Category: Guest Authors

Volags Getting Refugee Rich

Volags Getting Refugee Rich

By Joe Guzzardi
 

The State Department recently identified 19 U.S. cities as preferred destinations for Afghan refugees. Chosen because they’re “locations with reasonable cost of living, housing availability, supportive services, and welcoming communities with volunteers and resources,” the list includes Cleveland, Buffalo, Philadelphia, St. Louis and Baltimore, as well as other Southwest and Rocky Mountain cities like Salt Lake, Denver and Phoenix.

Volags Getting Refugee Rich

The usual suspects – the White House, the media, the bicoastal elites, 100 percent of congressional Democrats, and 80 percent of virtue-signaling congressional Republicans, a rough estimate based on how few in the GOP have objected – can barely contain their glee over what promises to be, at least in the initial refugee wave, between 22,000 and 30,000 Afghan arrivals. Even former President Donald Trump, who slashed refugee resettlement to historically low annual levels, advocated for resettling Afghans who assisted U.S. military, a category that’s broad enough to include office personnel and other nonessential workers.

But few are more thrilled than the “volunteers and resources” groups noted above, also known as “volags” – voluntary agencies – the so-called faith-based organizations, often disparagingly called the refugee resettlement industry. In her 2018 research report compiled from the latest publicly available data, senior researcher Dr. Nayla Rush of the Center for Immigration Studies found that the federal government funded the nine major U.S. volags at the rate of 58 percent to 97 percent. Taxpayer funds go to provide refugees support with housing, food, clothing, community orientation, English lessons, enrollment in various benefits and welfare programs, referral to social service providers including health care, and employment. Volags’ chief operating officers earned, at the time of Dr. Rush’s research, annual salaries that range from a low of $132,000 to a high of $671,749.

Although many resettlement workers may be motivated by good intentions, the indisputable conclusion is that, since volags are reimbursed on a per-capita basis, fewer refugees also mean fewer jobs and less income for the agencies and their employees. Logically, volags anticipate that the Afghan crisis represents a potential pot of post-Trump gold, and are pressuring Biden to expedite the maximum total of refugees. As Lutheran Immigration and Refugee Service’s president and CEO Krish O’Mara Vignarajah candidly said, “We’ve been screaming from the rooftops for months now that we need to get these allies to Guam or another U.S. territory.”

Earlier this summer, the Senate, in anticipation of what it knew would be a significant Afghan refugee influx, unanimously passed a bill that provided $1 billion toward easing the Special Immigrant Visa (SIV) application process. SIVs are issued to nationals of countries who have assisted U.S. military forces, often as translators. To coincide with the Senate bill, the State Department announced that it would confer Priority-2 (P-2) designation that grants access for permanent U.S. residency to certain Afghan nationals and their eligible family members that don’t or haven’t yet qualified for SIVs. Included would be Afghans who worked for U.S. government contractors, for U.S.-funded programs, or U.S.-based media or nongovernmental organizations, as well as their families.

John Kirby, assistant to the Secretary of Defense for Public Affairs, enthusiastically proclaimed that “we want to have the capacity to get up to several thousand immediately and want to be prepared for the potential of tens of thousands….We’re going to focus on getting as many folks [Afghan refugees] out as we can.” What total “many folks” might climb to, no one can predict. In a letter to Biden, U.S. representatives Barbara Lee (Calif.) and Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez (NY) urged the president to set the refugee cap at “no less than 200,000,” an increase of nearly 140,000 from the 62,500 established for 2021, and many thousands more than the 125,000 the White House previously said it would seek in 2022. Other advocates want 1.2 million Afghans resettled.
In Congress, the progressive caucus speaks loudly, and has significant sway with its receptive audience in the White House. Reaching 200,000 refugees in fiscal 2022 sounds like a stretch, but it would be consistent with the Biden administration’s America-Last agenda which has been on full display at the Southwest border since Day 1.
 
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.

Volags Getting Refugee Rich

Volags Getting Refugee Rich

What Biden Left Behind In Afghanistan

What Biden Left Behind comes courtesy of Stan Casacio who hosts the Don’t Back Down Show on WWDB AM 860


By John and Andy Schlafly

Some $85 billion worth of America’s most advanced military technology was left behind in Afghanistan, a shocking revelation that by itself would justify President Biden’s removal from office, along with his entire national security team. Biden has given new meaning to the term “cut and run” by abandoning American citizens while permitting an immense cache of advanced weapons to be used against them.

