Rabbits And The Rhythm of Jazz In A City That Never Sleeps
John W. Gilmore
The City that never sleeps awakes despite being bruised, beaten and injured by the Covid 19 Pandemic. With fewer people in the streets some of the businesses have shut down as you walk up and down Broadway and along the streets of the upper west side. Some of the restaurants have set up small seating areas open to the elements so people can sit in and eat. Things are diminished. The subway is on a different schedule The crowds aren’t as heavy, but life still goes on.
View From Central Park River Walk by John Gilmore
People are walking the streets and picking up food to go most of the time. Every so often a few people will pass you on a City Bike or bicycles of their own. There seems to be more E-bikes flowing up and down bike lanes set aside solely for their use. Some even have street lights set up for bicycles and the small, electric scooters that pass by every so often as people make it to their destinations.
Everyone is wearing a mask. Living together in the proximity of a city and caring about one’s neighbor has caught on as part of the milieu of the city and this city, where people are presented to the world as having citizens who are cold and uncaring, has proven itself, yet again, to care more for each other than groups of people located in many smaller cities, towns and rural communities when it comes to protecting them from the virus.
Walking down 107th street passing many people wearing various types of face covers we come to the entrance of Central Park, one of the largest urban parks in the US. We walk up a ramp and enter in. A jazz band is playing funky tunes close to, but not quite, the type of music you would hear on the streets of New Orleans. People are standing around tapping their feet, clapping. Some are moved to dance.
A couple whirls and twirls touch dancing. A few people find secluded corners where they dance with glee on this beautiful Easter Weekend. People are moved to share their time together to the beat of the saxophone, trumpet, trombone and a set of drums. It is a light shining into the darkness and the fear of a pandemic bringing hope and majesty back to this dynamic world class city.
The park is grand and beautiful. No matter what tragedy befalls the city and this nation, nature still stands out wonderfully with all of it’s winding trails, streams and rivers, birds and squirrels running free and doing the same things they have been doing for thousands or perhaps even millions of years. One man stands still holding seeds in his hand as the bravest of the birds fly down and pluck them up and as the squirrels approach them. People stand their watching, spell bound at the display of trust and comfort he had cultivated with these animals over a period of time. The city is masked, but not dead, as one might expect. People aren’t cowering in their homes.
Perhaps we all can learn a lesson from New York City. Many people are leaving the city. The Covid virus is still spiking. The city has been devastated, but there is still a vital energy and power that exists at the core of this city. In a class I took once at University of Creation Spirituality a teacher named Carl Anthony described it in a class on Urban Spirituality. He explained it as the power of humanity and the power of possibility that existed in every city because of the diversity, the history, the closeness, and the ability of people all living so close to create the atmosphere they wanted to provide experiences that will take every person to a higher understanding of what it means to be human and to learn the true meaning of joyful living.
This spirit–this spirit of life and resiliency in the face of pandemic, was what we experienced during this weekend trip to the city that never sleeps. It awakened the realization that no matter how dark and battered, no matter what experiences that we go through as we pass through the fire together, if we want to and if we will stay together, we will not only survive, but prosper. Like the Easter Egg that promises the hope of new life, or the empty tomb that represents the power of life over death, new life coming forth out of desperate circumstances is always a possibility.
Out of the egg, the shell of pain, suffering, and desperation holding the city in a tight grip of fear and despondency a new city can arise. A new people can arise, but we need to nurture ourselves and our society and protect the shell that surrounds it, the very thing that holds it altogether, until what is inside is ready to crack through into a new world and new way of being. That is what we need now, and that is what is happening as many people stand around a small jazz band in one of the largest urban parks in the country wearing masks, singing, dancing and remembering what the beautiful part of life really is. Togetherness.
Rabbits And The Rhythm of Jazz In A City That Never Sleeps
Rabbits And The Rhythm of Jazz In A City That Never Sleeps
Rabbits And The Rhythm of Jazz In A City That Never Sleeps
Over the last year, Pennsylvanians have seen how unchecked power can impact every aspect of their daily lives. On May 18, voters will have an opportunity to ensure that checks and balances are added to the emergency declaration process. The primary election ballot will include two proposed constitutional amendments that will help protect lives and livelihoods in the future.
The Department of State, controlled by the Governor, has done its best to make the proposed amendments as incomprehensible as possible in an attempt to confuse voters. In simple English, the proposed amendments are asking voters to answer two questions. First, should disaster emergencies declared by the Governor be limited to 21 days unless the General Assembly approves an extension? Second, should a majority of the House and Senate be able to vote to end a declared disaster emergency?
By voting “YES” on the proposed amendments, Pennsylvanianians will be restoring checks and balances to the emergency declaration process. Voters will also ensure that future governors can protect lives in a disaster but will have to work with the legislature to address longer-term problems. These proposed changes will also ensure that future Governors must be able to justify the decisions they are making in the name of safety.
Governor Wolf has shut down businesses and entire industries at random under his authority to declare a state of emergency. He claimed that his administration would “follow the science” to develop policies. Data obtained by the Commonwealth Partners clearly shows that that wasn’t the case. For example, only 2.6% of COVID positive patients said they attended or worked at a Pre-K or K-12 grade school in the 14 days before testing positive for the virus. Yet, many schools still are not holding in-person classes.
Many locally-owned bars and restaurants have shut their doors forever due to the Governor’s go-it-alone approach, and countless children have suffered severe disruptions to their education. By voting yes to the proposed amendments on May 18th, Pennsylvanians will ensure that local communities, small businesses, and our children’s education will be protected in the future.
