Category: Guest Authors

CBO Population Projection Off-Mark Regarding Illegals

By Joe Guzzardi

In January, the Congressional Budget Office (CBO) released its projection for U.S. population growth from 2023 until 2053. CBO anticipates a huge hike from today’s 336 million U.S. residents to 373 million three-decades out, a 37-million-person surge.

Over the next decade, immigration will represent about three-quarters of the overall population increase, and the greater number of births than deaths will account for the remaining one-quarter. After 2033, population growth will be increasingly driven by net immigration, which beginning in 2042 will account for all population growth.

CBO released its report without fanfare, perhaps because it included, buried deep on page five, this sentence: “Net immigration of foreign-born people without legal status” (my emphasis) – a wokeism meaning illegal aliens – into the U.S. is projected to average 220,000 a year over the next decade, a remarkable 175 percent bump from the 80,000 average the CBO had forecast a mere six months ago.

Although the CBO identifies as objective, critics question how its analysis could arrive at the modest 220,000 annual illegal alien projection, a completely detached conclusion from the Southwest border reality. In December 2022 alone, the Department of Homeland Security announced that CBP had more than 300,000 migrant encounters. And since President Joe Biden’s 2021 inauguration, an estimated 5.5 million migrants from at least 160 nations have unlawfully crossed into the U.S.

The administration’s goal is to grant parole, and the work authorization that parole status includes, to as many illegal immigrants as possible. The consequences for citizens seeking entry-level employment, especially minorities and the working poor, will be devastating. Using even the low CBO estimate of 220,000 illegal immigrants annually means a significantly expanded labor pool. When using the year-to-date total since Biden’s inauguration of 5.5 million arrivals, more than the combined populations of Chicago and Houston, and the aggregate available workers, mainly unskilled or low-skilled, the labor market bloats dramatically.

The inarguable labor supply and demand fact applies. And because the nation will have an in-take of millions of aliens instead of hundreds of thousands that occurred with previous administrations, the newly arrived illegal immigrants will compete for employment not only with U.S. workers, but also with each other – a dream come true for profit-driven corporate America.

The supply and demand truism exists at all economic levels. In New York City’s subway system, next to the arriving/departing train platforms, Ecuadorians and Hondurans are, without a mandatory city general vendor’s license, selling M&Ms and Skittles for $2. But one level above, a vendor who’s done everything correctly, including paying his licensing fee, loses life-sustaining revenue, pays less in city and state taxes, and may eventually go out of business. Everyone loses including the migrants who sell candy in New York’s dangerous underground.

Annual illegal immigration totals are twice those of legal immigration. In 2021 and 2022, and referring back to the 5.5 illegal entrants, about 1.25 illegal immigrants on average crossed each year contrasted to about 1 million legal immigrants.

U.S. workers deserve a break. Not only does the federal government issue more than 1 million annual permanent residency green cards that include lifetime valid work permission, the State Department approves another 1 million guest worker visas, some without numerical ceiling, and without risk that the government might intervene to assure that employers comply with the regulations.

Employers have a bottomless supply of foreign-born workers to hire. Evidence: At the end of 2022, 29.6 million legal and illegal immigrants were employed, 1.9 million more than during the pre-pandemic years. Meanwhile, the Labor Force Participation rate for Americans continues to decline. As long as Biden continues his reckless and wanton policy of welcoming the world, then workers’ best friend – a tight labor market – won’t exist

Joe Guzzardi is a nationally syndicated newspaper columnist who writes about immigration and related social issues. Joe joined The Project for Immigration Reform in 2018 as an analyst after a ten-year career directing media relations for Californians for Population Stabilization, where he also was a Senior Writing Fellow. A native Californian, Joe now lives in Pennsylvania. Contact him at jguzzardi@pfirdc.org.

CBO Population Projection Off-Mark Regarding Illegals

PFIR Becoming Institute For Sound Public Policy — Progressives for Immigration Reform (PFIR) announced its name change to the Institute for Sound Public Policy (IfSPP), Feb. 34.  The new name signals the organization’s broader vision and expanded mission to advocate for national policies that prioritize the security and well-being of U.S. citizens in a world where roughly 5 billion people live on less than $10 per day.

“2023 marks a sea change. Our repositioning as the Institute for Sound Public Policy will enable us to reach out and earn the moral and financial support of those who feel the pressures of the global billions.” said Kevin Lynn, executive director of the Institute for Sound Public Policy. 

