Category: Joe Guzzardi

Elon Wrong About Population Drop

By Joe Guzzardi
 

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Elon Wrong About Population Drop

Elon Wrong About Population Drop

Dems Face Biden Burden In Senate

By Joe Guzzardi

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Dems Face Biden Burden In Senate

The Pineapple World Series

By Joe Guzzardi

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

The Pineapple World Series

Enemies Among Us Courtesy Of Biden Policy

By Joe Guzzardi

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Enemies Among Us Courtesy Of Biden Policy

Enemies Among Us Courtesy Of Biden Policy

Enemies Among Us Courtesy Of Biden Policy

Black Mississippi Ag Workers Displaced By White South Africans

By Joe Guzzardi

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

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

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

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

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

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

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


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

Black Mississippi Ag Workers Displaced By Visa Holders

Biden Gives Sponsor Circles To Afghan Evacuees

By Joe Guzzardi

In her October 22 New York Times opinion piece, “Angela Merkel Was Right,” journalist Michelle Goldberg praises the German chancellor for her bold 2015 decision to resettle about 800,000 Syrian refugees. Experts like former Secretary of State Henry Kissinger and former Treasury Secretary Hank Paulson who predicted doom and gloom for Germany after Merkel threw open the borders were wrong, Goldberg wrote. Merkel, on the other hand, was correct, and now because of the refugees’ contributions, Germany is a better place.

High on the list of Merkel’s triumphs, Goldberg wrote, was the new, more vigorous labor force that refugees represented. Bonus: the Syrians, continued Goldberg, would boost Germany’s stagnant population growth. Goldberg’s sub rosa message is that if the U.S. followed Germany’s example, adding more refugees would revitalize the domestic economy. Moreover, Goldberg suggested, since Syrians have so seamlessly integrated into German society, Afghan evacuees might do the same and thus help end U.S. divisiveness.

Not all went as smoothly as Goldberg suggested. In the years immediately following Merkel’s decision, crime in Germany spiked. Statistics related to violent crime showed that, in 2017, 10.4 percent of murder suspects and 11.9 percent of sexual offense suspects were asylum-seekers and refugees. Many migrants formed gangs and perpetrated some of the most heinous imaginable crimes.

Beyond the considerable societal challenges that refugee resettlement often brings, timing for the accepting country must be factored into any decision to admit large numbers of foreign nationals. In 2015, Germany wasn’t undergoing a continuous wave of illegal immigration as the U.S. is today. As of late October, an estimated 1.7 million illegal aliens from more than 160 nations were detained at the Southwest border. Most will eventually be admitted to the U.S. population, and rewarded with employment permission.

The federal government will have its hands full dealing with the multiple needs of under-educated, low-skilled, non-English speaking foreign nationals without adding thousands more refugees, asylees and evacuees. The federal government has already failed dismally to cope with the estimated 11 million, possibly as many as 20 million, illegal immigrants. Another large caravan is headed toward the border, and determined to get past what is now only token protection.

Unlike Germany, a largely well-run country, the U.S. is and has been politically dysfunctional for decades. Germany has a successful on-the-job training record, while the U.S. has mostly abandoned training employees and offering trade school education. Unions have been decimated. Workers are poorly paid and generally treated even worse. These failures also argue strongly against adding a new population that would further put U.S. citizens at a labor market and public education disadvantage.

Goldberg is doubtless sincere in her recommendation that the U.S. adopt a more welcoming system to accommodate a higher refugee total. For Goldberg and other refugee advocates, they suddenly have a unique chance to lead the way on compassionate resettlement. The Biden administration’s State Department recently agreed to let private groups of five individuals form sponsoring units that could, for a 90-day period, be responsible for resettling Afghan evacuees. The sponsorswill be expected to provide for the evacuees’ basic necessities such as clothing, groceries and household furnishings, as well as assist with processes to access federal, state and local benefits, and introduce the evacuees to the local community.

The congressional wealthy who have throughout their careers voted in favor of higher refugee intake could and should also step up to the plate. Senators Dianne Feinstein (D-Calif.), Mitt Romney (R-UT) and Bernie Sanders (I-VT) have consistently voted for higher refugee resettlement totals. They’re among Congress’ richest legislators, multimillionaires all, each of whom have multiple homes.