Under the guise of “This is not who we are. America is better than this,” familiar elitist-speak currently spoken to excuse admitting thousands of Northern Triangle migrants, no accommodation is too generous for them. President Biden is the latest political potentate to unconvincingly utter the America-is-better-than-this refrain. But Biden has a long way to go before he matches former President Obama in his thinly disguised admonition of average Americans. Obama uttered the backhanded insult 46 times on issues ranging from the Affordable Care Act, voting and national security to immigration.
To gauge how much taxpayers are required to tolerate while underwriting an endless stream of affirmative benefits offered to recently arrived migrant noncitizens as they’re forced to play second fiddle, turn to San Diego, Calif. For more than a year, some 130,000 children enrolled in the San Diego Unified School District have been relegated to remote, online education. School administrators blame the COVID-19 pandemic, and have insisted that for the teachers’ personal safety, and in the best interests of their students, remote learning is mandatory.
Imagine, then, the shock parents must have experienced when they learned that SDUSD teachers would be instructing young migrants in person at the San Diego Convention Center where they’re currently housed. In other words, teaching in person is okay, but only if the students are foreign nationals and not San Diego’s kids. During his interview with the national media, Reopen California Schools founder Jonathan Zachreson said that the confirmed COVID-19 infection rate among the alien children the SDUSD teachers will be instructing is 9 percent. But among the San Diego students the teachers have betrayed, the infection rate is a microscopic .0018 percent.
In its statement to the press, the San Diego County Office of Education wrote, “We also have a moral obligation to ensure a bright future for our children,” an apparent reference to the migrants. The SDCOE didn’t mention concern for the San Diego students whose futures have been harmed, perhaps irreparably, by the county’s year-long stay-at-home order.
On April 12, San Diego schools will – tentatively – shift to hybrid learning while the in-person migrant program will remain active through July. Shortly after SDUSD officials confirmed the April 12 return date, teachers immediately pushed back. An internal union email that Voice of San Diegoobtained showed the teachers are hedging on the April 12 date, and suggested that classroom conditions are not yet safe for returning. The email read, in part, “Any date for a required return is a projection and not set in stone.” To restate the obvious: the teachers and their union throw up flimsy objections to educating San Diego’s citizen children, but don’t hesitate to sign up to instruct Mexican and Central American migrants.
The SDCOE stressed that its illegal immigrant education program will emphasize English as a Second Language and social-emotional learning opportunities, a direct slap in the face to San Diego’s enrolled thousands of limited English speakers and special needs students.
Statewide, California’s quality of education has been in freefall for decades. Within living memory, the 1960s, California had the nation’s most efficient and most admired K-12 public school system. But in 1978, Proposition 13cut property taxes and, as a result, slashed counties’ available funds for school construction and upkeep. Today, California has more than 6.1 million students enrolled in nearly 11,000 campuses. For more than a year, the majority have been denied an in-person public education, a lost school year that can never be recovered. But for frustrated, furious parents to realize that SDUSD teachers’ priority is educating unaccompanied, illegally present foreign national asylum seekers while their children’s academic needs are neglected is a burdensome reality to cope with.
In his press release, California U.S. Rep. Darrell Issa (R) sided with the parents. Said Issa: “The decision to provide in-person instruction to illegal migrants is outrageous and parents have every right to be angry.”
Summarizing, SDUSD teachers refused to return to their contracted jobs until, first, they were vaccinated; second, they received more money, and third, COVID cases fell. The teachers have been vaccinated; they and their California’s K-12 peers got $15.3 billion as their part of the American Rescue Plan Act, and cases have plunged. Yet, the teachers brazenly refuse to go back to their San Diego classrooms, but willingly will provide education to illegally present minors. Such is the state of things in California, and in today’s Washington, D.C., where the illegal immigrant is preferred to the citizen.
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.
While justified criticism about President Biden’s border fiasco rages on, an interesting and significant legal action has gone largely unnoticed. Texan Brian Harrison, formerly President Trump’s Department of Health and Human Services chief of staff, and co-plaintiff Steven Pace filed a 20-page brief in an Amarillo federal court which seeks to resume the Trump-era, no exception practice of returning unaccompanied minors to their home country.
The suit argues that the Biden administration hasn’t given a legal defense for ending the policy which was intended to protect Americans’ health and well-being during the coronavirus pandemic. Named as defendants are Health and Human Services Secretary Xavier Becerra, Homeland Security Secretary Alejandro Mayorkas and Centers for Disease Control and Prevention Director Dr. Rochelle Walensky.
In his legal filing, Harrison, who is on the May 1 special election ballot for the vacant U.S. House of Representatives’ seat that recently deceased Ron Wright held, has submitted a two-prong argument. First, in March 2020, the CDC invoked Title 42 which allows the federal government to bar migrants from entering the U.S. during a health crisis. But on February 2, Biden ordered a CDC review which quickly resulted in the agency’s February 17 notice that Title 42 would be suspended as it pertained to returning unaccompanied alien minors. And second, Harrison’s filing claims that the Biden administration didn’t follow the Administrative Procedure Act protocols which require federal agencies to justify any policy changes.
