Category: Guest Authors

Minor League Victory Was Major Labor Win

Minor League Victory Was Major Labor Win

By Joe Guzzardi

Midway during the Major League Baseball owners’ lockout of its players, I promised myself that I was done. No more universal DH, ghost runner, launch angles, tender limbs, watered down Hall of Fame standards and – most of all – no more haggling between the billionaire owners, the multimillionaire players and meddlesome, anti-baseball Commissioner Rob Manfred. I pledged not to watch or listen to one-third of any inning of any 2022 game. Unlike more important self-help vows I’ve made, I stuck to my pledge – no small feat for a fan whose summers for the last seven decades have included daily baseball doses.

But another constant disappointment is the principal reason I’ve steadfastly refused to contribute one thin dime to baseball – its years-long miserly, shameful treatment of minor league players. Advocates for Minor Leaguers (AML) crunched numbers and found that the median annual salary for a minor league player today is $12,000. The federal poverty level is $12,800, and the 2021 average MLB franchise has a $1.9 billion value.

MLB team owners pay their minor hopefuls a standard $400 weekly salary at the Complex League level, $500 per week in Single-A, $600 per week in Double-A and $700 per week in Triple-A. Players are paid only during the regular season and playoffs, despite being required to perform year-round in off-the-field duties. Minor leaguers, whose numbers were slashed when Manfred mandated that 42 teams be eliminated, make an annual salary of between $4,800 and $15,400. Weekly payments for entry-level minor leaguers are less than what minimum-wage workers earn in some states for a 40-hour workweek.

Minor League Victory Was Major Labor Win

Unlike major-leaguers, minor leaguers don’t draw checks until their first regular season game. Professional baseball is specifically exempted from federal labor protections. However, teams still are subject to state wage laws which owners routinely ignored. Instead, owners contended that players should be classified as short-term seasonal apprentices similar to farm laborers, a specious argument that a federal judge rejected.

Harry Marino, who played four minor league seasons, and is now AML executive director, said: “Guys struggle with housing, nutrition and making ends meet on a fundamental level. The system is outdated, exploitative and needs to change.” Last year, one viral AML video showed how nearly a dozen St. Louis Cardinals Double-A affiliate Springfield players were forced to sleep on the floor of a hotel banquet room while on the road.

In 2014, three retired minor league players filed a lawsuit which claimed violations of the federal Fair Labor Standards Act, as well as abuses of state minimum wage and overtime requirements. Eight years later, MLB agreed in court to pay minor leaguers $185 million to settle. An early guesstimate is that as many as 23,000 players could share the money with an average payment to each of $5,000 to $5,500. MLB grudgingly told the court that it approves of the settlement.

Garrett Broshuis, the players’ lead lawyer and a one-time minor league pitcher, called the settlement a “monumental step” toward “fair and just” compensation for the players. Broshuis continued: “I’ve seen first-hand the financial struggle players face while earning poverty-level wages – or no wages at all – in pursuit of their major league dream.”

The minor leaguers’ court win is a refreshing victory for the good guys against the stuffed-pockets, Scrooge McDuck-type tycoons content to let their prospects subsist on a bologna sandwich and sleep on the floor while they eat wagyu beef aboard chartered jets. Good baseball is everywhere – high school, college, Little and Pony Leagues, and the Independent League. Fans shouldn’t support the MLB tightwads, and can find better, more enjoyable baseball outlets close to home.

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

Minor League Victory Was Major Labor Win

2 New Alternative Parties For Election Day 2022

2 New Alternative Parties For Election Day 2022

By Bob Small

For many years in Pennsylvania the three active alternative parties were the Constitution Party, the Green Party, and the Libertarian Party.  All presented alternative views, from left to right.  All would frequently be challenged by either Democrat of Republican parties, so the years where three alternative gubernatorial, lieutenant gubernatorial, and senatorial candidates were on the ballot were rare but did happen.  During those years, Greens (including myself) might also help the Libertarians in their challenges while Libertarians might also help the Greens, and the Constitution Party would be in there also.