We are not just talking about a few guns or hand grenades. The abandoned American equipment includes more than 109 helicopters, 22,170 Humvees, 8,000 trucks, 64,300 machine guns, and 358,530 assault rifles, according to the non-partisan U.S. Government Accountability Office (GAO).

Jim Banks (R-IN), who is in the House Republican leadership after serving with our troops in Afghanistan, observed last week that the Taliban has “more Black Hawk helicopters than 85 percent of the countries in the world.” At least 33 Black Hawk helicopters are in the Taliban’s hands now. 

White House national security adviser Jake Sullivan previously admitted that the Biden Administration lacks a “complete picture“ of all of the military equipment it left behind. In addition, databases of Americans and our allies are probably with the Taliban, too.

White House national security adviser Jake Sullivan previously admitted that the Biden Administration lacks a “complete picture“ of all of the military equipment it left behind.

Since 2007, our troops have collected biometric data about residents of Afghanistan by using mobile technology including the Biometric Automated Toolset (BAT) and Handheld Interagency Identity Detection Equipment (HIIDE). These tools include a fingerprint reader, iris scanner, and camera, in order to build facial and fingerprint watchlists.

Placement on a watchlist in the United States can result in being kept off an airplane, which is inconvenient. But inclusion in these watchlists in Afghanistan can result in death.

White House press secretary Jen Psaki gave an unpersuasive denial of a report, by the left-leaning news website Politico, that the Biden Administration had given the names of attempted evacuees to the Taliban. The reality is that Biden has no idea whether such a list has been given to the enemy.

“First let me say there have been reports that we provided lists of people who want to leave Afghanistan to the Taliban. That’s inaccurate. That’s misreported and misconstrued,” Psaki insisted.

But last Thursday Biden himself admitted that he did know enough about such a list to respond to questions about it. He declared that he could not state “with any certitude that there’s actually been a list of names.”

The biometric database, now presumably in the hands of the Taliban, is a deadly “kill list.” It potentially provides the Taliban with photos and fingerprints of Afghans who supported or assisted American soldiers, and those Afghans now face deadly reprisal.

Secretary of State Antony Blinken was reportedly vacationing at his family’s luxurious home in exclusive East Hampton, Long Island, as the Taliban was overthrowing the Afghan government. Blinken has so misjudged the rapid takeover of Afghanistan that he should resign immediately.

Incredibly, the Western-installed president of Afghanistan, Ashraf Ghani, is a former Berkeley anthropology professor entirely unsuited for the challenge of his job, just as Biden is. As reported by the Washington Post, Ghani was more interested in early August in digitizing the Afghan economy than in defending against the invasion of his own capital.

“We never thought we would take Kabul so quickly,” a Taliban commander marveled. With Biden officials departed for an early weekend and the Afghan president having abruptly fled the country, there was no leadership for any earnest defense.

Military equipment can be replaced, but our trapped Americans cannot. Our equipment can now be used by terrorists against our own citizens there and elsewhere.
“If there’s American citizens left, we’re gonna stay to get them all out,” Biden declared on August 18. But Biden then broke his promise by pulling out of Afghanistan before evacuating all of our citizens who want to leave.

“We did not get everybody out that we wanted to get out,” Marine Corps Gen. Kenneth F. McKenzie, Jr., admitted Monday evening as the final American troops were withdrawn from the country, even earlier than the deadline demanded by the Taliban. The remaining Americans are targets for terrorists as bargaining chips, or worse.

Under President Trump’s leadership, only 3 American soldiers died in the second half of last year in Afghanistan. Biden’s failure to secure Kabul airport and Bagram Air Base for the evacuation resulted in the horrible massacre of 13 American troops last week, nearly all in their early 20s and whose heartbreaking photos are being shared in eulogy across the internet.

While American citizens were left behind to face the Taliban alone, tens of thousands of Afghan men, women, and children are being airlifted and resettled inside our country, and there is no way to adequately vet them. Far from eradicating terrorism in Afghanistan, Biden has equipped and facilitated it.

