Category: Guest Authors

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.

View Online

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.

View Online

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.

View Online

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.