Category: Guest Authors

Harris Would Proudly Continue Unvetted Immigration

By Joe Guzzardi

When U.S. Rep. Tony Gonzales (R-Texas) released to media outlets Immigration and Custom Enforcement’s shocking statistics about convicted illegal alien criminals that include murderers and rapists set free into the interior, the damning data’s publication coincided exactly with Vice-President Kamala Harris’ September 27 photo-op at the border. The two-term representative received the information from ICE Deputy Director Patrick Lechleitner who was responding to a letter Gonzales sent to President Joe Biden and Department of Homeland Security Secretary Alejandro Mayorkas that expressed his concern about at-risk Americans who live in sanctuary cites. Gonzales also requested detailed information about the illegal immigrants on ICE’s docket to learn how many criminals are being released into the nation’s communities. After reading the statistics that Lechleitner included in his reply, Gonzales said that ICE’s findings are “beyond disturbing” and he vowed to fund the agency with sufficient resources to remove criminal illegal immigrants. Gonzales also demanded that Biden and Harris clean up “the mess their failed policies have created.”

“Beyond disturbing” is the year’s greatest understatement. As of July 21, 2024, there were 662,566 illegal aliens with criminal histories on ICE’s national docket including 13,099 criminally convicted murders. Gonzales, a U.S. Navy veteran, and Master Chief who was deployed to Iraq and Afghanistan, represents Texas’ 23rd district which includes more than eight hundred miles along the U.S./Mexico border. Gonzales’ congressional voting record reflects solid grades on legislation that strengthens border security and interior immigration law enforcement. Gonzales recently secured over $12 million in federal grant funding through Operation Stonegarden for 17 Texas counties and two American Indian tribes. Operation Stonegarden, Gonzales explained, helps front line Border Patrol agents curtail cartel activity and related border security efforts.

Meanwhile down in Douglas County, Arizona, just as Gonzales released the gruesome ICE statistics, Harris connected with border patrol agents and local law enforcement officials. Cochise County Sheriff Mark Dannels told reporters that his frustration has mounted steadily during the three and a half years since Harris’ border czar appointment. Over the last 31 months, Dannels’ office jailed 3,762 illegal immigrants for border-related crimes that cost his county $12.5 million. Dannels made multiple efforts to meet with Biden and Harris, but they always rebuffed him.

Dannels has seen heat-related desert deaths and other tragedies, but the White House and Congress has “intellectually turned [their] backs on us. That’s frustrating to me.” Harris, for the umpteenth time, chided her opponent Donald Trump for allegedly scotching the so-called bipartisan border bill that President Joe Biden and other prominent Democrats have falsely claimed would solve the border crisis. Arizona, the only battleground state that borders Mexico, contended with a record influx of asylum seekers last year. Harris pledged to, if elected, revive the bipartisan border bill “and proudly sign it into law.” On multiple other occasions and on her website, Harris has pledged to offer “a pathway to citizenship” to millions of illegal aliens, an amnesty that Americans have, for decades, rejected.

Voters beware! The failed bipartisan bill that Harris praises would have, among its other flaws, codified continued mass immigration and done nothing to end parole abuse or scrap the illegal CBP-One app. The bill’s final version only required the Department of Homeland Security to tighten the processing and releasing of border crossers when a staggering 5,000 illegal aliens per day, averaged over 7 days, are encountered. The White House and DHS know how unpopular CBP-One is so they paired up to give concerned voters a head-fake. Last week, U.S. Citizenship and Immigration Services announced that it would not allow 500,000 Cubans, Haitians, Nicaraguans, and Venezuelans who arrived on CBP-One to extend their two-year parole period, a benefit previously available to them. Skeptics pointed out that not only would the illegal aliens likely remain, but they could enroll in other programs that protect them from deportation like Temporary Protected Status. Since the four countries are TPS-approved, when their parole period expires, if it ever does, getting added to TPS would be just a matter of bureaucratic paperwork. CBP-One is the gift to illegal aliens that keeps on giving. As of October 2023, 1.6 million migrants were awaiting approval to fly into the U.S. via the fraud-ridden parole program. Last month, DHS briefly suspended parole when an internal investigation found that thousands of illegal aliens’ sponsors listed fake social security numbers or phone numbers and used the same physical address on thousands of parole applications. 

