Category: Joe Guzzardi

California Bill Lets Illegals Enforce Law

California Bill Lets Illegals Enforce Law

By Joe Guzzardi

When the subject is California and the state’s extreme politics, nothing ever surprises. But even long-time California skeptics admit that Senate Bill 960 (SB 960) raises eyebrows for its audacity and disregard for public safety.

Introduced by State Senator Nancy Skinner, a Democrat who represents District 9 and its radical cities of Oakland, Berkeley and Richmond, the bill proposes to allow non-U.S. citizens to become California law enforcement officers. Skinner’s bill removes the condition that an individual must be a citizen or a lawful United States permanent resident to become a police officer, a step too far in many Californians’ opinion. Since Skinner’s legislation doesn’t specifically ban illegal immigrants from the non-U.S. citizen category, the conclusion that many have reached is that SB 960 would allow illegally present aliens to wear the badge. The bill originally passed committee 4-1, has been read twice, and will soon get a third and final reading before it can proceed to the floor for debate.

SB 960 has sparked controversy, and the first to speak out is Skinner herself. At a March 22 Senate Public Safety Committee hearing, Skinner insisted that her bill “only allows those who are living here legally and have the legal ability to work here – through a visa, a Green Card – to become peace officers.” She added, “I just want to be clear on that.” Despite Skinner’s insistence, SB 960 is at best murky on the permissibility of illegal immigrants becoming law enforcement officers.

To give Skinner the possible benefit of doubt, SB 960 may be the consequence of her district’s inability to retain police officers. The Mercury News reported that Oakland is the state’s “most watched police department with both a federal monitor and strong civilian oversight.” As a result of the intense oversight, officers are leaving the Oakland PD in unprecedented numbers, from an average of about four per month late last year to 10 or 15 a month since then.

California Bill Lets Illegals Enforce Law

Despite federal and municipal oversight, in 2021 OPD investigated 134 homicides, the most since 2012, and the city endured a 21 percent increase in shootings. Crime rates in Berkeley and Richmond are equally terrible. In Berkeley, a crime occurs on average once every 70 minutes; in Richmond, once every 158 minutes. Berkeley isn’t the only challenged city in the state. The Los Angeles Police Department has 296 vacant officer positions and almost 500 fewer on-duty officers than it did this time last year, according to LAPD reports.

Whatever the solution is to the Bay Area and sanctuary state California’s rising crime rates and its dwindling number of police officers on the payroll, rewarding illegal aliens with the vital job of enforcing the law isn’t the answer. One of the existing provisions to qualify as a California police officer is that the candidate complete a background check that confirms his or her good moral character. Since little information can be confirmed about an illegal immigrant’s life prior to voluntarily and illegally coming to the U.S., no meaningful background check can be performed. Known for certain, however, is that entering the U.S. without inspection violates U.S. immigration law which furthermore means that the prospective police candidate’s first action was criminal.

Blue states like New York, Illinois, Oregon, Washington and California have pushed to promote illegal immigrants to the same level as legal immigrants, a grave injustice to the foreign-born who followed the proper procedures to attain lawful permanent resident status. Opening up good, albeit dangerous, jobs like police officer to illegal aliens is a disservice all the way around – to citizens who want protection provided by the most qualified and best trained, to citizens seeking high-paying jobs with affirmative benefits, and to the U.S. homeland which is always imperiled.

Specifically, border agents have encountered 838,685 illegal aliens since October 1, fiscal year 2022’s beginning, to February; Biden has released 37.9 percent, or 318,700. Add to 838,685, hundreds of thousands more migrant gotaways not included in the official total.

Assuming the pace at which agents apprehend or encounter illegals keeps up – 167,737 per month pre-Title 42 removal – the alien encounter total by fiscal year end September 30 will exceed 2 million. And if Biden releases aliens at the same rate, another unsupervised 760,000 illegals will be at large. Skinner’s ill-conceived idea to give law enforcement jobs to noncitizens, a category that may include illegal aliens, is foolish and dangerous.


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

California Bill Lets Illegals Enforce Law

Migrant Surge Will Compound Housing Crisis

Migrant Surge Will Compound Housing Crisis

By Joe Guzzardi

The Alliance for a New Immigration Consensus, a cheap labor lobby with a fancy-sounding name, has set as its goal more immigration under the guise of helping employers find the workers they claim are in short supply.

The alliance’s letter to House Speaker Nancy Pelosi, Republican Leader Kevin McCarthy, Senate Majority Leader Chuck Schumer and Republican Leader Mitch McConnell starts with the dramatic statement that “at no other point in recent history has the need for immigration reform been greater than it is today. Simply put, the system is broken.”

These are familiar refrains from the cheap labor and ethnic identity hucksters. The letters’ cosigners included religious advocates, dairy farmers, pro-immigration, refugee resettlement organizations, the Chamber of Commerce – “We can no longer afford to delay!” – and the George W. Bush Institute.

The GWB Institute has an aggressive pro-immigration agenda that includes, reminiscent of 43’s White House days, promoting amnesty, accepting more refugees and asylees, and citizenship for deferred action for childhood arrivals, aka DREAMers.