Since February, the inflow of unaccompanied minors has continued unabated. Worse, a space shortage at border holding facilities has forced the Biden administration to release the migrants, some COVID-infected, into the U.S. interior without a notice to appear at a later date in immigration court. The most recent federal data showed that among 11,300 child and teen illegal immigrants in HHS care, 2,900 are laboratory-confirmed COVID-19 positive. White House Press Secretary Jen Psaki made Biden’s policy clear when she confirmed that “we have been letting unaccompanied minors stay.” In an effort to curb negative publicity, Biden’s Office of Personnel Management sent a memo to several government agency department heads requesting volunteer deployments for as long as four months to help Customs and Border Protection (CBP) deal with the unaccompanied minors’ border surge. More border re-enforcements will be needed during the summer months when, traditionally, migration peaks.
Within a 24-hour period last week, CBP took in 111 individuals smuggled north in three separate trucks. CBP officials identified the perpetrators as possible human smugglers and said those in custody were foreign nationals from Ecuador, El Salvador, Guatemala, Honduras and Mexico. None were wearing masks or other protective gear. Being forced to deal with the uptick in human trafficking detracts the CBP, as one of its officials said, from its “enduring mission priorities of countering terrorism, combating transnational crime, securing the border, facilitating lawful trade, protecting revenue and facilitating lawful travel.”
Americans just now are seeing the flickering light at the end of the year-long COVID-19 lockdown tunnel, and are increasingly concerned that the border releases could spark another round of stay-at-home-orders. Released asylum seekers who tested COVID-positive at a Brownsville, Texas, bus station told local reporters that their destinations included North Carolina, Maryland and New Jersey. Documents leaked to the media predict that the surge will last more than seven months. Consequently, other states will soon be receiving COVID-positive migrants.
Testing after Customs and Protection releases migrants gives the illegal aliens freedom to travel unrestricted throughout the U.S., an insult to the hundreds of thousands of Americans who lost their jobs and businesses. Also taken away during the government-imposed lockdown was personal choice for Americans to educate their children in public schools, and individuals’ constitutional rights to worship at churches, synagogues and mosques.
The question that the Biden administration should answer is what happens after the illegal aliens settle in the U.S. interior. On his border fact-finding mission, Sen. Tom Cotton (R-Ark.) learned directly from the adults that their main reason for coming to the U.S. is to find a job. The under-18 population will require public education in already overcrowded and largely failing K-12 classrooms. Many among both the minor and adult population will need taxpayer-funded health care, and will have access to other affirmative benefits.
Although Americans take pride in their humanitarianism, the nation has been through a grueling year-plus of lockdowns and employment furloughs. Putting Americans first until normalcy returns is the course of action that the Biden administration should be ethically obligated to pursue.
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.
As expected, the U.S. House of Representatives passed H.R. 6, the American Dream and Promise Act (DREAM). Soon the Senate will consider the bill which would grant legal status to about 3 million illegal aliens who claim – an allegation that will never be fact checked – to have entered the country when they were 19 or younger.
The amnesty bill also addresses 300,000 illegal aliens from Honduras, El Salvador, Nicaragua, Syria, Nepal, Burma, Sudan, South Sudan, Haiti, Venezuela and Yemen who have received Temporary Protected Status (TPS). Finally, the amnesty package includes illegal immigrants with Deferred Enforced Departure (DED), an immigration benefit that affords the unlawfully present an administrative stay of removal designated for a specific time.
DREAM would be a boon for its recipients who will get lifetime valid work permits, and a host of other affirmative benefits which would also be effective for the duration of their lives. Others who profit are cheap labor-addicted employers, immigration lawyers and immigration expansion advocates. Apple Chief Executive Officer Tim Cook, for example, is all-in. In a tweet, Cook urged Congress to pass the bill on behalf of the 450 DREAMers that Apple employs. Those Apple DREAMers displace or deny American tech workers and recent U.S. tech grads high-paying white-collar jobs.
But tens of millions of working-class Americans get nothing from DREAM except more job competition, and an increasingly overcrowded nation that further deteriorates already-dire public classroom seating capacity and emergency room hospital care conditions. Those specific types and classes of immigration admissions – DREAM, TPS and DED – will by 2031 conservatively add at least 3.2 million more residents to the U.S. population.
In another sobering study, the nonpartisan Congressional Budget Office predicted that the DREAM/TPS/DED amnesty would cost taxpayers $35 billion during the next decade. The amnestied aliens would become eligible for the Affordable Care Act and Medicaid tax credits as well as the earned income and child tax credits, an aggregate of about $42.5 billion in new federal government expenditures. However, the new green card holders would only generate about $7.5 billion in revenues, mostly from corporate income and Medicare taxes, and the nonrefundable portion of health insurance tax credits.
The method through which amnesty contributes to soaring population is explainable in two words: chain migration, another immigration albatross that Congress refuses to end. As soon as DREAM amnestied illegal immigrants become 21-year-old citizens, they can petition for their parents, who broke the law in the first place, to get them into the U.S. Hence, the chief immigration lawbreaking perpetrators, the parents, will ultimately be rewarded. More troubling eventualities: through chain migration, the amnestied youths will ultimately become anchors, paving the endless path for lawful permanent residency and lifetime work authorization for their aunts, uncles, cousins and grandparents. Using Census Bureau data, the Pew Hispanic Center identified immigration – immigrants and their U.S. born children and grandchildren – as the nation’s leading population driver that, left unchecked, will contribute 82 percent of the anticipated 117 million U.S. residents’ increase by 2050.
For the more than two decades that the Dreamer’s lead advocate, Sen. Dick Durbin (D-IL), has insisted that young aliens should not be punished by, because of their parents’ crimes, imposing perpetual illegal immigrant status on them. In 2021, in yet another attempt to put DREAMers on a citizenship pathway, Durbin called for ending the filibuster which, with the Senate’s 60-yea vote requirement, blocked his previously failed efforts.
