Finally, from the White House comes the first acknowledgement that the border crisis has spiraled out of control.
While President Biden and Vice President/Immigration Czar Kamala Harris remain mum and refuse to check out border conditions first hand, Health and Human Services Secretary Xavier Becerra has sounded an alarm bell. To the disappointment if not dismay of his White House bosses, namely Biden, Harris and domestic policy chief Susan Rice, Becerra’s aides have leaked that the HHS secretary would like to see the refugee cap stay at President Trump’s historically low 15,000 annual intake instead of being increased to Biden’s recommended 65,000.
A Becerra aide told Politico that the secretary takes raising the refugee cap seriously, but “wants to take one challenge at a time,” a reference to the mounting border mess which has in large part fallen into his lap. HHS’ Office of Refugee Resettlement has the impossible-to-keep-up-with and costly task of providing for an unending flow of unaccompanied minors (UACs) who enter the U.S. without lawful immigration status or an available parent or guardian.
As of May 2, HHS has about 23,300 children under age 18 in its care. As a reference point, in 2020 approximately 72 percent of all children referred were over 14, and 68 percent were boys. Countries of origin for UACs were Guatemala,46 percent; El Salvador, 14 percent; Honduras, 25 percent; and other countries, 8 percent. HHS spends tens of millions of taxpayer dollars weekly to shelter, feed and locate new housing sites for the unaccompanied aliens. In its report, Politico wrote that last month HHS advised Congress that it will transfer or reprogram emergency supplemental funding, a total of $1.3 billion, toward the ongoing UAC placement effort.
Each day, Becerra’s quest for stability becomes more uphill. In April, 13,962 new UACs entered, straining Customs and Border Patrol resources. All of the UACs will need the full range of care that ORR provides. But missing from the establishment media’s border coverage was a Texas farmer’s discovery of five abandoned UACs under the age of seven, including an infant. Three were Honduran, and two were Guatemalan, all lying in dirt, hungry and crying. Dumped off by traffickers, the girls would have, the farmer believes, died – the final, tragic result of the ruthless actions of callous cartel criminals. Long-time border observers predict that, during the summer months, migrants, motivated by Biden’s open borders policies and smuggled by profiteering traffickers, will perish.
As the UAC influx continues, states are less willing to accommodate the youths, another hurdle Becerra has to overcome. Governors from 20 U.S. states, including Texas’ Greg Abbott and Arizona’s Doug Ducey, signed a letter to Biden urging him to “take action” on the border because it’s “neither closed nor secure,” and added that his plan is “unacceptable and unsustainable.” Rejecting any future effort to house UACs in their states, the governors criticized the HHS request for private facilities to take in the minors. The states, the letter continued, have neither the resources nor the obligation to solve the federal government’s “self-created crisis.” Reckless, inhumane, misguided and disastrous is how the governors described Biden’s incentivizing border rhetoric.
Becerra, most well-known prior to his HHS appointment as the California attorney general who sued the Trump administration 123 times, has softened his tune on immigration. Becerra has been a long-time immigration expansionist dating back to his U.S. House of Representatives tenure. But now that he’s on the hot seat for, first, indisputably being unqualified to fill the HHS secretary’s job and, second, underperforming as secretary, Becerra is looking to minimize his exposure to criticism by subtly pressing for a lower refugee cap.
As California AG, Becerra wasn’t directly accountable for unmanageable immigration increases. But since he became a key part of the Biden administration as HHS secretary, he’s a point man for the out-of-control border failure. Becerra has learned that there’s a world of difference between immigration advocacy from California and coping with immigration reality as HHS secretary.
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.
Customs and Border Protection isn’t returning or detaining illegal migrant crossers, and Immigration and Customs Enforcement isn’t removing aliens from the interior, including convicted, released criminals. One inevitable result: a huge U.S. population surge that will help create a chaotic society which will struggle to keep up with deteriorating conditions. From the sudden, unanticipated population growth, there will be maximum strain on K-12 education, health care, public safety and other social services which can barely provide for existing residents.
Under the Biden administration, which comically ordered CBP and ICE to stop using the terms illegal alien and assimilation in favor of “more inclusive language” like “noncitizen” and “civic integration,” border agents’ tasks consist mostly of turning over unaccompanied minors to Health and Human Services, or catching but then releasing adults into the interior. Should released aliens run afoul of the law once in the U.S. interior, the Biden administration has ordered ICE to turn a blind eye. Privately, ICE officials told Washington Post reporter Nick Miroff that their jobs have essentially been abolished because the administration severely limited their ability to arrest and deport illegal immigrants. In April, ICE deported 2,962 aliens, a 20 percent decline from March, and the first time since the agency began keeping records that the monthly total dropped below 3,000.
In the administration’s most defiant federal law violation, Biden mandated that ICE detainers only be issued to incarcerated aliens that he as president thinks should be deported. Biden’s order disregards the removal grounds that the law lists, except possibly for suspected terrorists or others who may pose a public security threat. Florida, Texas and Louisiana filed suits against the Biden administration for its illegal enforcement restrictions that endanger the public at large. Released criminals can imperil society. The Bureau of Justice Statistics shows that the recidivism rates for state prisoners are 68 percent within three years, 79 percent within six years, and 83 percent within nine years.
Alleging that the White House is responsible for putting the public at risk, the Florida suit argues that “the Biden administration does not believe that being in the U.S. in violation of the immigration laws and committing serious crimes is sufficient reason to remove someone from the country.” Florida Attorney General Ashley Moody charged the Biden administration with “thumbing its nose” at its legal obligation to deport criminal aliens. Instead, Moore continued, the administration’s ICE retainer cancelation policy has put convicted sex offenders, heroin traffickers and home invaders back on the street, and among unsuspecting Floridians.
