Category: Guest Authors

Spineless GOP Rejects Border Bill

By Joe Guzzardi

A spineless House of Representatives just gave Americans a big, in-your-face middle finger. In the invasion’s third year, the southwest border surge continues relentlessly. Eight million illegal aliens plus one and a half million gotaways from more than 150 nations continue to lawlessly surge the border in willful defiance of United States law. The invaders have brought death and destruction with them — -death via the fentanyl they’ve trafficked in, destruction to the communities both large and small in which they’ve settled, and senseless homicides. Although the House has legislation that could end the border crisis, HR-2, the Secure Border Act of 2023 which it passed in May, and despite House Speaker Mike Johnson’s insistence that border security be included in any bill that might provide President Biden with more Ukraine funding, nothing changes.

To date, the U.S. has sent $133 billion to Ukraine for humanitarian and military aid. In December, Biden urged Congress to pass a $110 billion aid package that included $61.4 billion for Ukraine and $14 billion for Israel in its war against Hamas. Biden also seeks funding for Taiwan. Facing a government funding deadline, Johnson kicked the border security can down the road. Instead of demanding HR-2, the Speaker settled for a Continuing Resolution with a vote that included 108 weak-kneed Republicans who joined with Democrats to keep parts of the government open until March 1 and other sections until March 8. The final vote: 314–108.

Among the Republican nays were many who are, at least publicly, vocal about the dire need for border enforcement: Speaker Johnson, Judiciary Committee Chair Jim Jordan, Committee on Oversight and Accountability Chair James Comer, Subcommittee on Immigration Integrity, Security and Enforcement Chair Tom McClintock, Chairman, House Committee Chair on Foreign Affairs and Chairman Emeritus and House Committee on Homeland Security Michael McCaul, and Nancy Mace, National Security, the Border and Foreign Affairs Committee member. Although Johnson, Jordan, Comer, et al appear solid on security, exasperated voters wonder if they’re squishes disguised as patriots. The House’s most conservative members, thoroughly disgusted with Johnson, threaten to remove him and set off another bitter round of votes to replace him. Johnson’s unconvincing excuse that enforcement legislation which includes HR-2 would take too much time, and that the border catastrophe must be addressed correctly — -he provided no details.

With the November election only nine months away, and with polling showing that not only Republicans but Democrats and Independents all express deep dissatisfaction with Biden’s immigration agenda, Johnson should use the few weeks his enforcement cave-in bought him to get busy. Johnson must take a firm stand and make his and his fellow Americans’ positions clear that if H.R. 2 is not included in the supplemental foreign aid package, the House will not approve another CR that would fund the same disastrous, illegal border policies at the FY 2023 open border level. House Republicans, even with a slim majority, have the power of the purse, and with that leverage can end Biden’s sovereignty-busting immigration vision. Either in a comprehensive FY 2024 budget bill or included in the supplemental Israel, Ukraine and Taiwan foreign aid package that the president demands, HR-2’s border reforms must be included.

This marks the third time since the current fiscal year began on October 1, 2023 that Congress has failed to pass a budget. Assuming HR-2 is included in March — -an assumption only the most optimistic can embrace — -five months will have elapsed or, expressed differently and based on Customs and Border Protection statistics, more than one million illegal aliens will have been processed and released into the interior. Americans want the border sealed shut and interior enforcement returned to protect the public from criminals that have literally walked into the nation, unvetted, and rarely pursued by Immigration and Customs Enforcement.

With a terrible Senate bill in the works that could keep the alien invasion going, the nation’s message to Johnson and House Republicans is simple and direct — -no more sell outs!

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

Spineless GOP Rejects Border Bill

Nuggets Of Good Immigration News In 2023

By Joe Guzzardi

Scouring calendar year 2023 for good immigration news is a challenge. But a nugget here and there provides a glimmer of hope, however faint, for long-elusive border enforcement to become reality. The year’s highlight came in May when the House passed, 219–213, the Secure the Border Act of 2023, HR-2. The bill’s provisions include, among several other pro-enforcement features, a mandate that employers use the legislatively elusive E-Verify that would protect American jobs, require the Department of Homeland Security to restart border wall construction, reinstate Remain in Mexico, end asylum fraud, and close the loopholes that frivolously grant parole.

Another positive in the endless battle for sensible immigration is Mike Johnson’s (R-LA) election as Speaker of the House. Since entering Congress in 2017, Johnson has earned A+ immigration grades in strengthening border and interior security as well as ending asylum and refugee fraud. Johnson and like-minded GOP reps have so far insisted that HR-2 be included in any legislation that may provide funding for Ukraine and Israel. The show-down between House enforcement advocates and a Senate dominated by open-borders backers is scheduled to begin January 8. Johnson must not yield an inch, and must absolutely reject the Senate’s demand for amnesty as a quid-pro-quo to any agreement.