“For the past 15 years Progressives for Immigration Reform has identified numerous ways in which the inadequacy and abuse of immigration policy has destroyed livelihoods and diminished the overall quality of life in the U.S.  Today as the Institute for Sound Public Policy we expand beyond the adverse effects of unbridled human capital to address other essential factors and the root cause crippling our nation: globalist policies and neoliberal ideologies that pursue the unrestricted flow of capital, goods, and people.”

Progressives for Immigration Reform will immediately brand itself as the Institute for Sound Public Policy with a new logo, and a new website to be announced mid-March 2023.

It’s existing entities, U.S. Tech Workers, Doctors without Jobs, and Our Carbon Footprint will now operate under The Project for Immigration Reform, a  supporting organization to the Institute for Sound Public Policy.  The entities will continue to bring attention to the abuse of U.S. employment visa programs, the inequities in the U.S.’ medical residency matching program, and the impact of immigration-fueled population growth on the environment. 

During the name change process, the organization’s legal name will remain Progressives for Immigration Reform.

Chinese Sending Baseball Players To USA

By Joe Guzzardi

The New Year we’re moving into this week under the Chinese Lunar calendar is the Year of the Rabbit, considered the luckiest of the 12 animal signs to be born under in the Chinese zodiac. While some may be born to it, others’ luck is made through lucrative CCP deals.

In 2021, Major League Baseball extended its contract with Tencent, a Chinese tech company that broadcasts NBA games and has an audience of more than 1 billion. Through its international WeTV service in Thailand, Malaysia and Indonesia, Tencent’s viewership will expand. China’s baseball interest is at unprecedented levels, and intensifying. Baseball is played in more than 80 Chinese colleges and universities, and dozens of new baseball facilities have been built in recent years by local governments and individuals.

Always anxious to enlarge its $11 billion industry, in 2017 MLB and Beijing Enterprises Real-Estate Group Ltd. (BEREGL), a major Chinese state-owned enterprise, announced a 10-year relationship to further promote baseball in China. Jim Small, MLB’s Vice President, Asia Pacific division, said that MLB’s objective is to provide first-rate facilities and coaching for the increasing number of Chinese baseball players and that MLB is “honored,” his word, to team up with what he called one of China’s most forward-thinking, innovative and successful companies.

BEREGL and MLB plan to build nearly two dozen MLB-branded baseball facilities throughout China. Most of the new projects will be labeled MLB-BEREGL Baseball Development Centers and will provide top-notch facilities for talented Chinese student athletes in grades 7–12. The curriculum will offer mainstream academic instruction and baseball fundamentals. MLB maintains three development centers in Wuxi, Changzhou and Nanjing. No such facilities exist in U.S. for middle-school kids or any other age group.

MLB will continue to send, as it has in past years, visiting professional players and coaches to instruct all levels of Chinese players and teams. Previous MLB visiting instructors have included Prince Fielder, Curtis Granderson, Mark Melancon, Jeremy Guthrie and Jim Lefebvre.

In the globalist design that MLB developed with BEREGL, more Chinese players are on their way from the development centers to the U.S., either through the international draft, arriving on P-1A visas for professional athletes or by attending U.S. universities on nonimmigrant F-1 visas. In 2015, the Baltimore Orioles signed Gui Yuan Xu, the first development center graduate. Xu, a position player nicknamed Itchy because of his affection for Ichiro Suzuki, played 73 games over three seasons in rookie and Class A ball before being released. The Boston Red Sox, the Pittsburgh Pirates, the Milwaukee Brewers and the Philadelphia Phillies signed six other development center graduates; five of them were released after failing at the lowest minor league levels.

Many Chinese MLB aspirants prefer the college university route where more nationwide scouts will evaluate their skills. DJ, for example, is a 24-year-old native of Qinghai, a province in an autonomous Tibetan region. His visa documents identify him as Fnu Suonandajie. Fnu, however, is not a name, but initials that stand for First Name Unknown, a term the State Department assigns to foreign nationals with an unknown given name. And Suonandajie is not Fnu’s family name, but rather an appellation a Tibetan monk gave DJ, as his friends know him, when he was a child.

MLB, constantly prowling for promising athletes for their middle school program, discovered DJ in 2011. After graduating from Nanjing’s development center’s high school program, DJ came to the U.S., earned a roster spot as a walk-on at Los Angeles Harbor College, graduated in 2021, and was soon given a full baseball scholarship at Kansas City’s Division II Rockhurst University. He hopes to enter MLB’s first-year player draft, a longshot for a D-II player.

Evaluating the cozy partnership between MLB and the state-owned Chinese real estate business, clear winners and losers emerge. The big winners are MLB which will tap into an exploding market for not only players, but also for billions in streaming income and millions more in merchandise sales to Chinese baseball fanatics. Chinese players also win. They’ll receive a visa to legally enter the U.S., even though their prospects for reaching MLB are infinitesimally low. The website FiveThirtyEight calculates any player’s chances to make it to the major leagues, including standout NCAA players, are 0.17 percent.