The flaw in the so-called “sponsor circles” is that the guardianship period lasts only 90 days, insufficient time for Afghan evacuees or other refugees to accustom themselves to American life. Most refugees need assistance for many years; eventually, the responsibility to provide for them will fall on voiceless state and local taxpayers.

In the end, despite interim, partial solutions like the sponsor circles, the federal government must develop a refugee program consistent with the public’s wishes, its ability to integrate new arrivals, and maintain a sustainable, stable future. A haphazard evacuation of tens of thousands of unvetted Afghans doesn’t meet that definition. Americans want to help Afghans, but the evacuees’ presence was thrust upon them. The elite and the wealthiest are better prepared to provide immediate assistance than others. Let them be the first among Americans to set an example; others will follow.

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 Gives Sponsor Circles To Afghan Evacuees

Build Back Better Bad News For Tech Workers

By Joe Guzzardi

While a disbelieving nation is focused on the endless border crisis, more immigration sleight of hand is ongoing in Washington. Cloaked in Congress-speak, the troubling details of the Build Back Better Act (BBB) are being hidden from a bad-news weary public.

The National Border Patrol Council’s Rio Grande Valley chapter vice president Chris Cabrera told Sen. Marsha Blackburn (R-Tenn.) that the widely cited 400,000 “got-aways” represents a significant undercount. The total number of aliens who evaded border patrol detection is, Cabrera said, “at least twice if not three times that number,” as many as 1.2 million illegal immigrants. Add the 1.2 million not tallied to those among the 1.7 million caught and released in fiscal year 2021, and all of a sudden, the U.S. has a new population roughly the equivalent size of Phoenix, the country’s fifth largest city.

The border crisis is public, seen in its full inglorious detail on the nightly news. Congress’ immigration shenanigans occur behind closed doors and are incomprehensible to nonimmigration lawyers. Nevertheless, the open borders and Capitol Hill wrangling have the same goal: a huge, nation-altering immigration increase.

Senate parliamentarian Elizabeth MacDonough rejected amnesty Plans “A” and “B,” concluding each time that transformative immigration changes don’t belong in budget reconciliation legislation. That should have ended the amnesty discussion. But, undeterred, expansionist Democratic senators have nevertheless stealthily included provisions in BBB that will significantly increase legal immigration and subsequent chain migration. Writing for the Center for Immigration Studies, Robert Law, a former U.S. Citizenship and Immigration Services official, noted that pro-expansion advocates have tried to hide the reconciliation bill’s massive immigration increases through “an accounting scam,” commonly known as “visa recapture.”

Every year, the State Department offers 140,000 work visas, 226,000 family-sponsored visas and 50,000 diversity visas to prospective immigrants. The reconciliation bill proposes going all the way back to 1992 to “capture” and reuse unissued visas, and to make them available to potential immigrants. Law wrote that recapturing visas, as the reconciliation bill proposes, violates existing immigration law; in effect, there’s no such thing as an unused visa. Sen. Bill Hagerty (R-Tenn.) wrote in protest to his Independent Vermont colleague Bernie Sanders, and called the recapture provisions “the crown jewel of corporate lobbying.” Breaking immigration law, however, isn’t a roadblock for the Biden administration – witness the border crisis which the president and his Department of Homeland Security secretary Alejandro Mayorkas created and encourage.

BBB has more destructive provisions aimed at U.S. tech workers which would further enrich cheap labor-addicted employers. Under the proposed legislation, an illegal alien already in the U.S., and with a two-year wait for his Green Card, could, assuming his sponsoring employer pays a $5,000 fee, adjust his immigration status to lawful permanent resident, exempt from annual limits and per-country caps.

About 583,420 H-1B visa holders and their families would jump to the head of the Green Card line. Hundreds of thousands of U.S. tech workers have had their personal and professional careers ruined by callous Big Tech employers who have exploited H-1B visa rules to hire cheaper foreign-born workers while they pass over more qualified Americans.

In his same letter to Sanders, Hagerty summed up how ruinous BBB would be for U.S. tech workers: Those provisions “effectively terminate, for at least 10 years, all numerical limits on the annual allotment of green cards,” allowing “technology companies across America to employ a functionally limitless supply of cheaper foreign labor in place of willing, able, and qualified American workers.”