For the Bush boys, George and Jeb!, the apple doesn’t fall far from their father’s tree. Bush #43 pushed for amnesty throughout his eight White House years. The dismal 2016 presidential campaign of Jeb! centered on expanded immigration – a Wall Street Journal story quoted Bush’s critics and called him “an apostle for amnesty.” Father of GWB and Jeb, George H.W. Bush, #41, signed the Immigration Act of 1990, disastrous legislation that paved the way over three-plus decades for millions of imported workers that displaced American workers. George and his wife Laura are, even during this unprecedented period of an ongoing border invasion, unbending immigration promoters who, along with the powerful, deep-pocketed Chamber of Commerce, ceaselessly demand more.

Migrant Surge Will Compound Housing Crisis

In March, Laura and GWB invited four deferred action for childhood arrival recipients, an immigration lawyer and the American Nursery & Landscape Association legislative chair to the George W. Bush Presidential Center where the former president doubled down on the broken immigration system meme. To be sure, the immigration system is broken, but for reasons never mentioned by Bush or other supporters of higher immigration levels. For decades, congressionally approved, presidentially signed immigration laws have been blatantly trampled on while Congress ignores and often rewards the violators.

When Biden and Department of Homeland Security Secretary Alejandro Majorkas lift Title 42 at the end of May, officials expect 18,000 daily illegal immigrant encounters, an approximate 500,000 monthly total that should, but doesn’t, satisfy the most ardent immigration advocates. Not surprisingly, the half a million per month illegal immigrants that take up U.S. residency will represent the largest contributor to the nation’s future population growth. They will compete with Americans for jobs, medical care and classroom seats, and will help exacerbate the affordable housing shortage, an issue of grave concern in border states like California, Arizona and New Mexico. California’s median home price is projected to rise 5.5 percent in 2022 to hit $834,000. Exorbitant housing costs represent an insurmountable problem for newly arrived aliens who need shelter.

The Journal of Housing Economics researched immigration’s effect on housing costs, and concluded that an increase in the number of immigrants equal to 1 percent of a metropolitan statistical area’s total population was linked with a 0.8 percent increase in rents and a 0.8 percent increase in home prices. The same immigrant increase created a 1.6 percent rise in rents and a 9.6 percent rise in home prices in surrounding metropolitan statistical areas. The U.S. Office of Management and Budget defines a metropolitan statistical area as an urbanized area with a minimum 50,000 population.

Indisputable evidence – eliminating Title 42 as an illegal immigration deterrent – proves positively that more immigration is coming, although the final number, whatever that total may end up being, will never satisfy the Bushes, the Chamber of Commerce or the Biden administration. The donor class and elitists will score a big win. To Biden and his inner circle’s obvious satisfaction, unprecedented mass immigration devastates mainstream America.

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

Migrant Surge Will Compound Housing Crisis

Title 42 Going Out; Migrant Flood Coming In

Title 42 Going Out; Migrant Flood Coming In

By Joe Guzzardi


Since his first day in the White House, President Joe Biden has embarked on a nonstop journey to dismantle existing immigration laws, at first through Executive Orders, and more recently word of mouth. Biden’s criminal disregard for congressionally approved, presidentially signed immigration laws led to a 2 million-strong illegal alien invasion at the Southwest Border last year, plus 500,000 “gotaways” that eluded border patrol agents, and the numbers tick up daily.

On April 1, the CDC announced that it will end the Title 42 regulation on May 23. Title 42 allowed border patrol agents the wherewithal to expel, on the basis of COVID-19, some migrants who wanted to enter the U.S. and claim asylum. But at the same time, the agents processed family units and other so-called vulnerable migrants who were eventually bussed or flown to the U.S. interior.

The immigration crisis of the year past will soon look like a Sunday morning walk in the park. All hell is about to break out on the border. Immediately after the news broke about Title 42 and Department of Homeland Security Secretary Alejandro Mayorkas’ confirmation that the restriction would be lifted, Internet images of global migrants lined up to get past Mexican police, and proceed to the U.S. border, appeared on various sites.

Mayorkas, Biden’s co-conspirator in the dismantling of America, immediately began with double talk. Once the order is lifted, Mayorkas said that individuals will be processed under standard procedure. In a prepared statement, Mayorkas said that smugglers will spread misinformation about U.S. admission to take advantage of vulnerable migrants. But Mayorkas concluded with: “Let me be clear: those unable to establish a legal basis to remain in the United States will be removed.”

Sounds tough, but no one believes him. Mayorkas’ statement about removal directly conflicts with his earlier pronouncement that simply being illegally present doesn’t qualify an alien for deportation. In other words, current or future migrants have no concerns about being returned to their home countries. If they wish to stay, they’ll stay. Like his boss Biden, Mayorkas is a great one for making up new faux immigration laws as he goes along, but acting on them as if they are congressionally approved. Existing immigration law is crystal clear: those unlawfully present are deportable.

Title 42 Going Out; Migrant Flood Coming In

Despite pleas from his fellow Democrats to retain Title 42, Biden shows no sign of backing away from his open border tolerance. At least two Texas Democrats have asked Biden to delay ending the policy until Southern Border apprehensions and encounters slow. U.S. Reps. Henry Cuellar, a Laredo Democrat, and Vicente Gonzales, a McAllen Democrat, joined several of their Republican colleagues earlier this week in a letter to Mayorkas and Health and Human Services Secretary Xavier Becerra. In part, their letter read: “… small border communities lack the appropriate housing, transportation, and healthcare infrastructure to manage the ongoing release of migrant populations into their jurisdictions.”