John and Andy Schlafly are sons of Phyllis Schlafly (1924-2016) and lead the continuing Phyllis Schlafly Eagles organizations with writing and policy work.

What Biden Left Behind In Afghanistan

Pennsylvania 5G Law Passes With Little Fanfare

Pennsylvania 5G Law Passes With Little Fanfare

By Bob Small

HB 162 was passed by the Pennsylvania Legislature, and signed into law as Act 50 on June 30 by the Gov. Tom Wolf. The Small Wireless Facilities Deployment Act was passed with only three dissenting votes and little notice. The idea is to accelerate 5G infrastructure in Pennsylvania

We all, of course, want the modern world of 5G and any route to this sounds like it must be harmless. Well, yes and no. First, we learned of this item at the July Swarthmore Borough Council Meeting. We learned that the mini-towers required for 5G could be planted on the grass strips that many of us have between sidewalk and street.

This is property we had thought was owned by the homeowners and, we assumed, was part of what we pay taxes for We assumed we had control of what goes on on these strips. Guess not.

Now, according to State Senator Tim Kearney (D-26 and a former fine Mayor of Swarthmore) there are but sevem exceptions whereas a municipality can “refuse the installation of small cells.” None of these 7 exemptions apply to these street strips already having a planting of any kind of tree, neither fruit trees or saplings, or… These would probably have to go, though that’s a small price for progress, one supposes.

The apple harvest we had this year may be our last.

There’s an exception for Historical Markers, but this would not necessarily apply to, say, Swarthmore’s Historically Black Neighborhood. Each case like this might have to be brought up individually. How this might effect Swarthmore College is still unclear.

We have also been told that all these initial requests will be coming to your town by the end of the†month.

According to Legiscan.com, the only three nays, in the State House, were Democrat Kevin J. Boyle, and Republicans Carl Walker Metzgar, and Brett R. Miller, none of whom mentioned it on their websites.
Boyle, who participated in some forums I organized, did not respond as to his reasons to vote against this bill. No one in the Pennsylvania Senate opposed it.

Bob Small is a resident of Swarthmore.

Pennsylvania 5G Law Passes With Little Fanfare
HB 162 was passed by the Pennsylvania Legislature, and signed into law as Act 50 o

Judicial Elections Hugely Important In Pennsylvania

Judicial Elections Hugely Important In Pennsylvania, forwarded from Leo Knepper of Citizens Alliance of Pennsylvania

By Gina Diorio

While next year’s U.S. Senate race and, to a lesser extent, gubernatorial race are capturing much of the political media’s attention, Pennsylvania has another statewide election in just a few months. On Nov. 2, voters will elect four judges to open seats on our three statewide appellate courts. 

Before moving to Pennsylvania, I lived almost all my life in Jersey, where the governor appoints judges. So when I realized some states elect their judges, I was befuddled. Then, when I learned Pennsylvania elects judges in partisan elections, I was dumbfounded. 

You might be thinking, who cares? Why do these races matter? I’m glad you asked. 

Pennsylvania has three statewide appellate courts: Supreme Court, Superior Court, and Commonwealth Court. Superior Court and Commonwealth Court are equal in ‘rank’, so to speak, but hear different types of cases. 

The 15-member Superior Court hears appeals in criminal and most civil cases. And the court’s rulings can have a major impact on individuals, local businesses, and more. 

For example, the Superior Court has ruled on “venue shopping,” the practice of allowing trial lawyers to cherry pick where they bring personal injury cases—regardless of where the alleged injury occurred—based on which court has a history of ordering big payouts. (Hello, Philadelphia.)

The Superior Court has also chimed in on whether workers can sue former employers for illnesses that appear long after they’ve left their jobs (another potential trial lawyers’ dream). 

The 9-member Commonwealth Court, meanwhile, hears cases relating to state and local government.

Last year, when businesses challenged Gov. Wolf COVID orders, some of these cases went to Commonwealth Court. When the League of Women Voters challenged our congressional map back in 2017, that lawsuit began in Commonwealth Court. And when my organization, Commonwealth Partners, challenged our state’s unbalanced budget, we filed the case in Commonwealth Court. 

Of course, our 7-member Supreme Court can overturn or sustain any ruling from the Superior or Commonwealth courts on appeal. However, it  can also take any case directly, regardless of its status in the lower courts. 

