Category: Joe Guzzardi

California Mounts Recall Against Newsom

By Joe Guzzardi

Californians – or at least some Californians – are fighting back against Gov. Gavin Newsom’s dysfunctional leadership. The nonpartisan California Patriot Coalition has gathered more than 80,000 voters’ signatures in a petition to recall Newsom.

The coalition inarguably cites a $54 billion budget deficit, a soaring “crime rate, unaffordable housing, rampant homelessness, failing schools, and irresponsible spending” as the causes that motivate it to remove Newsom. Among Newsom’s questionable spending is a dodgy $1 billion deal with a Chinese manufacturer for masks. The group also points to Newsom’s “encroachment” on citizens’ First Amendment rights.

Beyond those offenses, Newsom has violated several federal immigration laws related to harboring illegal immigrants and facilitating their presence. When Newsom confirmed that, through the California Infrastructure and Economic Development Bank, his administration is providing millions of dollars in economic relief to California businesses that don’t otherwise qualify for federal aid, including those owned by illegal aliens, he’s breaking 8 U.S. Code § 1324, and is subject to fines and/or a prison sentence.

The coalition’s journey will be uphill every step of the way. To succeed, the Recall Newsom effort must collect 1,495,709 signatures by November 17, a total that represents 12 percent of the 12.5 million votes that put Newsom into office. Two previous efforts to remove Newsom failed. The first netted a mere 281,917 signatures while the second recall Newsom attempt disbanded once it became clear that the necessary signature totals wouldn’t be reached. In 2018, Newsom was elected California’s 40^th governor with 61.9 percent of the vote.

Nevertheless, the coalition’s mission could be successful if several pivotal variables fall into place. First, gathering the required signatures over the next four months is challenging, but achievable. Unquestionably, the elitist, multimillionaire Newsom’s indifference to California’s steep financial and societal decline has disgusted many more than the million and a half residents whose signatures are required.

The California Department of State shows that as of January 3, the state has 20.4 million registered voters, 45 percent Democratic, 24 percent Republican, and 26 percent that didn’t identify a party affiliation. Doing the rough math, the 45 percent Democratic registered voters translates into 9.1 million potential signatories. Writing as a California native, I have every confidence that at least half of the 9.1 million registered Democrats are sickened by the state’s sanctuary status, harboring aliens, homeless encampments, feces-littered streets, rat-infested buildings, looting, arson and other crimes now commonly committed from Crescent City to the north and in San Diego to the south.

Nevertheless, the daunting task remains. Since 1911, 51 recall attempts have been mounted, and only one, the 2003 Recall Gray Davis campaign, succeeded. The California Patriots organization should study the game plan that led to Arnold Schwarzenegger’s elevation from muscleman and action movie hero to California’s Republican governor.

The Recall Gray Davis campaign began when then-U.S. Representative Darrell Issa, Congress’ richest man with an estimated net worth during his tenure of $768 million, donated $2 million to Rescue California to gather signatures. Issa hoped to be California’s next governor. But Schwarzenegger shattered Issa’s dreams when he entered the recall race. Issa dropped out, and Schwarzenegger’s candidacy also doomed Davis.

Looking back, the reasons Davis was recalled are chicken feed compared to Newsom’s dereliction of duty. In 2003, voters charged Davis with mishandling the state’s electricity crisis and were angry about increased automotive registration fees, small potatoes when weighed against Newsom turning a blind eye to the state’s complete ruination. Today, no one calls California the “Golden State.”

No high-profile candidate like Schwarzenegger has emerged as a potential Newsom replacement. But the gubernatorial field is open to U.S. citizens and registered California voters. The Davis election attracted 135 candidates, and only the Bay Area and Los Angeles County voted no on Davis’ recall. Somewhere among the 10 million-plus Republicans and Independents a qualified gubernatorial candidate awaits. Governing California is a filthy but prestigious job that a determined individual should undertake to save California from complete devastation.