Democratic Senators Kyrsten Sinema, Mark Kelly and Joe Manchin implored Biden to enforce Title 42, but to no avail. Sinema and Kelly urged Biden to formulate an as-yet-undrafted replacement plan for Title 42. Manchin called Biden’s move “a frightening decision” that will lead to record-breaking illegal immigration during the current fiscal year.

Arizona Sheriff Mark Dannels, National Sheriffs Association Border Security Committee chair, stated the obvious when he said that Biden has forsaken border law enforcement, that his Cochise County is “already beyond a crisis” and that border-related crime has cost local taxpayers more than $1 million. Under Biden, Dannels said that he’s seen the “erosion of infrastructure and the rule of law.” Checkpoints have been shuttered, and a Border Patrol station is down to a skeleton crew. In summary, Dannels, a 37-year law enforcement veteran, said what many Americans, whether they live on the border or in the interior, have already concluded: “We have been abandoned; let’s just say that.”

Veteran observers of D.C. politics can’t quite figure out Biden and his immigration policy. Mid-term elections are seven months away, Biden’s favorability polling among likely voters is in the tank; 53 percentdisapprove, and his immigration handling stands even lower at 59 percent disapproval. As unlikely as it may seem, the staunch America-last Democrats and Biden’s inner circle of globalists are content to lose their jobs, and take their party down with them, over an open border immigration policy that no one wants and harms everybody – first and foremost, blacks, Hispanics and other minorities.

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

Title 42 Going Out; Migrant Flood Coming In

Opening Day 1939 Or When Athletes Really Were Heroes

Opening Day 1939 Or When Athletes Really Were Heroes


By Joe Guzzardi

To diehard baseball fans’ delight, but to traditionalists’ chagrin, Opening Day is here. But MLB Commissioner Rob Manfred and the players union have agreed to so many preposterous rule changes that fans might have trouble recognizing the game they once revered as the national pastime.

The designated hitter, an American League abomination since 1973, will now be utilized in National League; the ghost runner, so-called even though he’s clearly visible to all, will begin the 10th inning on second base; post-season playoffs will be expanded to include 12 teams instead of 10, with the top two seeds getting a first-round bye, and, most laughable, special rules have been approved for individual players, the Shohei Ohtani rule.Madison Bumgarner, San Francisco Giants 2014 World Series Most Valuable Player now pitching for the Arizona Diamondbacks, best summed up the latest baseball nonsense. Said Bumgarner: “I don’t know, I’m sure we’ll have a different rule in three months, maybe the next year after that. We’ll just make it up as we go. We’ll see whatever they like, the flavor of the week.… Maybe we’ll start playing with a wiffle ball or something.”

None of the 2022 changes are surprising. The players, despite their average $4.5 million annual salaries, want to get off the field and to their awaiting post-game buffets ASAP. Expanded playoffs mean more money for the players and owners, and the Ohtani rule helps keeps baseball’s biggest draw on the field longer.

Opening Day 1939 Or When Athletes Really Were Heroes

Pity the beleaguered Cleveland cranks who must put up with MLB nonsense and their team’s woke new nickname, the Guardians. The Indians are gone, and their 100-plus year history down the memory hole where they’ll co-exist with their old mascot, Chief Wahoo. Indian fans can take comfort, however, in their rich past. Fire-balling 21-year-old Bob Feller, a World War II hero, started seven Opening Days, and in the 1940 game, he pitched a no-hitter. On the road in Chicago and at the White Sox Comiskey Park, Feller, in 40-degree weather, fired a 1-0 no hitter, the first of three in his career, along with 12 one-hitters.

More to the point about the former Indians, now Guardians, in 1939, Feller got the nod to open the season, this time at home in Cleveland Stadium against the Detroit Tigers. The Cleveland weather was so frigid that only about 24,000 fans showed up in a ball park that accommodated 80,000 to watch Feller dominate the Tigers 5-1, and shut down future Hall of Famers Charlie Gehringer and Hank Greenberg, although the pair did draw their team’s only two walks. In his compete game win, Feller struck out 10, and allowed three hits.

Those fans that braved the cold got a special treat. Judy Garland, only 16 but already an MGM contract player, sang the National Anthem. Garland had completed filming on The Wizard of Oz; the movie was in the can as they say in Hollywood, but had not been released. In Cleveland for a two-week performance at the old State Theater, Garland got her manager’s permission to attend the senior prom at the University School, a local prep school. Since young Judy’s schedule didn’t allow much time for socializing, her manager okayed the prom.

On game day, despite the bitter, wet weather, Garland willingly posed for photos with Indians’ manager Oscar Vit and the Tigers’ pilot Del Baker. And – get this – she also posed in a magnificent full-feathered Indian headdress.

Although both superstars in their respective professions, the lives of Feller and Garland took different directions. From an early age, relentless overwork that studio bosses forced upon her, despite her tender age, eventually led to Garland’s drug and alcohol abuse. Garland had financial trouble with the Internal Revenue Service for nonpayment of back taxes, and eventually died in London from a drug overdose at age 47.