But the true reason DREAM hasn’t passed in the last 20 years is because it’s bad, elitist-written legislation designed to benefit illegally present foreign nationals and profiteers, but that harms mainstream Americans. Concerned citizens have consistently rejected DREAM. Their consensus is that giving existing immigrants the authority to choose future immigrants without considering what the newcomers may contribute to the common national interest, as DREAM Act-sponsored chain migration does, is self-defeating and risky business.
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.
Government Is Greed, Public Works Are About The Benjamins
By Lowman S. Henry
It is a law of nature that bureaucracies and government agencies always crave a larger share of the public treasury. In Pennsylvania, the undisputed leader of the pack is the public education establishment which has a voracious and insatiable appetite for taxpayer dollars.
A close second is the Pennsylvania Department of Transportation (PennDOT) which is always clamoring for more money – much more money. The public education and transportation behemoths have two traits in common: no matter how much their budgets are increased it is never enough, and neither shows any significant improvement in performance resulting from constant funding increases.
PennDOT kicked up the most recent funding controversy by floating a plan to place tolls on several major bridges in the commonwealth, supposedly to maintain and upgrade the structures. Predictably, the idea has been met with stiff opposition from commuters and the potentially affected industries.
Governor Tom Wolf has never met a tax he does not like – until now. He is empaneling a special commission to develop a plan to replace the state’s gasoline tax with a new funding scheme. The increased fuel efficiency of gas-powered vehicles coupled with the trendy push for electric cars threatens to drive gas tax revenue downward. The goal of the commission, of course, is to increase the flow of funding into PennDOT’s coffers.
At 58.1 cents per gallon, Pennsylvania’s gas tax is the second-highest in the nation behind only California. Just a few years ago, in 2013, higher taxes were levied on producers, the practical impact of which was to add about 30 cents per gallon to the price of gasoline for a cumulative hit of over $2 billion per year to motorists. Now, the agency is claiming it needs an additional $7 billion per year to maintain the state’s roads and bridges.
For decades successive governors and legislatures have slapped band-aides on Pennsylvania’s transportation funding formula. That approach has had a particularly negative effect on the Pennsylvania Turnpike, which is a separate state agency. In 2007 a law went into effect that has siphoned hundreds of millions of dollars from Turnpike coffers into PennDOT, some of which the commission has had to borrow. That in turn has triggered steep annual increases in turnpike tolls, more than doubling fares over that time frame.
The labyrinth that is state transportation funding is further complicated by the continued financial drain caused by public transportation. Both PennDOT and a portion of those turnpike dollars subsidize public transit systems. The biggest, the Southeastern Pennsylvania Transportation Authority (SEPTA) in the Philadelphia region and Port Authority Transit (PAT) in Pittsburgh are bloated, inefficient, and inept bureaucracies that have been resistant to reform due to union-driven political pressures.
Against this backdrop, Governor Wolf has ordered the establishment of a special commission to develop recommendations for changes to the current system of transportation funding. In a departure from his usual go-it-alone approach to governing, Wolf seeks to include legislators and transportation industry representatives on the commission.
This, however, should be viewed with great suspicion. The commission’s charge is to find a way to eliminate the gas tax and find funding alternatives with the goal of adding billions of dollars to the transportation budget. It is indeed time for the development of a comprehensive restructuring of transportation funding. But just throwing more money into the pot will not solve the problem.
Also needed is a streamlining and restructuring of the entire array of transportation entities operating in the state beginning with the Department of Transportation and the Pennsylvania Turnpike Commission and extending to the regional public transportation agencies. The system is beset with administrative bloat, funding inequities, and antiquated labor contracts.
There is universal agreement that roads and bridges, public transit, railroads, and airports are vitally important to the economic vibrancy of Penn’s Woods. Rather than take the politically difficult, but necessary step of developing the comprehensive plan needed to knit all the above together, state policymakers have taken the easy way out by just throwing money at whatever crisis happens to develop.
This is a unique opportunity to systematically address Pennsylvania’s transportation needs. Hopefully, the governor’s commission doesn’t turn into yet another way to simply suck more money out of taxpayers’ wallets but rather takes the first steps toward developing a sustainable transportation system.
Lowman Henry is Chairman & CEO of the Lincoln Institute and host of the weekly Lincoln Radio Journal and American Radio Journal. Leo Knepper and Lowman Henry had a chance to talk about the Governor’s proposal. That video can be found below.
Government Is Greed, Public Works Are About The Benjamins
Government Is Greed, Public Works Are About The Benjamins
Border Turmoil Makes One Asks Who Runs The Country
By Joe Guzzardi
As the border conditions worsen, concerned Americans wonder where and when the crisis will end. If left unchecked, President Biden’s existing come-one, come-all policy will allow about 1.2 million illegal immigrants to settle in the U.S. within the first full year of his administration. The 1.2 million projected annual figure is based on February’s 100,000 unlawful entrants that Customs and Border Protection apprehended, and assumes that the monthly total will remain the same, if not increase, during the traditional summer migratory peak.
More than 3,250 unaccompanied minors have been detained at the Southwest border, triple late February’s total. Over 1,360 of the children have been detained longer than the legal 72 hours, the maximum wait period before a minor must be transferred from CBP to the Department of Health and Human Services. In all, about 13,000 unaccompanied minors are in custody. Human smuggling rings, raking in huge cash payments for their illicit services, transport the minors from Mexico’s interior to the border where the children are dropped off, and left to fend for themselves as best they can.
