Category: Guest Authors

Senate Passes Ukraine Funding Bill Without Border Protection

By Joe Guzzardi

On Super Bowl Sunday, shortly before kickoff, the Senate voted 67-27 to advance a $95.3 billion funding bill, a step toward its passage. Two days later, after an all-night session, the bill passed 70-27 but without the border security measures that the House had originally demanded.

The funding package includes $60 billion for Ukraine; $14 billion in security assistance for Israel; $9 billion in humanitarian assistance for Gaza, the West Bank and Ukraine; and $4.8 billion to support allies in the Indo-Pacific.

Majority Leader Chuck Schumer (D-N.Y.) and Minority Leader Mitch McConnell (R-Ky.) spoke passionately about the urgent need for the bill’s approval. Schumer described Eastern Europe’s war-torn regions as dire as last seen during World War II. McConnell warned that failing to support Ukraine would put America’s allies at risk by giving China a “green light” to project power in Asia and the Indo-Pacific.

Highlighting the tension among Republicans that could culminate in the Senate minority leader’s removal, fellow Kentuckian GOP Senator Rand Paul called McConnell’s support for the bill “outrageous” and accused him, Schumer and President Joe Biden of “criminal neglect” by working to “send $100 billion overseas to fix someone else’s border before addressing our [own] border.” Senator Mike Lee (R-Utah) charged Schumer with dictating which amendments he would be permit—“essentially all of them are not.”

To Paul’s point, days before the Senate voted to proceed on the Ukraine-Israel funding bill, it rejected a very bad immigration bill that, instead of including HR-2’s border protections, established an emergency authority to shut down the border when a 5,000 daily average alien encounters over a consecutive seven-day period is reached or 8,500 encounters occur in a single day. By law, a single alien’s entry violates immigration statutes. Worse, the Senate’s proposed bill allows Biden to suspend this authority at his discretion, which could allow for thousands more illegal immigrants to cross.

Schumer and McConnell’s urgency to help Ukraine protect its border with Russia is reflected in its unprecedented Super Bowl Sunday vote during a period when the Senate was scheduled to be on holiday. Neither Schumer nor McConnell cares about the southwest border invasion. McConnell, worried that China might interpret nixing Ukraine funding as a “green light” for aggression, is indifferent to the thousands of Chinese nationals pouring aggressively across the Southwest border.

Among the millions of migrants flooding the southern border, Chinese illegal immigrants made up the fastest-growing faction last year. In FY 2023, CBP apprehended 24,000 Chinese nationals, about 12 times the 1,970 arrests in the previous fiscal year. Since October 1 when fiscal year 2024 began, a staggering 20,000 Chinese nationals have crossed. If the 20,000 per fiscal year quarter influx continues, a projected 80,000 Chinese nationals will enter.

The annual 2023 U.S. Threat Assessment report published by the Office of the Director of National Intelligence (DNI) warned that China’s Communist Party (CCP) will continue efforts to achieve President Xi Jinping’s vision to make China East Asia’s preeminent power, a major global threat that will undercut U.S. influence, and “drive wedges between Washington and its partners.” In his Wall Street Journal op-ed, former DNI  director John Ratcliff wrote that “Beijing intends to dominate the U.S. and the rest of the planet economically, militarily and technologically.” Resisting Beijing’s attempt to reshape and dominate the world is, Ratcliff concluded, the challenge of our generation. China, national security experts agree, is the U.S.’s biggest geopolitical enemy.

Assuming Ratcliff is right, the Biden administration is failing spectacularly to meet the challenge. In December, a large group of well-dressed, military-age Chinese crossed into San Diego and surrendered to immigration agents. The El Paso sector’s Chief Patrol Agent Anthony Good told the Homeland Security Committee during a private September hearing last year that his agents suspect that the Chinese aliens are active CCP operatives, and confirmed by committee chair Mark Green (R-Tenn.)  as a “massive” concern.

Despite the potential threat that Chinese nationals represent to America, the DHS makes no attempt to detain them or no effort to locate them after border officers release them into the interior. Schumer, McConnell and Biden continue to turn a blind eye to the risks China poses, and instead are determined to pour more good money after bad into the forever Ukrainian war.