Feller, a teen standout like Garland, was so popular at such a young age that NBC broadcast his high school graduation to a national audience. “Rapid Robert,” as Feller was called, went on to a Hall of Fame career, and served as a U.S. Navy Chief Petty Officer during World War II where he earned six campaign ribbons and eight battle stars. Ironically, because he was attending to his cancer-stricken, dying father, the patriotic Feller had a military deferment, but nevertheless enlisted only days after Pearl Harbor.

After Feller’s death at age 91, Mike Hegan, then-Indians’ broadcaster and son of former Feller battery mate Jim Hegan, said that the Indians of the 40s and 50s were the face of Cleveland, and Bob was the face of the Indians. Hegan continued: “But, Bob transcended more than that era. In this day of free agency and switching teams, Bob Feller remained loyal to the city and the team for over 70 years. You will likely not see that kind of mutual loyalty and admiration ever again.”

The Guardians’ woke ownership, the meddling, menacing Manfred and the selfish players union have little concept of loyalty or of honoring baseball’s rich tradition. As Bummy said, “It is what it is,” like it or lump it.


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

Opening Day 1939 Or When Athletes Really Were Heroes Opening Day 1939 Or When Athletes Really Were Heroes Opening Day 1939 Or When Athletes Really Were Heroes

Ruth Regains HR Title, Move Over Barry Bonds

Ruth Regains HR Title, Move Over Barry Bonds

By Joe Guzzardi

Major League Baseball has a new home run champion, and his name has been familiar to fans for more than a century: Babe Ruth. Forget about Barry Bonds, his 73 homers in 2001, and his career 762 round-trippers. Likewise, disremember Hank Aaron with his 755 career blasts. The new champion in both individual season and career categories is Ruth, the Big Bam.

In his 2007 book titled “The Year Babe Ruth Hit 104 Home Runs,” author Bill Jenkinson takes the reader through Ruth’s 1921 season when he hit a then-record 59 homers and sweetened the pot for Yankees’ manager Miller Huggins by hitting .378, and knocking in 168 runners. For good measure, Ruth’s on base percentage was .512; he slugged .846, racked up 457 total bases, scored 177 runs, and rang up 119 extra-base hits. Ruth’s plate production helped the Yankees win 98 games and finish in first place, 4-1/2 ahead of the Cleveland Indians.

Jenkinson made clear that his book isn’t a Ruth biography – dozens of those are available – but rather a recap of the slugger’s fearsome power, and how he dominated baseball during the 20th century’s early decades. The conclusion: in modern, smaller ballparks, with games played under different rules, more comfortable travel modes – specifically charter planes instead of rickety railroad cars – air-conditioned hotel rooms and the constant availability of skilled trainers, Ruth would have hit 104 home runs in 1921, 90 in some other seasons, and over 60 many times. In all, Ruth would have hit well over a thousand home runs in his career, Jenkinson’s research found, and obliterated Bonds’ record.

Ruth Regains HR Title, Move Over Barry Bonds

Fastidiously, Jenkinson listed every home run Ruth hit with estimated distance for each. Although the official record for the longest home run belongs to Mickey Mantle, 565 feet in Griffith Stadium in 1960, Jenkinson found that several Ruth blasts, when they finally came to rest, soared between 600 and 650 feet from home plate. As one Associated Press account recalled: “The ball cleared the right field fence 400 feet from the plate by more than 40 feet and was still ascending. The ball landed on the far side of the running track of a high school athletic field in Kirby Park [PA]. Officials estimated the length at 650 feet.”

No matter how many long-ago seasons are parsed or what analytical methods are relied upon to calculate who reigns as baseball’s most powerful and productive hitter, Ruth comes out on top. If he doesn’t, then the data was entered incorrectly or incompletely.

For those who may still doubt Ruth’s Ruthian batting greatness, consider these five comparisons to other baseball giants. First, for nine separate seasons, Ruth slugged .700 or better, more than Bonds, Sammy Sosa, Ted Williams and Stan Musial combined. Second, if Ruth came back from the dead, returned to baseball and struck out 3,187 straight times, he would still have a .500 slugging percentage, higher than Hall of Famer Ernie Banks. Third, if resurrected again, Ruth would have to go 0-for-1,147 for his slugging percentage to drop below Bonds’ .6069. Fourth, Ruth stole home plate ten times more than Lou Brock, Tim Raines and Rickey Henderson who, combined, had nine. Fifth and finally, Ruth had three qualifying seasons in which his slash line – batting average, on-base percentage and slugging percentage – was .375/.500/.750; no other MLB player in history has had at least one such season.

Before baseball writers anoint Shohei Ohtani the next Ruth, consider that the American League’s 2021 Most Valuable Player’s best slash line came in 2018: .285/.361/.564. Dismantling Ruth from his well-deserved titled of baseball’s king will be impossible.

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

Ruth Regains HR Title, Move Over Barry Bonds

Southwest Ranchers Under Siege On The Border

Southwest Ranchers Under Siege On The Border

By Joe Guzzardi

Last week, the Texas Department of Public Safety said that its elite brush team apprehended 54 illegal immigrants attempting to sneak through private ranches after crossing illegally into Maverick County, Texas. Among those apprehended was a Mexican national who started a fire on a ranch and will be charged with trespassing and arson.