No compassionate American, including Biden’s voters, supports the border tragedy. But, in an effort to obscure the crisis, the Biden administration has placed a gag order on border officials to prevent them from talking to the media. Greater public awareness would result if border officials could share first-hand accounts. Border and sector chiefs have been denied traditional ride-alongs that provide reporters will a first-hand view of conditions; only anonymous sources speaking on the condition that they would remain unidentified dared to release limited information.
But while the Biden administration’s willful blindness about the border is difficult to comprehend, a few things are clear. Biden didn’t campaign on border lawlessness, at least not directly. And voters didn’t elect Biden to throw open the border. Welcoming thousands of more desperate individuals during an era when millions of Americans are unemployed, and while 34 million live in poverty – 10.5 percent of the 2019 U.S. population – is unfathomable. Migrants from Africa and Asia have entered the U.S. unlawfully, and paid exorbitant fees to human trafficking cartels to be smuggled to the border illegally. The World Bank estimates that this year 150 million people will try to exist on less than $1.90 daily. Certainly, they too aspire to the generous American way that Biden promises.
Because Biden won’t travel to the border, hasn’t given a press conference, and rarely appears in public, 47 percent of likely U.S. voters believe that, according to a Rasmussen poll, he is a puppet president and allows others to make behind-the-scenes decisions for him. Capitol Hill insiders have identified as the true movers and shakers Vice President Kamala Harris, who governmenttracker.us ranked as the most liberal Senator ahead of Vermont’s Bernie Sanders and Massachusetts’ Elizabeth Warren, and Obama holdover Susan Rice, the former National Security Director and current While House Domestic Policy Director.
Biden’s border muddle has deepened so quickly that even Democrats are concerned. Long-time Democratic strategist Doug Schoen, a critic of President Trump and an advisor to President Bill Clinton, said that the border is in “full-on crisis mode” and that the manner in which the Biden administration has handled immigration will end up “as a tragedy for all of us.” And Henry Cuellar, a U.S. Representative from the front-line 27th Texas District that includes McAllen and Nuevo Laredo, is the latest Democrat to criticize the White House. As Cuellar bluntly put it, because of the consequences for Texas and other border states, “You just can’t say, ‘Yeah, yeah, let everybody in.’”
No one knows the Biden/Harris/Rice end game. But what’s certain is that whoever gets into the U.S. will be only the iceberg’s tip. Once in, no migrant will ever be sent home. Eventually, the migrants will petition other family members from international locations. And parents will soon join the unaccompanied minors. Today’s avoidable border crisis will have a long-lasting overcrowding effect on an already crowded nation, a consequence that’s unlikely to benefit most Americans.
Joe Guzzardi is a Progressives for Immigration Reform analyst who has written about immigration for more than 30 years. Contact him at jguzzardi@pfirdc.org.
Border Turmoil Makes One Asks Who Runs The Country
Border Turmoil Makes One Asks Who Runs The Country
Atlanta Massacre Shows Border, Interior Security Needed
By Joe Guzzardi
With stronger border and seaport enforcement, and with more vigorous Immigration and Customs Enforcement and FBI interior policing, last week’s massacre across several Atlanta massage parlors may never have happened. The immigration status of the deceased victims is as yet unknown; they may be U.S. citizens. Six of the eight killed were, reported the Associated Press, Asian, ranging in age from 33 to 74, seven women and one man.
Nevertheless, the harsh fact remains: deprived of trafficked and exploited illegal immigrants to hire, owners/operators, some also illegally present, could not manage their thriving massage parlor business as they do today – mostly unchecked. Finding the businesses isn’t hard; they’re listed in the phone book and are Internet accessible. Customers have no trouble seeking out the massage parlors, but, for the most part, law enforcement has a hands-off attitude.
Well-known for years is that international sex trafficking into the U.S. is an illegal but lucrative business and that many of the young women smuggled end up as prostitutes working under the flimsy guise of being masseuses. No one knows exactly how many illegitimate massage parlors operate in the U.S., but the total could be tens of thousands. Cities with populations as small as 50,000 often have several so-called spas, all open for business from early morning until late at night.
In his evening television program, Tucker Carlson advised that when his staff did an Internet search, it found more massage parlors than Starbucks in the neighborhood housing the Gold Spa, Aromatherapy Spa and Young’s Asian Spa where the shootings occurred. The Department of Justice announced that, “Atlanta is a major transportation hub for trafficking young girls,” and is “one of the 14 U.S. cities with the highest levels of child sex trafficking.”
Throughout Georgia, 165 illicit massage businesses have been identified that provide sexual services to at least 1,000 customers daily, and generate $42 million in annual gross revenue. The U.S. Department of Justice Human Trafficking Task Force found that the average victim is first exploited for commercial sex between the ages of 12 to 14. Experts claim that traffickers take advantage of different countries’ maritime law discrepancies to easily smuggle their victims and eventually make huge profits. By land or by sea, human exploitation is big business. The International Labor Organization estimates that the 25 million global victims generate about $150 billion in annual profits for the criminal organizers.
Victims are relocated in a foreign country where they cannot speak the language. Traffickers frequently take away the victims’ travel and identity documents, telling them that if they attempt to escape, their families back home will be harmed, or the victims’ families will be forced to assume their debt. Men, women and children that are encountered in brothels, sweat shops, massage parlors, agricultural fields and other labor markets may be forced or coerced into those situations and potentially are trafficking victims.
