Category: Joe Guzzardi

McCarthy Misses The Big Immigration Picture On Impeachment

By Joe Guzzardi

For all of Kevin McCarthy’s bluster about his impeachment inquiry into President Joe Biden’s corrupt finances, skeptics have deep doubts about the House Speaker’s priorities.

The Biden family’s financial double-dealing is small potatoes compared to the nation’s lost sovereignty that the administration’s open border agenda promotes. While the evidence that Oversight Committee Chair James Comer uncovered reveals a well-established pattern of the Biden family’s dubious dealings, McCarthy has said little about the more compelling border disaster.

Biden’s blatant refusal to enforce even to the minimum extent the nation’s immigration laws is easily proven. This flagrant abdication of duty to enforce laws for the security and safety of U.S. citizens and sovereignty of the country represents a series of impeachable offenses. McCarthy, Comer, House Judiciary Committee Chairman Jim Jordan, et al, don’t have to subpoena bank records, review the 5,400 emails that Biden wrote under his pseudonyms Robert Peters, Robin Ware and JRB Ware. House leadership simply has to visit the border to see that Biden has aided, abetted, facilitated, orchestrated and promoted illegal immigration, crimes for which he should be removed from office.

The latest Customs and Border Protection (CBP) stats are shocking, even for people who follow invasion data regularly. A total of 35,000 illegal aliens entered the U.S. for the weekend beginning Friday, September 15 and ending Monday, September 18, and CBP processed most of them. More accurately, CBP released 35,000 unvetted aliens into the interior. Previous surges included convicted criminals and possible terrorists on the FBI watch list.

In this unending human flow across the border, thanks to the Biden administration, consider also the doomed migrants who never reach their intended destinations. Their deaths are true human tragedies. The Wall Street Journal reported in March that in FY 2022 U.S. authorities discovered 890 bodies at the Southwest border, while hundreds of migrants are considered missing. Speculation is that somewhere in the border’s broad, rugged terrain, thousands more corpses lie undiscovered.

Human trafficking is a $150 billion industry, and traffickers have taken advantage of Biden’s inexcusable refusal to secure the homeland against foreign invaders who deliver deadly amounts of fentanyl and transport minors predestined for the sex trade or used and mistreated as underage labor. Federal code states that one single person found guilty of a trafficking violation will face a lengthy prison term, “potentially including life imprisonment for conduct involving actual or attempted killing, kidnapping, or aggravated sexual abuse.”

Taken on whole, the administration has, with Biden’s blessing, permitted one immigration crime after another. While Biden’s financial chicanery should lead to jail time, enriching of family won’t destroy the nation. But Biden’s open borders policy has the gravest of consequences – an end to sovereign America.

In a preview of future border-caused fiscal calamities to come for Chicago, Washington, D.C., San Francisco and other municipalities, Biden has brought New York City to its knees. Mayor Eric Adams is begging for a financial bailout to help subsidize the 110,000 migrants who have arrived in the Big Apple since April 2022. Evaluating his plight, Adams, speaking the truest words he’ll ever utter, said: “Never in my life have I had a problem that I did not see an ending to. I don’t see an ending to this. This issue will destroy New York City.”

Adams has correctly summed up the migrant invasion: no ending is in sight for New York or the nation. To offset the city’s projected cost of $12 billion to support aliens, some progressive Democrats propose a 5 percent state tax, the so-called “migrant tax.”

The GOP’s pre-2022 Election Day “Commitment to America” failed to deliver on lofty promises, including a pledge to prevent illegal crossings, stop cartel trafficking, end catch-and-release loopholes and require legal status to get a job. Keeping score, that’s zero for four, a .000 average. Such an across-the-board GOP failure diminishes confidence in the party and puts Speaker McCarthy on shaky ground when he’s trying to sell his point of view, in this case that Biden’s financial hanky-panky is more important than vanished borders.

If voters were asked which of the two crimes they consider more egregious, Biden’s open borders – the consequences of which are ruining their communities – or the money laundering and influence peddling, the result would be a landslide. The outcome: Impeach Biden now before he can do more harm to American sovereignty.

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

McCarthy Misses The Big Immigration Picture On Impeachment

The Disease That Killed Roger Maris; September Is Lymphoma Awarness Month

By Joe Guzzardi

During the waning weeks of September 1961, New York Yankees right fielder Roger Maris pulled away from teammate Mickey Mantle in the summer-long race to win the American League home run title.