Whatever may happen administratively, one thing is certain. ICE, hamstrung under the Biden/Harris administration, will deport few if any illegal aliens. Biden and Harris’ priority is the exact opposite: don’t deport; import.

Joe Guzzardi is an Institute for Sound Public Policy analyst. Contact him at jguzzardi@ifspp.org

Harris Would Proudly Continue Unvetted Immigration

Pennsylvania is The Swingiest Swing State

By Joe Guzzardi

Through September 13, Vice President Kamala Harris has visited Pennsylvania twelve times. Most of her campaign stops have been in red counties that supported former President Donald Trump in 2020. Along the way, Harris made an assortment of campaign promises and highlighted her resume to generate support for her presidential bid. Harris’ mission is to acquaint voters with her qualifications and her views for the future. A September New York Times/Siena poll found nearly one-third of voters don’t know who Harris is.

Both Harris and Trump have focused on Pennsylvania, the “swingiest” swing state in a must-win tight presidential election. Between the two, they’ve visited the Commonwealth two dozen times, exclusive of the stand-alone visits from Harris’ VP running mate, MinnesotaGov. Tim Walz and Trump’s VP pick, Ohio Sen. J.D. Vance. When, in early September, Harris landed at John Murtha Johnstown-Cambria Airport, Pennsylvania Democrat Sen. John Fetterman, his wife Gisele, and Johnstown Democrat Mayor Frank Janakovic joined her. Johnstown, a small city within Cambria County, has a population of 18,000. In 2020, Cambria County voted for Trump over Biden 68% to 31%. On another stop in Wilkes-Barre, part of Luzerne County, Harris, for the first time, pledged to lower the standards for federal government employment. The 2020 election results showed that in Wilkes-Barre Trump defeated Biden by a 57% to 42% margin. Those are powerful margins that Harris would have to overcome to cut into Trump’s popularity.

Harris doubled down on her economic opportunity and pro-small business agenda. If elected, Harris promised to eliminate the “unnecessary degree requirements for federal jobs and increase jobs for folks without a four-year degree, understanding that requiring a certain degree does not necessarily talk about one’s skills.” Instead, Harris called for alternative pathways to good-paying jobs like apprenticeships and vocational training or adult education. Voters who have been casting ballots since the Clinton administration recognize Harris’ promises as empty. President Bill Clinton created GEAR UP, a 1998 program designed to help high-school students better prepare for the professional world. The Department of Education squandered millions on the failed program. In a corporate world that relies heavily on technology, specifically the STEM occupations—science, technology, engineering, and math— a vocational school diploma will rarely replace a college degree.

Then, touting her credentials as the former California Attorney General, Harris pointed to “transnational” cartels, and said, “I know these cartels firsthand, and as president, I will make sure we prosecute them to the full extent of the law for pushing poison like fentanyl on our children.”

In 2022, around 73,838 people in the United States died from a drug overdose that involved fentanyl, the highest number of fentanyl overdose deaths ever recorded, and a significant increase from the 36,319 reported in 2019, just weeks from President Joe Biden’s and Harris’ inauguration. Their open border agenda began immediately. Fentanyl overdoses are the driving force behind the opioid epidemic, accounting for the majority of U.S. overdose fatalities.

Curbing fentanyl deaths is an action Harris, the so called “Border Czar,” could do today if she enforced immigration laws which would prevent cartels and other illegal aliens from entering the nation without inspection. Of all of Harris’ hollow promises, none is less convincing than her vow to prosecute drug cartels. As she moves along in her campaign from swing state to swing state, drug traffickers are crossing the Southwest border daily and pushing their deadly drugs into American communities like Johnstown and Wilkes-Barre. In Pennsylvania, overdose deaths rose by 16.4% in 2020 and continued rising to 5,438 reported overdose deaths in 2021, a 6% year-over-year increase. Expressed in starker terms, an average of 15 Pennsylvanians died each and every day of a drug overdose in the last year. Harris has failed at her most important duty—to keep America safe.