In his opinion column published in The Hill, Nolan Rappaport, a former House Judiciary Committee executive branch immigration law specialist and one-time Subcommittee on Immigration, Border Security and Claims immigration counsel, expressed concern about Biden’s rejection of the Immigration and Nationality Act’s removal grounds. Rappaport wrote that Biden has completely replaced existing removal laws with priority categories, a violation of the Constitution’s separation of powers principle. Congress, Rappaport correctly concluded, writes the nation’s laws – not the president.
Meanwhile, the Biden administration cannot keep track of the unaccompanied migrants that have successfully entered mainstream America. Two weeks ago, about 150 young migrants ages 7-12 arrived in Erie, Pa., approximately 1,800 miles from McAllen, Texas, a focal point of the border crisis. U.S. Rep. Mike Kelly (R), whose district includes Erie, went to investigate the young migrants’ housing facility, and found that 28 children had COVID-19. The following day, the site was abandoned; the children and the staff were gone. Kelly tried to get more information from the Department of Health and Human Services, but couldn’t get answers.
Biden and his immigration advisors refer to their border magnanimity as humane. But Kelly said that, referring to the Erie facility’s abrupt shut down, Biden’s approach is aimless. And because residents have been unwittingly exposed to COVID-19, the health of Kelly’s 16th Congressional district’s 705,687 constituents is jeopardized.
The administration shows no sign of making meaningful improvements to address the border chaos or its dangerous revisions regarding retainers. The administration remains indifferent. So far, the best indication that the administration may be vaguely aware of the border crisis is a virtual meeting that Vice President Kamala Harris held with Mexico’s President Andrés Manuel López Obrador. But they avoided tough talk, and only discussed nebulous ideas like the need to “create a sense of home” in Northern Triangle countries.
Former Acting CBP commissioner Mark Morgan estimates that between 3,000 and 3,500 illegal aliens enter the U.S. daily. Given those totals, much more than a vapid Harris phone call is needed to stem the illegal migrant surge.
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 Janet Napolitano’s 35-year-long professional career, she’s held important and influential positions. Napolitano has been President Clinton’s appointee as the U.S. Attorney for the District of Arizona and was twice elected as Arizona’s governor. At one time during her Arizona governorship, many Democrats considered her a possible presidential candidate.
Eventually she became the Senate-confirmed Department of Homeland Security Secretary. After Obama left office, Napolitano accepted a position as the University of California’s president, an appointment fraught with controversy because she had no background as an academic administrator.
Napolitano resigned from UC effective August 1, 2020. Now that Napolitano is retired, she can devote full-time to her favorite cause, advocating for illegal immigrants. During her tenure at UC, Napolitano announced that no one, including campus police, could cooperate with federal officials on any immigration-related request. Napolitano is a University of Virginia Law School graduate, and in legal circles her defiance is known as obstruction of justice.
She also urged the university to file suit against the Trump administration to prevent it from rescinding the Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals (DACA) program. At the time, UC had about 2,400 illegal immigrant students enrolled, and California parents were angry that their citizen children had to compete with and lose out to DACAs for coveted UC admissions.
Given her UC history, and her ineffectiveness at border protection while DHS Secretary and Arizona’s governor, Napolitano’s USA Today Op-Ed that hailed President Biden’s nonenforcement approach to immigration is consistent with her past enthusiasm for open borders. Titled “Biden is Making Immigration Moves that Will Pay Off,” Napolitano repeats age-old approaches that have failed to control illegal immigration in years past, and will be unsuccessful in the future.
Napolitano has forgotten – or cares not to mention – that as DHS Secretary she canceled a $1 billion contract with Boeing to build a virtual fence along the U.S. border with Mexico. Launched in 2005, SBI-Net proposed to monitor the Southwest border with a single integrated surveillance system. But SBI-Net failed because of “technical issues” that, Napolitano admitted to Congress after receiving feedback from Border Patrol agents about its ineffectiveness, created “significant” schedule delays and cost overruns.
Biden’s immigration approach will pay off, Napolitano claims. But she doesn’t identify the beneficiaries – cheap labor-addicted employers. Swiftly processing asylum claims, as Biden has authorized, will quickly create a looser labor market that harms the millions of unemployed or underemployed Americans.
Biden has, Napolitano wrote, ordered DHS to recalibrate its interior enforcement priorities, and focus on convicted criminals, and away from “otherwise law-abiding individuals who pose no public safety threat.” John Sandweg, former Immigration and Customs Enforcement acting director, debunked the long-standing myth that presidential administrations, whether Bush 41, Clinton, Bush 43 or Obama, deported nonviolent aliens. Sandweg told the Los Angeles Times: “If you are a run-of-the-mill immigrant here illegally, your odds of getting deported are close to zero.”
Throughout her Op-Ed, Napolitano predictably scorned President Trump’s border successes that included the wall and the remain-in-Mexico policy. And, citing her Arizona gubernatorial, DHS and UC experiences, Napolitano wrote, “I know something about these issues [immigration].” If so, Napolitano has tunnel vision and is overlooking the glaring flaws in Biden’s nonenforcement tactics.
In April, 42,000 illegal aliens escaped into the U.S. interior as overwhelmed Border Patrol agents couldn’t keep up with the inflow of humans – “gotaways” as the Border Patrol refers to them – or drugs. The Epoch Times reported that at least five Texas counties have issued disaster declarations and that one school district has warned parents to “be watchful of your children.”
Taking Napolitano’s immigration perspectives seriously is ill-advised. Remember, in 2010 then-DHS Secretary Napolitano told a U.S. Senate panel that the Southwest border is “as secure now as it has ever been.” In the 11 years since her bold and self-aggrandizing statement, hundreds of thousands of illegal aliens have successfully crossed the border, and entered the U.S. where they remain today.
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.
Ed Note: Jeffrey Peterson, who worked for Janet Napolitano, has this opinion as to why Democrats support open borders.
Paul Krugman Or Getting Away With Lies is being published with the permission of Maria K. Fotopoulos. The original can be found here.
