First of all, I’m retired which means tired squared. So, I’m trying to keep my life as simple as possible and not do any unnecessary activities. However, when a friend called to tell me that FEMA is giving out grants for funeral expenses for those who died from Covid, knowing that was exactly what my 99-and-half-year-old mother had died from, I decided to pursue this. When he further explained that it only required a single phone call, in most cases, I was suddenly less tired.
Of course it wasn’t that simple, bureacracy never is.
The very second step was that FEMA required my social security number. Mine! After pointing out that the public is constantly told not to give out their social security number under most circumstances and that the grant was for my mother, not me, they repeated that they needed it. When they were asked why they needed it, they basically said “because”.
Now it should be mentioned that my previous life included drudging for the state of Pennsylvania, in benefit determination. Now this required the applicant to provide their SSN, so we could match it with any employment, etc. income. However, even this did not capture many of those who were in “the underground economy”.
However, in the case of FEMA, I was told that “you can trust us” and, again, the only reason given was “because”, which my parents told me until at least the age of 12.
So I next did what any typical American citizen would do. I called my Congressperson. Their office said that they guessed FEMA needed proof that the person applying was not an illegal alien, either from Russia or Mars. They suggested that a Pennsylvania Birth Certificate would answer that concern. Unfortunately. my second call went about the same as the first. The couldn’t tell me why they needed the SSN, and only the SSN, only that, like with many recipes, no substitutions were allowed. When momma said don’t touch the stove, she had a damn fine reason!
So I came to the decision that my privacy is worth $6,000 more than my finances. Not everyone could afford to do this. As someone somewhere must have said, “having money means you can have principles”. As it is, my inner libertarian came through this time.
America Bigger Than Baseball — Remembering Jerry Coleman
By Joe Guzzardi
Lieutenant Colonel Jerry Coleman was a New York Yankees second baseman who won the 1949 Rookie of the Year award, and in 1950, the World Series Most Valuable Player award. After his playing career ended in 1957, Coleman broadcast New York Yankees, California Angels and then, for 40 years, San Diego Padres games. Coleman also had a brief, unsuccessful stint as the Padres manager.
Although Ted Williams and Coleman served in World War II and Korea, only Coleman saw active duty in both conflicts. In World War II, Williams was a stateside flying instructor, while Coleman flew Douglas SBD Dauntless bombers over the Pacific.
Williams and Coleman were flying buddies in Korea. During Williams’ 39 Korean combat missions, often as Colonel John Glenn’s wingman, enemy fire hit the plane of “Teddy Ballgame” and forced a crash landing. But as harrowing as Williams’ experience was, during one flight deep into North Korea, Coleman watched his tentmate Max Harper, flying just ahead of him, get shot down and perish. Despite the emotional burden of seeing his good friend killed in battle, Coleman carried on.
In his autobiography “An American Journey: My Life on the Field, In the Air and On the Air,” Coleman wrote about his early, challenging youth in San Francisco. Coleman’s father, Gerald, a former Pacific Coast League catcher with the San Francisco Seals and the Seattle Rainiers, drank heavily. One evening, suspecting that his wife Pearl was two-timing him, Gerald followed her to a local nightclub, and shot her several times, a crime for which he was never prosecuted. Young Coleman went to live with his grandmother, and excelled at sandlot baseball and high school basketball. In 1944, he enrolled in the Navy’s V-5 flight training program at age 18, the minimum age for the training. Coleman eagerly enlisted; he feared that World War II might end before he saw action.
The war over, the Yankees activated Coleman just in time for the thrilling 1949 pennant race that the Bronx Bombers won on the season’s last day when the team beat the Boston Red Sox. Coleman had his career year in 1950, but the Marines recalled him at the end of the 1951 season. By 1953, he had learned to fly Corsair attack planes, and was sent to Korea. By the end of the 1953 season, the 29-year-old Coleman, now physically and emotionally exhausted, returned to the Yankees where he struggled in his few token appearances. Coleman’s on-the-field slump continued in 1954 and 1955. By 1957, the playing days of the 33-year-old Coleman were over, and he embarked on his broadcasting career which eventually landed him in the Cooperstown Baseball Hall of Fame where he received the Ford C. Frick Award for excellence in baseball broadcasting.
Coleman’s only baseball regret was when he piloted the Padres in the 1980s. San Diego finished last in their division, and Coleman happily returned to the broadcast booth where he spent more than four decades in total calling the Padres games.
When Coleman died at age 89 in La Jolla, Calif., he was a San Diego icon, most often known around town by his nickname, “The Colonel.” C. Paul Rogers III in his Society for Baseball Research Coleman biographywrote that the bona fide war hero was buried with full military honors, including a 21-gun salute and an F-18 flyover in the missing-man formation.