More than destructive to U.S. tech workers, BBB will create population spikes so dramatic that the U.S. Census Bureau will have to revise dramatically upward its growth projections. Pre-BBB and the open Southwest Border, the Census Bureau projected that U.S. population would grow by 79 million people between 2017-2060, with roughly 90 percent of that growth resulting from Congress’ immigration policies. Americans don’t want more sprawl, more traffic and a less enjoyable quality of life.

A growing number of Americans feel that Biden is too focused, and at their expense, on bettering illegal immigrants’ lives and accommodating the donor class. The $185 trillion BBB bill is a glaring example – vague promises about reaching climate goals, the proverbial vows to create millions of better jobs, affordable childcare availability, and other familiar, but never-kept pledges to improve Americans’ lives.

Immigration increases will change Americans lives, and should be discussed front and center in the Senate Judiciary Committee, not tucked away in the small print of a voluminous 1,684-pages bill that only a scattered handful of Senate aides have even read.

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.

Build Back Better Bad News For Tech Workers

Job Turnaround Hopes Realistic?

By Joe Guzzardi

The October Bureau of Labor Statistics report showed that the economy boomed forward with a higher than anticipated 531,000 new jobs, a good sign for workers across the board. Wall Street analysts had predicted that 450,000 jobs would be added.

Private payrolls jumped 604,000 while the unemployment rate fell to 4.6 percent from 4.8 percent. BLS also revised up the total jobs for August and September by 235,000 in part because it recalculated seasonal factors. The economy registered its strongest growth in the leisure and hospitality sectors, 164,000, followed by manufacturing, 60,000, then transportation, 54,000, construction, 44,000, and healthcare, 37,000.

No doubt the labor market and Biden administration benefited from the coronavirus case decline, and employers’ renewed push to hire. Also contributing to the surprisingly strong October report was the post-Labor Day pandemic unemployment programs’ expiration that included the $300 federal bonus and extended eligibility from the traditional 26 weeks to 79 weeks.

In October, some demographic sectors benefited greatly, specifically female workers. Women represent about 57 percent of October’s job gains, 370,000, a dramatic shift from September when men gained all of that month’s new jobs, but more than 300,000 women left the labor force.

More female workers could soon be re-entering the labor pool. Jasmine Tucker, the National Women’s Law Center director, said that women are enjoying a “turnaround.” Tucker points to a return to in-person learning, and an hourly wage increase for hospitality and leisure workers from $17.12 per hour in October 2020 to $19.04 per hour only one year later. But, a hitch: Tucker estimates that, assuming October’s vigorous pace continues, it would take about eight months for the economy to gain back the nearly five million jobs lost during the pandemic.

Several demographic groups suffered an unemployment spike between September and October, including white women who went from 3.7 percent to 3.9 percent; Asian women, 3.4 percent to 4.4 percent, and Hispanics, 5.6 percent to 5.7 percent. Nearly one woman in every three, or 32.6 percent, who were unemployed in October had been out of work for six months or longer.

On behalf of women who successfully landed jobs in October, and want to keep their positions as well as in the best interests of women still seeking employment, the NWLC should immediately demand that the Biden administration stop handing out employment permits indiscriminately to border crashers, and to other illegal immigrants who have reached the interior. An estimated 160,000 illegal aliensnow in the interior have received parole, an immigration status that includes work permission. Most are low-skilled, and will compete head-to-head with workers, women and otherwise, in leisure and other occupations that don’t require more than a high-school degree.

American minorities, those seeking jobs and those already employed are especially vulnerable to an immigration-driven expanded, cheap labor pool. Numerous academic studies, including many done by liberal-leaning, pro-immigration analysts, found conclusively that immigrant labor, when readily available, depresses U.S. wages.

No analyst fits the “liberal-leaning, pro-immigrant” label better than New York Timesop-ed columnist and Graduate Center of the City University of New York economics professor Paul Krugman. Showing a mastery of Econ 101 and other economic principals he learned while earning MA and PhD degrees at MIT, Krugman wrote: “Immigration reduces the wages of domestic workers who compete with immigrants. That’s just supply and demand: we’re talking about large increases in the number of low-skill workers relative to other inputs into production, so it’s inevitable that this means a fall in wages.”

Since Krugman’s conclusion is inarguable, advocacy organizations like the NWLC, founded in the 1970s, comprised of lawyers and activists who seek justice for their constituency, need to step up immediately to oppose the Biden administration’s employment authorization giveaway. The border invasion shows no sign of slowing. Detentions and arrests at America’s Southwest border hit an all-time high in 2021. More than 1.7 million migrants were detained at the border, a significant percentage of which will eventually become work authorized, and expand the labor market – terrible news for U.S. workers.