Earlier in the year, the same brush team assigned to Operation Lone Star arrested 33 aliens trespassing on ranchers’ personal property near the border. In all, Operation Lone Star has arrested 2,600 aliens on statecriminal trespass charges. The arresting body is a Texas state agency, not Customs and Border Protection which might have been, because of the Biden administration’s soft-on-illegal-aliens policy, conflicted about what to do next after confronting criminals.

Years ago, I heard first hand from Arizona ranchers how little interest the federal government had in protecting them, their property and their families. On Sept. 10, 2001, 9/11 eve, NumbersUSA Executive Director Roy Beck and I traveled to Tucson. Roy was scheduled to give a speech, after which a retired CBP agent would guide us on a personal border tour along a portion of the 262-mile sector. The following day, 9/11, we had a prearranged meeting with ranching families and other concerned citizens. Despite the day’s tragic events, the ranchers, knowing that illegal immigration would be the focal point of Roy’s talk, nevertheless wanted to convene.

During the informal chat period that followed, a rancher I’ll call Jones came up to me to share his story about then-Sen. John McCain, a Republican and prominent supporter of illegal immigrants and their agenda. Jones told me that after years of mailing handwritten letters to McCain asking for federal intervention to protect his land and family, but never getting more than a form response, he decided to fly to Washington to personally meet the senator. On his first day, McCain’s secretary advised Jones that the senator was too busy to see him. On the second day, Jones met with the staffer who dealt with immigration. Jones promised that he’d return the following day, and pressed for one-on-one time with McCain. By the week’s end, Jones gave up, never having seen McCain. The senator knew Jones had valid grievances, but he didn’t want to hear them.

Looking back with the perspective I’ve gained from Biden’s disregard for citizens’ personal safety during his assumption of the presidency, showing a shocking neglect toward the unconstitutional border invasion, McCain’s insulting, dismissive attitude toward Jones isn’t surprising. Americans dismayed by Biden’s contempt for immigration laws, and the well-being that many of those laws provide, should brace for more lawlessness and chaos ahead.

The Progressive Congressional Caucus, chaired by Washington U.S. Rep. Pramila Jayapal, recently issued its want list, what it called “Recommendations for Executive Action,” on immigration. In part, the list includes expanding or redesignating Temporary Protected Status to foreign nationals from Afghanistan, Cameroon, El Salvador, Ethiopia, Guatemala, Guinea, Haiti, Honduras, Hong Kong, Lebanon, Mauritania, Mexico, Nepal, Nicaragua, Sierra Leone, Somalia, South Sudan, Sudan, Ukraine and Yemen. At least 5 million illegal aliens from Mexico are estimated to live in the U.S. TPS, quasi amnesty, includes affirmative benefits which harm working or job-seeking U.S. citizens. TPS includes lifetime valid work authorization.

Southwest Ranchers Under Siege

Also on the progressives’ list is a demand to end COVID-related Title 42, which will create a greater-than-ever border surge. An anonymous but knowledgeable source wrote: “U.S. intelligence officials are privately bracing for a massive influx of more than 170,000 migrants at the Mexico border if COVID-era policies that allow instant expulsions during the public health emergency are ended.”

A third progressive insistence is to “raise wages and improve labor safeguards and protections so that employers can no longer use the H-2B visa program to underpay and exploit migrant workers, and U.S. workers.” A better idea is to end H-2B altogether which would truly help U.S. workers. The program has a long, documented history of American worker displacement, wage theft and other abuses.

Looking back at McCain on immigration, and then comparing him to Biden, the former Navy captain looks pretty good, a conclusion I would have thought impossible to arrive at a few years ago. McCain favored mandatory E-Verify, defunding sanctuary cities, and funding entry/exit systems, all inconceivable to Biden. But “a few years ago” was before Biden, the president who has criminally scorned immigration laws in their totality since Day One.

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

Southwest Ranchers Under Siege On The Border Southwest Ranchers Under Siege On The Border

New Batch of H-1B Workers Arriving Soon

New Batch of H-1B Workers Arriving Soon

By Joe Guzzardi

On April 1, employers will learn which among them will gain access to H-1B visas, and also the total number of visas each will be awarded. Now entering its fourth decade of aggressively displacing qualified U.S. tech workers, and often presenting insurmountable employment roadblocks to recent U.S. college graduates seeking jobs, the H-1B is the meal ticket that enriches corporate America on the backs of cheap foreign-born labor.

Created as part of the Immigration Act of 1990, the visa’s major flaws, among many, are its low-wage component and that the visa holders are powerless to look elsewhere for better, higher paying jobs because their employers control the visas – modern day indentured servitude or a form of 21st century slavery.

Over a 32-year-long time span, regardless of Republican or Democratic-held White Houses, little has changed in the H-1B dialogue. Employers preposterously claim that without foreign-born tech workers, their solvency would be at risk. In truth, tech companies are flush with cash, and native-born tech workers are readily available for hire. A Census Bureau analysis dated June 2021 found that among the 50 million employed college graduates ages 25 to 64 in 2019, 37 percent reported a bachelor’s degree in science or engineering, but only 14 percent worked in a STEM occupation. Less than one-third of STEM-educated students work in the STEM field. Translation: thousands of U.S. STEM workers are available. What’s missing is employers’ willingness to hire them.