We saw this last year when the Supreme Court assumed jurisdiction over whether the General Assembly could terminate Wolf’s emergency disaster declaration without Wolf’s approval. As you’ll recall, the court ruled against the General Assembly—paving the way for the recently passed constitutional amendments reining in a governor’s emergency powers.

The Supreme Court assumed jurisdiction over whether the General Assembly could terminate Wolf’s emergency disaster declaration without Wolf’s approval.

Given that each judge in all three appellate courts is elected, the stakes and costs of judicial elections can quickly mount. 

In 2015, Pennsylvania set a record for the most expensive state judicial races in history to date, at more than $15 million. 

Spending was so high because three seats on our Supreme Court were up for election, and Democrats saw the chance to flip that court and have the final say over all the types of cases mentioned above—plus many more. 

Democrats succeeded, and as a result we’ve seen the court toss our congressional maps, change the voting rules just before last year’s election, and uphold Gov. Wolf’s business shutdown orders, to name just a few things. (For more on harmful Supreme Court rulings since 2015, check out Commonwealth Partners President and CEO Matt Brouillette’s recent op-ed.)

This year, voters will choose one Supreme Court justice, one Superior Court judge, and two Commonwealth Court judges. (In full disclosure, Commonwealth Partners, has endorsed candidates in each race.)

All these seats are currently held by Republicans. Democrats hope to expand their 5-2 majority on the Supreme Court, flip the Superior Court (which currently has an 8-7 Republican majority), and make inroads into the 7-2 Republican majority on the Commonwealth Court. 

Of course, seeking partisan gains for partisan ends is a barrier to an objective judiciary. Instead, we should seek judges who uphold the rule of law. 

So as November approaches, Pennsylvanians would do well to recognize that, despite their lack of excitement, judicial elections are critically important—and vote accordingly.

Gina Diorio is the Public Affairs Director at Commonwealth Partners Chamber of Entrepreneurs, an independent, non-partisan, 501(c)(6) membership organization dedicated to improving the economic environment and educational opportunities in Pennsylvania. www.thecommonwealthpartners.com.

Judicial Elections Hugely Important In Pennsylvania
Judicial Elections Hugely Important In Pennsylvania

Americans Fund Afghan, Border Blunders

Americans Fund Afghan, Border Blunders

By Joe Guzzardi

No sooner had the Taliban taken control of Kabul than the establishment demanded that thousands of Afghans be given immediate U.S. resettlement privileges. Allegedly, and likely at least partially accurate, some Afghans are friendly to the U.S. government, and worked with American military. Now, so goes the standard patter, with our allies’ lives reportedly endangered, the Biden administration has a moral duty to invite them to America to find safe haven.

Americans Fund Afghan, Border Blunders

In a bitter irony, the most passionate cry to immediately resettle Afghans came from former President George W. Bush whose fallacious “weapons of mass destruction” claim first drew the U.S. military into a 20-year long Middle East quagmire. Bush, a devoted immigration expansionist, urged Biden to “cut the red tape” to expedite Afghans’ safe and secure exit out of the now Taliban-controlled country.

As the old English proverb goes, and as history has proven, “There’s many a slip ‘twixt the cup and the lip.” The first hurdle in a resettlement plan is President Biden’s demonstrated inability to effectively manage any immigration-related issue. The Southern U.S. Border, where last month a 21-year high of 210,000 aliens crossed, is the most shocking example, but other instances, all still in progress, are Biden’s unconstitutional refusal to enforce existing immigration law, his proposed 96 percent budget reduction in border security assets and his gutting of Immigration and Customs Enforcement, the agency that protects the interior. Given Biden’s dismal immigration track record, only the most naïve could assume that his State or Homeland Security Departments could successfully vet tens of thousands of Afghans.

To be clear, fair-minded Americans want to help allies who have supported us in the extended Afghan War. But Americans don’t want the Afghan Special Immigration Visa (SIV) program to devolve into a similar situation to that of the fraud-ridden Iraqi SIV program. In June, Reuters reportedthat 4,000 Iraqis are suspected of filing fraudulent resettlement applications. The State Department is re-examining 40,000 cases that involve more than 104,000 people, 95 percent of them still in Iraq, and has frozen those applications until further clarification. More than 500 already-admitted Iraqi refugees have been implicated in the fraud and could be deported or stripped of their U.S. citizenship.