The tension surrounding their pursuit to break Babe Ruth’s 60 homers in a single season record intensified when Commissioner Ford Frick decreed that to be recognized as legitimate, the M&M boys would have to hit number 61 within 154 games, the season’s length during the Big Bam’s career. But after 154 games, to the delight of his many detractors who thought Maris a colorless, unworthy journeyman who never even hit .300, he had only 59 round-trippers. Number 61 came on October 1 in the season’s finale at Yankee Stadium. 

A befuddled, irked Maris later asked: “When they say 154 games, which 154 games are they talking about? The first 154, the middle 154, the last 154? If it’s the first, then I’d still have tied Ruth, because I didn’t hit my first homer until the 11th game. If it was the last 154 or the middle 154, then I’d have broken it anyway.”

Maris comes to mind because September is designated Leukemia and Lymphoma Awareness Month by the American Cancer Society. At age 51, the lymphoma scourge took Maris’ life.

Despite setting a new single-season home run record, and winning two back-to-back Most Valuable Player awards, Maris’ six-year tenure with the Yankees from 1960 to 1966 was doomed. The press was unrelentingly critical, and its pro-Ruth and pro-Mantle stories, coupled with its anti-Maris news, influenced fans who showered boos on the player Yankee managers Casey Stengel and Ralph Houk admired for his five-tool skills. Roger could, insisted the two World Series’ champion managers, hit, hit for power, run, field and throw. Looking back on his 1961 home run season, Maris said that “it wasn’t worth the aggravation. I had so many people on my tail. People hated me for breaking Ruth’s record – especially the press.”

Maris’ critics could not have misjudged his character more completely. In his book “You’re Missin’ a Great Game,” Hall of Fame manager Whitey Herzog wrote about the winter of 1961 to 62 when he was building with his own hands a home in Kansas City. Maris, just coming off two consecutive MVPs seasons, including one in which he was the most famous man in the sports world, volunteered to help. Every frigid morning, at 7:30 sharp, Maris reported to work, packing his lunch pail, ready to pound nails.

As a sidebar to the then-raging debate about whether Ruth or Maris should be designated as the true home run king, the Society for American Baseball Research historian Brian Marshall calculated that the variable between Ruth’s 1927 record and Maris’ in 1961 isn’t the additional eight games played but the batters’ total plate appearances. Marshall’s conclusion: it may appear to be a “no-brainer that Maris would have more opportunity [he played more games] to accomplish his feat than Ruth did to accomplish his. The fact is that Maris actually had less opportunity on a per game basis [fewer plate appearances.]”

In December 1966, the ingrate Yankees who insisted Roger play while injured, essentially gave Maris away to the St. Louis Cardinals in exchange for third baseman Charlie Smith. In his two years with the Yankees, 1967 to 1968, Smith hit .224. Maris, on the other hand, led the Cardinals to two National League pennants during the same period.

Because of Maris’ hostile relationship with the Yankees and its fans, and despite new owner George Steinbrenner’s pleading, the home run king boycotted the Old Timers’ Games for a decade. Then, in 1978, without advance notice, Maris appeared to help raise the Yankees’ 1977 American league pennant. Introduced by Mantle, Maris received an unexpectedly warm reception.

Maris’ post-retirement years found him hanging out with old Yankees and Cardinals friends, and successfully managing a central Florida Anheuser-Busch distributorship, a gift from Cardinals owner Gussie Busch. Around Thanksgiving 1983, Maris began to suffer from headaches which continued into early 1984. At first, Maris ignored them. But, when he experienced intermittent difficulty breathing and developed numerous lumps over his body, he sought medical attention. Maris had lymphoma. His original diagnosis offered hope for a full recovery. After immediately beginning chemotherapy, Maris was optimistic. As the cancer progressed, however, Maris to no avail visited cancer specialists at New York’s Mt. Sinai Hospital and Houston’s Anderson Hospital and Tumor Institute. On December 14, 1985, Maris passed.

After Maris’ funeral in Fargo, North Dakota, St. Patrick’s Cathedral held a memorial service two days before Christmas. At the service’s end, Cardinal John Joseph O’Connor, looking at Maris’ grandchildren, said:

“In something somewhat unusual for this great cathedral, I’m going to ask those in attendance to give us one last burst of applause for your grandfather so that you can get some understanding about how New York truly felt about him, and get some idea of the cheers that used to fill the great Yankee Stadium.”

With that, everyone, including attendee President Richard Nixon, began to applaud, politely at first. Then, on their feet and in tears, loud chants of “RO-GER, RO-GER” filled St. Patrick’s. A long-overdue and fitting tribute to Maris, an outstanding but under-appreciated baseball hero, had finally been paid in full.