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Joe Guzzardi is an Institute for Sound Public Policy analyst. Contact him at jguzzardi@ifspp.org

Pennsylvania is The Swingiest Swing State

Angels’ Pitcher Donnie Moore’s Tragic Story

By Joe Guzzardi

September is Suicide Prevention Month. Suicide, one of the leading causes of death, is a national crisis that effects, both directly and indirectly, Americans of all ages. Suicide rates increased approximately 36% between 2000–2022 and was responsible for 49,476 deaths in 2022, about one death every 11 minutes.

Although suicide is most often measured in emotional terms—the crushing effect on family and friends—the financial cost is significant. In 2020, suicide and nonfatal self-harm cost the nation over $500 billion in medical and work- loss costs. Suicide adversely affects all professions, even those that are associated with glamour and high incomes. For example, the list of baseball players who have taken their own lives is eighty-five names long. Listed chronologically, California Angels pitcher Donnie Moore is number 76. On June 18, 1989, Moore died from a self-inflicted gunshot wound. Adding to the tragedy, before he killed himself, Moore shot and wounded his wife Tonya with three bullets from his .45 caliber firearm while the couple’s three children were at home. Tonya sustained injuries to her lungs, stomach, and neck.

The Chicago Cubs selected Moore in the first round of the 1973 Major League Baseball Draft. In his 13-year career, Moore pitched for the Cubs, the St. Louis Cardinals, the Milwaukee Brewers, the Atlanta Braves, and the Angels. In the thirty-five years since Moore’s suicide, the widely accepted theory is that one post-season pitch thrown to the Boston Red Sox Dave Henderson drove Moore to the depths of despair. Moore threw his fateful pitch when he entered the game with the Angels holding a 5-4 lead, two outs in the ninth inning and a 3-1 advantage in the best of seven series. The Angels were one strike away from advancing to the World Series for the first time in franchise history.

When Moore took the mound, catcher Rich Gedman, who had been hit by a pitch, was on first base.  Henderson hit a 2–2 pitch off Moore for a home run to give the Red Sox a 6–5 lead. The Angels were able to score a run in the bottom of the ninth, pushing the game into extra innings which gave the Halos beloved owner Gene Autry hope. Moore returned to the mound and stifled a tenth inning Red Sox rally by getting Jim Rice to ground into a double play. Nonetheless, the Red Sox scored off Moore in the 11th inning with sacrifice fly by his nemesis Henderson. The Red Sox held the Angels scoreless in the bottom of the 11th and lost the game 7–6. The defeat left the Angels with a 3–2 series advantage with two more games to play at Fenway Park. The Angels, however, lost both, by scores of 10–4 and 8–1. After the fifth game, Moore admitted that he made a bad pitch to Henderson. “I was throwing fastballs, and Henderson was fouling them off, so I went with the splitfinger, thought maybe I’d catch him off guard, but it was right in his swing.” Lost in the retelling of the story, Moore was injured during the Red Sox series, received cortisone shots in his shoulder, but never got healthy. After saving nine more games in forty-one appearances over 1987 and 1988, the Angels released Moore. The Kansas City Royals signed him for the 1989 season, but he played only in the minor leagues before being cut in June of that year, ending his 14-year career in baseball.

No one truly understands why Moore, age 35, killed himself. The often-cited reason for Moore’s suicide is that he could not shake his failure against Henderson which prevented the Angels from advancing to the World Series. But pitchers routinely give up gopher balls, many at key times in crucial games. Bad performances in baseball are part of the game. Moore had been arguing with Tonya, and the pair had discussed divorce. But Moore had better options including counseling or separation. Money was not a concern; in 1986, Moore signed a $3 million contract, $8.6 million today. Moore’s 13 years in baseball were more than the average MLB pitcher lasts, and for about five years, he was one of the game’s premier relievers. He pitched two shutout innings in the 1985 All-Star Game. Despite his accomplishments, Moore was deeply depressed.