Looking back at his long and memorable life, Coleman said that he was most proud of his U.S. Marine Corp dive-bomber, fighter pilot days during his 57 World War II missions, and 63 Korean War missions. Coleman won 13 Air Metals, two Distinguished Flying Cross citations, the World War II Victory Metal, and eight other awards. Coleman once said that America “is bigger than baseball.”
Joe Guzzardi is a Society for American Baseball Research and Internet Baseball Writers Association member. Contact him at guzzjoe@yahoo.com.
America Bigger Than Baseball — Remembering Jerry Coleman
In Arizona, residents are increasingly frustrated and often angry at President Biden’s disregard for their safety and well-being as border patrol agents green-light illegal immigrants into the state. Last month, the Tucson Sector border patrol agents apprehended a cluster of 124 migrants, 105 of which were unaccompanied minors. Tucson Sector Chief John Modlin said that during the pre-Biden era, agents normally detained groups of single adults. On duty at the Douglas Station, horse patrol unit agents encountered 32 illegal border crossers from Mexico dressed in camouflage to blend in with the desert shrubs.
Unlike Texas that has plans to build eight emergency shelters with capacities of up to 14,000 children, including facilities at San Antonio and El Paso military bases, Arizona had been releasing migrant families into Yuma, Ajo and Gila Bend where nonprofits attempt to care for them. CBP also built “soft-sided facilities,” air-conditioned outdoor tents in Tucson and in Yuma that increased holding capacity for families and children.
But now that the Biden administration’s border mismanagement has reached Scottsdale’s high-rent district, where the median home price is $700,000, locals have protested more vocally. As part of a $530 millionagreement between Immigration and Customs Enforcement and the Texas-based nonprofit, Family Endeavors, a vacant Scottsdale hotel will provide up to 1,239 beds. A former Biden staffer facilitated the deal.
Yuma Mayor Doug Nicholls criticized the hotel plan and said it “actually encourages” more illegal immigration because the migrants know “they’re going to be released to an American hotel where they get room service….” Municipal officials said they only received one day’s notice. Protestors carrying “Save America” signs and the United States flag noted that armed guards surrounded the hotel, and that their reasonable concerns were ignored. Throughout Arizona, BLM bumper stickers and signs – Biden Loves Minors – are popping up.
A letter from Arizona Attorney General Mark Brnovich to the hotel property principals listed his questions, all unanswered, and his grave concerns about the detention center. First, who is in the facility and when would they leave? Second, will the migrants eventually filtrate into the community? Third, is a Scottsdale hotel the best location to house the migrants?
In his statement, Brnovich echoed Arizonans’ concerns. Brnovich wrote that Biden “is using Arizona as an experiment with his reckless border policies. I will continue to stand up for Arizonans and do everything I can to stop the Biden Administration’s attempt to abolish ICE. All of us will pay the price, not only with our tax dollars, but also with our national security, and the safety of our families.”
Arizonans and other states may be surprised to learn that, when it comes to expanding immigration, the Biden administration is just getting warmed up. Last week, the Department of Homeland Security and the Department of State announced that Central American migrants, often illegally in the U.S., with pending – not approved – asylum claims will be able to petition for their minors to join them. The Central American Minors Refugee and Parole(CAM) program originated in the Obama administration, and the Trump administration temporarily ended it. CAM represents another Biden administration overreach that will allow previously inadmissible aliens a legal path to the U.S., and access to affirmative benefits, employment authorization and eventually citizenship.
The majority of the tens of thousands of migrants who have unlawfully entered the U.S. since Biden took office will file asylum claims, and wait an average of 930 days for a decision. During that period, and with the Biden administration’s blessing, their Central American children and certain of their relatives will travel north on U.S. taxpayer-funded journeys. Also potentially included in the CAM free-for-all could be adult caregivers – grandparents, siblings, aunts and uncles.
Looking back at the 2020 presidential election, neither Arizonans nor any other of the 49 states voted for a huge immigration increase, but that’s what they’re getting. Arizona certainly is not an open-borders promoter. Biden’s Arizona campaign was a nonstarter, and he won there by the narrowest margin, about 10,000 votes. Largely because President Trump turned off Arizona’s Republicans, for the first time since 1996, the former red state turned blue. But 10,000 votes aren’t a mandate to restructure Arizona, impose heavy costs on the existing residents, and underwrite the uninvited aliens’ daily lives.
Before providing for more migrants, Biden should give Arizona’s existing immigrant population a chance to achieve the coveted middle-class lifestyle. Currently, the state’s population is 31.7 percent Hispanic; 27 percent speak a language other than English at home, and the per capital income is $30,700.
Arizonans have mixed opinions about immigration. But they’re near-unanimous that they should have a voice in how federal immigration policy is determined, especially when it expands the state’s total population, and presents more societal challenges. Under the Biden regime, Arizonans, like the rest of America, are on the sidelines watching the illegal immigrant influx continue unabated.
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.