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

The Disease That Killed Roger Maris; September Is Lymphoma Awarness Month The Disease That Killed Roger Maris; September Is Lymphoma Awarness Month

GOP Has Rare Opportunity to Secure Border

By Joe Guzzardi

Congress is back from its August recess, the weeks-long period away from its always-contentious, mostly unproductive business. The House and the Senate have less than three weeks until the Sep. 30 deadline to pass a federal budget. On Oct. 1, a new fiscal year begins. If lawmakers cannot push through 11 out of 12 separate spending bills, after passing just one before they left Washington, the nation will face a government shutdown.

With time short for congressional action, the more likely outcome, albeit a temporary one, is that lawmakers could pass a Continuing Resolution which would avert a shutdown and fund the government at its current levels until a mutually agreed upon date.

Some in the GOP caucus view shutdown threats, which would adversely affect only a small percentage of the population, as foolish saber-rattling. They suggest that a more urgent problem than a government services’ pause is the nation’s $2 trillion deficit and $33 trillion national debt. Writing in “City Journal,” Manhattan Institute Senior Fellow Nicole Gelinas in her article, “The Permanent Crisis Economy,” observed:

“… (T)hrough the Obama, Trump, and Biden administrations, Congress has approved record levels of deficit spending, paid not through tax collections but via Treasury debt. In 2007, the government owed $8.6 trillion in today’s dollars. As of the end of 2022, it owed more than triple that, $26.9 trillion, including $4.8 trillion in pandemic-era borrowing. Much of this was printed by the Fed: its balance sheet went from $1.3 trillion just before the financial crisis to a high of $8.9 trillion in 2022, as it conjured zeros on computer screens to buy Treasury debt, thus financing federal deficits.”

While Republicans are intent on cutting spending, a Continuing Resolution (CR) would also provide Congress with an opportunity to rein in the raging, unlawful border crisis, which is overwhelming major cities including New York, Chicago, Philadelphia and Denver, as well as thousands of smaller towns. New York Mayor Eric Adams declared that the illegal alien surge into his city has the potential to destroy it. Adams’ prediction is dramatic, but spot on. The city, inconveniencing and displacing thousands of New York taxpayers who fund the invasion, is housing about 60,000 aliens in 200 sites, including more than 140 hotels.

At a press conference, the mayor did the math for his incredulous audience: “For each family seeking asylum through the city’s care, we spend an average of $383 per night to provide shelter, food, medical care and social services. With more than 57,300 individuals currently in our care, on an average night, it amounts to $9.8 million a day, almost $300 million a month, and nearly $3.6 billion a year.” Adams ominously added that these costs represent the floor, not the ceiling of potentially higher costs. New York’s Democratic congressional caucus that includes the powerful Sen. Majority leader Chuck Schumer, Sen. Kirsten Gillibrand and House Minority Leader Hakeem Jeffries have shown zero interest in border enforcement which would ease the ever-mounting pressure on Adams. Congressional Democrats to Adams: “Good luck. You’re on your own.”

For persons serious about ending the border crisis, now is the hour to use the upcoming spending battle to create meaningful border security and pro-American immigration reform. In May, the House passed H.R. 2, the Secure Border Act of 2023, which would end many of the immigration abuses that global migrants have unsurprisingly taken advantage of and that the Biden administration has fully encouraged.

Among many other positives, the bill would close asylum loopholes – the invasion’s main driver – and would mandate E-Verify which would protect American jobs. Other enforcement features include ending catch-and-release and parole abuse, while deporting visa overstays and tightening lax family unit and unaccompanied minors’ entry guidelines. H.R. 2’s most significant provisions, restoring credibility to asylum petitions and cutting the jobs’ magnet through E-Verify, would end the pull enticement that lures migrants.

The House, which holds the purse strings of Congress, has an opportunity to end the border insanity if it attaches H.R. 2 to the must-pass CR. “If something cannot go on forever, it will stop,” said Herbert Stein, Chairman of the Council of Economic Advisors under Presidents Richard Nixon and Gerald Ford. The border calamity has already lasted more than two years, way too long. Assuming the GOP can get its act together, H.R. 2 can be the key to ending the sovereignty-destroying invasion.

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

GOP Has Rare Opportunity to Secure Border

Winningest Jewish Pitcher Ken Holtzman, A Rosh Hashana Baseball Story

By Joe Guzzardi

When the Chicago Cubs called up Ken Holtzman from the Rookie Pioneer League in 1965, some within the organization predicted that the lefty flamethrower would be the next Sandy Koufax. Both were tall, lean, Jewish flamethrowers.