This year, there are four alternatives on the ballot albeit the Constitution Party is not one of them as they are in the process of reforming. 

So joining the Greens and the Libertarians are the Keystone Party and the Socialist Worker Party, formed by expelled Trotskyites in 1938.   

In the states adjacent to Pennsylvania, only Republicans and Democrats are seeking major statewide offices in Delaware, New Jersey, and New York albeit the New York Dems have the support of their minor league team, the Working Families Party; an SWP senate candidate is on the ballot in Ohio while Maryland has Greens, Libertarians, and Working Class Party candidates on their ballots. Lastly, the Americans Coming Together (ACT) Party has a Candidate on their ballot in West Virginia. The ACT website quotes Plato “If you do not take an interest in the affairs of government, then you are doomed to  live under the rule of fools”.  Luckily, we live in Pennsylvania.

 See Politics1.com for the other 43 state wide candidate listings.

The phrase “vote your hopes, not your fears”, comes into play here.  During the last election, my Swarthmore Democratic neighbors told me I had to vote against Donald Trump because Trump will (fill in the blank here).  However Joe Biden and his “machine”, and his family, also scared me.   As I’ve previously posted, there were policies where Donald Trump would have done no worse, and sometimes better, than the Delawarean now in office.  The Afghan withdrawal is one prime example.

In future articles we will discuss the alternative candidates, none of whom have a snowball’s chance in Hades, of winning in Pennsylvania.

2 New Alternative Parties For Election Day 2022
2 New Alternative Parties For Election Day 2022

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

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.

Migrant School Enrollment Begins

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

Kenny Washington Forgotten Black Pioneer Of Football

Kenny Washington Forgotten Black Pioneer Of Football

By Joe Guzzardi

The multi-billion-dollar NCAA football business begins on Aug. 27 when 13 games will be nationally televised. Three PAC-12 schools are on the richest list: University of Southern California, University of Washington and the University of Oregon.

Not all the preseason headlines, however, involve speculation about which teams might reach the 2023 National Championship Game. UCLA and USC stunned the football world when they announced that, in 2024, they’ll leave the Pac-12. But since UCLA didn’t advise the University of California’s Board of Regents, which includes Gov. Gavin Newsom, the Bruins’ grandiose plan could be scuttled. The Board doesn’t affect USC, a private institution.

Once, back in the PAC-8 days when the pre-season buzz in Southern California was about football’s star players, and not TV billions, no player thrilled fans more than Los Angeles Lincoln High School dynamo and UCLA superstar Kenny Washington. During the 1930s and 1940s, Washington was the Los Angeles area’s most popular athlete. When Washington first donned a UCLA uniform, college football had only 25 black players nationwide; the UCLA campus was 3 percent black.

In his new book, “Walking Alone, the Untold Journey of Football Pioneer Kenny Washington,” Dan Taylor chronicles the tale of a groundbreaking black football star who could have been, had he so chosen, the first to break baseball’s color line. Jackie Robinson, Washington’s UCLA baseball and football teammate, readily acknowledged that Washington was his superior on the diamond.

Kenny Washington Forgotten Black Pioneer

Instead of breaking baseball’s black player ban, in 1946 Washington became the first African-American player in 13 years to join an NFL roster, the Los Angeles Rams. On the field, Washington withstood endless taunting and racist slurs, so ugly that he refused to play in games held in the south. His opponents blatantly fouled him, but referees refused to penalize the rule-breakers.

Washington’s pro-football debut was inauspicious. Playing in the Los Angeles Memorial Coliseum in 96-degree heat against the Philadelphia Eagles and before 30,000 excited fans – the Rams had just relocated from Cleveland – Washington entered the game when Hall of Fame quarterback Bob Waterfield left in the second half. Most of Washington’s passes sailed over receivers’ heads. His coach moved Washington to running back where his stats improved. In his first game at tailback, Washington was, despite knee injuries sustained earlier in his career, the Rams’ leading rusher against the Detroit Lions.