Congresses, year after year, have ignored sound testimony and criticism from credible witnesses, including Democrats, that the H-1B is an American job killer that generously lines the pockets of craven employers. Those employers have adopted the heartless practice of forcing the U.S. employees they fire to first train their H-1B replacements or lose severance benefits.

Examples of on-target critiques from otherwise pro-immigration advocates:

  • Ray Marshall, President Jimmy Carter’s labor secretary: “One of the best con jobs ever done on the American public and political systems…If you’ve got H-1B workers, you don’t have to do training or pay good wages.”
     
  • 60 Minutes: “…(W)e discovered more and more are taking advantage of loopholes in the law to fire American workers and replace them with younger, cheaper, temporary foreign workers with H-1B visas.”
     
  • New York Times: “Former [Disney] employees said many immigrants who arrived were younger technicians with limited data skills who did not speak English fluently and had to be instructed in the basics of the work.”

In their recent article titled “Biden Can Fix the Anti-Worker, H-1B Immigration Visa Scam,” authors Ron Hira, Daniel Costa and Hal Salzman argue that President Joe Biden has “a clear roadmap, the legal authority, and the duty…” to clean up the H-1B program that, the authors correctly emphasize, allows big business to earn billions of dollars by, in part, stealing from employees through wage underpayment.

The H-1B and many other guest worker programs don’t have the necessary safeguards to protect either immigrant or U.S. workers. Some programs, like the H-1B or its cousin the L-1 for international transfers, are designed for the high-skilled worker. Other programs were created for low-skilled workers. That includes the H-2A for agricultural workers or H-2B for seasonal, non-ag workers. All categories of temporary or guest worker programs employ international laborers who are at their new employers’ mercy – an open invitation for abuse should unscrupulous employers choose to take advantage when safeguards are missing.

New Batch of H-1B Workers Arriving Soon

Protections are paramount since the H-1B is the largest temporary work visa program with nearly 600,000 workers currently employment-authorized in the U.S. and approximately 140,000 new guest workers who will receive visas for fiscal year 2023, and still another 300,000 receiving three-year renewals.

Assuming labor protections and a fair pay scale for the vastly underpaid foreign-born workers were in place, and enforced, hiring H-1Bs would become less appealing to employers who would eventually turn to U.S. tech workers.

Hira, Costa and Salzman make the important observation that in today’s corporate world, labor safeguards are more vital than ever. Since 1990, corporations have moved ruthlessly to slash labor costs, cut pensions, hire short-term contract workers to replace full-time employees and bust unions.

Legislative reform, no matter how desperately needed, is a long-shot. Biden is president in large part because Silicon Valley worked tirelessly on his behalf, and dumped $5 million into his 2020 campaign coffers. On the other hand, protecting American workers and at-risk guest workers is one of the most necessary functions of the Executive Office. Even though taking a pro-America stance on visa reform would give Biden a much-needed bump in his poll ratings, it is improbable that Biden is brave enough to stand up to his advisors and Silicon Valley donors.

Joe Guzzardi writes about immigration issues and impacts. Follow him on joeguzzardi.substack.com.

New Batch of H-1B Workers Arriving Soon

Corrupt Dishonest Untrustworthy Media Or Just Say CDU

Corrupt Dishonest Untrustworthy Media Or Just Say CDU

By Joe Guzzardi

When journalists sit down to write, they can choose between two compelling storylines. The first is Russia’s invasion of the Ukraine; the second, the Third World’s incursion into sovereign America.

Journalists have reported on the Russia-Ukraine war exhaustively, 24/7 coverage in print and over the air. Even though the Southwest border has been invaded for the same 24/7 period for more than a year by illegal aliens from 150 countries, the mainstream media is stone-cold silent when headlines should be blaring. Between June 2020 and June 2021, Border Patrol agents took into custody Venezuelans, Haitians, Brazilians and Cubans, with total numbers significantly up from 2020. Over the last nine months, the number of migrants from Ecuador was up five times from the prior comparable period. Migrants whose nationality could not be determined doubled from the prior year to 37,000.

About 2 million illegal aliens crossed into the U.S. in 2021, and another 2 million are predicted to arrive before fiscal year-end 2022. Yet the number of words written about the inevitable demographic and socioeconomic changes the invasion will bring to the U.S. could, figuratively, fit on a pin’s head.

In the world’s history, the alien-perpetrated border incursion is unprecedented. Never before has an independent nation as powerful as the U.S. purposely thrown open its doors to all comers. Several words might explain the establishment media’s purposeful neglect – uninterested, indifferent or apathetic. The best word, however, is corrupt.

Despite the flowery language about fairness, balance and their commitment to principled journalism, as well as the highest ethical standards, found on the websites of the Society of Professional Journalists and the American Society of News Editors, both organizations more than 100 years old, the open borders story and the dramatic changes it will surely bring to America remain largely unreported.

Corrupt Dishonest Untrustworthy Media Or Just Say CDU

Readers and viewers notice the lopsided, nonstop Ukraine coverage, and the border cover-up. No surprise then that trust in the media is near an all-time low. A Gallup survey to determine Americans’ opinions about the media found that just 7 percent of adults said they have “a great deal” and only 29 percent responded that they have “a fair amount” of trust and confidence in newspapers, television and radio news reporting.