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

Senate Passes Ukraine Funding Bill Without Border Protection

US Workers Lose Ground To Foreign-Born In January

By Joe Guzzardi

The monthly Bureau of Labor Statistics report should be called the original “fake news.” Such is the case with the January 2024 report which announced that the economy added 353,000 jobs. Each month, District of Columbia’s anonymous civil servants grind out much-anticipated jobs data that Wall Street and financial journalists latch onto as the nation’s financial health indicators. Market analysts tout the monthly data to reaffirm their existing economic beliefs, be they good or bad. The first BLS Commissioner, Carroll D. Wright, described the Bureau’s mandate as “the fearless publication of the facts.” The BLS website claims that “Just the Facts” is a core value. When asked, “Is the glass half empty or half full?” BLS responds elusively that it sees an 8-ounce glass containing 4 ounces.

A few years ago, a critic called the BLS report “the big lie” because among its other flaws the original monthly data was subject to revisions, often significant. These late changes concern Federal Reserve officials. We must make decisions in real time,” Federal Reserve Board of Governors member Christopher Waller said late last year. “Whatever data is released, that’s the data I have to use. The problem with data is it gets revised.”

Revisions, which can come more than months after initial reports are published, wouldn’t necessarily be so much of an issue if they were relatively small. However, many revisions over the past few years have been game-changers.

The January BLS report could trigger history’s biggest game-changing revision. Zero Hedge (ZH), which lists as one of its manifestos, “to skeptically examine and, where necessary, attack the flaccid institution that financial journalism has become” mocked the January release as a “clown show,” and as the election season heats up, fulfilling its mandate from the White House “to make the economy look double super good-good.” And, speaking of revisions, ZH noted that in January BLS conducted its “annual re-benchmarking and update of seasonal adjustment factors.” The bottom line—what was until December a decline in jobs, the BLS has now been miraculously transformed declines into gains. 

The glowing report ignored the following lay-offs as a total percentage of their workforce: Twitch, 35%; Hasbro, 20%; Spotify, 17%; Levi’s, 15%; Xerox, 15%; Qualtrics, 14%; Wayfair: 13%; Duolingo, 10%; Washington Post, 10%; eBay, 9%; Business Insider, 8%; PayPal, 7% Charles Schwab, 6%; UPS, 2%; Blackrock, 3%; iRobot, 31%; Citigroup: 20,000 employees and Pixar, 1,300 employees. This month, nearly all Sports Illustrated staffers received layoff notices from the Arena Group, devastating the 70-year-old magazine that once set the standard for sports journalism. Most staff received 90-day notices, but many were immediately laid off. 

More inconvenient truths ZH exposed: BLS reported that in January 2024, the U.S. had 133.1 million full-time jobs and 27.9 million part-time jobs. The totals may sound good but look back one year to find that in February 2023, the U.S. had 133.2 million full-time jobs, slightly more than the economy did one year later. Predictably, the job growth is in low-paying, part-time jobs, which have increased by 870,000 since February 2023 from 27.020 million to 27.890 million.

The mainstream media, which had 20,000 job losses in 2023 across broadcast, digital and print industries with more recent media layoffs that include CBC, Vice Media and others, mostly ignored the most important fact buried in the January BLS report. In January, the number of native-born workers tumbled again, sliding by a massive 560, 000 to just 129.8 million. Add to this the December data, and a near-record 1.9 million plunge in native-born workers has occurred in the past two months. Not only has all job creation in the past four years gone exclusively to foreign-born workers, but since July 2018 there has been zero job-creation for native-born workers. 

With the illegal alien invasion poised to continue throughout the remainder of Biden’s first term—eleven months—and legal permanent residents added at one million-plus annually, the labor market will expand by about two million foreign-born workers each year. The Biden administration has unlawfully given about one million aliens parole, an immigration status that includes work permission. 

Foreign-born workers displacing Americans is an ongoing and accelerating tragedy that President Biden willfully imposed on citizens. Biden’s malfeasance should provide talking points for the White House and congressional candidates that seek to remove office holders who support the status quo.