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

California Mounts Recall Against Newsom

Trump Immigration Order Sends Big Tech into Advocacy Overdrive

By Joe Guzzardi

Big Tech has never pushed harder for cheap labor for the rich and powerful than it’s done in the last few weeks. The latest available data show that, from 2005 to 2018, Amazon, Apple, Facebook, Google and Microsoft laid out an aggregate $582 million to protect their collective interests on a range of topics that include protecting the inflow of employment-based visas, specifically the H-1B.

Immediately after President Trump’s June Executive Order that would suspend certain visa categories, including the H-1B, Big Tech went apoplectic. False narratives abounded, among them that restricting the H-1B visa would set back “America’s economic success,” stifle “America’s attractiveness to global, high-skilled talent” and prevent “the best and the brightest global talent” from contributing to the nation’s economic recovery. Big Tech threatened that “now is not the time to cut our nation off from the world’s talent or create uncertainty and anxiety….”

For decades, cheap labor champions have hawked the same tedious tripe. The truth is the exact opposite: the H-1B visa has displaced millions of skilled U.S. tech workers, and kept millions more American college graduates unemployed in the profession of their choice. Back in 2016, an unlikely source confirmed that U.S. grads are plentiful, but that – alas – they’re costlier than imported labor. Then-Infosys Chief Executive Officer Vishal Sikka admitted that the U.S. tech employment pool is abundant. He said, “There are enough universities, enough ability to hire, enough ability to teach…”

Big Tech is also solidly behind deferred action for childhood arrivals, another corporate favorite that contributes to the Silicon Valley labor pool. DACAs qualify for employment authorization documents, and many among the 700,000 eligible DACAs are in the workforce.

Meanwhile, as Big Tech scorns President Trump for his “dangerous” Executive Order, it’s simultaneously laying off or furloughing thousands of its current employees. The obvious contradiction: if, as Big Tech insists, it needs new employees so desperately, it should hold on to its existing workers who are already on the job, know their duties and don’t have immigration issues. But that’s not Big Tech’s end game. Instead, Big Tech wants what Congress has always provided – younger, cheaper, overseas workers.

In May, research from the liberal Economic Policy Institute found that 60 percent of H-1B positions that the Department of Labor certifies are assigned wage levels “well below the occupation’s local median wage.” The H-1B’s program regulations permit DOL to assign the lower wage levels but also provide authority to change the levels upward. Yet DOL has left the lower wage levels unchanged. EPI estimates, perhaps conservatively, that half a million H-1Bs are employed in the U.S. The majority of them work for the usual suspects – Amazon, Microsoft, Walmart, Google, Apple and Facebook. EPI recommends that DOL require and enforce above-median wages for H-1B workers to ensure that companies will use the immigration program as intended – to complement American workers – instead of using the visa to fill entry-level positions at a deep discount, and thereby enable U.S. tech workers’ displacement.

Nothing – not 9/11, not the 2008 Great Recession and not COVID-19 – keeps Congress from promoting more H-1B visas. This means the inevitable dismissal of U.S. tech workers. Two key congressional positions that oversee proposed immigration legislation, the Senate and House Judiciary Committees, are held by H-1B advocates, Lindsey Graham and Jerry Nadler, respectively.

At the same time, the wealth of Big Tech barons is stratospheric. The Bloomberg Billionaires Index ranks Jeff Bezos, Amazon CEO, as the world’s richest man; his estimated net worth is $189 billion. Every 11.5 seconds, Bezos earns the annual salary of his lowest paid, minimum wage worker. Microsoft founder Bill Gates is behind Bezos, with a net worth is $118 billion. Facebook’s Mark Zuckerberg ranks fourth with $93 billion net worth, and former Microsoft CEO Steve Ballmer rounds out the top five with a $76 billion net worth.

