Category: Guest Authors

AOC vs Schumer Election Battle Looming?

By Joe Guzzardi

Two sure signs that the 2022 mid-term campaigning has begun: candidates’ television spots are bombarding viewers, and the Capitol Hill rumor mill is grinding away. One of the most intriguing bits of gossip is that New York Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez may challenge Senate Majority leader Chuck Schumer this year, or wait until 2024 to take on the more vulnerable, ineffective Sen. Kirsten Gillibrand.

Ocasio-Cortez versus Schumer would present a fascinating match up, a media dream come true, with the upstart second-term representative having little to lose. First, consider that Ocasio-Cortez has experience in toppling the Democratic establishment. In the 2018 primary, Ocasio-Cortez drubbed 20-year congressional veteran and incumbent Joe Crowley, then the House Democratic Caucus chairman, the fourth ranking Democrat and a favorite to become Speaker.

Ocasio-Cortez, a member of the Democratic Socialists of America, won 57 percent of the vote. Her winning campaign four years ago could foreshadow trouble for Schumer as the message she’d send to New Yorkers would highlight the differences between the incumbent and her. Ocasio-Cortez repeatedly said that upset wins like hers represent what happens when people vote… “they had the money, we had people.”

For Ocasio-Cortez, Schumer represents an inviting target, should she choose to seek the Senate. In 2018, she ran as a woman, a young person, a working-class champion, a fresh face, an unabashed liberal and a person of color. Schumer is male, old, elitist and white. Along the campaign trail, Ocasio-Cortez piled up endorsements from national progressive groups that would elude Schumer.

Few in the Senate are more establishment than Schumer, best friend to Wall Street and Silicon Valley. Schumer’s only jobs since he graduated from Harvard Law School have been in government, and he’s become a powerful, but overly familiar, not particularly admired, boring, dour, staid figure in New York politics for nearly 50 years. First in the State Assembly in 1975, the U.S. House from 1991 to 1999, and the U.S. Senate from 1999 through today, Schumer is yesterday’s news.

On Election Day 2022, Schumer will be two weeks shy of 72; Ocasio-Cortez, 33. The woke vote, the 5 million or so New Yorkers between the ages of 18 to 34, and the fed-up vote would go overwhelmingly to Ocasio-Cortez who knows how to reach younger people through social media and her 13 million Twitter followers. Schumer’s Twitter followers, on the other hand, are 40,000.

Schumer’s approval ratings are the second lowest of his senate career, with only 41 percent of his constituents giving him an “excellent” or “good” score, and 29 percent rating him as “poor.” The polling results have more bad news for Schumer. Among Ocasio-Cortez’s key youthful voters, 58 percent said Schumer was doing a “poor” or, at best, “fair” job.

The next move is Ocasio-Cortez’s. She’s been coy about her intentions, and when questioned directly about challenging Schumer, she’s responded evasively. Ocasio-Cortez’s pat answer is that she hasn’t considered a Senate run, but she hasn’t ruled it out either. “We shall see” is her favorite dodge. Much of Ocasio-Cortez’s future may depend on Schumer’s ability to bring home President Biden’s major legislative agenda, currently badly stalled. Whether Schumer retains his seat, or Ocasio-Cortez upends him, the legislative vote tally will be unchanged. Both are reliably left, and can be counted on to vote straight progressive on social issues.

Ocasio-Cortez’s emergence into the national spotlight and her visibility as a viable U.S. Senate candidate show how dramatically New York’s politics have shifted in just two and a half decades. Within living memory, Republican Gov. George Pataki served three consecutive terms, 1995 to 2006, and defeated incumbent Democrat Mario Cuomo to win his first gubernatorial race. Conservative Sen. Alfonse D’Amato preceded Schumer. Gillibrand, when she served in the U.S. House from 2006 to 2008, was a blue dog Democrat who opposed a 2007 state-level proposal to issue driver’s licenses to illegal immigrants and voted for legislation that would withhold federal funds from sanctuary cities harboring illegal aliens. Once the junior senator came under Schumer’s wing, however, she voted the straight Democratic party line on immigration.

Ocasio-Cortez covets higher political office and has demonstrated the wherewithal to achieve her goals. Some analysts speculate that Ocasio-Cortez will skip a Senate run, and make a presidential bid in 2024. A look at the 24 failed 2020 Democratic candidates makes her run appear possible, if not probable.