In accordance with its mission to secure U.S. borders, facilitate legitimate trade and travel, and ensure immigration integrity, BTI released its report titled, “Economic Motivations of Migrants from the Northern Triangle.” BTI’s findings would have been valuable to Vice President Kamala Harris prior to her failed trip to Guatemala and Mexico to discuss migration’s root causes, and could have saved her the time, trouble and embarrassment. Based on BTI’s biannual surveys, researchers learned that, overwhelmingly, migrants left their home countries for economic reasons. The causes that the immigration lobby, congressional advocates and refugee resettlement groups most often cite, violence and natural disasters, barely register, if at all. Family reunification ranks second as a pull factor, but significantly behind economics.
When BTI asked Salvadorans, Guatemalans and Hondurans to identify the specific cause that prompted them to leave their home countries, 68 percent, 92 percent and 83 percent, respectively, named lack of employment or poor economic conditions. Only in El Salvador did violence register at 19 percent. Natural disasters scored 0 percent across the board.
As for the mainstream media’s unfounded claim that fear of violence is the Northern Triangle’s biggest push factor, BTI’s findings repudiated that falsehood. Asked if in the 12 months leading up to migrating, the surveyed person or any family member had actually been a victim of robbery or assault, threats or extortion, intimidation by gangs or criminal groups, religious or political persecution, domestic or family violence, conflicts with another person, homicide of a relative or an acquaintance, or violence in the local community, by a huge margin, often as high as 100 percent, the replies were “no.”
BTI found that for Northern Triangle migrants, U.S. employment increases their incomes ten-fold, an irresistible pull factor. Economics are the key, not only to the Northern Triangle job-seeking aliens, but also to the countries that they leave behind that are increasingly remittance-dependent, especially after the steep decline in monies sent back home during the COVID-19 pandemic. Through the first six months of 2020, remittances from El Salvador, Honduras and Guatemala dropped 8 percent, 4.2 percent, and 0.9 percent, respectively, or $219 million, $108 million and $47 million. These totals represent the largest percentage decline since 2009’s first six months when the Great Recession’s effect was felt most severely.
Biden’s critics are convinced that his administration has no interest in ending the illegal alien influx. Since Biden created the border surge, enforcement advocates are certain that he has little interest in ending the nation-busting problem, especially since an easy solution is readily at hand – E-Verify, the online program that would require employers to check their new hires’ eligibility. Only U.S. citizens and lawfully present immigrants can keep the jobs that they had recently been hired to perform.
For 40 years, government officials have known that jobs are the core attraction not just for Northern Triangle migrants, but from those coming to the U.S. from across the globe. In 1981, the Select Commission on Immigration and Refugee Policy concluded in its final report that “All studies indicate that undocumented/illegal aliens are attracted to this country by U.S. employment opportunities.” The New York Times followed up with an Op-Ed that powerfully reinforced the commission’s findings. The Times wrote that the best illegal immigration deterrent is to “make it harder for them [migrants] to get the jobs that lure them.” In turn, continued The Times, the most efficient way to achieve that goal “is to make it illegal for employers to hire them…. Without effective verification, there can be no effective enforcement of the borders.”
Since 1996, a full quarter of a century, Congress has half-heartedly kicked around various versions of E-Verify. None proved acceptable, and the program has never been nationally mandated, a remarkable disregard for national sovereignty and an insult to American workers. Pre-pandemic, U.S. workers had been displaced by about 8 million illegal immigrants of its total 12 million estimated population in nonfarm administrative, construction, manufacturing, leisure and health care jobs. As of 2020, more than 967,000 employers use E-Verify at more than 2.4 million worksites, with 1,500 new participating companies added weekly. Somehow, and to America’s detriment, E-Verify’s free cost, simplicity and its success have left Congress unswayed.
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.
Economics Drives Migration, Not Violence Or Climate
Economics Drives Migration, Not Violence Or Climate
The new normal. Of all the COVID-19 pandemic phrases to enter the popular lexicon the past year and a half, this is the one I hated most. That is because of the people who were using the term; folks like Governor Tom Wolf who intended the new normal to be one of extended if not permanent government regulation and control over of our lives.
But events of recent weeks have given rise to hope that the new normal might be one of enhanced freedom and opportunity. Among the lessons learned during the pandemic are that our rights and freedoms are fragile and must be jealously guarded; and that many laws and regulations are barriers to innovation and progress.
Here in Penn’s Woods, one of the most important aspects of the new normal is that never again can a despotic governor wield unchecked power through the endless exercise of emergency declarations. In a historic act, We the People ensured that by amending the state constitution to give our elected lawmakers the clear ability to end such power grabs.
The draconian actions of Governor Tom Wolf laid waste to tens of thousands of small businesses and exiled hundreds of thousands to the unemployment lines and a bureaucracy which itself was marked by chronic ineptitude. We have three branches of government for a reason, and the governor’s predisposition to act without consultation or collaboration made a bad situation infinitely worse.