According to the Department of State, the U.S. is the preferred destination for thousands of men, women and children globally trafficked and lured into illegal sexual practices and labor abuses. Many are enticed from their homes with false promises of well-paying jobs. But once they arrive, they are forced or coerced into prostitution, domestic servitude, or menial farm and factory labor.
Former Iowa Gov. Terry Branstad, U.S. Ambassador to China from 2017 to 2020, received a letter from a fellow Iowan who described how smugglers typically ply their trade. In 2017, Branstad’s correspondent met with a young Asian woman jailed in Iowa on prostitution charges. She had no family nearby, and spoke only Mandarin. Through a translator, the woman told her story: an adult woman who promised her wealth and security as a U.S.-based massage therapist brought her to Las Vegas on an easily obtained tourist visa.
Within a few weeks, the victim was sent to Atlanta, and then to Los Angeles where she was told she’d have to pay off her transportation expenses by first working at a local massage parlor, and then at a Northern California spa. Eventually, she was sent to Iowa, and placed at yet another massage parlor. In the unlikely event that any federal agency might have been pursuing her, the victim with the help of the perpetrators was always one step ahead of law enforcement.
The U.S. is the smuggler’s preferred destination because sneaking in is comparatively easy, the payoffs are high, and the likelihood of being apprehended and prosecuted is slim. Sex trafficking awareness is increasing; the FBI has a hotline to phone in suspected crimes. But so far, no significant dent has been made to stop felonious human smuggling. Ramped-up border and aggressive interior security is needed, and the Biden administration should, in light of the Atlanta tragedy, make enforcement its top priority.
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.
Atlanta Massacre Shows Border, Interior Security Needed
Atlanta Massacre Shows Border, Interior Security Needed
Like all the best things in life, Donald Trump’s presidency was over too quickly. If there’s one thing I regret about his reelection campaign, it’s that I didn’t take more pictures. I mean, I took a ton of pictures—it’s what I do. But I wish I’d gotten more candid shots of his supporters, like the ones below. I don’t really like posed portraits of people, because the emotion captured in a shot for which the subject was unprepared can’t be depicted when you ask them to freeze, put aside whatever they’re actually feeling, and plaster on a smile for your camera.
A little patriot at the Stop the Steal Rally, Nov. 7, in Harrisburg. Photo byOlivia Braccio
I’m not a mind-reader, just a photographer. I’m not sure what these subjects—none of whom I know personally—were feeling. I can imagine it was the tentative optimism we all shared. But I wonder if anyone else knew deep down that Trump would not be getting a second term. I didn’t want to say it then—I’m American with Italian roots; having come from a superstitious culture, it’s been implied to me that speaking something aloud can make it happen. But I knew. And it wasn’t the first time I felt that horrible weight in my gut, the sinking feeling of knowing a truth you so badly don’t want to accept. Some things are too good to be true. I knew Donald Trump’s second term was one of them. Some things do not happen twice.
My first thought when I wake up every morning is how much I wish Donald Trump were still president. Although we’re distraught that he didn’t get to finish what he started, I am as grateful for the time he spent being our leader as I am disappointed that it couldn’t last. I am thankful not only to President Trump himself, but for the fact that I was here to see all of this. Most lifespans are less than one hundred years. Considering this, I am almost in disbelief that I was fortunate enough to have my existence coincide with his. It dawned on me recently that had I been born a couple generations earlier or a generation later, I would have missed his presidency. I would have missed the greatest thing that ever happened for the United States. Each of us who supported him got to vote for him twice. We got to attend his rallies. Some of us were more involved than others, but we each got to play a part, however big or small, in the MAGA movement. At least we have that to carry with us moving forward.
From the Stop the Steal Rally, Nov. 7, in Harrisburg. Photo byOlivia Braccio
I cannot imagine the depth of the bereavement President Trump is feeling now as he watches his hard work being undone and his accomplishments being erased. We knew the Biden administration would be bad, but this is far worse than we’d imagined. If it’s this hard for us to witness, how much harder is it for the man who did everything in his power to prevent it? I hope the devastation our former president and his family must be feeling is tempered by the immense gratitude we have for them and the whole administration.
I hope Donald Trump’s main takeaway from his time as president is, simply, that he is loved. It sure didn’t always seem that way, but I hope that as he looked into the crowd at each of his rallies, he saw the appreciation we had for him illustrated on our faces. We saw his love for this country, we saw what he was doing for us. We know what he had to give up in order to serve the American people. We know he didn’t need to become president—he took the literal weight of the world onto his seventy-year-old shoulders not for himself, but for us. He could’ve spent the past five and a half years enjoying retirement in Mar-a-Lago. We know how hard it must’ve been to be a public servant—donating every penny of his salary—to constituents who make constant attempts to vilify him, who make threats on his life. But I hope he knows that along with every media source diminishing his efforts, along with every journalist who has labeled him a bigot, a sexist, or a Nazi, along with the people who hold up a replica of his severed head in effigy, the people who get the hashtag “wrong Trump” trending on Twitter in reference to his younger brother’s death, and the people wishing he would’ve succumbed to Covid, there are people who love him so profoundly that they drive three hours away to stand out on the shoulder of the road all day just to get a glimpse of his smiling face and bright yellow hair through the tinted window of a limousine. I always thought fanatical people were strange—what is there to be so excited about? A celebrity is just like anybody else.
From the Trump Rally in Old Forge, Pa on Aug. 20. Photo by Olivia Braccio
Until I was the one asking my mom to drive me to the Wilkes-Barre/Scranton airport after Trump’s private presentation was over, so I could watch the motorcade go by for a second time that day.