Holtzman had an outstanding 17-year-long career that included two stints with the Cubs, and one go-around each with the Oakland Athletics, the Baltimore Orioles and the New York Yankees. During his time on the slab with the A’s, Holtzman peaked. From 1972 through 1975, Holtzman won 19, 21, 18 and 19 games. In the World Series, when the chips were down, Holtzman excelled on the mound and with the lumber. Against the Hall of Fame-stacked, powerful Cincinnati Reds — Pete Rose, Johnny Bench, Joe Morgan and Tony Perez — Holtzman won the 1972 World Series opener, and would eventually record a 4–1, 2.55 ERA during the five fall classics he participated in. As if to mock the as-yet-unheard-of universal designated hitter, Holtzman had a career World Series .333 batting average that included two doubles.

Upon joining the Cubs, Holtzman soon became the rotations go-to guy. In 1966, in his first-ever major league start against the Los Angeles Dodgers’ Don Drysdale, Holtzman earned a 2–0 victory. One highlight that year was a late-season matchup between Holtzman and his boyhood idol, and the hurler he had been compared to, Koufax. The matchup took place at Wrigley Field on Sept. 25. The 24th was Yom Kippur, and neither Holtzman nor Koufax was in uniform; both were observing the Jewish Holy Day.

The Cubs scored two runs in the first inning against Koufax, all the support Holtzman needed. He entered the ninth inning with a no-hitter before giving up two harmless singles. Holtzman got the complete-game 2–0 win, striking out eight. In 1969, Holtzman notched his first no-hitter, 2–0 against the Atlanta Braves, and 318-game winner-to-be Joe Niekro. Holtzman’s masterpiece included a peculiar footnote — he didn’t strike out a single batter. Since 1901, a no-hitter without a strike out had happened only four times. With today’s 100-pitch limit, the baseball oddity will never happen again. Holtzman pitched his second no-hitter against the Reds in 1971.

After Cubs manager Leo Durocher directed anti-Semitic slurs at Holtzman, the pitcher demanded a trade, a fortuitous development for the lefty. In exchange for outstanding Cubs outfielder Rick Monday, an Arizona State All-American, Holtzman went to the A’s, a team on the cusp of winning three consecutive World Series championships. One of Holtzman’s new teammates was Mike Epstein, a one-time University of California fullback and defensive tackle. The irreverent, bombastic A’s nicknamed Holtzman and Epstein, “Jew” and “Superjew.” Neither took offense at the crude clubhouse labels.

On Sept. 5, 1972, during an off day in Chicago, when news reached Holtzman that Palestinian terrorists took 11 Israeli Olympic athletes hostage, and killed two, he sought out Epstein. They walked the streets, comforting each other, wondering what the Israelis had done to precipitate such hate, and why the Munich Massacre happened. Explaining their long walk on Chicago’s empty streets, Epstein who had once drawn the Star of David on his mitt, said to a Pittsburgh Press reporter: “I put on tefillin at different shuls in different cities. I was Bar Mitzvahed. I can read Hebrew. I’m a Jew.” The next day, in remembrance of the deceased, Holtzman and Epstein donned black arm bands on their jerseys’ sleeves, and kept them on through the playoffs. Remembered Epstein: “It was an emotional period. I’m glad we did something.”

After Epstein went hitless in the 1972 World Series, A’s owner Charles O. Finley dumped him and his 26 home runs to the Texas Rangers. Two years later, Epstein ended his nine-year career with the California Angels where he hit .206. Out of baseball, he began a successful batting school on the West Coast. Now retired, Epstein is 80.

Holtzman never achieved the Koufax-like Hall of Fame success that some had predicted for him. But he was elected to the 1972 and 1973 American League All-Star games. Holtzman finished his career with a record of 174–150, and a 3.49 ERA. He won nine more games in his career than Sandy Koufax’s 165 total which made Holtzman history’s winningest Jewish pitcher. In 2007, Holtzman briefly returned to baseball when he managed the Israel Baseball League’s Petach Tikva Pioneers. His experience with the league was an unhappy one, and he left the team before the season ended. Holtzman, now 77, is retired and lives outside St. Louis, his birthplace.

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

Winningest Jewish Pitcher Ken Holtzman, A Rosh Hashana Baseball Story

Staten Islanders Protest Mayor And Invasion

By Joe Guzzardi

Last October, Staten Island Borough President Vito Fossella, referring to the migrant rush, said that the crisis is “spinning out of control.” A few days later, New York City Mayor Eric Adams acknowledged that the steady migrant stream into the city’s five boroughs represented “a state of emergency.”

Objecting to Adams’ relocating migrants originally bussed to Manhattan to the four other boroughs, Fossella demanded to know why the people of Staten Island are forced to deal with an issue that they did not create, and they don’t want in their backyards, a question that’s resonated in many major cities unsuccessfully trying to cope with thousands of needy asylum seekers.