Thus, for the first time, many people realized the importance and impact a governor can have on our everyday lives. We also came to fully understand how the third branch of government – the judiciary – can be co-conspirators in stealing our freedoms through activist rulings and essentially re-writing laws. With elections for statewide judicial offices this year and an open seat election for governor next year we have before us the opportunity to further restore constitutional balance to state government.
During the COIVD-19 pandemic many regulations, particularly those involving the delivery of health care, were relaxed or suspended. In exercising their newly approved constitutional authority to end Governor Wolf’s emergency powers, lawmakers were careful to leave in place the relaxation or suspension of many regulations that expedited the delivery of health care services. Look for new legislation in the coming months to make many of those changes permanent.
At the national level, we learned how important it is to remove regulatory barriers and approval processes slowed by a moribund federal bureaucracy. The Trump Administration implemented Operation Warp Speed that got the government out of the way and sped up approvals to allow the private sector to develop effective COVID-19 vaccines in record time. As a result, countless lives have been saved and the pandemic – at least in the USA – has been largely brought under control.
What this has proven is that many of these regulations and approval processes are either not needed or unnecessarily complex and slow. Going forward, reforms need to be implemented to remove these barriers to the development of other pharmaceutical products so we can more quickly make advances in the prevention and treatment of more diseases.
We also learned what does and what does not work. Pennsylvania and other states with dictatorial governors suffered a prolonged and more severe pandemic both medically and economically than did states which took a more hands-off approach. Florida and its Governor Ron DeSantis have emerged as the gold standard of how to handle a pandemic: reasonable caution without excessive government interference.
The COVID-19 pandemic spurred many citizens who otherwise paid scant attention to state government into action. Social media was alive with activists pushing back against Governor Wolf’s draconian policies and many went into the streets attending rallies and protests. Having been awakened, the new normal should include a continuation of this citizen engagement.
But the most important aspect of the new normal is a new appreciation for the old normal. COVID-19 impacted the lives of all of us in one way or another. It closed schools, churches, and community events. It isolated many from family and friends. Those things we took for granted were suddenly gone. If nothing else, as all of those things return to the “old normal,” our “new normal” will be to appreciate that “normal” is actually something very special.
Mr. Henry is chairman and CEO of the Lincoln Institute and host of the weekly Lincoln Radio Journal and American Radio Journal
SCOTUS Upholds Immigration Law, Setback for Expansionists
By Joe Guzzardi
On June 7, the Supreme Court of the United States ruled that the immigration program known as Temporary Protected Status – protected from deportation – doesn’t necessarily mean a permanent stay. SCOTUS’ unanimous decision may represent a pause in the Biden administration’s relentless pursuit of never-ending, permanent immigration increases both at the border and, through weakened enforcement, in the interior. One can hope!
The case SCOTUS heard, Sanchez v. Mayorkas, was relatively straightforward. In the 1990s, Jose Santos Sanchez and his wife Sonia Gonzalez illegally entered the United States from El Salvador. The federal government granted them TPS in 2001 when the U.S. included El Salvador as part of the TPS program after that country’s earthquake. TPS allows unlawfully present foreign nationals to remain if conditions are deemed unsafe in their home countries.
For two decades, Republican and Democratic White Houses have on multiple occasions extended El Salvador’s TPS time limits. During those 20 years, Sanchez and Gonzalez stayed in valid TPS status. Sanchez’s employer, a yacht company, also filed a skilled-worker immigration-visa petition on Sanchez’s behalf which was granted.
The government, however, denied the couple’s subsequent application to use the adjustment-of-status process to transition from temporary to permanent residency. Citing the Immigration and Nationality Act’s Section 1255 (a) which restricts the in-country adjustment-of-status process to noncitizens who were “inspected and admitted or paroled into the U.S.,” immigration officials ruled that the couple’s original unauthorized entry disqualified them from obtaining the Green Cards they sought. Neither Sanchez nor Gonzales was inspected, admitted or paroled.
During April arguments, Associate Justice Brett Kavanaugh hinted at the eventual decision: Kavanaugh told lawyers for Sanchez and Gonzales: “We need to be careful about tinkering with the immigration statutes as written, particularly when Congress has such a primary role here. You have an uphill climb.”
In her opinion, Justice Elena Kagan confirmed Kavanaugh’s skepticism when she wrote that “Lawful status and admission… are distinct concepts in immigration law: Establishing one does not necessarily establish the other.” Kagan added that “because a grant of TPS does not come with a ticket of admission, it does not eliminate the disqualifying effect of an unlawful entry.”
SCOTUS’ ruling is the third in recent weeks in which the high court has disagreed with the 9th Circuit Court on immigration law interpretation. Last week, SCOTUS set aside a ruling that presumed immigrants seeking asylum were telling the truth unless an immigration judge found an “explicit” lack of credibility. Earlier, the court ruled immigrants who were once deported could be prosecuted for an unlawful entry, even if their original deportations were questionable.