Despite documented fraud in the Iraqi SIV program, Biden initiated a similar program for Afghanistan. The Department of Defense reportedly will, post-Kabul, place 30,000 Afghan refugees in Wisconsin’s Ft. McCoy and Texas’ Ft. Bliss. Assistant to the Secretary of Defense for Public Affairs John Kirbyannounced that, “We want to have the capacity to get up to several thousand immediately, and want to be prepared for the potential of tens of thousands.” Kirby’s inevitable undertaking will cost American taxpayers tens of billions of dollars.

The border crisis is expected to result this year in 2 million aliens, unvetted and some COVID-19 positive, allowed into the country. On August 17, the Department of Homeland Security unveiled a new “Case Management Pilot Program” to pay cities, counties and nongovernmental organizations to offer “cultural orientation,” medical screening, mental health services, legal orientation programs and other assistance for illegal immigrants who have been caught and released. U.S. taxpayers will fully fund the administration’s program, a version of which the Trump administration canceled because of cost inefficiency.

The 2 million-plus border surge, added to the as-yet-undetermined tens of thousands of Afghan refugees that will be resettled, will ensure that the nation’s transformation will continue unabated. Census Bureau datashowed that immigration, births to immigrants, the opioid epidemic and lower-than-anticipated birthrates among millennials after the Great Recession have contributed to a more diverse America.

The border fiasco and the Afghanistan mess are the direct consequences of wholly misguided, power-crazed elitists and inept military leadership. But, as always, Americans pay the financial tab and must adapt to whatever cultural changes and fallout that accompany the irresponsible politics that Washington, to citizens’ detriment, insists on forcing upon them.

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.

Americans Fund Afghan, Border Blunders

Americans Fund Afghan, Border Blunders

Gigi Williams Inspiring Autobiography

Gigi Williams Inspiring Autobiography

By Bob Small

This is the backstory of how I came to read Gigi Williams’ autobiographical book

God’s Hand in my “One” (looking back at the Master’s Plan). We had traveled to the village of North East , MD, to visit a friend — let’s call her M — as this location was equidistant from our homes.

While at a picnic table by the Bay, a few people came up to us. One of them was Gigi, a middle-aged woman with one hand, who offered her book, for free, which I accepted, on the condition that she sign it, which she did. My acceptance was based on the fact that I always accept free books, whether on peace, politics, poetry, or religion.

Gigi Williams Inspiring Autobiography

“Trust in the Lord with all your heart and lean not on your own understanding.

These words from Proverbs 3:5-6, are part of the introduction to Chapter 8 and this summarizes a main message of Gigi’s book, that she has had to lean on faith, as opposed to medical technology, which she has also tried.

Along with her faith she also stresses her acceptance which, in her case, means she sees herself as different rather than “disabled”. Her book talks about the faith and acceptance that led her to have a career, a college degree, a driving license,a marriage and a family, all while being different rather than being “disabled.”

She writes in a very direct, unemcumbered way.

Camp no limits, which she mentions towards the end, is still active in Maryland.

See https://nolimitsfoundation.org/ and Facebook. This is a camp focused on children with “limb loss”, not to be confused with the no limits foundation which focuses on autism related issues. Camp no Limits has a religious connection, which permeates the whole book. My sense is that her religious faith has sustained her, which I accept as one way to get through this labyrinth we call life.

This book can be ordered through www.gigiwilliams.info and also is carried by Amazon, and Barnes and Noble.

Gigi Williams Inspiring Autobiography

Woke Against Democracy

Woke Against Democracy

By Joe Guzzardi

On July 28, The New York Times published an op-ed titled, “There Is No Good Reason You Should Have to Be a Citizen to Vote.” The Times described Atossa Araxia Abrahamian’s opinion piece as “part of a series [‘Snap Out of It, America’] exploring bold ideas to revitalize and renew the American experiment.”

Bold, revitalize and renew are the misleading words that the Times chose instead of the more accurate: radical, audacious and subversive. The American experiment that the Times boasts proudly of championing is overthrowing America’s existing, time-honored voting system which legally excludes voting rights for noncitizens.