After the 1946 season ended, speculation abounded that Washington, encouraged by Robinson, would leave the Rams to pursue a baseball career with the Brooklyn Dodgers. When Dodgers’ manager Leo Durocher passed on him because “his knee was on the bum,” Washington returned to the Rams, this time with more success. Through his first four 1947 games, Washington scored four touchdowns and had a 7.5 yards per carry average.

In 1948, Washington took another strong stand against bigotry. After its Hawaii training camp disbanded, the Rams headed to Dallas, Texas, a Jim Crow state, to play in an annual exhibition game. Washington refused to play. Eventually, Rams owner Dan Reeves worked out an agreement with the games’ organizers that would pave the way for Kenny and future blacks to play in the Dallas game. Washington played and became the first black to appear in Texas professional football.

Early in the 1948 season, Washington, beset by injuries, announced his football retirement. In previous off-seasons, Washington had starred in black films, and he opted to return to Hollywood. He also had another shot at baseball, a near miss.

Polyarteritis, a heart and lung disease, took Washington, only 51, in 1971. In 1957, speaking on behalf of the NAACP’s Fight for Freedom Fund, Robinson spoke about his friend Washington, calling him “the greatest.” Author Taylor concluded that Washington was a football trailblazer who helped the NFL reintegrate.

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

Kenny Washington Forgotten Black Pioneer

Biden Agenda Excludes Black Workers Concerns

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.

Biden Agenda Excludes Black Workers Concerns

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

Religion An Issue In Pennsylvania Races

Religion An Issue In Pennsylvania Races

By Bob Small

On June 14, 1954, President Dwight Eisenhower signed the law  adding “under God” to the Pledge of Allegiance.   This aligns with the widely held belief –backed up by history — that most of the Founding Fathers were Christians. They led the first successful rebellion of a colony against the British Empire.

Christianity aside, the Founders were fallible. They were adulterers, duelists, slave owners, and you name it. Most though professed to being Christians even those who didn’t believe in Jesus’ divinity.

Religion is playing a huge role in Pennsylvania’s gubernatorial and senatorial Races. Both Doug Mastriano (Christianity) and Josh Shapiro (Judaism) have included their religion in their campaign ads.

Neither John Fetterman nor Dr. Oz have made his Muslimism a feature of their campaigns, though I expect the Democrats to enter that territory at some point.

The Freedom from Religion Foundation (FFRF) was founded in 1978. Their purpose is to promote “the constitutional separation of church and state”.  According to the June-July 2022 issue of their publication, Free Thought Today,  they try to do this through legal challenges and pointing out the crimes of various religions. See the publication’s “Black Collar Crime” section.  

If you search under DuckDuckGo — or use any  search engine but Google — with Freedom from Religion Foundation, there are six pages of links.

Free Thought Today reaches 30 pages and there’s a lot in there to read and agree and disagree with.

For arguments against, a good place to start is Conservapedia.

Religion An Issue In Pennsylvania Races

Sanctuary Mayors Cry Uncle; No Más Migrantes

Sanctuary Mayors Cry Uncle; No Más Migrantes

By Joe Guzzardi

Sanctuary cities are once again in the headlines. But this time, sanctuary cities, the bane of immigration law enforcement advocates, have a different spin. Since five-time deported illegal immigrant Jose Inez Garcia-Zarate murdered Kate Steinle in July 2015 on Pier 14 in San Francisco, state and city governments have persisted in welcoming illegal aliens and protecting them from Immigration and Customs Enforcement. San Francisco is a sanctuary city in the sanctuary state of California.

Despite a federal immigration detention request to hold Garcia-Zarate so immigration officials could take him into custody, San Francisco authorities freed the seven-time convicted felon just three months before he killed Steinle. Eventually, Garcia-Zarate was acquitted and sentenced to time served on an illegal firearms possession charge.