Until I was the overzealous nut—there’s always one, right?—standing in the front row with the Bikers for Trump, and screaming “WE LOVE YOU MOOOOOOORE!” to Eric Trump at his rally in the parking lot of Superior Laminating, each time he spoke of his affection for the president’s supporters.
Until my mother and I were driving all the way up to Waymart in the pouring rain to see Ivanka, and I was one of the people shoving a piece of paper at her and telling her how proud I was of her, and later hanging that autograph, framed, on my bedroom wall.
Until I was photographing Mike Pence during his rally at the Reading Airport, in awe as he jumped off the platform like someone half his age to come around and greet his fans. As I shouted that I was proud of him and watched him smile back, the irony was not lost on me—anyone who knows me will tell you I’m fairly reticent, rarely telling even close friends that I love them. But here I was, saying it freely to members of both Trump’s family and administration, all of whom were technically strangers to me.
What I found particularly touching was how involved Donald Trump’s children were with his presidency and reelection campaign. I loved the devotion that the Trump family showed to each other and to the US. Seeing each of them in person brought out the human side of politics, the side you don’t see when you’re watching the ten o’clock news or reading the latest tabloid. They weren’t just public figures, they weren’t just his advisors. They already had full lives long before their dad ran for president, with the same ups and downs that all of us experience. They were citizens serving their nation while keeping their young children out of the limelight and trying to maintain some semblance of privacy. They went from being well-liked, successful businesspeople to being under 24/7 Secret Service surveillance in only a few months’ time.
I don’t think there is a family in modern history who has had to face the kind of adversity the Trump family has, who has taken the kind of undue criticism they have had heaped upon them every day since 2015. Call them privileged all you want; what does money and fame mean when you’re living with the knowledge that there are people who have homicidal intent towards you? A certain amount of disparagement is expected when you get involved with politics, and of course neither Trump himself nor anyone else in his family or administration ever batted an eye, but nobody is immune to constant assaults on their character or the stress of having their safety jeopardized each time they left their homes—a scenario which should never have occurred in a so-called civilized society. After the initial riots following the 2016 elections, I’d hoped the Left would realize their mistake, begin using their eyes and heads, and start appreciating what President Trump was doing for our nation. It was only a couple of months later when I realized we wouldn’t see that happen. On the contrary, the threats from the “Hate Has No Home Here” crew became more vulgar, grew in both intensity and frequency. Did President Trump and his family find it as harrowing as I did? Did they deplane at each campaign stop wondering if that could be the day when a protestor with nefarious intent would somehow slip past security?
It’s sad to think of our president and first family working for our country under these circumstances; the fact that they performed their roles so well in spite of it all is a testament to their indomitable spirits and dedication to the US. I don’t understand when it became socially acceptable to wish death upon the leader of your own nation, or how violence against Trump supporters became such a common occurrence that some of us had to think twice before leaving the house in a hat bearing the name of the president. I don’t understand how it was seen as normal that business owners in major cities had to board up their windows at the end of October—were we preparing for an election or a natural disaster?
I hope the support the Trump family was shown at each of their rallies insulated them against these attacks. I hope the screams of their adoring fans was enough to drown out the hostility, the hurtful remarks that were spewed, and I wish they knew that the amount of love and gratefulness I alone had—and still have—for them is so much greater than the hatred that all the vitriolic people hold within their embittered souls combined, and I know the rest of President Trump’s supporters would express the exact same sentiments.
The anticipation in the months leading up to the election was as torturous as it was delightful. It was like sitting at a railroad crossing while a freight train was going by. Logically, you knew it had to end sometime, but as it chugged along in front of you, it almost seemed like there could be an infinite number of boxcars. And yet, somehow, it felt like I was searching for a pause button that I knew did not exist—I wanted to stay there, savoring the feeling of unity at each of Trump’s reelection events, of being with people who all shared a common goal. You would think that when you cram five to ten thousand people into an airport hangar, things would get contentious, but they didn’t. We passed around snacks, we gave up our seats for each other. I doubt I’ll ever find a way to recapture that pre-election excitement; although I sensed the impending catastrophe, the last shreds of my idealism were not entirely snuffed out until Biden’s inauguration. Now having experienced Biden’s leadership—or lack thereof—there is nothing I wouldn’t do to be able to go back to that segment of our lives, to pull a lever and halt the Earth’s rotations at any point before November third.
I have no doubt that President Trump is aware of how much we miss him. Having known this was coming for months, I wasn’t expecting the onslaught of grief that hit me when I saw President Trump and Melania leaving the white house for the last time. But as I watch Biden force National Guard troops to sleep in a parking garage, as I watch him send airstrikes to Syria, as I watch the destruction of the Keystone Pipeline and the erasure of women from sports, as I watch the crisis at the border escalate, and executive order after executive order pile up on his desk in less than two months’ time, I miss President Trump in the same frantic and desperate way I would miss oxygen if I were trapped underwater.
I miss everything about the Trump administration.
I miss having peace in the Middle East.
I miss energy independence.
I miss gas being two dollars per gallon.
I miss his Tweets!
I miss watching his State of the Union addresses.
I miss the backache from standing in line at each of those rallies. I miss the total stranger who, when she saw that I was starting to panic after being in line for seven hours at President Trump’s rally at the Harrisburg International Airport, began rubbing my back and talking to me to calm me down. I miss holding up the sign I had made out of a poster board and Sharpies, “Four More Years of Liberal Tears.” I miss being awestruck at the sight of Air Force One landing on the tarmac. I miss the sound of ten thousand voices all reciting the Pledge of Allegiance together. I miss the way my throat closed up with emotion when Melania came out on stage to address the crowd in Chester County just about a week prior to voting day. I miss sitting in the parking lot of the Upper Salford Volunteer Fire Company on a day that was about ninety-eightdegrees, in a metal chair on the asphalt, direct sunlight beating down on us, melting in the literal sense while waiting to see Lara Trump arrive with the Women for Trump bus tour.