 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

US Workers Lose Ground To Foreign-Born In January

‘Bipartisan’ Senate Bill Would Keep Border Open

By Joe Guzzardi

Oklahoma Senator James Langford has not officially announced his long-term political goals. But deep-red Oklahoma’s senior senator has done a superb job of shooting himself in the foot by joining up with three open borders advocates in what they laughingly refer to as a bipartisan border agreement. Under Senate Majority leader Chuck Schumer’s watchful eyes, Langford’s negotiating colleagues are Arizona Senator Kristen Sinema, a faux Independent who caucuses with Democrats, and blue Connecticut’s Chris Murphy. Sinema and Murphy have consistently voted against border and interior enforcement while favoring amnesty enticements. Neither Sinema nor Murphy, however, have served close to Schumer’s three decades-plus in Congress during which time he has unbendingly fought for higher immigration levels and less enforcement. Up against Schumer and company, Langford is out of his element.

Even the most cursory review of the Senate’s proposed deal shows that the details would not only keep the border open but also encourage more illegal immigration. Leaked details include a disastrous provision that once border crossings reached a seven-day 5,000 rolling daily average, the Department of Homeland Security would have the authority to shut down migration. Daily encounters between 4,000 and 5,000 would allow for discretionary expulsions, and any single day where there were over 8,000 encounters, expulsions would be mandatory even if the 7-day average were lower. Those expulsions would also be exempt from judicial review. Not only would such levels be inconsistent with border security, but President Biden has complete authority to shut the border down tight without more congressional legislation. The legislation would also, say advocates close to the talks, tighten asylum standards, speed up the hearing process, double deportation flights, and expedite work permits. Only expedited work permits are likely to become a reality, a harmful feature that expands the labor force with unskilled workers and takes away jobs from U.S. workers.

Andrew Arthur, a Center for Immigration Studies Resident Fellow in Law and Policy, and a former immigration judge, wrote in his New York Post op-ed that Section 212(f) of the Immigration and Nationality Act gives the president authority to “suspend the entry of all aliens or any class of aliens.” Moreover, in 2018, the Supreme Court rejected immigration advocates’ challenges to travel restrictions that President Donald Trump implemented on certain nationals of terrorist hotspots and countries hostile to the United States and wrote that Section 212(f) “exudes deference to the President in every clause.” House Speaker Mike Johnson, reflecting most Americans’ sentiments and promising that if the Senate bill should ever reach the House it would be DOA, said that the “goal should be zero illegal crossings a day, not 5,000.” Unlike the Senate trio, Johnson knows that in the Iowa and New Hampshire primaries, immigration ranked with the economy as the two issues that most troubled voters.

Langford,  an ordained Southern Baptist minister, has pushed back against criticism and claims that election year politics and not the bill’s details hamper the Senate process. Voters are increasingly aware that Biden’s lack of political will to enforce existing laws is the main reason the border remains open. Deep skepticism with the White House’s immigration agenda has intensified, and a bad Senate bill will not soothe voters’ immigration anxiety. 

Langford got a sample of how getting cozy with Schumer could derail his career. The Oklahoma Republican Party (OKGOP) voted to censure Lankford for his close work with Democrats on border legislation. However, since not all OKGOP members were present, the censure was not official. Still, the vote could be a signal of trouble ahead for Langford. 

History’s lesson: Florida Senator Marco Rubio got a rude awakening to the long-term consequences of a Schumer connection. In 2013, only his second full year in office, Rubio was one of four GOP Senators who teamed up with four Democrats including Schumer to pass the disastrous immigration “Gang of Eight” bill, never taken up by the House. Rubio’s betrayal shocked Florida’s Republicans. In 2015, Rubio was one of 17 GOP announced presidential candidates. When the crucial Florida primary time rolled around in March 2016, Rubio needed a win over Donald Trump to remain viable. But Florida’s voters didn’t forget Rubio’s duplicity and overwhelmingly cast their ballots for Trump, 46% to 27%. Once considered a frontrunner, Rubio’s presidential aspirations ended that night.

Langford’s next re-election cycle, should he choose to run, is 2028. Myriad border outcomes could occur in the next six years. But Oklahoma Republicans are unlikely to forget, much less forgive, Langford’s eagerness to join the Democrats to keep the border open and subvert U.S. sovereignty. 

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

‘Bipartisan’ Senate Bill Would Keep Border Open