Between January 2014 and September 2015, the Center for Immigration Studies reported that sanctuary jurisdictions rejected 17,000 ICE detainer requests – 17,000 individuals who should have been deported but remained to potentially pose criminal risk to U.S. citizens. Claiming that migrants are fleeing poverty and persecution, local leaders have been willing to spend their constituents’ taxpayer dollars on affirmative benefits for the newly arrived illegal immigrants.

Sanctuary Mayors Cry Uncle

Suddenly, however, with President Biden and Department of Homeland Security Secretary Alejandro Mayorkas opening the Southwest border to foreign nationals from 150 countries and clandestinely flying them to faraway cities, attitudes are less welcoming. New York Mayor Eric Adams said that busing migrants from Texas to mid-town Manhattan, as Gov. Gregg Abbott has done, is “cruel.” About 4,000 unlawfully present migrants have entered New York’s shelter facilities since May, an ”unprecedented surge,” said Adams, who has unsuccessfully called on the federal government to intervene.

Washington, D.C. Mayor Muriel Bowser has made the same complaints as Adams, labeling the migrant flood “critical,” issuing identical rejected pleas for federal intervention. Since April, Gov. Abbott has sent more than 6,800 illegal immigrants to Washington. Bowser has begged for the National Guard to intervene “to help prevent a prolonged humanitarian crisis in our nation’s capital resulting from the daily arrival of migrants in need of assistance.” McAllen, Texas, Mayor Javier Villalobos mocked Adams and Bowser. Villalobos said: “The city of McAllen was able to deal with thousands of immigrants a day; I think they can handle a few hundred.”

Adams and Bowser should have known that pleading with the feds, especially Mayorkas, would be futile. At the January U.S. Conference of Mayors, Mayorkas tried to sell the assembled mayors on his new, mostly gutted ICE. But the attendees wanted to hear about border enforcement, a subject Mayorkas studiously avoided.

While it may be overly optimistic to hope for a change now that prominent Democratic mayors are experiencing first-hand the fiscal burden and public safety risks that sanctuary policies create, a shift is in the wind.

The mere existence of sanctuary cities is illegal. Local laws that protect illegal immigrants prevent routine cooperation among municipal, state and federal law enforcement agencies. President Obama’s Attorney General Loretta Lynch realized the importance of keeping law enforcement apprised about any individual’s immigration status. Lynch warned sanctuary cities that they would not receive Justice Department funding in the 2017 fiscal year if they did not comply with 8 USC Section 1373, which prohibits any agency from restraining “in any way” the exchange of information among federal, state and local agencies regarding foreign nationals’ immigration status. Despite saber-rattling from Lynch, and then-Attorney General Jeff Sessions, funding continued.

With millions of border crossers already released into the U.S. interior, and millions more anticipated during Biden’s remaining two and a half years in office, sanctuary cities will come under increasing pressure to provide for their unlawfully present alien residents, an untenable situation for the already underfunded, overcrowded municipalities.

Sanctuary Mayors Cry Uncle

July Labor Report Hides Truth

July Labor Report Hides Truth

By Joe Guzzardi

The July Bureau of Labor Statistics report was a blockbuster. The economy created 528,000 jobs, and unemployment dipped to 3.5 percent, well ahead of Dow Jones’ 258,000 new jobs and 3.6 percent unemployment estimates. Wage growth also rose; average hourly earnings increased 0.5 percent for the month and 5.2 percent year-over-year, higher than, respectively, the .03 percent and 4.9 percent Wall Street estimates. A .05 percent increase, however, keeps consumers getting poorer as inflation last month proceeded at an 8.5 percent rate.

But no federal government report merits more skepticism than the monthly BLS. If the jobs market were truly booming, then the labor participation rate should be climbing. Instead, the participation rate is falling.

The number of Americans not in the labor force, those who neither have a job nor are seeking employment, climbed past the 100 million mark again in July, hitting 100,051,000, a 239,000 increase from June. From May to June, the previous 2022 reporting period, Americans detached from the labor force increased 510,000. The July report showed that labor participation was 62.1 percent.