By Maria K. Fotopoulos
During the Bush (“W”) regime, my husband and I attended an event at the UCLA campus with featured speaker Paul Krugman, a New York Times columnist. That we committed the time to attend the speaking engagement was an indicator of the value we thought Krugman brought to the discussion on the state of the world post the Sept. 11 terrorist attacks on the U.S. The coordinated terrorism perpetrated against the U.S. by 19 terrorists from Saudi Arabia, the United Arab Emirates, Lebanon and Egypt, who commandeered four passenger jets and turned them into weapons of mass destruction, killing 3,000 people, resulted, under W, in a U.S. attack on Iraq, a country not involved in the attack on our country.
At the UCLA event conclusion, Krugman signed his new book, and we got our 30 seconds with the author to commiserate on what a bad direction the Bush administration had taken, as Neocon Central dominated, with the talking head Bill Kristol, Under Secretary of Defense for Policy Paul Wolfowitz, Chairman of the Defense Policy Board Advisory Committee and Prince of Darkness Richard Perle, Vice President Dick Cheney, and Secretary of Defense Donald Rumsfeld, buttressed by Colin Powell and Condoleezza Rice, bringing their own special gravitas to false narratives.
At the same time, the credibility of The New York Times was shredding. The publication’s reporter Judith Miller had been a reliable water carrier (yellowcake, yellowcake!) for the Bush administration and/or the CIA, helping build the case, based on lies, for an invasion of Iraq.
The newspaper that has used the line, “All the News That’s Fit to Print,” since 1897, perhaps should have revisited that in recent years, maybe adding, “And a Bit of Propaganda Too.” Miller is just one of the failed products of The New York Times. Jill Abramson, the former executive editor of The New York Times, was called out in 2019 for plagiarism in her book, ironically called “The Merchants of Truth.” And how can we forget the infamous Jayson Blair story? His multiple infractions and fabrications/outright lies committed as a reporter at The New York Times were legendary.
Then last year, in a tremendous display showing how cojones-less The New York Times has become, senior management caved to the “woke” they’ve allowed into the publication and accepted the resignation of their editorial page editor, James Bennet, who had the audacity to run a reasonable and sound viewpoint by Sen. Tom Cotton (R-Ark.). But to the zombified woke, they saw “The Horror.” One of the woke among the Times staff wrote: “Running this puts Black @NYTimes staff in danger.”
Good grief. The exaggeration, the hyperbole and the mindlessness stagger the rational mind.
The Times then added a lengthy editor’s note at the front of Cotton’s commentary. Given the extent of the newspaper’s descent into the abyss and the world of State-Run Media, it’s surprising they didn’t pull the piece.
Paul Krugman
This brings us back to Paul Krugman. In addition to his Times duties as a scribe, Krugman now fronts a “MasterClass” in which students can learn: “Really good economics has a kind of beauty to it, and it comes down to just two principles. $100 bills don’t lie in the street very long. The other is every sale is also a purchase — things add up.”
Oy vey!
Towards the end of the promo teaser for the class, Krugman says, “Don’t let the crazies grind you down.”
Krugman is wholly unaware that he has become one of the crazies — not because of his MasterClass silliness, but for a variety of other missteps, to be explained, that put him squarely on the list of New York Times failures.
But before getting to his most egregious recent Proof of Madness, let’s revisit a few of his misses in his chosen field: economics.
Krugman was one of, granted, many cheerleaders for globalism. I’d wager, however, that the average American who works for a living understood that outsourcing jobs and importing labor offer no silver lining for American workers. Yet, a Yale graduate and Nobel Prize winner in Economics couldn’t figure that out. Journalist and author William Greider outlined many of Krugman’s failings in a piece for The Nation, “Why Was Paul Krugman So Wrong?”
Read too David Harsanyi’s Nov. 19, 2019, piece, “Paul Krugman: Always Wrong, Never in Doubt,” and you might start to think that the economist is an economist in name only, and that his prime directive has been to serve as a propagandist for Democrats, with the 2016–2020 goal of criticizing anything coming from the Trump administration. Wrote Harsanyi, “One of the nation’s leading doomsayers has been The New York Times’ perpetually mistaken Paul Krugman, who warned shortly after the 2016 election that Trump’s victory would trigger a global recession ‘with no end in sight.’”
Until the COVID-19 pandemic gripped the country and the world in 2020, “Trump’s economy” was booming.
Last year, Laurence B. Siegel, in a piece for Advisor Perspectives, “The Wisdom and Folly of Paul Krugman,” wrote in his review of Krugman’s book, “Arguing with Zombies,” that he couldn’t “in good conscience recommend this book, despite its occasional flashes of brilliance.” Siegel wrote:
“Winston Churchill has been quoted as saying, ‘A fanatic is someone who can’t change his mind and won’t change the subject.’ Along with Mark Twain and Albert Einstein, Churchill is claimed to have said just about everything worth saying. I don’t know if he said it, but it applies to Krugman, whose Johnny One-Note approach to political discourse is deeply annoying. Because of his obvious talent for a certain kind of economic analysis (he revolutionized economic geography in the 1980s), I just know he has the ability to discern good arguments from bad. Yet, in Arguing with Zombies, he mixes them with wild abandon.”
In a bit of a non sequitur, moving from the world of economics, last year Krugman said that child pornography being downloaded from his IP address “could be an attempt to Qanon me.”
With that as some backstory on Krugman, let’s move to Twitter, April 2021; wherein, we see the complete devolution of Krugman (@paulkrugman) into the truly crazy zone.
Here are three Krugman tweets of April 22:
“In the past few days I’ve been noticing a lot of what I think of as delusional whataboutism. It runs like this: ‘OK, maybe police are killing an innocent Black person every day or so, but what about all the killing and looting by BLM mobs?’ 1/
“This would be terrible even if the premise were true — the police, empowered by the law, are supposed to behave better than rioters. But the reality is that BLM protests were overwhelmingly peaceful 2/
“Yes, there were bad actors. There are always bad actors in any situation. But not many. The idea that our big cities were under threat is pure malevolent fantasy; BLM may have been the best-behaved protest movement in history 3/”
“Peaceful protests.” Uh, right. How many times has that lie been uttered? Add the famous Nobel Prize winner Paul Krugman to the count! And when a reporter is standing in front of a burning building set ablaze by rioters, uh, “peaceful protestors,” that’s just one more example of a peaceful protest.