In politics, the nine months between today and November 8 are an eternity. Among other Democratic failures on crime, education, affordable housing and COVID-19, New York voters may have grown tired of illegal aliens, including underage migrants, being flown, under cover of darkness, from the Southwest border into their state where they will become taxpayers’ burdens.

A change is coming to New York’s U.S. Senate representation. The question that will face voters is whether the change will represent an improvement in their lives or another step backward toward full-on California status.

A PFIR analyst, Joe Guzzardi writes about immigration issues and impacts. Find him at joeguzzardi.substack.com.

AOC vs Schumer Election Battle Looming? AOC vs Schumer Election Battle Looming?

Border Failure Thought Success By Biden Gang

By Joe Guzzardi

Getting a dinner reservation at Per Se, New York’s restaurant of choice for the city’s royalty, is more difficult than entering the U.S. illegally. The wait for Per Se, the Thomas Keller Restaurant Group dining experience, can exceed three months, but border crossers just walk right on in to the U.S.; neither reservations nor identification is required. Actually, Illegal aliens have it better than Per Se diners. Border surgers don’t have to pay a $2,000 tab, including wine and tax, for dinner for two. Just the opposite for aliens. The free ride begins once they step inside the U.S.

To get their new-in-America lives started, the aliens only have to peacefully surrender to immigration border officials. Although the agents are highly trained to defend and protect the U.S. border, the new normal under Department of Homeland Security Secretary Alejandro Mayorkas is for aliens to turn themselves in to Customs and Border Protection agents who process and release them into the American interior. Then, they become the responsibility of  federal, state and local taxpayers who foot the bill for a bountiful array of affirmative benefits.

An extraordinary example of how the Biden administration has abdicated its border responsibilities occurred Jan. 22 when federally charted buses dropped off dozens of illegal alien single adult males in Brownsville, Texas, where they were seen getting into taxis headed for the airport to travel to Miami, Atlanta and Houston. No one has the slightest idea who they are. The only certain thing is the taxpayers, who have no vote in federal immigration policy, are funding their trips. In December 2020, agents reported more than 178,000 encounters at the southern border, the highest December on record. Convicted sex offenders and other criminals were among the 2 million worldwide migrants who illegally entered in 2021.

Several think tanks, each doing independent research, calculated that taxpayers subsidize illegal immigrant health care costs annually to the tune of $18.5 billion, and public education, $60 billion. Unaccompanied minors crossing the border in record numbers from Mexico, and the Northern Triangle countries of Guatemala, Honduras and El Salvador, have created a budget-draining cost to public schools in the form of Limited English Proficiency classes the schools are federally mandatedto offer.

Illegal immigration, the unprecedented Biden-style 2022 version, can be analyzed two ways. Beyond the first, the dollar burden on taxpayers, lays the long-term negative consequences to U.S. sovereignty. Some analysts argue that illegal immigration helps the U.S. economy because the migrant workers are motivated and responsive to the country’s always-shifting needs – in agriculture, construction and hospitality. Those who benefit the most from illegal immigration, however, are the cheap labor-addicted employers who hire them, and the aliens who have relocated, often with spouses and children in tow. Except for corporate profiteers, Americans gain little.

The second and much less discussed consequence of illegal immigration is the dissolution of national sovereignty. Arguments about illegal immigration, good or bad, have persisted for decades. But never before has an administration been so brazenly craven in welcoming and catering to aliens. Of the 2 million illegal immigrants who entered last year, 45,000 were clandestinely flown from the border into the interior with some using their arrest warrants as identification to board commercial aircraft.

Mayorkas openly admits that his agency has “fundamentally changed,” meaning that he’s gutted Immigration and Customs Enforcement, and proudly eliminated worksite enforcement. Even though only Congress can make immigration law, Mayorkas also boasted that in the Biden administration illegal presence is no longer considered a criminal offense.

Texas U.S. Representatives Chip Roy and Michael Cloud have called for Mayorkas’ immediate impeachment. Roy and Cloud allege that Mayorkas has violated many laws in letter and spirit, and he has “undermined the rule of law, violated the Constitution, and placed the lives and inalienable rights of Americans in danger.”