July Labor Report Hides Truth

A Congressional Budget Office analysis found that a lower labor force participation rate is associated with lower gross domestic product (GDP) and lower tax revenues, with larger federal outlays because people who are not in the labor force are more likely to enroll in certain federal benefit programs.

A deeper dig into the July statistics found that leisure and hospitality led the way in job gains with 96,000, although the industry is still 1.2 million workers shy of its pre-pandemic level. Professional and business services were second with 89,000. Health care added 70,000 positions, and government payrolls grew 57,000. Goods-producing industries also posted solid gains, with construction up 32,000, and manufacturing adding 30,000. Despite repeated alarm bells sounded by Walmart, Target and other big box stores that consumer demand is weak, retail jobs increased by 22,000.

Superficially, the job growth looks encouraging. But the wages that those jobs pay can’t support a household of four, or perhaps not even the individual worker. Leisure and hospitality workers, which BLS classifies as cooks, bartenders, waiters, hotel housekeepers and food preparation supervisors, earn an average of about $30,000. Professional and business services earn $40/hour; health care, $29,000; goods producing industries, $30,000, and retail workers, $29,000.

In order for blue-collar workers to advance into the middle-class lifestyle, they need the labor market to get tighter, a challenge since the border is open; temporary guest worker programs are expanding, and legal immigrants receive lifetime valid employment authorization. During the Biden administration, nearly 2.5 million border crossers have entered the U.S. Biden’s intention is to give most if not all parole status that includes work permission. Over the last 15 years, the State Department has issued millions of guest worker visas to foreign citizens who perform blue- and white-collar jobs. In fiscal 2022, the U.S. will accept 2.1 million lifetime work-authorized legal immigrants, a record number, that will swell the labor pool.

To help U.S. workers, the labor market should be tight. Fewer immigrants would push wages higher and move Americans up the economic ladder. People would become more productive and less welfare dependent.

When Congress returns after Labor Day, campaigning for the mid-term elections will begin in earnest. Most of the politicians will promise to elevate the electorate’s lifestyles. But few will mention the important role that reduced immigration would play in boosting wages.

July Labor Report Hides Truth July Labor Report Hides Truth July Labor Report Hides Truth

Look At Newsom Before Leaping, DNC

Look At Newsom Before Leaping, DNC

By Joe Guzzardi

Despite Washington, D.C.’s August heat and humidity – perfect vacation weather – the nation’s capital is immersed in politics. A thorny two-part question consumes political insiders. The first part asks whether President Biden should run for re-election in 2024. And if the answer is no, the consensus response among nervous Democrats, the follow-up question is who’s the best candidate to replace him?

Apprehensive Democrats want Biden to step aside gracefully, but the president’s choice may be to go for a second term. Biden has repeatedly said that he’ll run because his party wants him to. Time will tell whether Democrats convert their cautiously anti-Biden rhetoric into action by launching primary challenges.

Since 1980, serious Republican and Democratic presidential challengers have failed – Ronald Reagan vs. Gerald Ford, Ted Kennedy vs. Jimmy Carter and Pat Buchanan vs. George H.W. Bush. The most important takeaway from the failed primary efforts is that incumbents Ford, Carter and Bush #41 lost their general elections. Unless Biden voluntarily retires, the only course left open to Democrats is to force him out, an ugly scene that would hurt the party.

Assuming that the party either puts Biden out to pasture or he bows out graciously, one way or another, his name won’t appear on the 2024 ballot. The second of the two questions will then move to the forefront: Who will replace him? As of today, the polls have identified California Gov. Gavin Newsom as the leading candidate with Michelle Obama a distant second. Predictably, Vice President Kamala Harris is nowhere. But before Democrats rush to embrace Newsom, they’d be well advised to vet him vis-à-vis the national electorate.

If voters are tired of privileged, elitist government, then the multimillionaire Newsom, who cavorts with billionaires, will have a hard time appealing to the working class. Billionaires were the major donors to Newsom’s gubernatorial campaigns. More important than Newsom’s donor base, however, are his politics. Democratic National Committee Chair Jaime Harrison should ask Newson for a preview of his campaign platform. For sure, Newsom’s stump speeches won’t include lines like this: “With your vote, I can convert America into 49 more California’s.”