Almost a year has passed since Fossella pleaded for common sense on a federal issue that requires a federal solution. Instead, the feds haven’t lifted a finger to stop migrant entry at the border, the obvious first step toward a solution. As Fossella predicted, Staten Island continues to face an ongoing crisis that stems directly from excessive federal government demands to provide for migrants. Sometimes referred to as New York’s “forgotten borough,” residents are fed up.

In recent weeks, four large-scale protests have been formed to rail against the conversion of the former St. John Villa Academy into a 300-bed facility to house and feed migrants. Hundreds of protestors held signs that objected to unvetted migrants being relocated in their community. Other signs expressed safety concerns, a reasonable worry. Legal wrangling about using the former school as migrant shelter has been ongoing. In late August, Staten Island Supreme Court Judge Wayne Ozzi temporarily banned housing migrants at the former school. But within a few hours, Brooklyn Supreme Court Appellate Division Justice Carl Landicino overturned Judge Ozzi’s decision.

Curtis Sliwa, former NYC mayoral candidate, Guardian Angels’ founder and staunch supporter of besieged Staten Island residents, promised to organize closures of the Verrazzano-Narrows Bridge, the Goethals Bridge, the Bayonne Bridge and the Outerbridge Crossing which would cut off access to Staten Island from vehicles transporting aliens from Manhattan. Sliwa has pledged to run against Adams again in 2025 when conditions might be favorable for him. In 2021, only 20.5 percent of 5.6 million registered voters turned out in the mayoral election. Adams won 67 percent of the vote, and Sliwa won 27 percent. Assuming anger over Adams’ horrible management of the migrant increases, the only direction it can head, Sliwa could surprise.

Adams blames everyone but himself for New York’s steady erosion. At his September press conference, Adams admitted that the migrant problem will “destroy” New York, ominously adding that he doesn’t “see an ending to this.” Then, Adams correctly blamed President Biden, and then, preposterously, condemned Texas Gov. Greg Abbott, calling him “a madman.” Since Biden was installed in the White House, he has opened the U.S. borders to more than 8 million illegal aliens. Since 2022, Texas has bussed a piddling 13,000 of them to New York City, where leadership there years ago avowed its “right to shelter.”

Directly under Adams’ nose, a migrant crime wave is well underway. At the Roosevelt Hotel, a former landmark built in 1922 to honor President Teddy Roosevelt, but today a hellhole where migrants live, police have arrested 41 aliens, most for domestic violence, assault and child endangerment. District Attorney Alvin Bragg refuses to prosecute.

Protests like Staten Island’s, and previous ones in Chicago, Massachusetts and other places nationwide, are just the beginning. Voters don’t want an invasion, and they certainly don’t want to subsidize one. Winter months are coming, and for migrants, sleeping on the street will be less of an option. Biden has 15 more months in office, hundreds of thousands more migrants are on the way.

Time for Adams, and other migrant-inundated state and city officials, to shut down the invasion and cancel sanctuary status, which never appeared on an official public ballot to begin with! Take a page from Sliwa’s game plan; keep aliens out before conditions get worse than they already are.

Joe Guzzardi is a Project for Immigration Reform analyst. Contact him at jguzzardi@ifspp.org.

Staten Islanders Protest Mayor And Invasion

High-Earning Californians Moving Out

By Joe Guzzardi

After decades of dramatic population increases, California’s residency totals have stabilized, although not in the manner that advocates had hoped for. Radical policies embraced in Sacramento, and by other major municipalities including Los Angeles and San Francisco, have accelerated residents’ departure. Those still stuck behind are left to cope with rising crime, homelessness and governance’s indifference to taxpayers’ legitimate grievances.

Under Gov. Gavin Newsom’s woke, misguided leadership, district attorneys disinclined to prosecute have passively looked on as California’s violent crime rate increased by 6 percent, from 2020 to 2021. During the same period, aggravated assaults jumped by 8.9 percent, and homicides and rape increased by 7.7 percent and 7.9 percent, respectively.

Criminals are so fearless and authorities so inert that the media has coined a new phrase to describe hoodlums’ brazen behavior. “Smash-and-grab” refers to mobs of hooded thieves that break into upscale department stores, smash display cases and grab expensive merchandise for resale on street corners or on the Internet. Homelessness, a problem that Newsom, tongue-in-cheek, said he “owns,” is a major headache for California’s big city dwellers.

