Category: Guest Authors

Althea’s Accomplishments Transcend Serena’s

By Joe Guzzardi

Althea Gibson represents to black professional tennis players what Jackie Robinson is to American blacks in Major League Baseball. Gibson, a 1950s era player, pioneered the way for Arthur Ashe, Zina Garrison and the Williams sisters, Venus and Serena. The difference between Gibson and Robinson is that most Americans instantly recognize Jackie’s name, while only a handful of septuagenarians who followed tennis decades ago remember Gibson. In 1950, Gibson broke the tennis color barrier when she became the first black to play in New York’s national tennis championship, now called the U.S. Open.

Gibson’s family migrated from South Carolina to Harlem in 1929. For Althea to become the world’s №1 ranked women’s tennis player 20 years later seemed improbable, but turned into reality.

In her early years, Gibson, a lanky six-footer, passed her time fighting with street gangs and shoplifting. Her father, a garage worker, wanted Althea to become a professional boxer. But Althea took to basketball and ping-pong. After she won the city’s paddle tennis championship at age 10, a Police Athletic League supervisor bought her two used tennis racquets. From that moment on, Gibson’s tennis career, although still limited to the black circuit, took off. Althea joined the Cosmopolitan Club, a local black tennis club where the most prosperous Harlem residents played. Gibson soon beat all comers. The impressed club members sent Althea on the nationwide, all-black American Tennis Association tour.

By 1947, at age 20, Gibson won her first ATA title and went on to win 10 national championships, a still-standing record. By the end of the 1950s, Althea had collected 11 Grand Slam titles, including multiple championships at Wimbledon, the U.S. Open and the French Open, where, in 1956, she won titles in singles and doubles. After winning the 1957 Wimbledon title, New York City honored Gibson with a Broadway ticker-tape parade, an event normally reserved for international dignitaries and World Series winners.

After Gibson retired from tennis, she launched into golf, and in 1964 became the first black woman to join the Ladies Professional Golf Association. Gibson played 171 events between 1963 and 1977, but never won a title. Although she was one of the LPGA’s top 50 money winners for five years, over the course of her golf career, she earned a meager $19,250.25. But, as she did in tennis, Gibson opened doors for black female golfers like Shasta Averyhardt, Sadena Parks, Mariah Stackhouse, Cheyenne Woods and Ginger Howard. When she learned about Gibson’s groundbreaking LPGA involvement, Howard said that “breaking those barriers” (golf and tennis were played almost exclusively by wealthy whites) was “a huge step.”

Had Gibson played in today’s era alongside Williams, she would have earned vast wealth and Hollywood-like fame. Forbes placed Williams’ net worth at $260 million, and Serena, who has more than a dozen corporate partners, is even more successful off the court where she’s grossed more than $340 million. Today, Williams’ primary focus is Serena Ventures which has $111 million invested in 60 seed companies.

Gibson, on the other hand, was born poor and lived in poverty most of her life. Before she died in near-bankruptcy in 2003, her finances were so dire that fellow champion Billie Jean King helped her pay off her debts. During Gibson’s tennis heyday, prize money was not awarded, and she had no corporate endorsements. After her playing days ended, Gibson struggled to make ends meet by touring with the Harlem Globetrotters, representing a national baking company and giving tennis lessons.

But Gibson is finally getting her due. In 2019, a statue honoring her was unveiled outside Arthur Ashe Stadium. In Harlem, a street has been renamed Althea Gibson Way, and the U.S. Mint may soon produce a 25-cent piece with Gibson’s image. Remembering Althea, Billie Jean said that she “always felt connected to her and thankful and grateful for what she’s done for people of color and me.”

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

Labor Day and the Vanishing American Worker

by Joe Guzzardi

Unemployed individuals, especially during sustained jobless periods, suffer from stress that is often so intense that mental anxiety ultimately affects their physical well-being. Losing the self-identity and confidence that comes from having steady employment and regular income creates an enormous physical and mental challenge. The physical setbacks most likely to occur after job loss are headaches, backaches, heart disease, high blood pressure and diabetes. Since the unemployed no longer have work-related health care coverage, desperately needed treatment goes wanting, and physical disorders may worsen.

With tens of millions of Americans jobless and without health benefits in their underemployed status, the nation is experiencing an accelerating health crisis. Yet for decades, the federal government has persisted in issuing employment-based visas to foreign-born nationals. To be completely clear, a visa is synonymous with a job – a job that an American or legally present immigrant will not receive, because of the ready availability of cheap, imported labor.

The State Department issues so many categories of work visas that the exact total can be a mystery even to the most well-informed. Including qualifying family members of the primary visa recipient, the total is roughly 35. Whatever the Bureau of Labor Statistics identifies as an occupation category, a visa is most likely available to a foreign national to take the job.

The donor class persistently lobbies Congress, claiming acute worker shortages, and demands more foreign employees when domestic labor is plentiful. Even visas that expressly exclude work permission, the B-1 temporary business visitor, have been used to displace Americans. Despite the potential availability of able-bodied U.S. workers, Congress often increases existing visa caps. The H-2B for domestic nonagricultural workers is an example.