Unlike finding the positive immigration news during 2023, the bad news stands out like the proverbial sore thumb. The House Homeland Security Committee released a shocking report titled “Startling Stats” that detailed the extent of President Biden and DHS Secretary Mayorkas’ illegal, unconstitutional disregard for obeying immigration law and their criminal indifference to defending national security.

In FY23, Customs and Border Protection recorded more than 2.4 million encounters at the southwest border and more than 3.2 million encounters nationwide. During the current fiscal year, 169 individuals on the terrorist watchlist were apprehended attempting to enter the country illegally, and at least 1.7 million known gotaways have evaded apprehension since FY2021. Since President Biden took office, there have been 7.5 million encounters nationwide and 6.2 million encounters at the southwest border, in addition to 1.7 million known gotaways.

Also in FY 2023, CBP arrested 35,433 aliens with criminal convictions or outstanding warrants, including 598 known gang members, 178 of those being MS-13 members. Including its Air and Marine Operations, CBP also seized enough fentanyl coming across the Southwest border to kill, the House Homeland Security Committee estimates, about 6 billion people.

The report’s findings did nothing to influence the administration to end the invasion. Not only did the illegal alien influx remain steady, it accelerated unabated. Proof that the border crisis will continue unchecked: in December, CBP processed and released a historic monthly high 302,000 aliens. Since the start of FY 2024 which began on October 1, 2023, CBP has encountered more than 785,000 aliens at the southern border alone.

With Johnson serving as speaker, and with HR-2 in place as potential leverage to use in the upcoming Ukraine-Israel funding negotiations, optimism for the first steps toward border enforcement can be harbored. But as long-time veterans of immigration enforcement versus immigration chaos conflicts can attest, there’s many a slip twixt the cup and the lip.

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

 Dems Will Dump Biden?

By Joe Guzzardi

As of today, Washington D.C.’s conventional wisdom holds that the Democrats prefer a 2024 candidate other than President Joe Biden but feel that the incumbent has earned the right to run. Nonsense! Under no circumstances will the power-hungry Democrats let Biden, unwilling to engage primary debate challengers, and refusing to campaign in the time-honored fashion, again become the party’s standard bearer. Seven months remain until Chicago hosts the Democratic National Convention, an eternity in politics, and doubly so if party leaders and donors perceive that presumptive GOP nominee Donald Trump continues his upswing while Biden drops even further in national polling.

Influential Democrats and deep-pocketed party supporters could lean hard on Biden to withdraw gracefully with their promise that on his way out, they would hail him as a modern-day FDR. If Biden resists, Democrats could play hardball, a technique the party is familiar with. Since there are no secrets in Washington, everyone who’s anyone knows about Biden and his family’s nefarious dealings. Threaten to leak internal dope on the Biden family to the Republican-led Judiciary and Oversight committees and Biden might change his mind. The scenario may appear improbable but it’s not impossible.

Should Biden exit, voluntarily or otherwise, that would solve only half of the Democrats problems. The other half would be to choose a viable replacement. Many of the names floated don’t resonate with the general public—Vice-President Kamala Harris, Michigan Governor Gretchen Whitmer, and Energy Secretary and former Michigan governor Jennifer Granholm. All have net negative polling.

Still available is California Governor Gavin Newsom, anxiously waiting in the wings, fingers crossed, ready to pounce should the opportunity present itself. But if Newsom is tapped, a vexing hurdle remains—the governor would need to script a platform that will connect nationally, a tough task given his abysmal governance record.

Typically, a stumping candidate highlights his successes. Not only does Newsom have no tangible, tout-worthy achievements, his failures and misjudgments are colossal. The elitist, multimillion net worth governor will never shake his Napa Valley French Laundry birthday party fiasco. During the COVID-19 pandemic when Newsom shutdown Orange County beaches, he dined maskless with lobbyists. The incident, which showed Newsom’s disregard for his constituents, will haunt him. The dinner is a small potatoes blotch compared to California’s exploding homelessness, wide-spread poverty, soaring housing prices, rotten public education system that ranks 44^th nationwide, rampant smash-and-grab crime, and dramatic cost of living spikes.

Although California’s bullet train fiasco has dropped from the national news, the story reflects another costly Newsom blunder. Four years ago, when Newsom unveiled his scaled-down concept for the bullet train, he proposed constructing a 171-mile starter line in the Central Valley that would begin operating in 2030 and cost $22.8 billion. Today, the projected costs are $35 billion, and exceed by $10 billion future committed funding. Adding to the bullet train’s woes: an official estimate of future ridership has dropped by 25%, and the operating schedule has been pushed further into the future. Waste, waste, and more waste on a project that Californians didn’t want, and few would benefit from.