Dear Reader: How many times can you say, “factually incorrect,” as you read the tweets above?
In 2020, there were 1,021 fatal police shootings. Of those, 457 were white, and 241 were black. In “The Truth About Police Shootings in America,” Dan O’Donnell and Daunte Wright write: “Nearly every single person police officers have shot and killed since The Washington Post started its comprehensive database has been armed, yet the popular misconception persists that law enforcement is killing unarmed black men at a staggering rate.”
One might think an economist would have a better grasp of data! And to think the Left and Rasputin over at Twitter HQ were concerned about Trump’s tweeting. What about this guy Krugman?
Hrrrm!
Twitter’s Jack Dorsey.Rasputin.
In response to another April 22 Krugman tweet, “In reality, given that GOP supporters believe that rampaging mobs burned and looted major cities — somehow without the people actually living in those cities noticing — getting them to see facts about something as abstract as the deficit is a hopeless cause,” National Review Online contributing editor Deroy Murdoch said, “Either this guy is lying, or he’s got some sort of clinical level state of denial, in which case I really recommend he go see a psychiatrist as soon as possible.”
But, it gets worse. On April 23:
“This is what right-wing politics is down to. It’s all false claims about evil liberals, which the base is expected to believe because it’s primed to believe in liberal villainy. They’re not even trying to engage on actual issues 3/
“With ‘replacement theory’ gaining ground, I thought I’d do some quick and dirty number crunching to confirm what I thought I knew. Using PRRI data on % saying undocumented immigrants should be deported, the most anti-immigrant states are those with few immigrants 1/
“This may be bc actually interacting with immigrants you tend to see them as human beings. It may also be bc tales of murdering rapists fly less where ppl can see they aren’t true 2/
“Similar to another thing I’m pretty sure is true: belief that BLM mobs sacked our cities prevails mainly in rural areas, where the reality isn’t in front of ppl’s noses 3/”
Krugman manages to disparage Americans, while pretending that no murders and rapes have been committed by illegal aliens and that riots resulting in property destruction and bodily harm did not occur in many cities across the country for most of last year!
Amazing denial of reality by Mr. Krugman! Or, perhaps there’s more at play. As author Upton Sinclair wrote, “It is difficult to get a man to understand something, when his salary depends on his not understanding it.”
More amazing to believe is that 4.6 million folks follow this guy on Twitter. But, if we’re to believe that 80 million people put a man of obviously diminished mental capacity and a woman who dropped out of the presidential race early, polling at only 3 percent, in the White House, I guess we can believe anything is possible — no matter how horrifying. Again, “The Horror.”
If we weren’t living in some alternative universe now, Paul Krugman would be fired for lying. That’s because in the real world The New York Times would practice ethical journalism and be a standard-bearer for high-integrity journalistic endeavors. Being fired is the right outcome for an employee who has put forth lies, not once, but repeatedly.
Yes, in a United States that hadn’t become a dystopian morass, Krugman would have been fired by now. But, alas, we are a dystopian mess.
The Nobel Prize folks should consider retracting his prize too.
But, alas, to repeat, we are a dystopian mess. And, the Nobel folks now are as woke as The New York Times, or maybe more woke … woker?
The Nobel descent begins at least with the President Obama nomination for the 2009 Peace Prize. Obama was nominated for the prize 11 days after he took office. In other words, he had done nothing as President to advance peace and presumably to be nominated for the prize.
Advance to 2020, and the Nobel brain trust nominated the Black Lives Matter (BLM) movement for the Nobel Peace Prize. There are so many examples that we are living George Orwell’s “1984.” But this nomination is a primo example. “War is peace. Freedom is slavery. Ignorance is strength.” Black Lives Matter, a Marxist movement that’s caused massive social erosion, hatred, destruction and violence is labeled a peace movement.
BLM’s early work: shutting down one of America’s busiest freeways.
Among BLM’s early disruptions were shutting down the 101 and 405 freeways in Southern California and intersections in Beverly Hills. The results: PO’d drivers. Wow. That was really productive. And 2020 was BLM’s crown jewel year, as the movement produced chaos, anarchy and social unrest across the country. BLM also advanced the brilliant idea to “defund the police,” and got woke “leadership” in the Democrat party to “bend the knee.” Among the first was one of many feckless Democrat mayors, Eric Garcetti, the legacy mayor of Los Angeles, who indeed did whack the police budget on a force that already was too small for the size of the city.
And Krugman chooses to ignore the reality of BLM. Who is this guy’s master?
The BLM name itself, however, is pretty brilliant. It has a built-in element that one can’t say “no” to. If anyone rejects the organization — “No, I don’t support Black Lives Matter” — the default position is, “You are a racist!” Of course, that has become the default position on many topics, so the “r” word is becoming fairly meaningless, but the woke among us seem unaware of the word’s diminishing power.
The Nobel may become a case study one day in “brand destruction.” If the Nobel continues on its trajectory, at the current rate of destruction, will most people put any stock in this prize? Alfred Nobel started the prize, it’s been written, because he was criticized for his profiteering in arms. This ignited his altruistic side, and he left his fortune for the Nobel Prize. Wonder what Alfred would think of today’s awarding process, including an award to an economist who now appears detached from reality?
So it’s unlikely with the level of wokeness at the Nobel HQ that they will “cancel” Krugman. But aren’t there still some normal folks at The New York Times? Are there no ramifications anymore for lying? Surely yes? If so, it’s time for The New York Times to acknowledge that Krugman’s red button has popped out. He’s done.
Maria Fotopoulos writes about the connection between overpopulation and biodiversity loss, and occasionally about other issues (such as media failure) so outrageous they drive her to write in the tradition of her training — journalism. Contact her on FB @BetheChangeforAnimals.