Moore’s heartbreaking story has a comforting footnote. Because of her injuries, Tonya missed Donnie’s memorial service in Santa Ana and his funeral in Lubbock, Texas. To help Tonya get over her grief and at her request, family attorney Randall Johnson arranged to have Moore’s body brought to her at the hospital. Orderlies delivered his coffin to an empty room, and then wheeled Tonya in. Tonya said the viewing gave her a chance to express her feelings. “I told him I forgive him,” she told the Los Angeles Times from her hospital bed. “I told him I love him. He had a lot of problems, but I still love him. He was a sweet guy.”

Angels’ Pitcher Donnie Moore’s Tragic Story

Marvin Miller Made Baseball Players Millionaires

By Joe Guzzardi

Journalist Studs Terkel, who wrote “Working,” the classic oral history of Americans’ on-the-job lives, called Marvin Miller “the most effective union organizer since John L. Lewis,” the United Mine Workers president for forty years and Congress of Industrial Organizations’ founder. Miller took over a failing group that represented the nation’s most exploited but irreplaceable workers —the Major League Baseball Players Association (MLBPA)—- and converted it into the country’s most powerful union.

Miller’s introduction to labor negotiations came when he worked for the United States Steel Workers Association (USWA). In the early 1950s, the USWA, along with the United Auto Workers (UAW), for whom Miller also worked, represented America’s union strength. USWA, with 2,300 North American locals, had more than one million members. But an internal USWA shake-up prompted Miller to seek new employment. He turned down a faculty position at Harvard University when Hall of Fame pitcher Robin Roberts asked him to consider becoming the MLBPA’s executive director. Miller, a baseball fan who admired Roberts’ sterling career—286 wins and 305 complete games over a 20-year career—agreed. After the owners tried to persuade the unconvinced players that Miller would lead them into a strike that few of them could afford —a scare tactic— in 1966, the tenacious labor leader eventually got the job.

Miller had to overcome numerous efforts made by the owners to block his ascendancy. The owners hoped that by repeatedly stalling they would force Miller, who still had no fixed plan to fund the union, to give up. Instead, the owner’s heavy-handedness infuriated the players, and they unified their support behind Miller, who in 1966 they unanimously elected their executive director. By 1968, Miller had negotiated MLBPA’s first collective bargaining agreement (CBA) with the team owners that won the players a whopping increase in their minimum salary from $7,000 to $10,000 plus larger expense allowances that covered the 1968 and 1969 seasons. Miller advised superstar outfielder Curt Flood in the historic 1972 Flood versus Kuhn case which reached the Supreme Court. At stake was coveted free agency. The court ruled against Flood 5-3-1; nevertheless, Flood’s lawsuit opened the door for other MLB players to challenge the reserve clause.

On December 23rd, 1975, Peter Seitz, the neutral arbitrator, awarded Major League Baseball players, both present and future, the greatest Christmas present they would ever receive. He ruled that clause 10(a) of a player’s contract, reserving an unsigned player to his current team, was only valid for one year. After that, a ballplayer could become a free agent if the contract remained unsigned. Free agency, resulting from the 1974 case of the Los Angeles Dodgers’ Andy Messersmith and the Baltimore Orioles’ Dave McNally who Miller encouraged to sit out a year, was on the horizon. After filing a grievance, Messersmith and McNally won free agency and signed new contracts with the Atlanta Braves and the Montreal Expos.

During Miller’s MLBPA executive director tenure, baseball suffered through strikes and lockouts that angered fans. But the average player’s annual salary rose from $19,000 in 1966 to $326,000 in 1982, the year Miller left the MLBPA. Miller died in 2012 and didn’t live long enough to see the explosion in player salaries. Too bad; he would have been proud of the groundbreaking work he did decades ago. In 2024, Los Angeles Dodgers’ two-way player, Shohei Otani will earn $70 million, the average player salary is $5 million, and the minimum player income, $750,000.

After being rejected six times in Hall of Fame voting, four times by the Veterans Committee, and twice by the Expansion Era Committee, both dominated by owners and baseball executives, in 2020, the Modern Baseball Era Committee inducted Miller. In 2008, four years before his death at age 95, Miller told the Boston Globe that he held the HOF in contempt and was indifferent to his induction. Calling the vote “rigged” and the members “handpicked to reach a particular outcome,” Miller said, “At age 91, I can do without the farce.”