Newsom’s gravest miscalculation is, during a sustained southern border illegal alien invasion, his immigration advocacy. California’s official government website prominently includes a section captioned “California for All” which reads as follows: “every person can achieve a better life regardless of where they start out,” an open invitation to illegal immigrants. Newsom is out of step with public opinion. At a time when the nation is coping with an estimated eight million aliens released into the interior since Biden’s inauguration and coming from more than 150 nations, Newsom as of January 1, will provide all low-income illegal aliens, regardless of age, with Medi-Cal, the state’s Medicaid program.

As many as 764,000 illegal aliens could be added to Medi-Cal, costing California taxpayers an extra $3.1 billion annually. The rub is that pursuant to the Illegal Immigration Reform and Immigrant Responsibility Act of 1996, illegal aliens are generally barred from receiving federally funded means-tested public benefits like Medicaid. Therefore, the burdensome cost falls solely on California’s residents, a foolish, inexplicable decision since the state is sinking under a $68 billion deficit.

Deservedly, California is synonymous with failure. Residents are fleeing for more hospitable states. Newsom would have to be a magician to sell his California as a model for the other 49 states. If Democrats examine Newsom’s résumé and conclude he’s not electable, then they may be stuck, like it or not, with an equally unelectable Biden.

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

STEM Degrees Not Worth Effort, Expense

By Joe Guzzardi

Little by little, the truth about academic life on university campuses is leaking out. Although not as dramatic or headline-grabbing as the Harvard, Penn, and MIT scandals, the myth that science, technology, engineering and math degrees (STEM) will lead to a well-paid, white-collar job is gradually being debunked.

In his Los Angeles Times opinion commentary, U.C. San Diego sociology professor and author of “Wasted Education: How We Fail Our Graduates in Science, Technology, Engineering and Math”, John D. Skrentny, exposed a STEM degree’s true worth in the employment market—considerably less than advertised, and perhaps not worth the monies spent on exorbitant tuition fees.

Long-hyped as a path to a big-ticket IT job, and with employers and the federal government’s tacit endorsement that helped promote more foreign-born labor to displace U.S. workers, STEM classes’ popularity soared. Another carrot that encouraged young adults to enroll: the Bureau of Labor Statistics projected that STEM jobs would increase 8 percent by 2029 compared with 3.7 for all other occupations. From 2006 to 2015, bachelor’s degrees in the STEM fields rose from 22 percent of the baccalaureate degrees awarded to 30 percent of the total, the highest level since 1987 when detailed national record-keeping began.

But the Census Bureau’s June 2021 report refuted the popular narrative. STEM degrees don’t guarantee a coveted job in the prestigious science, technology, engineering and math fields. Among the 50 million employed college graduates ages 25 to 64 in 2019, 37 percent earned a bachelor’s degree in science or engineering but only 14 percent worked in a STEM occupation. Moreover, the National Center for Science and Engineering Statistics, in its 2023 analysis, found that STEM degrees held by diverse graduates hardly moved the needle. Despite corporations’ vocal commitment to DEI, black, Hispanic, American Indian, and disabled persons remain dramatically under-represented in tech.

Although warnings about pro-STEM fallacies have been reported for at least a decade, they’ve fallen on deaf ears. Forbes journalist and Duke University School of Law J.D. George Leef wrote in 2014:

“Interest groups that want more STEM education, research funding and workers know how to capitalize on that belief to get politicians to enact the policies they want. Even through there is nothing approaching a [labor shortage] crisis, they keep lobbying as if we have a dire one…Strong business and educational groups lobby for nice-sounding policies that benefit themselves, frequently employing dubious arguments and misleading claims. The costs of the resulting pro-STEM policies are dispersed among the public, and fall particularly hard on the unfortunate individuals who invest a lot of money and years of their lives in pursuit of credentials that are apt to become almost worthless.”  (“True Or False: America Desperately Needs More STEM Workers,” by George Leef, Forbes, June 10, 2014)

The year after Forbes published Leef’s critique, Jesse Jackson traveled to Silicon Valley where he found that its overall workforce was only 30 percent female, 3 percent Hispanic, and 2 percent black. Countless studies from respected academics and prominent think tanks came to the same conclusion—U.S. tech workers are effectively shut out. But only a smattering of the published research, including Skrentny’s op-ed, address the most obvious reason that American minorities are consistently kept out of white-collar jobs. Employers prefer to hire younger, less qualified, cheaper foreign nationals, mostly from Pakistan and China, that work on H-1B visas, the so-called guest workers who rarely go home. In the 10 years since Leef, Jackson, and countless other scholars have sounded alarm bells, hundreds of thousands of H-1B visa workers have entered the domestic labor market to take jobs that would otherwise go to U.S. STEM grads.