The British have a saying that applies to the self-serving congressional and corporate elitists whose efforts have taken away jobs from Americans, and given them to foreign nationals: “I’m alright, Jack.” Congress has its power, and Big Tech tycoons have their wealth – they’re alright. But, U.S. workers are left to fend for themselves.

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.

Trump Immigration Order Sends Big Tech into Advocacy Overdrive Trump Immigration Order

Immigration Polls Load Questions

By Joe Guzzardi  

A Gallup Poll conducted between May 28 and June 4, a period that pre-dates President Trump’s Executive Order that suspended some employment-based visas, found that 34 percent of Americans, up from 27 percent a year ago, support increased immigration to the U.S. Gallup notes that it’s the highest support for expanding immigration since 1965 when Gallup began its polling.

Furthermore, Gallup’s poll showed that those who favored decreasing immigration fell to 28 percent, a new low. However, Gallup didn’t include total annual immigration statistics – more than 1 million lawful permanent residents settle each year – an important fact that could have had a bearing on responses.

Some of the poll’s takeaways were predictable: more Democrats and liberals than Republicans favor increased immigration. But the most surprising Gallup finding was that 77 percent of Americans “think immigration is a good thing for their country,” a result that conflicts with earlier polls including ones that Gallup conducted. One year ago, Gallup reported that 72 percent of Americans either wanted immigration kept at its current 1 million-plus level or reduced.

Much less ballyhooed in the establishment media than this year’s Gallup Poll, a Washington Post poll taken from April 21 to 26 showed that 69 percent of Hispanics answered yes when asked, “Would you support … temporarily blocking nearly all immigration into the United States during the coronavirus outbreak?” Only 30 percent of Hispanics would oppose a shutdown. The Postpoll also showed that an immigration shutdown “is backed by 65 percent of all adults, 67 percent of independents, 83 percent of Republicans, 76 percent of conservatives, 64 percent of moderates, and by 63 percent of younger people age 18 to 39.” Hispanics understand that more immigration means, among other outcomes, more job competition.

The Gallup and the Washington Post polls prove only that individual surveys don’t convey broad sentiment or represent a barometer for future outcomes. Look no further back into history than the 2016 national election when virtually every poll showed candidate Hillary Clinton trouncing now- President Donald Trump. Especially without merit are push polls, so called because the questions asked are designed to influence a certain voter block.

Consider this question that Gallup asked in its latest survey of a mere 1,040 U.S. residents: “On the whole, do you think immigration is a good or bad thing for the nation?” The question is not related to any specific subject, and so vague that it’s obvious that Gallup’s intention is to elicit a positive reply. “Good” has constructive connotations, while “bad” is synonymous with evil or wicked. Americans like “good” things and hate “evil” things.

In the more than 30 years that I’ve studied and written about immigration, thousands of polls have been taken. I’ve read most of them. But the most important question to measure Americans’ mood about immigration is rarely asked: Do you favor dramatic and unsustainable immigration-driven U.S. population growth?

According to the U.S. Census Bureau, immigration and births to immigrants drove nearly 90 percent of immigration growth since the Immigration and Nationality Act of 1965. Since then more than 60 million new immigrantshave settled in the U.S. The Census Bureau projects that by 2060, immigration-driven U.S. population growth will hit 420 million, nearly 30 percent higher than today’s 331 million.

When President Lyndon Johnson signed the Immigration and Nationality Act of 1965, he said: “It [the bill] does not affect the lives of millions. It will not restructure the shape of our daily lives.” But President Johnson was dead wrong. The overhauled immigration bill opened the door to tens of millions of new lawful immigrants. Many immigrants contribute to the U.S.’s fabric, but each of them needs housing, transportation, roads, schools and hospitals. Providing those essentials has created the massive sprawl that has undeniably diminished Americans’ quality of life.

Twenty-five years ago Bill Clinton said in the introduction to his Population and Consumption Task Force report that “…reducing current immigration levels is a necessary part of working toward sustainability in the U.S.” But two and a half decades later, about 25 million new immigrants have entered; all need basic those services that contribute to all that sprawl.