Biden could reverse the open borders course he’s chosen to pursue. But he prefers to welcome the world, give corporate employers a helping hand, and keep Americans struggling to recover from the job-killer pandemic. Future BLS reports may indicate a strong economy, but the important variable is that new jobs go to citizens and lawfully present residents, not aliens who knowingly violated U.S. laws.

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.

Job Turnaround Hopes Realistic?

Fentanyl Deaths Reach Record High

By Joe Guzzardi

The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention reported that last year in the United States more than 93,000 people died of drug overdoses, the largest number of drug-related deaths ever confirmed in a single year. In 2020, led by fentanyl-related fatalities, opioid deaths accounted for 75 percent of all overdose fatalities.

Unlike other industries that suffered business losses during the COVID-19 pandemic, drug runners enjoyed a booming, near-insatiable trade. One reason, explained the National Institutes of Health’s director Dr. Nora Volkow, is that since fentanyl is easily produced, and only a small hit creates an addictive high, it’s effortless to smuggle across the border. Unchecked fentanyl trafficking has had, in addition to soaring death rates, other adverse consequences. Among the impacts that Dr. Volkow identified are “decreased access to addiction treatment, increased social and economic stressors, and overburdened health departments….” These harmful variables, Dr. Volkow concluded, “collided in 2020 and were associated with a tragic rise in overdose deaths.”

Fentanyl is a synthetic opioid that experts consider up to 100 times stronger than morphine and 50 times stronger than heroin, two other drugs that, when used for other-than medical applications, are addictive and deadly. Most commonly, fentanyl flows from China, through Mexico and its cartels, then proceeds northward on routes that lead to the San Diego border, finally arriving at the U.S. interior.

Another popular method of pure fentanyl distribution is directly from Chinese laboratories to U.S. customers via the mail, packed in small, hard-to-detect packages. In January 2020, the Drug Enforcement Agency wrote that Mexican transnational criminal organizations (TCOs) were “producing increased quantities of fentanyl and illicit fentanyl-containing tablets, with some TCOs using increasingly sophisticated clandestine laboratories and processing methods.” One kilogram of pure Chinese fentanyl, about a $3,300 to $5,000 wholesale cost, can be converted into a diluted powder sold at a $300,000 street value. The further fentanyl travels from its border entry point, the steeper the retail value rises.

America’s battle against fentanyl is the latest, most damaging lost War on Drugsthat the U.S. has suffered since 1970 when President Richard M. Nixon signed the Controlled Substances Act. In the psychedelic era, drugs were, President Nixon said, “Public Enemy No. 1.” Determined to roust drugs out of U.S. society, President Nixon followed up when he created the Drug Enforcement Agency in 1973. At the agency’s outset, DEA employed 1,470 special agents and functioned with a budget of under $75 million a year. Today, the agency has nearly 5,000 agents and an annual budget of more than $2 billion. Despite spending $1 trillion over the last five decades, the War on Drugs has failed cataclysmically. The War will continue to be unsuccessful as long as the Biden administration’s open borders persist. Homeland Security Secretary Alejandro Mayorkas, acting with President Biden’s tacit endorsement, unashamedly refuses to do his sworn duty to protect the nation against invasion, and has thereby paved the way for drug contraband, and the deaths that go together with it, to continue unchecked.

CBP cannot cope with the unprecedented U.S. invasion, 200,000+ illegal immigrants in July and August, and seize fentanyl and other addictive drugs at the same time. The Center for Immigration Studies’ Andrew Arthur, a retired immigration judge who reported from Texas’ Del Rio sector, noted that CBP is stretched to “the breaking point.” Administratively attending to surging aliens takes time away from the agents’ principal task of stopping illegal entry. About 40 percent of CBP agents are “off the line,” meaning that they’re performing nonborder security-related tasks like migrant child care, feeding unaccompanied minors and providing comfort to weary travelers.

Biden and his White House have proactively chosen to allow cartels and other criminals to ply their multibillion-dollar enterprise, a larger cash cow than Walmart, safe from the federal government’s intervention. To the Biden administration, last year’s 93,000 American deaths are an inconvenient truth that won’t stop it from pursuing its open border, end-America agenda.

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.

Fentanyl Deaths Reach Record High