Year-after-fiscal year, and regardless of economic conditions, the federal government approves 85,000 H-1B visass. In late 2022 and throughout 2023, Google, Amazon, Meta, and other tech giants laid off thousands of workers. And 2024 is off to a similar start as Duolingo, Twitch, and Discord made deep cut while Amazon and Google continued their 2023  significant firings. Despite the layoffs, H-1B approvals continued.

As long as H-1B visa workers are readily available to employers, and as Artificial Intelligence makes a greater, ever-growing societal impact, STEM degrees will become increasingly less valuable on job-seekers’ resumes.

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

STEM Degrees Not Worth Effort, Expense

Ted Williams Rescues Bush 41 Campaign

By Joe Guzzardi

Baseball fans recognize Ted Williams as one of the sport’s all-time Cooperstown Hall of Fame legends, a fearless pilot who served in the United States Navy and the United States Marine Corps during World War II and in Korea. Less well-known is that Ted is also a Fly Fisherman Hall of Fame inductee.  Williams caught black marlin in New Zealand and tiger fish in the Zambezi River in Mozambique. In Ted’s opinion, only three fish were worthy of true sportsmen— tarpon, bonefish, and Atlantic salmon. Considered by Williams the triple crown of fishing, he had caught and released over 1,000 of each by 1982.

“The Kid’s” inner circle—his family and close friends—knew that Williams had another passion. Williams was a political junkie.  Born in 1918 in San Diego, Williams grew up in conservative California. Beginning in 1890, and lasting for about a 100-year period, Republicans consistently occupied Sacramento’s Governor’s Mansion, and the state’s voters consistently sent Republicans to the U.S. Congress. Williams most admired President Calvin Coolidge, the former Massachusetts governor who favored tax cuts and limited government spending.

No surprise then that when Vice President George H.W. Bush called on Williams to campaign on his behalf in the 1988 New Hampshire primary, Ted accepted, and thereby changed America’s presidential history. Setting the scene, President Ronald Reagan’s two-terms were up, and Bush was part of a crowded GOP primary card. The Iowa caucus’ outcome had been a shock to the Bush campaign. The Vice President finished a distant third to Kansas Senator Bob Dole and televangelist Reverend Pat Robinson, the newly formed Christian Coalition’s favorite. With only a week between Iowa and New Hampshire, Bush was floundering. The Manchester-Union Leader, a powerful conservative New Hampshire voice, labeled Bush “a wimp,” and endorsed Delaware governor Pierre S. du Pont.  Jack Kemp, the Buffalo Bills’ former quarterback, was also vying for the GOP nomination.

Although Bush had done his legwork and visited the Granite State frequently during 1988, when primary week began, he polled five points behind Dole. Another failure would have put Bush permanently out of the running. John Sununu, former New Hampshire governor and Bush’s campaign reached out to Williams. Neither Bush nor Sununu personally knew Williams, but they had heard of his strong political opinions. A liberal on social policy, Williams was a conservative on fiscal and foreign policy. Although he distrusted all politicians, he particularly hated the Kennedys and consistently voted the GOP ticket.

Sununu phoned Williams and persuaded him to fly to New Hampshire from Florida where he had been fishing. Williams’ presence with Bush, who played second fiddle to “The Kid,” changed the game, and helped put Bush in the White House. Voters turned out in droves to get a glance at their beloved Boston Red Sox hero. One gifted Williams an antique bamboo fishing rod. Ted signed autographs, and introduced his new friend, Bush, as “the next president of the U.S.”

In the end, Bush ended up with 59,290 votes; Dole, 44,797; and Kemp, 20,144.  Campaign donations returned, and Bush was on his way to the White House. Bush, a World War II pilot and Yale University baseball standout, and Williams became friendly. Bush kept his old first baseman’s glove at the ready in his desk drawer, a quirk that endeared him to Williams.

Now Bush’s chief of staff, Sununu organized two major events that included Williams. First, a 1991 Rose Garden lunch on the All-Star game’s afternoon with Joe DiMaggio to celebrate the 50^th anniversary of Joe’s 56-game hitting streak and Ted’s .406 average. After lunch, they flew Air Force One to Toronto to watch the game, a 4-2 win for the American League. Second, also in 1991, Bush presented Williams with the Presidential Medal of Freedom, one of the rare times Ted agreed to wear a tie.

Historians acknowledge that Williams was the key factor in putting Bush on the presidency’s path. On November 8, 1988, Bush won a landslide against the Democrat candidate, Massachusetts Governor Michael Dukakis, 426 electoral votes to 111, an impossible outcome without Teddy Ball Game’s intervention.

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

Ted Williams Rescues Bush 41 Campaign