Despite the establishment media’s effort to obscure the U.S.-Mexico border crisis, a Harvard/Harris poll taken in June found that an overwhelming 80 percent of Americans believe that illegal immigration is a serious issue that needs more attention than it’s getting from President Joe Biden or Vice President Kamala Harris, the anointed border czar. Moreover, 68 percent said that Biden’s White House is sending migrants welcoming signals that encourage illegal immigration.

Dishonest journalism and White House betrayal merged when the media ignored a huge Department of Homeland Security story that’s directly tied to public safety. Every year, DHS releases data that summarizes the numbers of illegal aliens arrested and deported. But this year, the congressionally mandated report was delayed weeks beyond its normal issuance date. Little wonder that the administration wanted to conceal its contents. The reportshowed that since fiscal year 2019, Biden has crippled interior immigration enforcement. Illegal alien arrests dropped nearly 50 percent, and deportations were slashed by 78 percent. Detainers, official requests to state and local authorities to cooperate in turning over deportable migrants to ICE, fell dramatically, from 122,233 in 2020 to 65,940.

From October 2020 to September 2021, of the estimated 12-25 million illegal immigrants in the nation, only slightly more than 74,000 were arrested, and only 60,000 deported. Many arrests and deportations occurred during the former administration’s final months which means Biden’s arrest totals were lower than the DHS report reflected. Immigration analysts said that the drops in arrests and in criminal deportations means that tens of thousands more dangerous people are at large in American communities, some far from their Southwest border point of entry.

Jon Feere, former Immigration and Customs official and the current Center for Immigration Studies Director of Investigations, noted that the DHS data set omitted several valuable categories such as facts related to family units and unaccompanied minors, criminal charges and convictions against illegal aliens, and aliens’ country of origin – more coverup that’s intended to deceive an unsuspecting public that Biden’s immigration practices serve the nation’s best interests.

The White House and the media, working in tandem and in secret, are doing their level best to destroy sovereign America. So far, they’re doing a job they’re proud of, but worrisome to Americans.


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

Corrupt Dishonest Untrustworthy Media Or Just Say CDU

Afghan Evac Flaws Cautionary Lesson For Ukraine

Afghan Evac Flaws Cautionary Lesson For Ukraine

By Joe Guzzardi

More alarming details have come to light about how badly the Biden administration botched the Afghan evacuation. Instead of taking a deep breath, and committing itself to a more prudent – and legal – approach to resettlement and asylum, President Biden is jumping in feet first with the Ukrainians.

First, a review of the failures associated with the Afghan airlift. Last week, the Department of Justice revealed that several Afghans had allegedly bribed a Commander in the U.S. Navy Reserves in order to obtain a coveted Special Immigrant Visa. SIVs help expedite the resettlement process, and remove all possible doubt about the visa holder’s loyalty to America. Federal prosecutors filed visa fraud charges against 53-year-old Navy Reserves Commander Jeromy Pittmann of Pensacola, Fla., who wrote up more than 20 fake SIV recommendations which falsely claimed the Afghans had worked as translators for the U.S. Armed Forces. Pittman also alleged that he supervised the Afghans, a lie, and that unless they were granted SIV visas, they would be Taliban targets, and at risk for their lives. Pittmann now faces 20 years in a federal penitentiary.

Second, since August 2021, about 85,000 Afghans have been resettled in 46 states, many if not most of them improperly vetted against counterterrorism databases, a fact which Department of Homeland Security Secretary Alejandro Mayorkas confirmed. A report released by the Department of Defense Inspector General harshly criticized Biden for his rushed, botched and numerically unlimited resettlement that allowed “significant security concerns” to take up U.S. residency.

Afghan Evac Flaws Cautionary Lesson For Ukraine

DOD cannot locate at least 50 Afghans with possible terrorism ties and worries that “the U.S. government could mistakenly grant ineligible Afghan evacuees with derogatory information from the DOD Automated Biometric Identification System database SIV or parolee status.” Moreover, DOD concluded, Biden’s State Department and the United States Citizenship and Immigration Services also could provide dangerous, unvetted Afghans with visas, Green Cards, and naturalized American citizenship.

Third, violent post-Kabul airlift crimes occurred almost immediately after the August 2021 airlift, proof that vetting was lax. In September 2021, the Western District of Wisconsin federal grand jury returned indictments on two Afghans that included sex acts with minors under age 16, and spousal assault by strangulation and suffocation. The perpetrators had been assigned temporary housing at Ft. McCoy, Wis., a military base that at one time housed nearly 13,000 Afghan evacuees.

The ongoing Afghan resettlement process is about eight months old, and no one can predict whether it will be successful or fraught with social and assimilation challenges much like the Somali refugees struggled with. Whatever the end result may be, Afghan resettlement is a huge, continuous and costly project that will take years to complete.

Nevertheless, the Biden administration is ready to embark on expedited processing of Afghan refugees “with open arms” even though the legal steps are years long, and cumbersome. But since the Biden administration’s indifference to immigration law is well-known internationally, some wealthy Ukrainians have decided to forego refugee status, and instead file asylum claims inside the U.S. after traveling through “safe countries” on route, and then getting past border officials.

