that since 1940 the population of the 10 largest sister cities that straddle the U.S.-Mexican border, an arid region already short of water, has exploded twentyfold, from 560,000 people to roughly 10 million today.

Without taking into consideration the ongoing border surge, the Census Bureau predicts that the nation’s mid-century population will exceed 400 million, a 25 percent increase from today’s level, and about 90 percent driven by immigrants and births to immigrants.

Don’t blame immigrants for the water crisis. The Biden administration graciously invited border crossers to live in the U.S., and Department of Homeland Security Secretary Alejandro Majorkas facilitated their safe and orderly dispersal throughout the nation. After immigration officials apprehend the aliens, they’re released into the interior, often on charter flights. Eventually, they’ll receive the government’s full complement of affirmative benefits. Those who have come, and those who will continue to come. are here to stay. But the water that they’ll need can’t be manufactured. The looming, acute water shortage will create a hard time for all, immigrants and citizens alike.

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.

Border Surge And Drought Are Incompatible

Border Surge And Drought Are Incompatible

Gov Lamm Supported Sensible Immigration

By Joe Guzzardi 

On July 29, Richard D. Lamm, Colorado’s three-term governor, 1975-1987, died of complications from a pulmonary embolism. He was a week away from his 86th birthday. Lamm was a Democrat who earned his J.D. degree from the University of California, Berkeley, served in the U.S. Army and became an attorney for the Colorado Anti-Discrimination Commission. Once his third gubernatorial term ended, Lamm was executive director of the University of Denver’s Center for Public Policy, and wrote several books.

During his 12 years as Colorado’s governor, Lamm spoke out unflinchingly about the issues most important to him – protecting the fragile environment, defending women’s rights and promoting commonsense immigration. Lamm, who criticized overdevelopment and the relentless sprawl it spawns, opposed Interstate 470, a proposed circumferential highway around the Denver Metropolitan area. Years later, and because of never-ending development, the highway was built. Today, Denver has some of the nation’s most congested highways, and much of Colorado’s open spaces are a distant memory as housing projects have paved over what was once rural land. Lamm knew and loved Colorado’s countryside; in 1974, running on his campaign to limit growth, he walked across the state to promote his platform.

Because it adds millions of new residents to the U.S.’s population annually, Lamm, unlike many Democrats with similar academic and professional credentials, bluntly criticized federal immigration policy as ill-conceived, destructive to the environment and harmful to low-wage American workers.

In 2003, Lamm gave his most widely known speech, “I Have a Plan to Destroy America.” At the time of Lamm’s speech, Congress had passed the Immigration Reform and Control Act of 1986, and the Immigration Act of 1990. Republican presidents Ronald Reagan and George H.W. Bush had signed the two legislative acts that opened the borders to more illegal immigration, and created more employment-based visas that, over the last three decades, helped displace millions of American low- and high-skilled workers.

Presciently, Lamm foresaw immigration’s growing, detrimental effect on the U.S., as well as the amassed power that its advocates had on Congress and the media. Lamm’s eight-point program, which he subtitled “and many parts of it are underway,” include, despite multiculturalism’s multiple global failures, making America a bilingual, bicultural country; encouraging immigrants to maintain their own language and culture instead of, as previous immigrant waves did, assimilating; ensuring that the fastest growing demographic is the least educated, thereby creating a second, permanent underclass; getting big business and powerful foundations to donate huge sums toward promoting ethnic identity, victimology and diversity. Lamm’s most compelling point noted that all of his above observations must be treated as “off limits…taboo.” Make sure that opposition is squelched on unfounded xenophobe and racist charges that end debate. Because immigration was “once good,” Lamm predicted that its advocates would insist that it “must always be good.” Lamm anticipated that the immigration-related problems he identified in 2003 would grow worse over the years to come.

Although often at odds with Lamm, especially about immigration, the Denver Post’s editorial board wrote a mostly gracious commentary about the former governor, and referred to him as “a kind, humble and generous man…. a man of conviction… whose policy on immigration was drastically different from that of the modern Democratic Party.…”

I knew Dick from several Washington, D.C., conferences where we met, began and maintained a friendship. On a trip to Denver years ago, Dick and his wife, Dottie, invited me to their home for dinner. Dottie, once a Colorado U.S. Senate candidate, Dick and I spoke about his 2003 speech, and bemoaned how much of it had come true.