TPS is one of dozens of immigration programs that devolved from compassionate and well-intended to comically permissive. No rational person would define “temporary” as a 20-year span, the exact period that Sanchez and Gonzales have lived in New Jersey. Whether Sanchez’s employment in the yachting company represents a “skilled” job is likely debatable; Gonzales works at Atlantic City’s Borgata Casino. The couple has American birthright citizenship children.
For Sanchez and Gonzales to return home after 20 years would be disruptive, perhaps cruel. Blame the U.S. government which doesn’t insist that TPS recipients from all nations return home when conditions permit. The devastating impact of El Salvador’s earthquake ended long ago; the country is now a tourism hot spot. The Pew Research Center found that Salvadoran migrants, as well as those from Guatemala and Honduras, identify economic opportunity and reuniting with relatives as the reasons they traveled north, not personal safety. Were Salvadorans with admirable work ethics like Sanchez and Gonzales to return to El Salvador, they could become agents for change in that troubled country.
Since TPS is poorly administered – no one goes home – the program has no credibility. TPS represents a ticket to lifetime U.S. residency. Central Americans who refuse to go home, and the U.S. government that refuses to make them go home after civil wars and natural disasters have ended are, like Sanchez and Gonzalez, holding U.S. jobs that would otherwise be filled by unemployed Americans.
But as expected given its expansionist agenda, the Biden administrationadded Venezuela and Burma to the TPS-eligible list, bringing the total nations to 12, and the total persons covered to more than 600,000. In the government’s eyes, more immigration is always better.
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.
In early June, the United States Post Office issued stamps to honor the heroic World War II service of Japanese Americans. Hawaii Governor David Ige unveiled the forever stamp that featured Nisei soldier Shiroku “Whitey” Yamamoto, a member of the all-Japanese American 100th Infantry Battalion/442nd Regimental Combat Team whose fighting motto was “Go for Broke.” Yamamoto’s image is from his photograph taken in 1944 at a railroad station in France.
During World War II, the Roosevelt administration looked suspiciously at U.S. Japanese families, and denied them their constitutional rights during periods of forced removal from their lifelong homes. The displaced Japanese were sent to barracks in one of 10 U.S. relocation detention centers. Nevertheless, even though many of their relatives were imprisoned, the “Go for Broke” volunteer soldiers remained steadfastly loyal to America, and served with indomitable spirit and uncommon valor. More than 33,000 Japanese Americans fought in WWII, and more than 700 were killed or wounded; the regiment was awarded 9,000 Purple Hearts and 18,000 individual decorations.
Miles away from the European and Pacific battlefields, the detained Nisei, forced to live in brutal conditions, also demonstrated great courage. Determined not to let their adverse circumstances overwhelm them – “shikata ga ni,” or translated, “it cannot be helped” – the Nisei held at Manzanar, between the California towns of Lone Pine and Independence in Owens Valley, fell in love, married, had children, published the Manzanar Free Press, planted flower and vegetable gardens, organized dances, formed teaching groups for young children, offered dental services, and opened a canteen that sold cigarettes, soda pop, and non-rationed food items. Between March 1942 and November 1945, 120,000 Japanese Americans were incarcerated at Manzanar.
For internees, baseball was by far the most popular entertainment. The government took away the prisoners’ radios, cameras and for native Issei prohibited their Japanese language. Detainees were allowed to bring only what they could carry in two suitcases, but they were not denied the pleasure of playing the national pastime. Quoted in Kerry Yo Nakagawa’s book, “Japanese American Baseball in California,” George Omachi said, “Without baseball, camp life would have been unbearable. It was humiliating and demeaning being incarcerated in one’s own country.” Omachi, whose family was transported from California by train to the Jerome War Relocation Center, in Denson, Arkansas, would later become a Houston Astros and New York Mets scout who helped develop Hall of Fame pitcher Tom Seaver.
One of the great ironies about camp baseball was that the diamonds were built outside of the barbed wire fences that surrounded the centers. As Sab Yamata, a Manzanar prisoner, explained, there was no reason for prison guards to worry. Miles and miles of desert stretched out as far as the eye could see; escape would be futile. “Where would you run to?” Yamata asked.
Once the players donned their uniforms, they traveled by Greyhound Bus far and wide to play baseball, often for two-week trips. California teams went to Wyoming and Colorado to play against other regional teams. Eventually, theFree Press covered 100 men’s baseball teams and 14 women’s softball teams like the Dusty Chicks and the Montebello Gophers. The Dusty Chicks All-Star catcher, Rosie Kakaucchi, said her team was so good that when the Chicks challenged the men, they won.