The annual refugee resettlement kerfuffle is underway. As usual, on one side are the immigration expansionists: President Joe Biden, Vice President Kamala Harris, congressional Democrats with, for good measure, the predictable GOP defectors, immigration lawyers who see $$$ in their futures, resettlement agencies who also profit disproportionately, and the tirelessly active pro-immigration lobby.
On the other side are American voters who want to see an admission cap that’s consistent with the nation’s ability to absorb refugees, the current economy and, in 2021, the possible consequences from a still-threatening COVID-19 that refugees might carry. Americans also want to maintain the country’s well-deserved image as a compassionate, caring nation.
For decades, refugee admissions have been a political hot potato. Until President Trump set the annual level at 15,000, the previous levels ranged widely. Under former presidents George W. Bush and Barack Obama, the U.S. resettled an average of 81,000 refugees annually. Then, President Trump gradually cut back to his final 15,000 cap – from 45,000, to 30,000, and to 18,000 during successive fiscal years. Although President Trump set his 2020 cap at 15,000, the administration admitted only 12,000 refugees, a cautionary response to the coronavirus. The caps represent an upper limit on how many refugee applications the State Department is willing to review during a fiscal year, and not a mandated goal.
Since Biden entered the White House, however, the refugee debate has taken on another antagonistic dimension: Biden’s waffling. Biden, a cosponsorwith Edward M. Kennedy (D-Mass.) of the Refugee Act of 1979, initially committed to extending former President Trump’s 15,000 cap, a decision he said was “justified by humanitarian concerns and is otherwise in the national interest.” But after getting intense blowback from influential Democrats like Illinois’ Dick Durbin, the Senate’s second-ranking Democrat, immigration lawyers and resettlement profiteers, Biden quickly reversed his course, and signed an Executive Order that committed to a 125,000 refugee ceiling in fiscal year 2022.
Biden relented under heavy pressure from Durbin who had sharply reprimanded Biden, calling a 15,000 ceiling “unacceptable.” Biden also came under attack from immigration lawyers who scorned his “cowardly” failure to fulfill his campaign promise to lift President Trump’s annual cap from 15,000 to 125,000. One immigration lawyer questioned why Biden is “perpetuating Trump’s racist, anti-immigrant legacy.”
Most craven among Biden critics were nine taxpayer-funded refugee resettlement agencies: Church World Service, Ethiopian Community Development Council, Episcopal Migration Ministries, Hebrew Immigrant Aid Society, International Rescue Committee, U.S. Committee for Refugees and Immigrants, Lutheran Immigration and Refugee Services, U.S. Conference of Catholic Bishops and World Relief Corporation. The International Rescue Committee whole-heartedly endorsed Biden’s Executive Order. The agencies have a keen interest in maximizing resettlement. In 2012, a critical analysis from the General Accounting Office found that agencies’ annual federally funded budgets are determined by the number of refugees they resettle.
The Federation for American Immigration Reform (FAIR) published a reportthat quantified for taxpayers precisely how much refugee resettlement costs. FAIR’s study found that the cost of resettling refugees is about $1.8 billion per year, with about $867 million representing welfare payments. Other resettling costs include processing, education and housing assistance. That works out, FAIR research found, to a per refugee cost to taxpayers of nearly $75,600 during the refugee’s first five resettled years.
Biden’s backers insist that increasing refugee resettlement will preserve the U.S. position as the world’s most welcoming nation for migrants. But America’s status as the world’s most charitable – with or without admitting more refugees – cannot be challenged. In 2020, the United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees compiled data which showed that the U.S. was the top 2020 donor to UNHCR’s global refugee activities. The nearly $2 billion in U.S. contributions is about four times the total contributed by the source that ranked second, the entire European Union which gave an aggregate $522 million.
Refugees qualify for immediate work permission. With millions of Americans unemployed, underemployed or COVID-19 furloughed, more employment-authorized refugees create unnecessary competition for increasingly scarce jobs that citizens and lawfully present residents deserve.
Biden’s original reaction – to hold steady at 15,000 refugees for the upcoming fiscal year – was correct. Unfortunately, Biden didn’t have the courage of his convictions, and folded under the pressure Democratic extremists put on him.
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.
Despite High Unemployment,White House Invites More Foreign Workers
By Joe Guzzardi
No sooner had employers wailed that a dire worker shortage might put their businesses on the brink than President Biden rewarded them with 22,000 new employment-based visas. The I-can’t-find-workers is employers’ annual lament, and superficially at least, this year they lay blame on the coronavirus pandemic. Frenzied media reporting may have scared some workers away from the labor markets. Others on the sideline are reaping the benefits from Biden’s financial largesse in the form of stimulus relief checks.
With lightening-like speed, the Department of Homeland Security, acting in conjunction with the Department of Labor, announced that the 22,000 bump in H-2B visas for temporary, nonagriculture workers would ensure that American businesses have easy access to the labor pool they allegedly need to recover successfully and to contribute to the economic health of local communities. Included under the H-2B umbrella are jobs in landscaping, construction and hospitality – work that Americans will perform.
While the DHS swamp-speak sounds convincing, the harsh reality is that employers want more cheap labor, and they know that Biden is the soft touch who will provide it. Added to the 66,000 H-2B visas already authorized for the current fiscal year, employers will have the flexibility to hire 88,000 foreign-born workers.
In the fiercely competitive arena of most fraud-ridden among the employment-based visas, the H-2B is near or at the top. A few years ago, the Government Accountability Office reviewed several closed cases that involved employers who had hired H-2B employees. The GAO’s findings showed employers’ blatant disregard for labor rights and human dignity.
In South Dakota, hotel owners who employed H-2B workers were found guilty of nine counts of conspiracy, holding people in peonage, making false statements and visa fraud. In Louisiana, 87 Indian nationals paid at least $20,000 each for H-2B visas to work in construction, but were never employed by the construction company. The construction company owner plead guilty to conspiracy, and others were found guilty of conspiracy, money laundering and 14 counts of encouraging and inducing illegal immigration.