Dick enjoyed a long, full life. In an era where most politicians speak double talk or test which way the wind blows before addressing a crowd, Dick spoke his mind even when he knew his foes were ready to pounce. As the Postwrote: “Colorado will be poorer without him here offering his unvarnished and genuine takes on the most important policies of our time.”

Governor Lamm’s many allies in the uphill climb for stable, sustainable population and manageable immigration will deeply miss his strong, rational voice. The fierce battle that Dick predicted will be more challenging without him.

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.

Gov Lamm Supported Sensible Immigration

Countless Biden Ploys to Immigration Increases

By Joe Guzzardi

In the criminal justice system, parole means a prisoner’s early release, pursuant to certain conditions, from his sentence. But in immigration law, parole has a different meaning. The Immigration and Nationality Act (INA) authorizes the federal government to exercise discretion to temporarily allow certain otherwise inadmissible aliens applying for admission at a port of entry to physically enter the United States even if they have no legal basis for admission.

Typically, DHS only grants parole, and limits it to individuals outside the United States, if the agency determines that there are urgent humanitarian needs or a tangible public benefit. Parolees, legally considered arriving aliens, are expected to depart when their authorized time periods lapse.

Another parole category is parole-in-place, available to some aliens already residing in the U.S., and often living with their illegally present family members. For the fortunate aliens who are paroled in place, they receive lifetime valid work permits, Social Security numbers and other affirmative benefits like driver’s licenses. As originally written, parole in place can only be granted on a case-by-case basis. But the Obama administration, unable to pass comprehensive immigration reform, began to use parole as a cover to give amnesty to small groups, a little bit at a time.

In October 2013, then-President Obama ignored separation of powers, and granted amnesty via parole to small groups of illegally present aliens: illegal alien spouses, children and parents of military personnel and veterans, as well as certain relatives of those who entered under the Visa Waiver program, itself badly in need of stricter oversight. Obama had earlier tipped his hand about his willingness to go around Congress when he signed off on deferred action for childhood arrivals, DACA, the program that eventually gave 650,000 aliens temporary status and work permission.

In March, parole once again jumped to the forefront of immigration news. The Biden administration announced that it would “reinstitute and improve” the Central American Minors Refugee/Parole program (CAM) that Obama initiated in 2014, but that President Trump ended in 2017. Interviewed by George Stephanopoulos on ABC News, Biden personally proclaimed that Northern Triangle migrants need not go through the hazardous and costly process of paying traffickers. Soon his administration would send Department of Homeland Security and Health and Human Services representatives to El Salvador, Honduras and Guatemala to process asylum petitions in person. Biden: “And the process of getting set up, and it’s not gonna take a whole long time, is to be able to apply for asylum in place. So don’t leave your town or city or community.”

Under Biden, who ignores immigration law and has looked the other way as thousands of worldwide foreign nationals have walked in, parole is poised to become a much larger challenge for keeping immigration at levels the nation can support. Criminals are well-aware of the ease of entry at the Southwest border. At the Rio Grande Valley border sector, Customs and Border Protection reported a 380 percent increase in criminal alien arrests over last year’s total. And what CBP calls “gotaways” have spiked 156 percent since 2020.

Biden has disregarded the American majority and provided an immigration policy diametrically opposed. The parole authority is broad, without statuary limitations, and therein lay abuse opportunities that the Biden administration will take advantage of.

Combined with executive actions and executive orders on immigration, parole is a dangerous tool that allows the sitting president to circumvent Congress, and carry out his immigration vision unilaterally. Conceivably, Biden could decide to grant parole to millions of illegal immigrants, an action that’s consistent with his proven, open borders immigration agenda.

In his reckless rush to admit as many foreign nationals as possible in the shortest time period, Biden’s power grab has exposed citizens to public health risks, added to U.S. workers’ job concerns and further endangered the environment. Americans want a meaningful immigration process – one that enforces congressionally written and passed laws that the U.S. president dutifully signed.
 

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.

Countless Biden Ploys To Immigration Increases

Countless Biden Ploys To Immigration Increases

The Woke and Bob Feller In Cleveland

By Joe Guzzardi

Last week, the perpetually offended scored another big win. The venerable Cleveland Indians announced that next year their nickname will be the “Guardians,” a reference to two large landmark stone edifices near Progressive Field. For the woke, the triumph isn’t quite on the scale of tumbling down or defacing statues of America’s founding fathers, George Washington and Thomas Jefferson, but the symbolism is identical.