Woke Against Democracy

Abrahamian, the Canadian born author of “The Cosmopolites: The Coming of the Global Citizen,” and who holds Swiss and Iranian citizenship, proposes, among other extreme concepts, that voting rights be given to foreign nationals residing in the U.S. on temporary work visas, and Green Card holders. Those immigrant categories would include non-English speakers and those who have briefly lived in the U.S. Ironically, Abrahamian’s proposal would also extend to illegal aliens who have knowingly and willingly broken U.S. law, and presumably would also be granted to the estimated 2 million aliens who will surge the Southwest Border this year.

The Illegal Immigration Reform and Immigrant Responsibility Act of 1996, however, expressly barred noncitizens from voting. But the 1996 act has been steadily chipped away at and criminally disregarded. A San Francisco 2016 referendum joined a few other municipalities to give illegal immigrants voting privileges in local school board elections. The supporting argument was that about one-third of San Francisco school district pupils had foreign-born parents. Whether those parents were legally present was not part of the debate. Advocates also speciously argued that participating in the electoral process gives unlawfully present immigrants a greater sense of community involvement.

Illegal immigrants have, fraudulently and feloniously, registered to vote and have cast possibly deciding ballots in federal elections. In its essay, “Aliens and Voter Fraud,” the Center for Immigration Studies wrote that when Old Dominion University (ODU) and George Mason University (GMU) researchers analyzed noncitizen participation rates from the Cooperative Congressional Election Studies’ 2008 and 2010 data, they estimated that roughly 620,000 noncitizens were registered to vote prior to the 2008 election.

The researchers then turned their attention to the 2008 North Carolina presidential results as well as to the Minnesota senate race. By comparing the noncitizen turnout to the vote margin needed to win the elections, ODU and GMU analysts concluded that noncitizen voting likely won the elections for the Democratic Party candidates in both instances. In the North Carolina election, the ODU and GMU authors wrote that “it is likely … that John McCain would have won North Carolina were it not for the votes for Obama cast by noncitizens.”

The Minnesota senate election was one of the most crucial congressional races in the 2008 election cycle, given that it ensured a 60-vote filibuster-proof Democratic majority. Notably, after a mandatory recount, and eight months after Election Day, 312 votes determined the Senate winner. Highlighting the paper-thin margin in which Democrat candidate Al Franken defeated Republican incumbent Norm Coleman, the authors wrote that “participation by more than 0.65 percent of noncitizens in MN is sufficient to account for the entirety of Franken’s margin. Our best guess is that nearly ten times as many [noncitizens] voted.”

A University of Alabama study, “Immigration Status, Immigrant Family Ties, and Support for the Democratic Party,” concluded that immigrants, their children and theirgrandchildren are all more likely than Americans without close immigrant relatives to support the Democratic Party. If the entire illegal alien and temporary resident population were granted voting rights, Abrahamian’s goal, years if not decades will pass before the GOP won enough federal elections to make a difference.

To all but the woke, a group that includes the Times, globalist Abrahamian and far too many Washington, D.C., elites, sovereign American and inalienable voting rights that go with citizenship are treasured values to defend, fight and die for.

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.

Woke Against Democracy

Woke Against Democracy

Home In India, A Review

Home In India, A Review

By Bob Small

Almost every Saturday Night around 11:30 p.m. (9 a.m. Indian time the following day), we find ourselves going to Epiphany’s Church Service, in English (Cuttack,India), via Zoom. One of the most inspiring pastors is Rev. Moumita Biswas of the Church of Scotland.

Rev. Biswas is featured Andrew Mills’ book Home in India, which can be ordered at https://www.andrewmillsbooks.com/

This weekly schedule is not due to any great religious fervor, but rather relationships formed by my wife while she was in India previously, that were recently re-established.

This was many years and one husband ago.

Part of the story of Andy Mills in India is his role as in India as a Lay Missionary.

The Andy Mills we know is from his work in Witness for Peace. Witness for Peace was founded in 1983 and campaigns for “peace, justice, and sustainable economies in Latin America”.

Andrew Mills connects both these topics and more; He has been a Chairperson of Witness for Peace (1994-2012). Previously, he went to India , in a dual role as a consulting groundwater hydrologist/programmer and a lay Missionary under the UCBWM (United Church Board for World Ministries). This was from 1956-61, and 1967-71.

This book introduced me to a part of Andy that I never knew, the Missionary. He felt he was in India to help with both bodies and souls.