Miller was among baseball’s three most impactful figures, sharing the honor with Babe Ruth, who changed the way the game is played and Jackie Robinson who paved the way for black players to enter the Major Leagues.

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

Marvin Miller Made Baseball Players Millionaires

CBO Explains Bad BLS Reports: Over-Immigration

By Joe Guzzardi

The non-partisan Congressional Budget Office has a message for disaffected citizens who have watched legal and illegal workers replace Americans: Get used to it! Since 2021, the onset of Joe Biden’s presidency, 9.3 million people have entered the United States, more than three times the net number that arrived in the country during the previous decade. Using cautious, politically correct prose, CBO identified the biggest net increase of 6.5 million as “other foreign nationals,” which includes “people who entered the U.S. undetected, as well those who were paroled into the country and are awaiting proceedings in immigration court.” In plain language, the arrivals are low-skilled, under-educated, non-English-speaking illegal aliens. The largest sending countries are Venezuela, an avowed enemy of the U.S., Mexico and Honduras, 14%, 13%, and 8.5% respectively. In addition, CBO estimates that the non-immigrant population which includes employment-based visa holders has increased by about 230,000 since 2020. Among the 6.5 million illegal aliens, CBO concluded that “most of them work.”

Another category that must be considered are the two million gotaways that the House Homeland Security Committee estimates have slipped undetected into the U.S. and may be working in the $3 trillion underground economy. The arriving illegal immigrants, noted CBO, “are younger [about 78%] and more likely to be of working age…” Among the recently arrived illegal immigrants aged16 or older, 68% are either employed or looking for employment, a total of about five million individuals. CBO analysts determined that, based on U.S. Census data, illegal immigrants who arrived since 2020 are more than twice as likely than U.S. workers to have dropped out or never attended high school. Those without high-school diplomas earn less than their American-born contemporaries; their willingness to work for a lower income is attractive to unscrupulous employers. Cheap labor is always in vogue. Their occupations are concentrated in jobs that Americans, especially under-employed Americans, can and would do. They include construction, carpentry, landscaping, drivers, housekeepers, and janitors. Their low education achievement prevents them entering the skilled labor field.

The August BLS establishment survey showed that the economy created a tepid 142,000 jobs. But the big story is August’s Household Survey that collects comprehensive employment data including demographic facts. CBO suggested that the illegal alien population might be larger than the August BLS Household Survey indicated. First, unlawfully present residents may be hesitant to share personal information with the Census Bureau representative who, on behalf of BLS, interviews them. And second, the report does not count the number of newly arrived Biden-Harris open border illegal immigrants who are employed. The dramatic increase in the immigrant population includes 2.6 million lawful permanent residents who receive employment authorization.

Recent Household Surveys have reflected a growinggap between native-born and foreign-born employment. In August, the number of U.S. born employees fell by 1.3 million and the number of foreign born employees increased by 635,000. Over the past 12-months, native born employment has contracted from 131 million to 129.7 million, a loss of 1.3 million natives from payrolls. The number of foreign-born employees has grown from 30.4 million to 31.6 million, a gain of 1.2 million. Since October 2019, native-born U.S. workers have lost 1.4 million jobs; over the same period foreign-born workers have gained three million jobs.

An estimate of the illegal alien population published in June 2023 put the total at a record high 16.8 million. That highest-ever total is significantly greater than the January 2022 illegal alien population estimate of 15.5 million, and the 2024 count, when it is released will be higher still. The unprecedented surge in legal and illegal immigrants, which the CBO report identified, has changed the U.S. labor force in ways that are likely to reverberate throughout the economy for decades. Given the trend that started in 2019 and continues today, Americans’ unemployment crisis will do more than “reverberate.” The demographic shift will create an earthquake of more unlawfully present workers who take citizens’ jobs. The great displacement is no longer theory but established, cold fact as published government statistics confirm.

Joe Guzzardi is an Institute for Sound Public Policy analyst. Contact him at jguzzardi@ifspp.org

CBO Explains Bad BLS Reports