The losers are the U.S. prospects from NCAA universities or other amateur leagues. Arriving Chinese players expand baseball’s labor pool, diminishing the chances of those already in the pool. But the biggest losers of all could be the public at large. Chinese players entering in significant numbers could represent a national security threat. Historically, the State Department does a poor job of tracking visa holders, regardless of the threat they may pose. In baseball’s multi-billion-dollar business, globalism reigns. Everything else is a distant second.

Joe Guzzardi writes about immigration issues and impacts.

Chinese Sending Baseball Players To USA

Great Salt Lake Going Dry Due To Population Growth

By Joe Guzzardi

Utah’s Great Salt Lake may disappear within the next five years, experts predict. A Brigham Young University report found that as of January 2023, the lake is 19 feet below its average level. Since 1850, the Great Salt Lake has lost 73 percent of its water and more than half of its surface area.

BYU ecologist Benjamin Abbott, noting “unprecedented danger,” called for emergency measures to save the Great Salt Lake from further collapse. Abbott wrote that despite encouraging growth in legislative action and public awareness, “most Utahns do not realize the urgency of this crisis.”

At this point, and since 2020, the lake has lost more than 1 million acre-feet of water annually. Each acre foot represents about 360 gallons of water, nearly the size of a one-foot-deep football field. Today, only about 0.1 million acre-feet of water is returned to the lake each year.

Abbott pointed to worldwide examples which show that saline lake loss triggers a long-term cycle of environmental, health and economic suffering. He urges a coordinated rescue to stave off widespread air and water pollution, further losses from animals listed as part of the Endangered Species Act, and greater declines in agriculture, industry and overall quality of life.

If Utah Governor Spencer Cox hopes to deliver on his promise that the Great Salt Lake will not go dry on his watch, he’ll have to adopt some if not all of Abbott’s suggested measures, many of which will be unpopular among constituents. Specifically, the BYU scholars called on Cox to implement a watershed-wide emergency rescue plan that will set a requirement of at least 2.5 million acre-feet per year until the lake reaches its minimum healthy elevation of 4,198 feet. In conclusion, and in light of what the authors called an “all-hands-on-deck emergency,” the BYU analysis asked farmers, counties, cities, businesses, churches, universities and other organizations to “do everything in their power to reduce outdoor water use.” Utahns must, BYU counseled, adopt a “Lake First” approach to water preservation.

The Great Salt Lake’s rapidly dwindling water level is attributable to two factors: the ongoing drought that’s affected large swathes of the nation and an unprecedented population boom. Despite above average snowfall in 2022, most of Utah remains in severe to extreme drought mode.

The bigger culprit in the Great Salt Lake’s demise, however, is population growth. Between July 2021 and July 2022, Utah’s estimated population grew by more than 61,000, which marked the state’s largest spike in absolute growth since 2006, putting its total population at slightly more than 3.4 million residents. Of Utah’s 29 counties, 28 added population, except for Daggett, which declined by six people. Utah’s population growth is calculated by the standard formula: net migration accounted for an estimated 38,141 more residents, while natural increase — births minus deaths — accounted for another 23,101 residents. From 2010 to 2020, Utah was the nation’s fastest growing state. Utah’s growth will continue unabated. By 2060, Utah’s population will hit 5.5 million with intervals of 4 million between 2032 and 2033 and 5 million between 2050 and 2051.

Put another way, in the next 40 years, Utah’s population will increase 66 percent.

By the time the 2030 Census rolls around, Utah will have more Venezuelan migrants admitted under President Biden’s immigration policies. Already in Utah in significant numbers, Venezuelans are part of Biden’s program to grant immigration parole every month to 30,000 total Haitians, Cubans, Nicaraguans and Venezuelans. For Venezuelans who have family ties and prospective sponsors in Utah, the state becomes a magnet. And once settled, the migrant Venezuelans will start families or expand their existing families, thereby putting more pressure on Utah’s natural resources.

The Great Salt Lake is one of many disappearing U.S. lakes and rivers, victimized by overpopulation and mismanagement. Others in grave danger of drying up include the Colorado and California’s Lake Mead and Lake Tahoe. BYU’s environmentalists have rolled out a sound plan to save the Great Salt Lake. For its part, the federal government is irresponsibly adding population to states like Utah that are struggling to provide precious water and other resources for existing residents.

Joe Guzzardi writes about immigration issues and impacts.

Great Salt Lake Going Dry Due To Population Growth