In Virginia, hospitality industry employers, later linked to organized crime, fraudulently obtained 3,800 H-2B labor certifications but leased the workers to undisclosed businesses not listed on the visa petitions. The criminals defrauded the Internal Revenue Service of $7.4 million in payroll taxes, and eventually plead guilty to conspiracy, visa fraud and tax evasion.
A subsequent Economic Policy Institute analysis found that in the vast majority of H-2B visa occupations, Americans’ wages were stagnant or declined, a direct consequence of more overseas employees in the domestic labor market. Despite the year-after-year outcry from employers, no evidence exists of a labor shortage.
And as the economy slowly climbs out from the pandemic lockdown, employer shortage claims to which Biden has given credence by offering more H-2B visas ring hallow. The U-6, or real unemployment rate, which includes the underemployed, the marginally attached and discouragedworkers, is 10.7 percent, which represents about 17.4 million Americans.
As Biden’s DHS announced the H-2B visa increase, small towns across America are engulfed in what one journalist described as “a permanent atmosphere of despair.” Most people, if they work at all, earn barely enough to eke by. USA Today profiled such a town, tiny and poor Ogdensburg, New York. Even before COVID-19, life in Ogdensburg was a struggle. Census Bureau data showed that the median house in the city of 10,000 people sold for $68,000; the average family earns $42,000 a year, and 2,300 residents live below the family-of-four $26,500 federal poverty guideline.
Ogdensburg’s poverty rate is 75 percent higher than the rest of New York. Post-pandemic, the city coffers are near-empty; the hospital furloughed 174 staffers, and restaurants, grocery stores and the few local businesses are hanging on by a thread. Other American small towns are undergoing similar prolonged periods of economic strife from which they are unlikely to ever emerge.
Ogdensburg isn’t on the White House’s radar. Instead, the 22,000 lucky H-2B visa recipients are, and they will come from Honduras, El Salvador and Guatemala – the Northern Triangle countries – as part of the Biden administration’s futile effort to offset what it labels as “the root causes of migration.”
Ninety days into the Biden administration, neither the president nor his inner circle has given the slightest indication that they’re concerned about small-town America. Their exclusive focus is on adding immigrants to the U.S. population which will make economic recovery evermore elusive for America’s embattled poor.
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.
Despite High Unemployment, White House Invites More Foreign Workers
Biden Removes Visa Freeze, More Workers to Enter U.S.
By Joe Guzzardi
With so much media focused on the accelerating border emergency, another immigration-related development has gone largely unnoticed – President Joe Biden’s commitment to admit more employment-based visa holders into the still-tight U.S. labor market.
At the border, Biden’s team shows no interest in slowing the influx of Northern Triangle aliens who know that they can turn themselves into immigration officials, and soon be on their way into the U.S. interior. Last month, U.S. Customs and Border Protection apprehended a 20-year record high 168,000 foreign nationals, a total that included 19,000 minors. Biden deftly handed Vice President Kamala Harris the responsibility for bringing the border chaos under control. But Harris has responsibility avoidance skills equal to Biden’s.
Since being delegated the White House’s go-to border person, Harris has traveled to Middletown, Connecticut, where she explored the state’s former juvenile detention center as a possible migrant housing facility. She also traveled to Los Angeles and Chicago, but not to McAllen, Texas, a crisis point in the border fiasco. Neither Biden nor Harris have announced future plans to journey South.
Meanwhile, back in Washington, D.C., in a move that will harm already struggling U.S. workers, Biden allowed former President Donald Trump’s temporary pause on some employment visas to expire on March 31. Effective April 1, tech workers – most notably H-1Bs, F-1 visa holders that may be enrolled in Optional Practical Training work-study programs and seasonal hospitality workers – will once again be able to enter the U.S. to compete with, or displace, American workers. The Trump administration issued the ban to protect Americans’ employment opportunities for those who, because of the coronavirus-related furloughs or firings, lost their jobs.
Also on April 1, USCIS announced that the agency would no longer automatically reject incomplete asylum or immigration benefit applications even though it’s unlawful to process them. When USCIS accepts a partially blank form, it violates legal requirements in the Code of Federal Regulations. From the USCIS policy manual: “In order for USCIS to accept a benefit request, a submission must satisfy all applicable acceptance criteria.” The no-blank-space guideline was put into place in October 2019 to deter widespread immigration fraud, a safeguard the Biden administration is unconcerned about.
The following day, April 2, the State Department announced that visa hopefuls previously denied because of Trump’s freeze could reapply by submitting a new application. Visa applicants not interviewed earlier will have their applications prioritized. Similar to his practice with the developing border turmoil, Biden had no comment on his administration’s relaxed revisions.
Ending Trump’s visa pause and accepting watered-down asylum applications help prospective asylees and a wide range of industries that profit from an expanded labor pool. In addition to the asylees who will now have virtually an unobstructed path to work permission and affirmative benefits, other winners are Silicon Valley, landscapers, resort and restaurant owners, and families who hire au pairs. The Chamber of Commerce, long-time advocates for more cheap labor, and immigration lawyers also come out ahead under Biden’s more expansive and permissive immigration views. The American Immigration Lawyers Association and more than 100 trade associations and immigration advocacy groups wrote a letter to Biden which demanded that the president reverse Trump’s temporary ban. By complying, Biden is facilitating a wealth transfer from U.S. labor to U.S. industry.
Whether looked at from the border perspective or from an interior jobs market viewpoint, nothing Biden has done during his administration’s early days helps average U.S. citizens. Biden’s ending of Trump’s employment-based visa ban is hard to justify in light of his $2.3 trillion American Jobs Plan that he claims will, along with the $1.9 trillion American Rescue Plan, create 19 million jobs. In no sane world is it logical to import high- and low-skilled workers, as Biden has authorized, while millions of Americans are unemployed or underemployed, and at the same time advocate for spending $4.2 trillion – the rescue and jobs bills’ total cost – to create jobs.