Indians’ management claims that polling found that the Indians name generated deep dissatisfaction among its fan base. Maybe, but skeptics would like to see who was polled, and how the questions were phrased. In all probability, those questioned were progressive whites who are affronted with almost everything about America’s past. Leading the anti-Indians charge was MLB’s meddlesome and super-woke commissioner, Rob Manfred. In a saccharine-sweet social media video complete with melodramatic music, Hollywood pitchman Tom Hanks introduced the Guardians.

On the Indians official website, the chief executives’ biographies appear. Paul Dolan, owner, chairman and chief executive officer has a University of Notre Dame J.D. degree. The second in command, Chris Antonetti, president of baseball operations, is a Georgetown University business administration magna cum laude graduate with a master’s degree in sports management from the University of Massachusetts.

Third in the Indians hierarchy, Brian Barren, is a Princeton University alum whose thesis analyzed MLB’s integration. After more than a year of brainstorming, in consultation with other high-powered Clevelanders, and checking in with focus groups, the extraordinarily well-educated Indians management could do no better than rebranding the team the “Guardians.” Only a herculean effort could produce a dumber name.

Some Indians fans hoped that management would reach back into the team’s deep, often unhappy past, and revive the “Spiders.” In 1899, the Spiders logged the worst record in baseball history, 20-134, a dismal performance that included losing 40 of 41 consecutive games. Other names the Indians could have selected, each better than the Guardians, include the old Cleveland-based Negro League teams: the Stars, the Elites or the Hornets.

The Indians have produced some of baseball’s greatest players, including Hall of Fame members Satchel Paige, Larry Doby, Bob Lemon, Early Wynn, Tris Speaker and Bob Feller. One wonders what their take on the Guardians would be – an educated guess is that they would strongly oppose eliminating the Indians, and political correctness in general.

Take Feller, a no-non-sense guy. Feller, an unadulterated patriot, would have been unlikely to immediately enlist in the Navy for World War II if he knew that 44 months later, he’d return to a woke America.

On December 7, 1942, Feller, in his spanking brand-new Buick Century with all the available extras – a heater and a radio – was driving toward Chicago to sign his new contract. At 24, Feller had notched 107 wins, and big money awaited him. Then, over the radio, Feller heard the news that the Japanese had bombed Pearl Harbor. Feller drove on, and on December 9 enlisted in the Navy at a Chicago recruiting office, the first professional athlete to sign up for World War II combat.

When Feller looked back at his war experiences as gun captain, he said that he was constantly surrounded by scares and tragedies. The worst, Feller recalled, didn’t occur in battle, but rather when the USS Alabama was caught in week-long Typhoon Cobra whose 180 mph winds sunk three U.S. destroyers. The choppy waves made refueling impossible. More than 800 American sailors drowned or were eaten by sharks after their ships capsized in the storm. During his service, Feller earned six campaign ribbons and eight battle stars. Ironically, because he was attending to his cancer-stricken, dying father, Feller had a military deferment.

Not only did Feller pass up the big money that his 1943 contract offered him, but he sacrificed nearly four years of his pitching career. About players who served in the two World Wars and Korea, fans speculate what they might have achieved had they not lost key baseball years fighting to protect their country. Ralph Winnie, a Seattle baseball statistician, calculated that Feller would have won 107 more games which would have brought his career total up from 266 to 373, notched 1,070 additional strikeouts up to 3,651, pitched five no-hitters instead of three, and 19 one-hitters instead of 12.

Feller and the other Indians greats are fading from memory, and wokeness is accelerating their disappearance. The Indians have thrilled or disappointed Cleveland fans for 115 years, but Indians – deemed “racist” to the woke – had to go. Dolan said that an “epiphany” motivated his decision to rebrand the Indians as the Guardians. But Dolan is listening to the wrong people. Feller was often asked what his greatest win was. Instead of answering that moment came when he threw an Opening Day no hitter, Feller unhesitatingly replied, “World War II.” Defending America, her history  and her greatness was Feller’s proudest accomplishment. If they would only heed history’s lessons, therein lies a valuable lesson for the Indians’ management and the wokesters. Tearing things down is easy; building, tough.