Nakagawa provided an interesting look back at camp baseball. At the beginning, Nakagawa wrote, conditions were dismal, and morale was low. But baseball created a positive atmosphere and helped Japanese Americans maintain self-esteem. Fans turned out to watch the games “to bring a sense of normalcy to the futility of daily life.”
By January 1945, Japanese Americans were released from the camps. Even though not a single case of treason or espionage had been brought against the former detainees, often they were still treated as traitors. Again, baseball helped them re-enter, regroup and slowly resettle into mainstream society. In Sanger, Calif., the high school baseball team fielded seven Nisei starters, and won the Fresno County championship. Dan Takeuchi remembered that when he came back from camp and earned a spot on his titled-winning team, he knew that baseball would allow the players to “do a lot of healing…and let others know that we were just going to go on very positively.”
President Ronald Reagan signed the Civil Liberties Act of 1988 that provided letters of apology and $20,000 to internment camp survivors. Ultimately, more than 82,000 survivors received redress. The apology came four decades too late, and given the inexcusable treatment the federal government forced upon Japanese Americans, $20,000 is a pittance compared to the hardships they endured.
Joe Guzzardi is a Society for American Baseball Research and Internet Baseball Writers Association member. Contact him at guzzjoe@yahoo.com.
Two and a half months have passed since President Joe Biden designatedVice President Kamala Harris as his administration’s border czar. Harris, who half-heartedly accepted her daunting new task, has neither been to the Southwest border to personally watch the ongoing illegal immigrant influx nor given a press conference on the subject. But she’ll meet with Alejandro Giammattei and Andrés Manuel López Obrador, the Guatemalan and Mexican presidents, to address what the White House refers to as migration’s “root causes.” Earlier, Harris spoke twice with both remotely.
The Biden administration’s critics, specifically of its border mismanagement, are disappointed that a two-day public relations trip is offered up as a serious approach to the grave problem that tens of thousands of arriving migrants represents. On the eve of her trip, officials announced that Harris will offer coronavirus vaccines, and millions of dollars towards humanitarian relief, food insecurity and anti-corruption measures.
That’s all well and good. The U.S. should take every reasonable measure to help struggling Central Americans. But those are, at best, long-term solutions that do little to offset decades of the federal government’s tolerance, if not encouragement, of illegal immigration, and Congress’ refusal under Republican and Democratic administrations to pass programs that would eliminate the jobs magnet, and at the same time protect American workers: E-Verify and an entry-exit system that would curb visa overstays.
Harris doesn’t have to look far to identify the true root cause of the border surges: the presidential campaign rhetoric that Biden and she engaged in, along with Biden’s post-inauguration determination to open the border, and to gut Immigration Customs and Enforcement, as well as Customs and Border Protection. On Biden’s first day as president, he signed 17 executive orders that expanded immigration.
Leading up to and during her failed 2020 presidential effort, Harris spoke out in favor of decriminalizing illegal border crossing, offering health care to unlawfully present immigrants, and indirectly compared ICE to the KKK. During ICE nominee Ronald Vitiello’s Senate confirmation history, Harris asked if he saw any parallels between agents and the KKK.
Then, as if to one-up Harris, Biden promised that “no one would be deported at all” during his administration’s first 100 days, and promised amnesty for the existing illegal immigrant population, possibly as many as 20 million. As part of Biden’s plan, illegal immigrants deported during the Trump administration would be flown back to the U.S. at taxpayer expense to qualify for amnesty.
To minimize the heat and to keep from dashing her well-known presidential ambitions too quickly given the near-impossible nature of her assignment, Harris is downplaying her mission as simply fact-finding. But if Harris were sincerely interested in facts, she would have engaged another of the Northern Triangle presidents, El Salvador’s Nayib Bukele.
In an interview with Fox News’ Tucker Carlson, Bukele spoke the harsh truth that Harris would prefer not to hear. Before his interview, Carlson reminded his audience that immigration has, over the last 30 years, contributed to a 100 million population increase, and that mass illegal immigration is permanent because few get sent home. Bukele, while acknowledging that El Salvador has largely failed to provide economically for its citizens, told Carlson that mass immigration is “bad for both of us.”
Over the years, more than a third of Salvadorans have migrated, most to the U.S. Many are young, bold and ambitious – the profile of people who could eventually improve their native country. As Bukele explained, loose immigration in the U.S. helps makes El Salvador a net exporter of people, not products or services. The result is that the Salvadoran economy becomes dependent on remittances from the U.S. For the U.S., immigration goes up, population increases, and El Salvador remains dependent on money sent home, a “bad economic formula” for both countries, Bukele concluded.
If it pleases him, Biden can send Harris on a fool’s errand, but few Americans are deceived by his unconstitutional plan – little or no enforcement and wide-open borders, the most radical, unprecedented immigration agenda in presidential history that defies laws that Congress has passed.
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.