California was once a prime destination for individuals who wanted to bask in the Golden State’s many advantages – weather, good middle-class jobs and a thriving economy. Today, job-seekers are headed elsewhere. From 1900 through 1990, California’s population increased 38 percent on average per decade. In 1900, California’s population was 1.5 million; in 1990, the total population was 30 million, and just a tick below 40 million in 2023. California’s Department of Finance, the state’s official demographer, noted that in its most recent count, 46 of the state’s 58 counties, including the three most populous – Los Angeles, San Diego and Orange – lost population.

Californians’ exodus to other states marks the beginning of residents’ flight away from what they increasingly view as a dysfunctional place to live. The American Community Survey found that, from 2010 through 2021, about 7.7 million people moved from California to other states, while only 5.8 million people moved to California from other parts of the country. The California Department of Finance estimates that the state has lost residents to other states every year since 2000. Over the past few years, the movement out of the state has accelerated with a record net outflow of 407,000 from July 2021 to July 2022.

In 2021, more than 360,000 people left California to relocate in Texas, Arizona and Washington. Some even moved to Mexico to avoid the 2021 to 2022 inflation surge, as Mexico is more affordable to live in than many U.S. destinations. Between April 2020 and July 2022, the state’s population dropped by more than 500,000 people, a trend demographers refer to as net interstate migration. Among the departing Californians are young adults who have earned a bachelor’s degree or higher, a significant trend because historically the Golden State was a destination for aspiring college-educated persons at the outset of their careers. Also abandoning California in large numbers are high-income households, defined as earning incomes of $137,500 or more for a family of four.

If interstate migration patterns continue, California could experience sustained population losses for years to come. Eventually, assuming the migration pattern continues, California will be transformed from vibrant and productive to government benefit-dependent.

Because of the state’s high taxes and complex regulatory environment, businesses also left the state. Between 2020 and 2023, about 65 corporations with 100 or more employees left California. Many companies are household names like McAfee, Oracle, Chevron, Charles Schwab and Tesla.

Incoming population – of which the aggregate total offsets the outgoing population – is in large part illegal immigrants, a variable that the open Southwest border has exacerbated. Newsom, in an interview with ABC News, said that in the post-Title 42 era, the Biden administration is sending “more and more” migrants to California which could, in his word, “break” the state.

California is already broke; its $31.5 million budget deficit bodes poorly for residents who depend on the state for child care, transportation and other publicly funded services, areas targeted for deep cuts. The state budget is highly dependent on income taxes paid by its highest earners – people who have fled – and is therefore subject to the ebbs and flows of capital gains from investments and the hefty bonuses paid to executives.

Incredibly, against the backdrop of Californians voting with their feet, and exiting in droves, Newsom’s name is bandied about as a possible 2024 presidential candidate should Biden either be forced to retire or be dumped. Other scenarios are possible. Boot Vice President Kamala Harris off the 2024 ticket, replace her with Newsom, and in a smoke-filled backroom prearranged deal, Biden retires shortly after Inauguration Day. In February 2025, Gavin Newsom, having never campaigned or received a single vote, would become the U.S. president.

On the surface, such a bizarre set-up appears farfetched. But in today’s political climate, anything goes – absolutely anything – including elevating to the White House a governor who has spawned California’s deep and potentially irreversible decline.

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Joe Guzzardi is a Project for Immigration Reform analyst. Contact him at jguzzardi@ifspp.org.

High-Earning Californians Moving Out

High-Earning Californians Moving Out

DOJ SpaceX Suit Is Labor Day Travesty

By Joe Guzzardi

President Biden’s Justice Department (DOJ) has filed a lawsuit against SpaceX, the Elon Musk-founded company. In its 13-page complaint, DOJ alleges that SpaceX “discriminated against asylees and refugees throughout its hiring process, including during recruiting, screening, and selection, in violation of the Immigration and Nationality Act.” The case’s outcome will be a landmark in corporate, immigration and labor law.

DOJ contends that from September 2018 to May 2022 the privately owned space company discouraged asylees and refugees from applying for positions “by wrongly stating that SpaceX can only hire U.S. citizens and lawful permanent residents.” DOJ further argues that Space X’s illegal hiring policies were “routine, widespread, and longstanding, and harmed asylees and refugees.”

For its part, SpaceX countered that because the company designs, manufacturers and launches advanced rockets and spacecraft, it can only hire U.S. citizens and lawful permanent residents, pursuant to U.S. laws and regulations. A complex series of federal laws and regulations govern SpaceX and its competitors. Known as “Export Controls,” the regulations are comprised of the ITAR (International Traffic in Arms Regulations) and EAR (Export Administration Regulations) and collectively administered by the Departments of Commerce, State and Treasury. Export Controls are “designed to prevent the spread of sensitive technologies to foreign actors that could threaten U.S. interests... [These] controlled technologies include defense articles, e.g., missiles, defense services, e.g., integration of a spacecraft onto a launcher, and dual-use items, e.g., commercial spacecraft and components.”