He talks honestly of the dichotomies between his views as a Christian Westerner, and both the Christian Indians and Hindu Indians. Along the way, there are also the differing views within the Christian Missionary Community.

One vital point he makes is the notion that he should live simply, in the same way that the Indians live. This adjustment was not easy for him as an American.

He also explained that the different groupings had much to learn from each other when they chose to listen.

Recently, when I looked up the current status of CNI, the Church of Northern India, I discovered that some of the same concerns that he wrote about were still in the process of being resolved.

The book is divided into sections covering his dual activities in India, and three epilogues, honoring both British and Indian Christians he worked with.

Home In India, A Review

More People Means Reservoirs Shrink

More People Means Reservoirs Shrink

 By Kathleene Parker


Showing reservoirs, including iconic Lake Mead at Hoover Dam, shrunk to a fraction of their intended size, national news media is reporting that the American Southwest is in the worst 20-year drought in 1,200 years.

Yet, no one asked why President Biden is hellbent on increasing immigration – which has exploded the U.S. population by an average approaching 30 million a decade over the last three decades – when he can’t ensure adequate water for those here now. The Southwest is the fastest growing region of ours, the third most populated nation and one of the world’s fastest growing developed nations – something else never reported.

More People Means Reservoirs Shrink


There are roughly 200 reservoirs along the length of the Colorado River – the primary water source for at least 45 million people in the Colorado River Basin and beyond – that were thought to ensure a 50-year water supply in drought. Yet, by the early 2000s, that 50-year supply was sucked dry!

At Lake Mead, the water level recently fell below the trigger point for the first-ever federal water emergency. That will mean mandatory water cutoffs, delivering a body blow to the Southwest’s economy and drying up farmland needed to feed the nation’s exploding population. But even that might not stop a collapse of the Colorado River system, a vast network of diversion projects and reservoirs stretching from Wyoming to the Mexican border. Meaning, reservoirs might run dry and diversions might no longer take water into cities of millions!

Today’s Phoenix, Arizona, was so named when settlers in the 19th century realized that they were building on the ruins of some long-ago civilization – that of the Hohokam – and named their new settlement after the mythical bird that arises from the ashes of another.

The Four Corner states – Colorado, Arizona, New Mexico and Utah – today are dotted with the ruins of the mysterious cliff dwellings and towns of the ancestral Puebloans – the Hohokam, the Anasazi and the Mimbres – who were forced into what we call the Great Abandonment, during the prolonged drought of the late 1200s though the mid-1300s. Hundreds of thousands of people fled what had been relative paradises in Colorado’s Montezuma Valley and on the once-verdant Mesa Verde, in the Gila Mountains of New Mexico and on the high uplands of Arizona, relocating to areas, mostly along the Rio Grande, with somewhat dependable water.

Lake Mead, the second largest reservoir in North America, is now 35 percent “full,” but since the bottom 20 percent is useless sludge, that means nearly empty, just as the Scripps Institute of Oceanography warned would happen in the 2020s. In California, some reservoirs can no longer generate hydropower, and Lake Powell, just upstream from Lake Mead and the largest reservoir in North America, also flirts with being empty. Yet, Big Media never ask if Biden grasps:

  1. That this might not be drought, but merely a return to far-drier norms than 1960 to 1995, the wettest time in the Southwest in 2000 years.
     
  2. That there is not “always ‘new’ water” to be found or some miraculous technofix to save us – although, admittedly, more people mean more sewage effluent to process for drinking. Yum!
     
  3. That the current drought might pale in comparison with what climate change might bring.

In 1922, the Colorado River Basin states of Wyoming, Colorado, Utah, New Mexico, Arizona, Nevada and California met near Santa Fe to legally divide, or allocate, the Colorado River. But the resulting Colorado River Compactbegan with an “Oops!” of staggering proportions, as 16-million acre feet were divvied up, even though the river usually carries only 13 m.a.f. (An acre foot is the amount of water it takes to cover an acre of ground with a foot of water.)

That didn’t matter in a Southwest that at the time supported under 5 million people. But, if immigration continues at the astronomical rates of recent decades, or even increases, the Southwest could see its population double, even as flows on the Colorado will likely average a paltry 7 m.a.f. a year, maybe even as low as 5 m.a.f.