For a president who has long embraced the myth that he’s just “plain folk” – old Blue-Collar Joe, the working man’s friend – his actions contradict his image.
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.
Biden Removes Visa Freeze, More Workers to Enter U.S.
Biden Violates Environmental Policy Act With Border Wall Stop
By Joe Guzzardi
Responding to the consequences of President Biden’s wildly out-of-control border mess, Arizona Attorney General Mark Brnovich sued the administration in the U.S. District Court of Arizona. At issue is Biden’s unilateral decision to stop border wall construction, and to end the policy which requires asylum seekers to remain in Mexico while their petitions are reviewed. The wall and Mexican Migration Protocols are among former President Trump’s signature immigration accomplishments, and helped to slow population growth in Arizona and other states.
Biden’s irresponsible, illegal border permissiveness violates the National Environmental Policy Act (NEPA) which President Richard Nixon signed in 1970 and which recognized that population directly affects the environment. Today, 90 percent of that growth is caused by immigration. NEPA requires that every agency considering an action that will affect the environment must analyze and publicize those outcomes before going forward. The published analysis is officially called an Environmental Impact Statement (EIS).
Yet the Department of Homeland Security and, before it, the Immigration and Naturalization Service have steadfastly refused to comply with NEPA even though it’s federal law. Environmentalists like Julie Axelrod, Center for Immigration Studies Director of Litigation and a former Trump administration senior Environmental Protection Agency policy advisor, who have testified before the Council on Environmental Quality, had their logical arguments fall on deaf ears.
From the Arizona complaint which lays out the indisputable truths:
“Migrants (like everyone else) need housing, infrastructure, hospitals, and schools. They drive cars, purchase goods, and use public parks and other facilities. Their actions also directly result in the release of pollutants, carbon dioxide, and other greenhouse gases into the atmosphere, which directly affects air quality. All of these activities have significant environmental impact which, as discussed above, courts have recognized as cognizable impacts under NEPA.”
On April 15, Brnovich told Tucker Carlson Tonight that the average border crosser carries about 6-8 pounds of trash. Using the best estimate of 2 million aliens illegally entering the U.S. this year, Brnovich said that translates to “about a million of pounds of trash each month.” Brnovich insisted that the so-called environmental movement, which includes the hypocritical Sierra Club, cares only about raising money, not safeguarding America’s beauty.
U.S. immigration-driven population growth is dire, and should be a matter of grave concern to Congress. The U.S. Census Bureau estimates that immigrants and births to immigrants represent more than 80 percent of the nation’s population growth. Yet Congress refuses to develop a responsible immigration policy that would provide a better quality of life for the nation’s native-born and settled immigrants.
Instead, Congress is intent to let unchecked population increases propel the nation, figuratively speaking, off a cliff. In 2016, respected environmental scientist and natural resources planner Leon Kolankiewicz, working with Progressives for Immigration Reform, completed a three-year study which led to a Programmatic Environmental Impact Statement (PEIS), an analysis of the long-term, cumulative effects of immigration on America’s environmental resources.
Summarized, the study assessed three alternative immigration scenarios, all projected out to 2100: 1) the No Action Alternative, in which current immigration rates of approximately 1.25 million per year would be maintained; 2) the Expansion Alternative, or 2.25 million annual immigration; and 3) the Reduction Alternative, 250,000 annual immigration, the historic level.
As of Earth Day 2021, the U.S. population stands at slightly more than 330 million. In approximate numbers, the No Action Alternative would lead to a U.S. population of 524 million in 2100; the Expansion Alternative, the option the Biden administration is committed to, would create a 669 million U.S. population in 2100, and the Reduction Alternative would lead to a 379 million U.S. population in 2100, not ideal but the most manageable of the three options.
Assessing each of the three possible immigration levels’ outcomes and their potential environmental impacts on urban sprawl and loss of farmland, habitat loss and impacts on biodiversity, water demands and withdrawals from natural systems, carbon dioxide emissions and resultant climate change, and energy demands and national security implications, the results are widespread, ominous and highly adverse.
Congress has a long way to go to make up for ground lost since Wisconsin’s former U.S. Senator and Governor Gaylord Nelson founded Earth Day more than half a century ago. As Nelson’s daughter Tia said, her father would be “deeply distressed” by the lack of progress on environmental causes. And, immigration is intimately related to environmental issues. As the Earth Day founder said, “… (I)t’s phony to say, ‘I’m for the environment but not for limiting immigration.’ It’s just a fact that we can’t take all the people who want to come here.”
Arizona’s lawsuit puts environmentalists back in the game in a manner earlier suggested by PFIR in the PEIS and the “Let’s Make America Green Again” campaign.
If other border states, such as Texas and New Mexico, joined Arizona, then environmentalists’ important goal – to preserve America’s magnificence – could start to be within reach.
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.
Biden Violates Environmental Policy Act With Border Wall Stop
Biden Violates Environmental Policy Act With Border Wall Stop
Public charter schools empower parents by giving them options for their children’s education. Because most charter school teachers decide against forming a union and provide competition for traditional public schools, teachers’ unions and their allies have made charter schools into a boogeyman. Since becoming Governor, Tom Wolf has been openly hostile to charter schools and attempted to reduce their funding at every turn.
On last week’s CAPitalist Cast, which you can find below, CAP CEO Leo Knepper had a chance to talk with Lenny McAllister about how charter schools are funded and how they’ve handled the challenges created by COVID 19. Mr. McAllister is the CEO of the Pennsylvania Coalition of Public Charter Schools. It was a fantastic opportunity to explore the role these schools play in educating the next generation of Pennsylvanians.
Mr. McAllister has written several opinion columns recently. We found some of the information they included fascinating. Below are excerpts and links to the articles.