NYC Birth Tourism Thrives as the Big Apple Loses Legitimate Businesses
By Joe Guzzardi
Businesses headquartered in New York City have, in large numbers, relocated elsewhere, or plan to leave, mainly to Florida or other welcoming locations in the Southeast. Some businesses like Goldman Sachs and J.P. Morgan & Co. have Wall Street roots that date back to the mid-19th century. Thousands of high-paying financial institution jobs packed up and left as employers such as Credit Suisse, Morgan Stanley, Barclays, UBS, Citigroup and Alliance moved staffers to less expensive destinations in North Carolina, Salt Lake City, Dallas and Nashville.
Residents, too, can’t flee Manhattan fast enough. About 3.57 million people, including many high-income earners, left Manhattan between January 1 and December 7, 2020. Although millions, mostly lower income, arrived to replace them, the net exodus cost the city $34 billion in revenue.
Individuals and businesses both cited the same reasons for getting out of Dodge while the getting was still good: high taxes, soaring living costs, Mayor Bill de Blasio’s inept governance, calls to defund the police amidst ever-increasing, random crime, and questionable school shutdowns. A survey that the Manhattan Commission conducted found that 44 percent of city dwellers who earn more than $100,000, and contribute 80 percent of the city’s income tax revenue, have considered moving. Comptroller Scott Stringer warned that the city’s wealthiest residents who remain should be prepared to pay higher taxes to close the huge $4.2 billion deficit.
While legitimate businesses, and the executives who manage them, are bolting from the Big Apple, another albeit less savory industry with dubious oversight is thriving. In New York, birth tourism, the blatant federal immigration law abuser, is resurgent. But, a cautionary note to Stringer who may be expecting a tax windfall: birth tourism is often unregulated and unlicensed. Similar maternity hotel operators have been indicted for tax evasion. Stringer’s city may never see a dime.
In 2015 in Santa Ana, Calif., federal agents executed 35 search warrants stemming from the work of Immigration and Customs Enforcement, Homeland Security Investigations, Los Angeles, IRS Criminal Investigations, the Irvine Police Department and the San Bernardino County Sheriff’s Department. The result: federal criminal charges for widespread immigration fraud, international money laundering, and defrauding property owners who leased their apartments and houses to shelter the aliens. The Los Angeles Timesreported that, at the time, several hundred Chinese birthing sites were listed at Southern California locations.
The template years ago in California is unchanged today in New York. Operators set up a website in the foreign national’s native language, most frequently Chinese but also Korean, Russian and Spanish, to encourage pregnant women to pay between $40,000 and $80,000. In exchange for the princely sums, the women will receive coaching on how to deceive airport immigration officials, how to obtain ethnically specific care once in the U.S., and how to birth an American citizen child. Too often, U.S. taxpayers pick up a big chunk of the tab. One Chinese couple paid the indigent hospital rate– $4,080 – even though they had more than $225,000 in a bank account that they opened to pay for luxury shopping sprees.
It’s unknown how many skip out on payment altogether in the U.S. Leaving unpaid medical bills for birthing babies has been reported in the Northern Marianas, significant because, as U.S. territory, children born here are eligible for U.S. citizenship. A reported birth tourism case in Canada left a hospital with an unpaid $1.2 million neonatal bill.
Little in the birthing industry has changed since the practice became common 30 years ago. A May 15 New York Post story revealed that in the greater metropolitan area 80 birthing centers operate brazenly. Yet Congress inexplicably continues to tolerate what amounts to several federal felonies being carried out, punishment-free, under their noses: visa application fraud, money laundering, Medicare fraud, income tax fraud and identity theft.
Birth tourism is terrible for America, and poses a national security threat. Anchor babies, granted U.S. citizenship under the 14th Amendment’s misinterpretation, mean that thousands of individuals will, through a fraudulent process, receive free K-12 public education and myriad other affirmative benefits. Eventually, they will serve as anchors for their returned parents, and non-nuclear, extended family members who will receive the same entitlements.
With political courage, three solutions could in short order end birth tourism. First, prosecute offenders to the law’s full extent, including mothers. After obtaining a medical certificate that the mother can safely travel, fly her home. Otherwise, she can give birth while detained, under a medical doctor’s care, and then be sent home. She’ll achieve her original goal, a citizen child, but under dramatically different circumstances than she originally envisioned.
Second, Congress must toughen up. Remove the citizenship enticement; pass legislation that citizenship requires at least one parent be a citizen or a lawfully present resident. Not surprisingly, previous efforts at commonsense birth citizenship reform had few congressional cosponsors.
Third, utilize the “fruit from the poisonous tree” doctrine which, in birth citizenship cases, would mean that the citizenship benefits were ill-gotten, and therefore must be forfeited to the government, e.g., citizenship revoked. Congress must not keep rolling over on the three-decade old birth tourism scam that hurts Americans and helps foreign nationals, mostly Chinese.