So, twice the people, half the water.

Will that bring our own Great Abandonment, an exodus of 45 million people trying to flee anywhere other than a drought-and-climate-change seared Southwest?

Are you even aware, Mr. Biden, of that possibility?


A contributing writer to Progressives for Immigration Reform, Kathleene Parker, of Los Alamos, New Mexico, is a fifth-generation resident of the American Southwest. A retired journalist who long covered a national laboratory in New Mexico, she now writes nationally on water, population and the need to re-regulate major media.

More People Means Reservoirs Shrink

Border Surge And Drought Are Incompatible

Border Surge And Drought Are Incompatible

By Joe Guzzardi

The federal government’s U.S. Drought Monitor indicates that nearly half the nation is suffering from abnormally dry drought conditions. States in the West are the most adversely affected, but parts of the Midwest and the East are classified as experiencing extreme, severe or moderate drought. The Pacific Northwest had not seen a spring this dry since 1924, and this is the second driest March to June on record for Washington, Oregon and Idaho.

Border Surge And Drought Are Incompatible

In California and Nevada, reservoirs are low, approaching but not quite matching 2012 to 2016 levels. Continued drying increases wildfire risk throughout the region, reflected in several recent out-of-control incidents in northern California, which has more than 200 vulnerable communities. The Dixie Fire, California’s second largest in the state’s history, destroyed iconic Greenville, burned hundreds of homes and forced evacuations in the adjacent 48,000 acres. As of August 8, Dixie has torched more than 463,000 acres and is only 21 percent contained.

Nevada and California, both states in 100 percent drought conditions that range from moderate to exceptional, had record warm temperatures in June which escalated the severe effects, including fire potential, water temperature impacts on fish and increased evaporative demand. Drought impacts on pasture conditions, ecosystem health, water supply, recreation and fire potential have intensified and expanded.

Just as the National Weather Service predicts no relief in sight, neither do population analysts foresee a reduction of the numbers of new arrivals that will drink, cook with, bathe in, irrigate or flush with the increasingly scarce water normally available for everyday activities. California Gov. Gavin Newsom asked residents to voluntarily cut water use by 15 percent. Many but not all will comply. Posh resorts, golf clubs, baseball diamonds, college football fields as well as the rich and famous like the Kardashians likely won’t do their share. Post-pandemic California anticipates millions of visitors this summer season, and through 2023. Out-of-state tourists who pay an average $2,757 per week to visit California may take their 15-minute shower and opt for freshly laundered linens.

Whether California residents heed Newsom or whether visitors pay attention to their lodgings’ pleas to consume less water is beyond anyone’s control. But controlling the millions of future water consumers pouring across the Southwest border is well within the federal government’s power. At the current pace, by the end of his first year in office President Biden will have overseen and unconstitutionally sanctioned the unlawful entry of more than 2 million illegal immigrants. Add those 2 million to the autopilot annual 1 million lawful permanent residents and hundreds of thousands who arrive on employment-based visas but rarely return home, and more than 3 million new arrivals will join the country’s already overcrowded 330 million.

Here’s the simple formula: too many people will equal not enough water. Some areas have been dramatically hurt by too little water, and too rapid population growth. The Texas Commission on Environmental Equality found that since 1940 the population of the 10 largest sister cities that straddle the U.S.-Mexican border, an arid region already short of water, has exploded twentyfold, from 560,000 people to roughly 10 million today.

Without taking into consideration the ongoing border surge, the Census Bureau predicts that the nation’s mid-century population will exceed 400 million, a 25 percent increase from today’s level, and about 90 percent driven by immigrants and births to immigrants.

Don’t blame immigrants for the water crisis. The Biden administration graciously invited border crossers to live in the U.S., and Department of Homeland Security Secretary Alejandro Majorkas facilitated their safe and orderly dispersal throughout the nation. After immigration officials apprehend the aliens, they’re released into the interior, often on charter flights. Eventually, they’ll receive the government’s full complement of affirmative benefits. Those who have come, and those who will continue to come. are here to stay. But the water that they’ll need can’t be manufactured. The looming, acute water shortage will create a hard time for all, immigrants and citizens alike.

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.

Border Surge And Drought Are Incompatible

Border Surge And Drought Are Incompatible