Preferring less immigration is not an indictment against immigrants. Instead, favoring lower immigration is a strong endorsement for population stability that will ensure an improved quality of life for all current U.S. residents, including immigrants who already live in America.


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

Immigration Polls Load Questions

Kushner On Chopping Block?

By Joe Guzzardi
Immediately after President Trump appointed son-in-law Jared Kushner as a Senior White House Advisor, the fur flew on Capitol Hill. On the most basic level, D.C. analysts couldn’t figure out what the politically inexperienced Kushner could bring to President Trump’s table. And on the legal front, critics argued that Kushner’s presence on President Trump’s staff violated the 1967 federal anti-nepotism statute that Congress passed shortly after President Kennedy tapped his brother Robert as his Attorney General. The statute ruled that nepotism potentially undermines presidential policymaking.

Kushner’s elevation to a key, influential White House position also violated President Trump’s Executive Order 13770 that he issued just days after his inauguration, in which the president wrote: “I agree that any hiring or other employment decisions I make will be based on the candidate’s qualifications, competence and experience.”

In an effort to slow the mounting fury over Kushner, and eventually over Kushner’s wife – the President’s daughter Ivanka, who also became a Senior White House Advisor – the Department of Justice’s Office of Legal Counsel concluded that, based on another statute, when the president hires White House employees, he’s exempt from the anti-nepotism law.

Regardless of legal arguments, President Trump’s addition of son-in-law Jared and daughter Ivanka to key White House insider positions raised questions about his judgment and demonstrated a remarkable political naiveté, especially for a man who had just shocked the nation with his 2016 win. Nothing positive could have come from President Trump’s decision to hire Jared and Ivanka. And nothing productive ever did evolve from Kushner and Ivanka.

Predictably, the love birds have been a thorn in President Trump’s side since Day 1. They have done everything possible to undermine the president’s strategy to tighten immigration, the platform that delivered the 2016 election to Trump. Kushner has persistently lobbied for more immigration, mostly in the form of employment-based visas, that would displace U.S. tech workers. In secret meetings with immigration advocates like the Chamber of Commerce, Kushner pressed for higher legal immigrant levels. More employment-authorized immigrants directly conflicts with President Trump’s “hire American” Executive Order. More than 40 million unemployed and desperate Americans haven’t dissuaded either Kushner, or the lockstep aides and assistants under his direction, from pushing their expansionist views.

Ivanka is all-in on her husband’s indefensible more-workers-are-needed philosophy. At the 2020 Consumer Electronics Show, Ivanka, the keynote speaker, said in reference to F-1 student visa holders, “We need to reach over the sidelines, draw them into our workforce.” Such a policy, if enacted, would greatly hamper the already formidable challenge that tens of thousands of U.S. tech graduates and prospective employment-seekers must overcome to get good white-collar jobs.

But credible rumors continue to swirl that President Trump has had his fill of Jared. In 2018, President Trump reportedly told then-Chief-of-Staff John Kelly and others among his close friends that “Jared hasn’t been so good for me” and that “he wished both Jared and Ivanka would return to New York.” Jokingly – or perhaps not – President Trump said that he wished Ivanka had married New England Patriots quarterback Tom Brady, but instead got Kushner. Some in the media have derided Kushner for subverting President Trump and have correctly noted that Jared finds his father-in-law’s supporters contemptible.

When the time comes for President Trump to dismiss those who have fallen out of his favor, he acts swiftly. Through May 20, 2020, about 415 among the president’s staff have been fired or have resigned under pressure.

Kushner could soon be gone too. Jared’s continued high-visibility presence, often in critical immigration negotiations, detracts from President Trump’s agenda, and greatly annoys the president’s base which he can ill-afford to lose.


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.

Kushner On Chopping Block?