“Foreign actors that could threaten U.S. interests” deserves further analysis. Bona fide asylum seekers who filed an Application for Asylum, Form I-589, but have not received approval within 180 days, qualify for a work permit, and employment despite potentially being in the U.S. illegally. Refugees admitted legally must apply for permanent residency within a year of arrival or are subject to deportation, but are immediately employable.

Through a non-lawyer’s eyes, Musk and his SpaceX legal team appear to have the stronger hand. In Musk’s defense and in support of hiring citizens only, recent asylees and refugees include foreign nationals from Syria, Afghanistan, Russia, Cuba, Iraq, Somalia and Iran, active or potential U.S. enemies. Furthermore, SpaceX contends it can’t hire non-U.S. citizens because it must comply with the above-referenced export control restrictions.

Musk also cited a current Executive Order 11935, and called upon the DOJ to sue itself for its seemingly, in view of its suit against SpaceX, discriminatory hiring practices. As per the EO, “only United States citizens and nationals” can be hired for federal jobs. As an example of the feds discrimination against SpaceX, a post on X, formerly known as Twitter, cited a tweet by economist George Mason University economics professor Alex Tabarrok, who pointed out that the job requirements for the federal Bureau of Prisons specify “U.S. citizenship is required.” Musk concluded, correctly, that DOJ’s action is “yet another case of weaponization of the DOJ for political purposes.”

The most foreboding challenge SpaceX faces is the Biden administration’s contemptible disregard for federal law. The administration is particularly willing and eager to break immigration law. For nearly two years, Biden and his corrupt Department of Homeland Security Secretary Alejandro Mayorkas have unconstitutionally sanctioned granting parole, which includes work permission, to thousands of unvetted worldwide migrants.

In 1952, Congress granted the Executive Branch parole authority, which “should be surrounded with strict limitations … in emergency cases, such as the case of an alien who requires immediate medical attention … and a witness or for purposes of prosecution.” Instead of obeying congressionally passed law – the absolute minimum Americans should expect from their president – Biden has paroled en masse unvetted aliens who are inadmissible under any immigration category.

The sad but unsurprising truth is that, given what’s known about Biden and his anti-American agenda, DOJ is suing SpaceX because Musk’s company wants to hire U.S. citizens.

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

DOJ SpaceX Suit Is Labor Day Travesty

First GOP Debate ZZZZZ

By Joe Guzzardi

Life is short. Our time on Earth is far too brief to waste two hours listening to eight GOP presidential hopefuls give rote answers to puffball questions. But as a journalist on assignment, I toughed out the debate – the wrong word, by the way, forum is more accurate.

Yes, I stayed awake and listened to queries that candidates had been asked and had responded to multiple times before. If I’m giving Fox News, Martha MacCallum, Bret Baier and eight candidates my ear for 120 minutes, I want insight into their opinions on important, but less understood subjects, and not a rehash of what’s been opined on endlessly.

The debate was doomed to fizzle from the get-go. First, the electorate has no idea if the leading GOP presidential candidate, President Donald Trump, will be campaigning from a jail cell. Second, no one knows if the Democratic machine will put the skids to the incumbent, Joe Biden, who has vowed not to debate, and probably won’t campaign. Any candidate who compares the near-loss of his cat and his Corvette in a kitchen flare-up nearly two decades ago to 115 Lahaina dead, including infants, and more than 388 unaccounted for two weeks after the Maui fires, is not a guy Democrats should consider endorsing again. Third, the Iowa caucuses will be held on January 15, 2024, and the Republican National Committee’s convention is set for July 15-18. Both dates are, in the political world, eternities away.

The second primary debate is September 27, plenty of time for the moderators to formulate questions that will make the candidates squirm – put them on the spot! Viewers learned nothing from the first debate. All eight candidates are for stronger borders – big surprise! Every Republican candidate in recent history, including infamously pro-immigration Sen. John McCain, campaigned on enforcement – I’ll “complete the danged fence.”

The public deserves to know more about immigration’s harmful fine print. The moderators should ask about birthright citizenship, a policy abandoned in most Western countries because of its absurdity. Granting priceless U.S. citizenship to a child whose mother entered the U.S. on a fraudulent tourist visa for the sole purpose of having a newborn delivered at a U.S. hospital while being catered to pre-pregnancy and post-delivery at a hotel designed to pamper wealthy, deceitful foreign nationals is ridiculous.