The first article from Mr. McAllister, co-authored by Amber Northern and published by the Daily Signal, details the funding myths pedaled by teachers’ unions and their political allies (emphasis added):
“Contrary to charter critics’ preferred narrative, total revenues per pupil increased in most states as the percentage of local students who enrolled in charter schools rose…Simply put, charter schools in Pennsylvania receive less money than district schools. For example, a recent study estimated that Pennsylvania charter schools received $12,175 per pupil, while traditional public schools would have received $17,989 for those same students…
“According to University of Arkansas researchers, “The state funding formula for charter schools begins with the same amount of funding as a charter school’s home district, but then subtracts up to 21 categories of prior-year district expenditures,” resulting in a funding disparity that favors districts.
“In other words, the host districts get to keep the subtracted funds…districts were actually being paid more to educate fewer students.”
On the subject of cyber-charters from GoErie (emphasis added):
“A report showed that roughly one-fourth of the third through eighth grade cohort, including a disproportionate number of socioeconomically challenged students, did not take specific annual academic assessments.
“In Pennsylvania, these issues have cropped up for months in school districts despite district officials telling lawmakers for years that they could provide online academic instruction better and cheaper than public cyber charter schools. The pandemic has proven otherwise — here at home and around America.
“In contrast, public cyber charter families didn’t miss a beat.
“Pennsylvania’s cyber charters have been teaching online for more than 20 years. These schools know how to use technology to educate large numbers of students at home. As a result, thousands of families exercised their right under Pennsylvania law to choose a public cyber charter school for their children...The “blame game” has ramped up from school district officials and education unions. They complain that their money is lost to public charter schools — especially cyber charter schools. However, it’s not their money. It’s state funding allocated for education in Pennsylvania, regardless of where a student attends a public school.
“Public charter schools are public schools – just like those in local school districts, but simply operating at roughly three-fourths of the cost.“
On the importance of school choice to ensuring racial equality, from USA Today:
“Families who have chosen to enroll their children in public charter schools deserve to know with certainty that the new [Biden] administration understands, values and supports their choice. These 7,500 unique public schools educate about 3.3 million children across the USA, mostly from Black and brown families.
“These children have the ability to thrive in innovative public schools that best suit their needs for life, with teachers who look more like them and curriculum that is malleable to fit diverse backgrounds and learning preferences. These schools are effective at teaching our nation’s nuanced history and developing students not only with strong academic foundations but also with self-esteem and civic awareness.”
The USA Today article also profiles three outstanding examples of Black educators working to improve educational opportunities in the communities.
The best way to counter Governor Wolf’s narrative about education funding is to be armed with the facts.
Equality Amendment Is Racist; Fire Co Loans Is Scam
By Donna Ellingsen
Apart from the two amendments dealing with limiting the Governor’s power to enact endless extensions of emergency lockdowns, there are 2 other ballot initiatives on the May 18th ballot in Pennsylvania.
PROPOSED CONSTITUTIONAL AMENDMENT 3 PROHIBITION AGAINST DENIAL OR ABRIDGEMENT OF EQUALITY OF RIGHTS BECAUSE OF RACE OR ETHNICITY
STATEWIDE REFERENDUM MAKING MUNICIPAL FIRE AND EMERGENCY MEDICAL SERVICES COMPANIES ELIGIBLE FOR LOANS
The so-called, misleadingly named “Equality” amendment on the ballot in May 2021 is a trap, I believe. DO NOT FALL FOR IT! When the #Leftists use these sweet-sounding words, it really means the opposite! It will create a special class for other RACES AND ETHNICITIES so they will be able to give OTHERS (read: IlLLEGALS and NON-WHITES) more equality than you (read: WHITES, CHRISTIANS, CONSERVATIVES, etc.!). Don’t let them fool us again! This bill is not about enshrining “Equality” in the PA Constitution. It’s about ILLEGAL IMMIGRATION!!! Think about it: It will create a special class for other races and ethnicities, so then will it become illegal to treat illegals differently from citizens? After all, we are all created EQUAL, and even the PA Constitution will say so.
There’s an “Equality HR Bill 5 in Congress right now, trying to do the same and enshrine it in the US Constitution. And look at how they are using the same sweet-sounding “equality” nonsense! We already have equal rights for all defined in the Declaration of Independence as well as the 14th Amendment to the Constitution. Equal protection under the law. Therefore, there is NO need to create protected classes – e.g. a crime is always a crime; no need to specify a “Hate crime” which now creates special protections if you are labelling it a “hate crime.” This is what this deceptive “EQUALITY” is meant to do. They touted equality when they said it was only to stop backyard abortions and do “rare, legal abortions,” so now we have genocide being committed on a mass scale and partial-birth abortions up to the day of birthing.
It was “only hate crimes” and now we have muzzled ourselves to where it’s illegal to point out that most murders of blacks are committed by other blacks. And when they said, “We just want to love each other and be able to get married, to get recognized legally,” now we have transgenderism, sex being taught to 8-year-olds, little girls sharing bathrooms with grown men, males competing in women’s sports, and drag queen story hours with toddlers in public libraries
How many times are we going to fall for this? As far as I can tell, the GOP Leadership is pushing for this as a “feel-good measure” to give to Wolf and the Democrats in exchange for voting for limiting the Governor’s emergency powers. But the Dems who really WANT this amendment, are letting the Republicans push it! We all see how that worked for us with Act 77 and Mail-in ballots!
Please DO YOUR RESEARCH. VOTE NO ON THE MISLEADINGLY-NAMED “EQUALITY” AMENDMENT.
And vote NO as well on giving yet another office the ability to tax and spend your dollars at will.
Please feel free to copy this post and post it everywhere on social media in every venue. And spread the word to every group you are in. This is really important! Two YES’s and two NO’s.
Democrats play the long game; conservatives can only see the next 2 steps in front of them.
Isn’t this interesting? Change the meaning of words and definition to suit the occasion. Who’ll notice or realize it’s been changed? If you really want to know the true meaning of a word, look it up in a dictionary printed before 1950’s or earlier, but even a more recent one (1990’s) might suffice.
Equality Amendment Is Racist; Fire Co Loans Is Scam