Because Biden and his administration view the border calamity as a thundering success, Mayorkas may remain in office for as long as the president is in office, something that sovereign America cannot withstand if the historic nation is to survive. Mayorkas’ impeachment is the best solution.

Joe Guzzardi is a PFIR analyst who writes about immigration issues and impacts. Contact him at jguzzardi@pfirdc.org.

Border Failure Thought Success By Biden Gang

Who Needs Congress? D.C.’s New Normal

By Joe Guzzardi

In a late Friday afternoon announcement, the Department of Homeland Security expanded the Science, Technology, Engineering and Math, STEM, Optional Practical Training, STEM OPT. Now, F-1 student visa OPT candidates can have degrees in bioenergy, general forestry, forest resources production and management, human-centered technology design, cloud computing, anthrozoology, climate science, earth systems science, economics and computer science, environmental geosciences, geobiology, geography and environmental studies, mathematical economics, mathematics, atmospheric and oceanic science, general data science, general data analytics, business analytics, data visualization, financial analytics, other data analytics, industrial and organizational psychology, and social sciences, research methodology, and quantitative methods. The complete 22-career long list is intended to give readers the full scope of its dire consequences to U.S. students and professionals, not to bog them down.

DHS Secretary Alejandro Mayorkas issued a press release and posted a notice in the Federal Register, but the news barely made a blip in the media or even on business channels. STEM OPT’s expansion, however, is significant since the thousands of new foreign-born workers entering the labor pool will adversely affect employed U.S. tech workers or recent U.S. STEM graduates whose prospective careers could be jeopardized.

“Practical training” is a purposely deceptive phrase; in reality, “training,” defined in real terms, means work authorization, a benefit that wasn’t included for F-1 student visas in the 1952 Immigration and Nationality Act. Students were expected to return home when they completed their courses of study. In a major and legally questionable departure from the INA, 70 years later, the biggest guest worker program is the F-1 student visa holder.

Joining DHS in making job searches harder for young Americans, the State Department also did its hurtful best. State doubled the time period for J-1 visa travelers, allegedly in the U.S. on a cultural exchange visit, from 18 to 36 months. Investigative journalists have extensively reported that J-1 visa holders, far from participating in cultural exchange, are often employed at jobs Americans will do. The visa is used to import workers whose professions range from au pair to medical doctor.

DHS’ unexpected proclamation offers insight into how today’s federal government works: wealthy elitists team up with high-ranking administration officials at exclusive functions, then lobby for special considerations that will benefit them while falsely claiming America will be the winner. Finally, the insiders, operating in secret, do an end run around Congress to put their destructive policies into place without the appropriate congressional committee debate or vote.

In 2008, OPT mushroomed from a one-year program that took effect after students graduated to 29 months. During a Georgetown cocktail party, Microsoft cofounder Bill Gates complained to then-Department of Homeland Security Secretary Michael Chertoff that Congress’ refusal to authorize more H-1B visas above the existing cap impaired Silicon Valley’s ability to maximize its profits. At that time, 65,000 new H-1B visas were available, with an additional 20,000 visas provided to holders of U.S. university-earned master’s degrees or higher. In 2015, the Obama administration, again without congressional approval, increased the OPT F-1 visa overstay authorization period to 36 months.

Rich, powerful and well-connected Gates and Chertoff proved to be a combination that, when they set out to achieve their mutual goal to provide Silicon Valley with more cheap labor, left U.S. tech workers out in the cold. Then-President George W. Bush, an immigration advocate, could have interceded on behalf of Americans, but chose not to.

That’s the new Washington, D.C. normal – agencies make and enforce regulations as law without congressional approval, and the administration ignores the unlawful procedures, pretending that all is well in the nation’s capital. As for displaced U.S. tech workers or struggling graduates, thanks to DHS’ open-borders Mayorkas, U.S. specialists who studied in the 22 STEM fields are left to fend for themselves. Mayorkas realizes the harm he’s inflicting on the nation’s prospective white-collar workers, and he knows that Americans object to prioritizing foreign workers. In his tweet that announced the STEM OPT expansion, Mayorkas purposely omitted “foreign student” to create the false impression that DHS is investing in domestic STEM talent.

OPT has been in litigation for more than a decade, challenging whether OPT holders who are no longer students can legally be allowed to work. For all those years, U.S. tech workers have taken the brunt of the government’s illegal ploys that are used against them indiscriminately to give foreign nationals an advantage in the high-skilled labor market.