Globalist Push For More Worker Visas As Clock Ticks

By Joe Guzzardi

The May jobs report from the Bureau of Labor Statistics dumbfounded economists and made Wall Street analysts look foolish. Supposed experts expected that the huge job losses reflected in the April report, 20.5 million, would continue in May to the tune of 7 million Americans sidelined. Instead, the economy added 2.5 million jobs, and the unemployment rate fell to 13.3 percent from 14.7 percent

Put aside whether those jobs are newly created or furloughed workers returning to their former positions. The BLS data raises important questions about what President Trump will do when his Executive Order that paused some immigration expires later this month.

The expansion lobby, which includes immigration advocates and lawyers, has long argued that employers face dire labor shortages in virtually every BLS occupational classification. The “Buy American, Hire American” proponents – those who want to protect American jobs through a commonsense immigration policy – face a huge problem. They don’t have congressional support. But, the expansionists do. A recent example is seen in the letters members of the Senate and the U.S. House of Representatives sent to President Trump asking him to protect the H-2B visa, the vehicle used to import low-skilled, foreign-born nonagricultural workers.

The Upper Chamber wrote that “farming, forestry, packing, hospitality, healthcare, communications, and information technology rely on non-immigrant guest workers to survive.” And the House letter stated, “It is important that the H-2B program continue to be available to our seasonal employers as a fail-safe in the event that we see a rapid drop in unemployment and a return to the extremely tight labor markets of just a few months ago.”

This year, the Department of Homeland Security announced plans to implement a rule that would allow an additional 35,000 H-2B visas to the existing 66,000 cap. But after a voter rebellion opposing the proposed increase, DHS backed off. Around that time, about 50 million native-born and 10.4 million foreign-born age 16 to 64 were detached from the labor force, and businesses were entering the shutdown phase.

Given the May U-6 20.7 unemployment rate, which measures individuals who want and are available for a job and have looked for work sometime in the past 12 months, the Senate and House letters are brazenly misleading. Not only are the letters deceptive, they show a cynical disregard for America’s most vulnerable workers and a sellout to the pro-business, cheap labor lobby.

Once Congress, through its expansive guest worker visa legislation, allowed employers to become dependent on foreign-born labor, those same employers stopped looking for Americans to hire. In the ag industry’s case, with an abundance of cheap labor available, thoughts of moving from stoop labor to more efficient mechanization have all but vanished.

Last year, the Department of Homeland Security granted more than 900,000 temporary work visas. In other words, the federal government allowed 900,000-plus foreign nationals to deny American workers a fair shot at available jobs.

Every year, employers allege that they’re facing a worker shortage. And every year, nonpartisan think tanks debunk the employers’ claims. Tworeports from the left-leaning Economic Policy Institute published in back-to-back years found “no evidence at all” of labor shortages in the top H-2B occupations. And in its editorial, the pro-immigration New York Timesconcluded that labor shortage claims don’t stand up. The Times, applying Econ 101 basics, wrote that when labor is scarce, unemployment falls, and wages rise. The Times noted that H-2B workers are subject to exploitation and unemployment “is high in the major H-2B fields, which include landscaping, groundskeeping, construction, hospitality and seafood processing, while wages in those fields have long been flat or declining.”

In 1986, Congress created the H-2B visa as part of the Immigration Reform and Control Act. IRCA’s goal was to supplement the U.S. labor market through the H-2B when true shortages exist. But Republican and Democratic administrations abandoned the visa’s original intent. They granted H-2B visas to lifeguards, landscapers, hospitality workers, Vail ski instructors, football coaches and Cape Cod summer employees. Nobody can intelligently argue that ski resorts can’t find local instructors or that Cape Cod, surrounded by New England colleges, couldn’t find nearby workers. Giving skiing lessons in the Rocky Mountains or waiting tables on the Cape are a young person’s dream job.

The traditional solution to true job shortages, which employers refuse to adopt, is to pay higher wages, not import more pliable foreign-born workers.

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.