Typically, candidates for high office point to their successes, and run on those accomplishments. In Newsom’s case, his feats fall into the negative column. For starters, California has the country’s lowest literacy rate. Only one in four Californians over age 15 can read and understand a simple sentence. Newsom’s open border’s advocacy contributes to sanctuary state California where 220 languages are spoken, and 44 percent of residents speak a language other than English at home. Seven million Californians cannot speak English well.

Look At Newsom Before Leaping, DNC

Math isn’t much better; about 40 percent of California’s public school students are proficient, but that pathetic ratio is explained away because math has been designated as racist, and its study is now based on critical race theory. Nothing is Golden about the state’s income and sales taxes; they rank with the nation’s highest.

Newsom ordered the first statewide COVID lockdown. Three protestors on a San Diego beach were arrested for violating Newsom’s stay-at-home edict. California is third in per capita homelessness behind Hawaii and New York. Median rent is $1,600 monthly, and homes sell for a median $538,500. Violent crime has spiked so high that the annual crime data’s publication is well overdue.

In fairness, though, Newsom’s candidacy would have, from the DNC’s perspective, an upside. Billionaires’ deep pocket donations and Silicon Valley’s censorship would be in play. Newsom would start out with 74 electoral votes in his back pocket, California, Oregon and Washington, and another 49 leaning his way, Illinois and New York. Conditions in Illinois and New York, however, are changing fast – so quickly that Biden is underwater in both states.

Weary from Newsom’s gubernatorial failures, Californians are fleeing the state, which should warn presidential voters that, if nominated, the slick, coiffed Hollywood darling is the wrong choice to replace Biden in the White House.

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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.

Look At Newsom Before Leaping, DNC Look At Newsom Before Leaping, DNC

Statue Of Liberty Concerned Slavery, Not Immigration

Statue Of Liberty Concerned Slavery, Not Immigration

By Kevin Lynn

Given the numerous attempts to pack immigration provisions into current spending bills, there’s probably no better time to talk about the real meaning of the Statue of Liberty.

The Statue of Liberty has long been a beacon for immigrants, and not just any immigrants, but the poorest and most destitute around the globe. This symbolism of taking in the world’s impoverished is embodied in a verse from Emma Lazarus’ poem, The New Colossus, which proclaims as though speaking through the statue itself, “give me your tired, your poor, your huddled masses yearning to breathe free, The wretched refuse of your teeming shore. Send these, the homeless, tempest-tossed to me, I lift my lamp beside the golden door!“

These often recited and famous words are a permanent fixture associated with the Statue of Liberty. After all, aren’t they inscribed on a bronze plaque below her feet?  Yet, the bronze plaque wasn’t originally part of the statue; it was added 17 years after the dedication. And, what’s more, the poem’s words and ideas obscure the statue’s true meaning.

As Roy Beck author of Back of the Hiring Line points out, the statue was meant to “celebrate the fact that the U.S. had finally abolished slavery and accorded full liberty, at least in principle, to all its inhabitants.”  What’s still ignored to this day, are the broken shackles on her feet, which signify the newfound liberty for formerly enslaved Black Americans.

The Statue of Liberty was not intended as a symbol for those who have yet to come, but a tribute to the foundational group of people who were already here. The intent was “to portray a form of government that could be copied by people in their own countries, not by leaving their countries.” Appropriately, she was named Liberty Enlightening the World, not Liberty Receiving Enthusiastically the World! 

Statue Of Liberty Concerned Slavery, Not Immigration

Immigration proponents’ understanding of the true meaning of the statute is entirely backward.  They don’t talk about its history or intent as it goes against the heart of the open border advocates’ narrative.  Much like the passage from “The New Colossus,” they focus on the poor coming from overseas and across our borders rather than the poor at home. The fact that there have been 1.6 million migrant encounters last fiscal year, and 1.6 million already, year to date is music to their ears.