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

The Woke and Bob Feller In Cleveland

Biden Pondering Afghan Visa Increase

By Joe Guzzardi

As the United States exited Afghanistan under cover of darkness, the 20-year war racked up costs of a staggering $2.3 trillion. The albatross was left over from the Bush administration. Brown University’s Costs of War Project calculated that the federal taxpayer has spent about $16,000 per person to keep this futile conflict raging. The War Project consists of 35 scholars, legal experts, human rights practitioners and physicians who have been studying the Afghan War’s devastation since 2011.

Brown University further estimates that the $2.3 trillion cost is understated because the totals don’t include the funds the U.S. is obligated to pay in future healthcare costs for veterans or future interest payments on the money borrowed to finance the war, $600 billion in interest expense through 2023, and billions more to come in the following decades. The analysis also estimates that 241,000 people died in the Afghanistan War, a total that includes 2,442 U.S. military service members, nearly 4,000 U.S. contractors, and more than 71,000 civilians.
 
Now the U.S. is left to deal with Afghanistan’s aftermath, one of which is the country’s at-risk or displaced nationals anxious to migrate to America. Atop that list are Afghans who worked alongside and assisted U.S. troops during the two-decade war. Among them are 18,000 interpreters, drivers, engineers, security guards and embassy clerks who are stuck in a bureaucratic quagmire. After applying for Afghan Special Immigrant Visas (SIVs), available to Afghans who may face threats because of their work for the U.S. government, the applicants can often wait as long as six or seven years, far too long some observers claim given the danger the U.S. allies might encounter.
 
To speed up the SIV process, in late June the U.S. House of Representatives overwhelmingly passed, 366-46, a bill that would waive the mandatory medical examination, allegedly a hardship, and replace it with a requirement that a physical be completed within 30 days of U.S. arrival. Whether this relaxed medical condition would be confirmed once stateside is uncertain.
 
But, as is standard operating procedure with immigration advocates, they’ve pressured their colleagues and President Biden to loosen the existing requirements, and issue more visas. Since 2014, the State Department has authorized 26,500 Afghan visas, but Rep. Jason Crow, (D-Colo.), who served three tours in Iraq and Afghanistan, introduced the ALLIES Act that would increase the visa cap by 8,000, and remove judicious requirements like obtaining “credible sworn statements” that the applicants have worked for or on behalf of the U.S. government. Crow wants to “streamline and strengthen,” words that in immigration parlance translate to open-wide-up and weaken. Predictably, given the nature of the legislation, the ALLIES Act has significant bipartisan support.
 
To be clear, fair-minded Americans want to help allies who have supported us in the extended Afghan War. But neither do Americans want the Afghan SIV to devolve into the fraud-ridden Iraqi SIV program. In breaking news, Reuters reported that 4,000 Iraqis are suspected of filing fraudulent resettlement applications. The State Department is re-examining 40,000 cases that involve more than 104,000 people, 95 percent of them still in Iraq, and has frozen those applications until further clarification. More than 500 already-admitted Iraqi refugees have been implicated in the fraud and could be deported or stripped of their U.S. citizenship.
 
Earlier this year, the Department of Justice indefinitely suspended the Iraqi SIV program after it learned that foreign nationals from Russia, Iraq and Jordan stole from the State Department’s database files refugee applicants’ employment records, security checks, military history and their personal persecution accounts, all breached by the infiltrators. Prosecutors said that undeserving Iraqis could duplicate stolen information to gain approvals that they would otherwise have been denied, and may also have pushed some deserving refugees out of the queue.
 
When he learned about the fraud, Michael R. Sherwin, then-acting U.S. Attorney for the District of Columbia, said: “It is important to hold accountable those who would seek to defraud such programs [Iraqi SIV], particularly when the crimes compromise our national security and public safety, when they impose such high costs on taxpayers…”
 
Obtaining SIV means eventual U.S. citizenship, permission to petition nuclear and extended family members, legal and lifetime valid work authorization, and also represents, as Sherwin warned, a potential national security threat. In light of an SIV’s benefits, the existing requirements are reasonable, and didn’t deter the 60,623 Afghans who were admitted between 2007 and 2018.
 