Daniel Costa, the Economic Policy Institute’s Director of Immigration Law and Policy Research, analyzed recent H-2B data and found that although the visa has an annual 66,000 cap, Congress and the White House have supplemented the total during the past few years. In 2021, 117,000 H-2B workers were present; in 2022, however, the program will increase to more than 150,000, a record high. The H-2B program has indirectly encouraged employers in the main hiring categories in which the visa is used – landscaping, construction, forestry, food processing, restaurants and hospitality – to engage in unscrupulous practices. Department of Labor statistics that Costa studied showed that between 2000 and 2021, employers stole $1.8 billion from U.S. and foreign-born workers.

Wage theft in the H-2B program is a grave concern. The Government and Accountability Office, after analyzing ten diverse cases, found thatdifferent industries with employees in 29 states failed to pay promised wages, overtime and charged H-2B workers exorbitant fees. The GAO also uncovered employers and recruiters who submitted fraudulent documentation to government officials, evaded IRS payroll taxes and laundered money.

The total count of potential workers climbs daily. The anticipated 2.1 million illegal aliens that will cross the Southwest Border will eventually, for the most part, either be granted asylum or parole; both come with work authorization. Sadly, few in Congress and no one in the White House cares when a foreign-born worker displaces an American. Since 2000, the total foreign-born population, a record 47 million, has grown by 50 percent; it’s doubled since 1990, tripled since 1980, and quintupled since 1970 – all workers or potential workers.

The U.S. doesn’t need 150,000 H-2B visas, the total Costa anticipates, to mow lawns, serve meals or hang dry wall. Americans can and will do those jobs, assuming a living wage. In his earlier reports, Costa wrote that “no labor shortages [exist] at the national level in the top H-2B occupations.” But the federal government and its Chamber of Commerce toadies are indifferent to displaced U.S. workers’ plights, their families or recently graduated job-seeking college students.

American workers on Labor Day 2022 struggle with a labor market stacked against them. In theory, a solution could be implemented – immediately reduce, with an eye toward eliminating, unnecessary employment visas. Sadly, though, the White House has proven time and again that it refuses to put Americans first.

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Joe Guzzardi is a nationally syndicated newspaper columnist who writes about immigration and related social issues. Joe joined Progressives 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.

Migrant School Enrollment Begins; Less Teacher Time for U.S. Kids

By Joe Guzzardi

New York City public schools are bracing for a significant enrollment of non-English speaking migrants. The recently arrived youths were bused to Manhattan from Texas, an ongoing transfer from Red to Blue areas of the country that has led to bombastic protests from New York’s sanctuary city Mayor Eric Adams.

The political implications for Adams and Texas Gov. Greg Abbott are yet to be seen. But the consequences for the 80,000 K-12 teachers are immediate and demanding. As Schools Chancellor David Banks said: “There are students coming in every day.” But Banks omitted some key elements of what he called a challenge. The new students have arrived illegally from around the world, about 150 different nations, and will need assistance in every facet of public education. That assistance comes at the expense of New York’s already enrolled student body, as well as its teachers and administrators. No teacher has enough time in his or her day to properly educate existing pupils and simultaneously transition the newcomers into classroom readiness.

Department of Social Services Commissioner Gary Jenkins put on a brave, but foolhardy front. Jenkins said that his agency is going all out to smooth the way for the migrants, support their needs and quickly enroll them. Easier said than done, of course. The burden won’t directly fall on Jenkins, Banks or Adams. The already overworked and under-appreciated teachers will be responsible for educating illegal immigrants, some with no formal classroom background. Good luck to the soon-to-be overwhelmed teachers.

Mayor Adams, Chancellor Banks and Commissioner Jenkins are off to a bad start. With schools opening on September 8, the high-ranking trio felt compelled to do something – anything! – to give teachers, school principals and parents the impression that they have a clue. Adams introduced his short-on-details interagency plan to transition the students before their first day. The children received free-to-them, but taxpayer-funded, school supplies and mobile phones.

Few kids who live in an understaffed shelter as these do are prepared to begin a new school year in a new country and new environment. The child who is age-appropriate for the fourth grade, but has no first, second or third grade preparation is unlikely, public education experts concluded, to ever catch up, and are at risk for dropping out.

President Biden’s open borders agenda has hurt millions of already-struggling, poor Americans. Now, Biden’s brazen, illegal, unconstitutional immigration law-breaking will leave its mark on America’s classrooms. Among the biggest losers in the very long list of immigration policy victims that the Biden administration has willfully created are the students who will now have to compete for their teachers’ attention with non-English speaking migrants. Rita Rodriguez-Engberg, director of the Immigrant Students’ Rights Project at Advocates for Children, admitted that migrants who are learning English and living in shelters “will need targeted support in school, including programming to help them learn English and participate in class.” The city is dramatically short of bilingual English language instructors.