Yet, more than three million immigrants a year, both legal and illegal, arriving in the U.S. creates colossal problems for everyone, and especially the poor. According to the Census Bureau, in 2020, the number of people officially in poverty was 37.2 million, and the depth of poverty has gotten worse. Deep poverty has increased to 45.6%.

And why do the poor continue to stay poor? One big reason is the oversupply of low-skilled immigrant workers, who depress wages of the native-born. Case in point, the bottom 20% of Americans’ income has remained largely the same ”and has only risen from around $15,000 to $16,100 between 1966 and 2014”. As a result, these lower-income households saw a twenty percent decrease between 1970  and 2020 in their income share compared to the middle and upper class.

Not surprisingly, the descendants of American slaves have been hit especially hard by the endless waves of migration. The National Bureau of Economic Research found that since 1970, actual earnings for the median black man have fallen from $30,800 to $21,000 in 2014, a 32 percent decline.

Declining wages have slowed people’s ability to move up financially in their lifetimes. This increasing economic inequality and the inability to get ahead is due, again, in large part to mass immigration.

Just look at the contrast between the upward trajectory of children born before the 1965 Immigration Act and afterwards.  It’s startling! Whereas”92% of children born in 1940 earned higher incomes at the age of 30 than did their parents, this share dropped to 50% for children born in 1980“. 

We’ve gone from a country where almost everyone could financially exceed their parents’ income to the odds of achieving that now are worse than flipping a coin. Of the children born into the bottom fifth of the economic ladder, 43% will continue to be stuck there, and for Americans born at the bottom, it’s clear the ability to move up is particularly low. 

With the recent influx of immigrants, Democrat mayors in blue states finally must confront the consequences of their policies. New York City’s mayor Eric Adams recently let out a few known truths on immigration, conceding the illegal immigrant influx was a “real burden” and that for New Yorkers, “our schools are going to be impacted, our health care system is going to be impacted, our infrastructure is going to be impacted.” He went so far as to say, “if there was ever an all-hands-on-deck moment, this is it.” Hopefully, Mayor Adams will realize the costs of immigration before it sinks his ship.

In Washington D.C., Mayor Muriel Bowser told Face the Nation that newly arrived asylum seekers were filling up homeless shelters. These bussed migrants are straining the city’s social safety net, and “the local taxpayers are not picking up the tab and should not pick up the tab.” She believes it’s the federal government’s responsibility and they should pull out their checkbook. She’s right on that. By the same token, it shouldn’t be the responsibility of the U.S. to generously accommodate illegal aliens, either. 

The stone-faced Statue of Liberty and Americans struggling here share an uncomfortable truth: both the meaning of the statue and American livelihoods have been displaced. Prioritizing the needs of the impoverished from abroad over the plight of America’s most vulnerable ignores the fact that day after day the poor become more financially broke and economically immobile.

Reducing immigration will benefit those Americans struggling to make ends meet, as economic prosperity is very much possible. Between 1940-1980 when there was low immigration, “the real incomes of white males expanded two-and one-half fold” while “real incomes expanded four-fold” for Black men. By 1980, the Black middle class grew from 22 percent of African Americans to 71 percent.”

The U.S. has a duty and an obligation to pick up the tab for its citizens, not new arrivals from halfway around the world. It’s time we support our poor, our homeless, and our huddled masses yearning to breathe free. Only then can the U.S. live up to the real meaning of the Statue of Liberty. 

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Kevin Lynn is the Executive Director for Progressives for Immigration Reform. Lynn writes about the unintended consequences of unbridled immigration and their impacts on the environment, as well as federal, state and local politics. A former Army intelligence officer and successful organizer of influential groups in Arizona, California and Texas, he is based in Pennsylvania. Contact him at klynn@ firdc.org.

Statue Of Liberty Concerned Slavery, Not Immigration Statue Of Liberty Concerned Slavery, Not Immigration