Regulations require that asylum seekers must make their claim in the first safe country they reach, Poland, for instance. And Article 31 of the 1951 Convention Relating to the Status of Refugees stated specifically that illegal aliens or migrants cannot be denied the chance to seek asylum as long as they are “coming directly from a territory where their life or freedom was threatened.”

Recently, a group of Ukrainian migrants arrived at San Ysidro, Mexico, an international point of entry. But even though the Mexican government declared that special and immediate treatment will be given to migrants or people arriving from Ukraine for asylum purposes, the migrants’ destination is the U.S. Asylum claims should be denied to petitioners who pass through safe countries to reach the U.S.

Enforcing the safe country concept doesn’t mean that the U.S. will turn its back on migrants in danger. The idea instead is that instead of continuing what might be a perilous journey that covers hundreds of miles, for those truly in peril, the first safe haven may be the best place to begin a new life. Biden’s task is to enforce the safe country concept to ensure that Ukrainian or other asylum seekers don’t take unfair, undeserved advantage of U.S. generosity.

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

Afghan Evac Flaws Cautionary Lesson For Ukraine

Immigration An Economic Issue

Immigration An Economic Issue

By Joe Guzzardi


For more than 50 years, the roiling immigration debate has been wrongly framed. The arguments for or against immigration increases are seen as liberal versus conservative, Democrat versus Republican or expansionist versus restrictionist. While those labels may be accurate, they distract from a discussion about the core issue of economics.
 
Congress, the media and employers argue passionately for higher immigration levels – an annual 1 million-plus or higher. Restrictionists maintain with equal vigor that immigration should be reset from today’s record highs back to its historical 250,000 total, the intake for the nation’s first 200 years, 1776-1976.
 
Congress’ obligation, which it ignores, is to determine what amount of immigration is best for American workers, and to protect the nation’s wage earners. Vernon Briggs, Emeritus Cornell University professor and labor economist, broke down America’s immigration history as it affected the U.S. labor force into eras: Continental Expansion, 1820-1879, immigration average, 162,000 per year; Industrial Revolution, 1880-1924, 584,000 immigrants; Rise of Middle Class, 1925-1965, 178,000 immigrants. Briggs found that during a high immigration period – the Industrial Revolution – wages for American workers were suppressed. But during tight immigration, the Rise of the Middle Class period is recognized as four decades of upward mobility, accompanied by increased productivity and innovation.

Immigration An Economic Issue

Since the Immigration and Nationality Act (INA) of 1965, the U.S. has experienced significant legal and illegal immigration growth. Since the INA, about 60 million immigrants, exclusive of illegal aliens, have entered the U.S. Most have lawful permanent resident status that includes among its affirmation benefits a lifetime valid work permit.
 
Employment-authorized lawful residents plus nonimmigrant employment-based temporary workers can add up to more than 125,000 immigrants monthly, again, exclusive of illegal immigrants who enter the labor market and compete for jobs with unemployed Americans and recent high school graduates. Since the 1965 Civil Rights movement, the income gap between blacks and whites has remained largely unchanged. Black households’ net worth is about 10 percent of white households, a statistic that’s held steady for nearly six decades. Significantly expanding the labor pool year after year through immigration has depressed wages – labor excesses help employers and harm job seekers.
 
In his book, “Back of the Hiring Line,” Roy Beck detailed the 200-year history of immigration surges, reductions, employer bias and black wealth depression. For black Americans, immigration surges translate into stagnation or repression in their quest for the middle class. On the other hand, moderate immigration, the Rise of the Middle Class decades, helped blacks get pay raises, better jobs and buy new homes.
 
Previous White Houses, Congress, the media, independent academics, Goldman Sachs and the Congressional Budget Office know the adverse impact immigration has on U.S. workers, and have spoken or written about its negative effect, especially on black Americans with less than a college education.
 
In his 2006 autobiography, “The Audacity of Hope: Thoughts on Reclaiming the American Dream,” then-Sen. Barack Obama wrote, “There’s no denying that many blacks share the same anxieties as many whites about the wave of illegal immigration flooding our Southern border – a sense that what’s happening now is fundamentally different from what has gone on before,” a reference to previous tight immigration eras. Yet Obama bitterly disappointed blacks on immigration. As his second term drew to a close in 2015, information gathered from U.S. Citizenship and Immigration Services, acquired through a Freedom of Information request, and published by the Center for Immigration Studies, found that the Obama administration had issued approximately 7.4 million more work permits than congressionally set limits allowed.
 
During his presidential campaign, Biden introduced “Lift Every Voice,” his plan to give black Americans a “fair shot.” He promised to “advance the economic mobility of African Americans and close the racial wealth and income gaps.” But by immediately opening the border during his first year in office to 2 million low-skilled, undereducated aliens, many of whom will be looking for jobs that will displace blacks, Biden is dooming African Americans to more of the same – dead-end jobs, stagnant wages and lost hope.
 
 
PFIR analyst Joe Guzzardi writes about immigration issues and impacts. Contact him at jguzzardi@pfirdc.org and joeguzzardi.substack.com.

Immigration An Economic Issue Immigration An Economic Issue