Joe Guzzardi is a syndicated columnist and PFIR analyst who writes about immigration issues and impacts. Contact him at jguzzardi@pfirdc.org and joeguzzardi.substack.com.

Who Needs Congress? D.C.’s New Normal

More Foreign Workers Coming To USA

By Joe Guzzardi

During the peak days of coronavirus, Amazon delivery trucks were a familiar sight in neighborhoods across America. Amazon’s logo is a smiley face arrow pointing from “A” to “Z” indicating that the company offers customers products that range from those with names that begin with the letter “a” and all through to the letter “z,” in other words, everything. Shopping at Amazon, the smiling arrow promises, will make consumers happy.

What began in 1994 in Jeff Bezos’ garage as an online bookstore, then called “Cadabra” and with initial earnings of $20,000, Amazon is now recognized worldwide as the place to shop for products as diverse as AAA batteries or zinc tablets, and have them promptly delivered to your front door quickly. Today, Amazon’s market cap is $1.7 trillion. As of January 2022, Bezos is the world’s richest man with a net worth of $195 billion. Amazon is a great American success story. If only Amazon and its founder Jeff Bezos could use their billions-strong financial strength to share their wealth by hiring more Americans and paying them fairly instead of opting for lower-cost overseas workers, their accomplishments might be more broadly hailed.

But when Amazon wants to hire workers, it too often relies on the insidious H-1B, guest worker employment-based visa to fill its needs. In fiscal years 2020 and 2021, at 6,182, Amazon received more approvals for H-1B visas than any other corporation; Microsoft, Google and IBM received 1,200 or more. Worse news for U.S. tech workers is that the decline rate for H-1B visas has, under President Joe Biden, dropped to its lowest level in history which means that more tech jobs will go to Indian and Chinese nationals instead of U.S. citizens.

The National Foundation for American Policy calculated that only 4 percent of petitions were denied in FY 2021, down from 13 percent in FY 2020 and down from the high of 24 percent in FY 2018. NFAP wrote that the status of many H-1B extensions was reviewed under a more restrictive standard than the Trump administration. Those tighter guidelines gave officers at the U.S. Citizenship and Immigration Services more discretion to require additional proof that entry-level computer programming jobs qualify as a “specialty occupation,” a basic requirement for receiving an H-1B visa.

Courts later ruled that the Trump era memo was unlawful. NFAP also wrote that “employers and attorneys have credited USCIS Director Ur Jaddou and the Biden administration for rescinding the October 2017 memo.” Big business, lawyers and the Americans Last Biden White House, all unlimited immigration advocates, hailed Jaddou’s intervention, and defended the H-1B revision as helpful to corporations struggling to find what they term as “high-skilled” or the “best and brightest” employees, myths that have been perpetuated for decades.

The Census Bureau’s 2019 Community Survey, Single-Year Estimates found that among the 50 million employed college graduates ages 25 to 64 in 2019, 37 percent reported a bachelor’s degree in science or engineering but only 14 percent worked in a science, technology, engineering or math-related (STEM) occupations. U.S. tech workers are plentiful, but employers have to seek them out.

Through a series of loopholes, Congress has enabled H-1B visa holders to, instead of the initial six-year time cap on their visas – one three-year period followed by a three-year renewal – remain to work indefinitely, and become U.S. citizens. Because of the “dual intent” provision, H-1B visas holders can now displace American workers, and are rewarded with citizenship. Stated differently, admitted under the guise of being temporary, H-1B holders can become the most permanent of residents, a U.S. citizen.

The decline in H-1B denials trend is guaranteed to continue during Biden’s remaining three years in the White House. The president’s critics wonder why he’s so steadfastly determined to harms both high- and low-skilled U.S. workers. The border influx of mostly limited-skilled and under-educated migrants harm Americans at the lower end of the economic spectrum, while, at the same time, loosening the H-1B visa standards puts college-educated Americans behind the eight-ball when it comes to securing a white-collar job.

Joe Guzzardi is a Progressives for Immigration Reform analyst who has written about immigration for more than 30 years. Contact him at jguzzardi@pfirdc.org.

More Foreign Workers Coming To USA

More Foreign Workers Coming To USA