Globalist Push For More Worker Visas As Clock Ticks Globalist Push For More Worker Visas

USMCA Lacks Worker Protection For Americans

By Joe Guzzardi

A few years after President Bill Clinton signed the North American Free Trade Agreement, Rolling Stone sent investigative reporter Dan Baum out to pound the pavement to learn how the globalist-hyped deal was working on both sides of the border. When President Clinton promised during his 1993 signing that NAFTA, an agreement among the United States, Mexico and Canada, would create millions of domestic jobs and reduce illegal immigration within its first few years, skeptical blue-collar Americans couldn’t understand President Clinton’s tortured logic. Reform candidate Ross Perot accurately predicted that when Congress passed NAFTA, Americans would hear a “giant sucking sound” of companies fleeing the U.S. for Mexico where workers would be paid less and be without benefits.

Baum quickly learned that Perot had analyzed NAFTA’s fallout correctly. In his story, “The Man Who Took My Job,” Baum located David Quinn, a unionized Indiana auto parts worker who was one of 455 Breed Technologies employees to lose a job when the factory shut, then relocated to Mexico. Soon thereafter, more than 100 Indiana businesses followed Breed to Mexico – a great deal for cheap labor-addicted employers, but devastating to the U.S. domestic workforce.

By 2000, the $5.5 billion U.S. trade surplus with Mexico metastasized into a $16 billion deficit. Quinn and Baum traveled to Mexico where they eventually found “the man who took the [Indianan’s] job,” toiling longer work weeks for less money, few safety precautions and without union protections. During the next two decades, in part under Bush II, job losses continued to mount and deficits deepened; today the U.S. trade deficit with Mexico is $617 billi.

Bush 43 learned nothing from the NAFTA fiasco. Instead, he used the NAFTA template to create the World Trade Organization which opened up the U.S. market with China and led to more than a dozen bilateral trade treaties that have hampered America’s labor force. Congress is considering nearly 25 more agreements that may kill more U.S. jobs. Since 2001, the U.S. has lost 3.7 million jobs to China, and is currently running a $346 billion trade deficit with the Asian superpower.

Yet, Republican and Democratic-led administrations put trade first, above working Americans. President Obama’s 12-nation Trans-Pacific Partnership would have the opened borders to millions of foreign-born workers in every employment classification. Shortly after President Trump assumed office, he withdrew the U.S. from TPP. Because of COVID-19 concerns and the relatively short time period for businesses to adjust to its new regulations, the president’s NAFTA replacement, the U.S. Mexico Canada Agreement, may be delayed beyond its June 1 starting date. U.S. Trade Representative Robert Lighthizer expressed his concern: “Let us not make long-term decisions in the midst of a crisis.”

A COVID-19 delay might be a lucky break for U.S. workers. The Economic Policy Institute is apprehensive that the U.S. International Trade Commission’s projections about higher U.S. wages and increased employment may be based, much like NAFTA, on “questionable assumptions.” Specifically, EPI doubts whether U.S. wages will rise as a direct result of improved labor rights enforcement in Mexico, a conclusion that the ITE model doesn’t validate.

NAFTA and other trade deals have been a disaster for American workers; America needs a better approach that will rebalance trade and level the playing field for U.S. workers and other participating countries. Despite two decades of White House bloviating about American jobs and railing against income inequality, the average worker isn’t as important to leaders as easing corporate trade.

Unregulated global trade consequences have led to worldwide criminal-level labor exploitation. Corporations set up sweatshops in Vietnam, China, South Korea, India, Honduras and Taiwan, all sources of plentiful cheap labor that enhance bottom-line profits.

Like NAFTA before it, USMCA has no real American worker protections. USMCA’s language refers to “temporary” immigrant entry to “supply services.” But as the old adage goes, nothing is more permanent than a temporary immigrant, especially when he supplies labor “services.”

President Trump has talked pro-American about trade and immigration, but he’s fallen far short of delivering the goods he’s so often promised.


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.

USMCA Lacks Worker Protection For Americans