Consider that in the 2021-2022 academic year, New York’s K-12 1.1 million student-strong profile showed that 72 percent are economically disadvantaged; 20 percent had disabilities, and 14 percent are English language learners. Into that mix, teachers and education-hungry citizen kids must find a way to accommodate the migrants and create a productive classroom environment – a tough assignment that could spike teachers’ already-high attrition rate. In New York, the two-year teacher attrition rate is 25 percent; 18 percent leave in the first year. The national rate is 10 percent.

Because Abbott has bused illegal immigrants to New York, and Adams complained loudly, the fallout between them is headline news. But, remember, Biden has also authorized migrants’ release into the interior’s every corner. Other schools will soon be juggling teacher time and scarce resources between illegal aliens and citizen students. Coming off of two years of COVID-mandated remote learning, and then vying for teacher time because of Biden’s reckless immigration agenda, U.S. kids have to apply themselves if they want a sound education that will put them on a path to good jobs. But with Biden, American kids’ educations are a distant second to illegal aliens’ schooling needs. Putting U.S. kids second is consistent with Biden’s now well-established America-last agenda.

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JOE GUZZARDI

Joe Guzzardi is a nationally syndicated newspaper columnist who writes about immigration and related social issues. Joe joined Progressives 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.

Migrant School Enrollment Begins; Less Teacher Time for U.S. Kids

Biden Agenda Excludes Black Workers Concerns

By Joe Guzzardi

On his first day in office, President Biden signed an Executive Order to advance racial equity and to support underserved communities, an admirable goal, and one that most Americans share. Unfortunately for residents of those struggling communities, many of them African-American, on the same day, Biden signed several other Executive Orders that fundamentally changed how the new administration would deal with immigration. Those Executive Orders sent a message around the world that amnesty is on the table, and enforcement, for the most part, was off the table.

Although few could foresee how impossible to carry out Biden’s equity agenda would become once his immigration Executive Orders were implemented, the results are clear now. The huge influx of illegal immigrants at the border – an anticipated 2.1 million this year – legally admitted Ukrainian and Afghan evacuees, and more than 1 million legal immigrants admitted every year on autopilot have made employment conditions tough for underserved black Americans to find employment or to move up from their entry-level jobs into well-paid middle-class positions.

No president genuinely concerned about equity and black Americans’ futures could open the Southwest border and reward foreign nationals who have willfully and knowingly violated U.S. immigration laws with work authorization.

Since Biden took office through July 2022, about 4.9 million illegal immigrants, including about 900,000 gotaways, have crossed the border and entered the interior. For those among the 4.9 million who are working age, which the Bureau of Labor Statistics defines as 18 to 64, many if not most will receive work permission. Evacuees and legal immigrants also receive employment documents. Those who don’t could enter the underground economy, always fertile ground for unscrupulous employers.

But the purposely porous border isn’t the only culprit that suppresses black, Hispanic and other minority workers from moving up in the social strata. The Biden White House allows unnecessary employment-based visas to persist. Dozens of visa categories displace or put at a disadvantage Americans seeking low- and high-skilled jobs in the areas of leisure, landscaping, forestry, technology and medical science. Neither the donor class nor whomever occupies the White House blinks when talented, experienced Americans lose their jobs and have to train their foreign-born replacements. Deeply-in-debt university graduates are behind the eight ball when they’re forced to compete with cheaper overseas labor. The donor class wins; U.S. workers lose.

But the uncomfortable truth is that establishment Washington prefers foreign-born workers. Writing in Newsweek, Pamela Denise Long, a descendants of U.S. slaves advocate, asked why black dreams don’t matter. “Are descendants of U.S. slaves not supposed to notice how we and our countrymen are negatively affected by yet another bastardization of ‘social justice’?”

In her opinion article, Long wrote that “the immigration industrial complex built up around legal and illegal migration has abandoned what is patriotic and pro-American.” She references the 2010 Commission on Civil Rights report which found that the abundance of overseas workers expands the labor market, which eventually led to a 40 percent decline in employed low-skilled, native-born black men. Long called the Biden administration’s policies “the most expansive federal giveaway to legal and illegal migrants since President Reagan’s amnesty of 1986.”

Although Newsweek categorized Long’s essay as opinion, she wrote undeniable truths about the devastating effect that persistent high legal immigration and unchecked illegal immigration have on American workers, especially those with only a high school diploma or less. Long’s essay concluded with this admonition: “By supporting brain drain policies [importing foreign workers], Democrats, and officials who are Republican in name only are traitors against the American people. We see you!”

In his book, “Back of the Hiring Line,” author Roy Beck titled his final chapter, “Prioritize Descendants of Slavery?” Beck concluded that the most helpful immigration policy for non-college educated blacks will also be the correct immigration policy for other vulnerable Americans, including recently arrived legal immigrants. To put all Americans on a path to greater wealth, mass immigration must be dramatically reduced.

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Joe Guzzardi is a nationally syndicated newspaper columnist who writes about immigration and related social issues. Joe joined Progressives 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.

Biden Agenda Excludes Black Workers Concerns