Absurd too is citizenship for children born to illegal alien mothers. Many pregnant foreign nationals have crossed into the U.S. from the Southern border during Biden’s open border era, and will soon be giving birth to brand new American citizens. Congress could and should pass a bill to amend the Immigration and Nationality Act to grant citizenship only to a person born in the U.S. to parents, at least one of whom is: (1) a U.S. citizen; (2) a lawful permanent resident alien who resides in the U.S.; or (3) an alien performing active service in the U.S. Armed Forces.

On a related subject, let’s hear the candidates’ opinions about chain migration, a subject too few Americans understand. Every immigrant who enters as part of the chain is chosen by other immigrants, not by the federal government. Chain immigrants come regardless of their skills, or lack of skills, and how they might affect the labor pool or Americans’ wages who compete in the same job categories, and regardless of how they might drive the booming U.S. population growth that government data show is the primary cause of the destruction of natural habitat and farmland annually. A quarter of a million lifetime work permits are given to foreign citizens each year through chain migration that probably doesn’t serve the national interest.

Birthright citizenship and chain migration affect every American. The two policies drive population growth which in turn expands the labor market; adds to overcrowded cities, schools, hospitals and roads; and reduces citizens’ quality of life. If the debate’s purpose were to inform voters, Fox News gets an F. Moderators should ask tougher questions so that the electorate can make informed choices at the polling booth.

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

Red Carpet For Afghanistan, Cold Shoulder for Maui

By Joe Guzzardi

Survivors of the deadly fires in Maui are being offered a $700-per-household payment by FEMA (the Federal Emergency Management Agency) and temporary shelter.

But in Maui, $700 doesn’t go far. Estimated monthly living costs for a family of four are $7,203. The token $700 represents less than 10 percent of a family’s living costs, an insult to the suffering residents who have, in some cases, lost everything that they own. Public outcry over the First Family’s perceived indifference has more or less forced Biden and his wife Jill to visit Maui.

But for Afghanistan and the Ukraine, the Biden administration can’t shell out money fast enough, with no limit to its wasteful ways. In early August, Biden asked Congress for about $40 billion in new spending to support the efforts of the Ukraine to beat back invading Russia. In its letter to lawmakers, the White House Office of Management and Budget asked for $13 billion in new military aid and $8.5 billion in additional economic, humanitarian and security assistance for Ukraine and other war-impacted countries.

The White House’s funding request also includes other forms of assistance for Ukraine, including more than $12 billion for disaster relief and for other emergency domestic funds, like hurricanes, as well as tens of millions of dollars to boost pay for firefighters battling the wildfires that have hit many parts of the country. In Biden’s mind, wildfires in Ukraine are a more urgent concern than the Maui wildfires that destroyed the town of Lahaina and took the lives of 114 people, with 1,000 missing, at the time of this writing.

In total, the U.S. has sent more than $100 billion to Ukraine. Displacing millions of people, the 18-month-old proxy war has left a reported 500,000 dead or injured. And there is no end in sight. Biden said that the U.S. will remain committed for “as long as it takes,” which means that taxpayers will continue to fund a war in which they have no stake.

In Afghanistan, the U.S. is supporting the Taliban-controlled government with more than $2.35 billion since the botched 2021 withdrawal. The Special Inspector General for Afghan Reconstruction, John Sopko, admitted in his April report to the House Oversight Committee of Congress that he “cannot assure this committee or the American taxpayer we are not currently funding the Taliban.” Further, he said that the Biden administration has blocked any and all investigative efforts as to whether American dollars sustain the Taliban or “other nefarious groups” like ISIS.

While neglecting the home front, and funding corrupt foreign countries, Biden also has provided for them on U.S. soil. Programs such as “Uniting for Ukraine” and “Operation Allies Welcome” have made available resettlement benefits and parole, an immigration status that includes work permission, to many thousands of foreigners. Additionally, more than 70,000 Ukrainians have not arrived via Biden’s official program but rather have come illegally through the Southwest border. Thousands of Afghans have been successfully resettled since America’s hasty and ill-conceived Afghanistan withdrawal.

Afghan and Ukrainian nationals have been granted Temporary Protected Status (TPS) which officially protects them from removal even though such an action would be unlikely under all but the most extraordinary circumstances. TPS also includes employment authorization. With that, program recipients can compete with citizens or other legal immigrants for jobs.

The Biden administration’s multi-billion-dollar outlay to Ukraine and Afghanistan and its red-carpet acceptance of those countries’ nationals, with minimal vetting, proves that no matter how dire conditions may be for U.S. citizens, e.g., Hawaiians, foreign governments receive priority, despite their crooked backgrounds.

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