Can the Biden administration be counted on to vet the Afghans properly and thoroughly? Or, will the administration instead greenlight all the applicants? Those are the questions of the hour. Judging from Biden’s nonenforcement of Southwest border policy, long-time immigration observers are wagering that, despite the inherent risks, he will welcome the Afghans with little, if any, oversight.
 
Whether dealing with SIVs or other immigration issues, the federal government never has been able to get immigration right. U.S. Rep. Barbara Jordan (D-Texas) understood. Jordan, now deceased, said in 1995:
 
“Those who should get in, get in; those who should be kept out, are kept out; and those who should not be here will be required to leave.”
 
Those straightforward guidelines could help avoid difficult uncertainties like the Iraq and Afghan SIVs.
 
 
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.

Biden Pondering Afghan Visa Increase

Biden Pondering Afghan Visa Increase
 

America Bigger Than Baseball — Remembering Jerry Coleman

By Joe Guzzardi

Lieutenant Colonel Jerry Coleman was a New York Yankees second baseman who won the 1949 Rookie of the Year award, and in 1950, the World Series Most Valuable Player award. After his playing career ended in 1957, Coleman broadcast New York Yankees, California Angels and then, for 40 years, San Diego Padres games. Coleman also had a brief, unsuccessful stint as the Padres manager.

Although Ted Williams and Coleman served in World War II and Korea, only Coleman saw active duty in both conflicts. In World War II, Williams was a stateside flying instructor, while Coleman flew Douglas SBD Dauntless bombers over the Pacific.

Williams and Coleman were flying buddies in Korea. During Williams’ 39 Korean combat missions, often as Colonel John Glenn’s wingman, enemy fire hit the plane of “Teddy Ballgame” and forced a crash landing. But as harrowing as Williams’ experience was, during one flight deep into North Korea, Coleman watched his tentmate Max Harper, flying just ahead of him, get shot down and perish. Despite the emotional burden of seeing his good friend killed in battle, Coleman carried on.

In his autobiography “An American Journey: My Life on the Field, In the Air and On the Air,” Coleman wrote about his early, challenging youth in San Francisco. Coleman’s father, Gerald, a former Pacific Coast League catcher with the San Francisco Seals and the Seattle Rainiers, drank heavily. One evening, suspecting that his wife Pearl was two-timing him, Gerald followed her to a local nightclub, and shot her several times, a crime for which he was never prosecuted. Young Coleman went to live with his grandmother, and excelled at sandlot baseball and high school basketball. In 1944, he enrolled in the Navy’s V-5 flight training program at age 18, the minimum age for the training. Coleman eagerly enlisted; he feared that World War II might end before he saw action.

The war over, the Yankees activated Coleman just in time for the thrilling 1949 pennant race that the Bronx Bombers won on the season’s last day when the team beat the Boston Red Sox. Coleman had his career year in 1950, but the Marines recalled him at the end of the 1951 season. By 1953, he had learned to fly Corsair attack planes, and was sent to Korea. By the end of the 1953 season, the 29-year-old Coleman, now physically and emotionally exhausted, returned to the Yankees where he struggled in his few token appearances. Coleman’s on-the-field slump continued in 1954 and 1955. By 1957, the playing days of the 33-year-old Coleman were over, and he embarked on his broadcasting career which eventually landed him in the Cooperstown Baseball Hall of Fame where he received the Ford C. Frick Award for excellence in baseball broadcasting.

Coleman’s only baseball regret was when he piloted the Padres in the 1980s. San Diego finished last in their division, and Coleman happily returned to the broadcast booth where he spent more than four decades in total calling the Padres games.

When Coleman died at age 89 in La Jolla, Calif., he was a San Diego icon, most often known around town by his nickname, “The Colonel.” C. Paul Rogers III in his Society for Baseball Research Coleman biographywrote that the bona fide war hero was buried with full military honors, including a 21-gun salute and an F-18 flyover in the missing-man formation.

Looking back at his long and memorable life, Coleman said that he was most proud of his U.S. Marine Corp dive-bomber, fighter pilot days during his 57 World War II missions, and 63 Korean War missions. Coleman won 13 Air Metals, two Distinguished Flying Cross citations, the World War II Victory Metal, and eight other awards. Coleman once said that America “is bigger than baseball.”

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

America Bigger Than Baseball — Remembering Jerry Coleman