These bold but lawful actions would minimize and eventually end birth tourism travel. The proposed remedies are simple, direct and legal. Nevertheless, an inert Congress steadfastly refuses to implement any of the three, and is content to tacitly endorse the jus soli process – Latin meaning “the right of soil” – that other most developed nations abolished long ago. The U.S. should join other advanced nations, and grant treasured citizenship based on the child’s parents’ nationality or resident status.
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.
NYC Birth Tourism Thrives as the Big Apple Loses Legitimate Businesses
President Joe Biden has been around Washington, D.C., for a long time – a six-term U.S. Senator representing Delaware and another two terms in Capitol Hill’s inner sanctum, the White House, as Barack Obama’s vice president. Biden has, during his 44 years toiling in federal government, met plenty of qualified people from which he could choose to join his cabinet.
Yet Biden has, right out of the gate, stumbled monumentally on two key positions affecting immigration, a policy that concerns many millions of Americans. Health and Human Services Secretary Xavier Becerra, the former California Attorney General, has no experience administering health agencies. HHS has 85,000 employees and an $879 billion annual budget, a massive responsibility. Overseeing HHS, and its Office of Refugee Resettlement, has by his own admission overwhelmed Becerra.
Department of Homeland Security Secretary Alejandro Mayorkas was another avoidable cabinet selection. The Havana-born former U.S. Citizenship and Immigration Services director is a long-time backer of higher immigration levels and was instrumental in implementing deferred action for childhood arrivals, DACA, the Obama-era policy that Congress never voted on.
Favoring more immigration or supporting DACA aren’t automatically disqualifiers for DHS secretary; millions of Americans share the same views. But violating immigration guidelines to enable overseas investors to obtain business visas that include paths to citizenship should automatically void any cabinet nomination. Now as DHS secretary, he’s disregarded his sworn oath of office, and should be removed from his role.
Mayorkas is guilty on both counts: visa abuse and shirking his DHS duties.
In 2013, several of Mayorkas’ USCIS staff reached out to then-Judiciary Chair Chuck Grassley that their boss had inappropriately intervened on behalf of three wealthy, influential investors whose EB-5 visas had previously been denied. The three cases included, reportedly, a consortium with ties to former Virginia governor, Democrat Terry McAuliffe, and another involving Anthony Rodham, brother of former Secretary of State Hillary Clinton. Informally, EB-5 is referred to as the “citizenship for sale visa,” which grants permanent residency Green Cards to the investor, the spouse and unmarried children under age 25.
Mayorkas’ EB-5 scandal wasn’t a partisan infight. In 2015, Obama’s Department of Homeland Security Secretary General John Roth investigated Mayorkas’ EB-5 involvement and concluded that he had acted inappropriately. From Roth’s report: “Mr. Mayorkas communicated with stakeholders on substantive issues, outside of the normal adjudicatory process, and intervened with the career USCIS staff in ways that benefited the stakeholders.” At Mayorkas’ DHS confirmation hearing, Grassley and Sen. Ron Johnson (R-Wis.) repeatedly pressed for answers, but got only purposely elusive replies.
During his brief DHS Secretary tenure, Mayorkas been passive in the extreme about an unprecedented border surge, and ignored one of his principal duties, to protect the homeland. From Mayorkas’ oath of office: “I pledge to defend and secure our country….” But just two months later, in April, Customs and Border Patrol (CBP) encountered 178,622 illegal immigrants in border crossing attempts, the highest one-month total in two decades. In March, officials picked up 19,000 unaccompanied minors, the largest number ever, and housed them in mass shelters with little oversight. Often, the Associated Press reported, parents have no idea where their children are. With Mayorkas’ approval, an overwhelmed Border Patrol has released 61,000 illegal immigrants into the general population without notices to appear in court at a later date. The latest DHS affront: the department hired 260 nonmedical caregivers to, as acting CBP Commissioner Troy Miller explained, help the young migrants cross the border.
Calls for tougher border policies that serve Americans’ best interests have begun, and are getting louder. Former deputy DHS Secretary Ken Cuccinelli, former acting CBP Commissioner Mark Morgan and former acting Immigration and Customs Enforcement Director Tom Homan claim, citing ample evidence, that Mayorkas has “abjectly failed” to defend and secure the U.S. In their joint statement, the experienced law enforcement officials urged the Biden administration to “return to the rule of law.”
Mayorkas’ inappropriate intervention in the EB-5 cases, his blatant indifference to the border surge and the children he’s knowingly putting in harm’s way make him an unworthy DHS secretary. Americans didn’t reelect President Trump, but they didn’t vote for the border disaster, every step of which is funded with their hard-earned tax dollars. Before more harm can be done, Mayorkas should be fired.
Joe Guzzardi is a Progressive for Immigration Reform analyst who has written about immigration for more than 30 years. Contact him at jguzzardi@pfirdc.org.