I miss the Toby Keith songs they used to play at Trump-related events. Do I like country music? Not one bit. I miss it anyway.
But mostly, I just miss having hope for our nation’s future. I miss the security of knowing we had a commander in chief who put America first in all things, who worked tirelessly to protect his constituents from threats both domestic and foreign, even in the face of constant opposition from the Democratic party and even some members of the GOP.
I wish I could go back to election night, 2020, getting home after a long day working the polls, eating a pork roll sandwich in front of the computer and forcing myself to stay awake until five-thirty to watch the count come in, clinging to the nonsensical belief that as long as I didn’t fall asleep, as long as I kept refreshing the Google results, as long as my eyes did not close, President Trump would be declared the winner before daybreak.
I wish I could go back to election night, 2016. That morning had been my first time voting in a presidential election, and I was filled with twenty-year-old naivety that had not yet been smothered. I spent the day at the hospital in the city, fighting the urge to pace, to shake out the nervous energy consuming me as I sat still as a statue while the surgical resident drew dots on my face, took measurements in preparation for a maxillofacial surgery that would take place several months later. I remember waiting for the train during rush hour at 30th Street Station, looking around at everyone else and wondering if this was just another day for them, just another commute home, or if they were feeling the same tension of being perched on that metaphorical precipice. It was after two-thirty that night when Hillary called to concede. I burst into relieved sobs while the rest of the nation erupted in equal parts rage and euphoria.
I wish we could all go back to June sixteenth, 2015, the day President Trump announced his candidacy. As we watched him descend the escalator in Trump tower, Melania at his side, some of us were scratching our heads. I remembered watching The Apprentice as a kid with my mom, but I was too young to understand what was happening in the show, and I knew next to nothing about this man other than the fact that he was rich, famous, and lived in Manhattan. It wasn’t the first time a non-politician had run for president—we can’t forget Ronald Reagan—but that was way before I was born. So admittedly, my only thought that day was, how is a reality TV star supposed to run the country? How will Donald Trump do something like that?
With more efficiency, care, common sense, candor, and patriotism than anybody ever had before.
A tragedy occurred outside of Holtville, California, when a northbound big rig rammed into the driver’s side of an SUV that pulled out in front of the semi-truck, killing 13 people. This tragic event morphed into the surreal when we learned that the SUV was packed with 25 people who had been smuggled into the United States.
That’s right, 24 passengers and a driver packed like sardines in a vehicle designed to hold eight adults at maximum. Perhaps the driver who hailed from Mexicali, Mexico, was distracted when he pulled out in front of the semi making its way down Route 115. Anyone who has been in a Ford Expedition has to be thinking to themselves, HOW? How do you get 25 people into a vehicle like that?
Well, you start with ruthless, morally shipwrecked cartels that make steep profits trafficking humans across the border. Todd Bensman of the Center for Immigration Studies recently wrote that cartels expect to make $2,500 per individual smuggled from Mexico. When we do the math, that SUV had a human cargo valued around $60,000.
To give an example of just how revolting this incident is, one has to go back to the American slave trade in the 18th and 19th centuries. According to History.com, slave ships could be either “tight pack” or “loose pack.” A tight pack could hold more slaves than the loose pack, because the amount of space allocated to each slave was considerably less, but more slaves would die on route to the Americas. It would appear the cartels these days have chosen the tight pack model.
Next, you have to look at the people making the journey to enter the U.S. illegally. Coming from Mexico, they have to fork over the $2,500 and be willing to place their lives in the hands of unscrupulous smugglers. How many other deprivations do they suffer along the way, and what motivates them to do so?
The motivation is to rush to the border and be physically present in the U.S. while the Biden administration plays musical chairs with immigration policy. Will the Biden administration win sweeping amnesties for illegal aliens, or will it fail to deliver on its promises? Many people are betting on the former and are engaged in a desperate and dangerous run to bust through the border in an attempt to claim a chair when the music stops.
Since Jan. 20, Americans have become more apprehensive of the Biden administration’s plans to make sweeping changes to immigration. The majority of Americans are in fact becoming more restrictionist as opposed to expansionist in their views.
The Rasmussen Immigration Index for the week of Feb. 14 – 18, 2021, fell to 86.0, and it’s fallen by nearly 15 points since the week before the November election. This shows voters want tighter immigration control from President Biden’s administration. Right now, the Immigration Index is the lowest since it began in December 2019.
The administration is playing with dynamite, and has pinned itself in a corner that leaves two ways out. They can either abolish the border or enforce our immigration mandates to the fullest extent of the law. To do anything less is to invite more tragedy the likes of which we saw last week.
It is not just traffickers who profit off this immoral trade. There are a dozen industries that profit from cheap, compliant and easy to abuse labor. When I was a kid growing up in the 1960s and ‘70s, there were roughly 750 meat packing plants across the country. My mother worked the front counter of a local one called Lustig’s. The work and pay were good.
Today, 80 percent of our beef products come from three companies. The work and pay are bad. These huge factory meat processors rely on a steady stream of illegal aliens. Their business model would not work without them, and only when compelled to do so by ICE raids are they inclined to pay more, offer benefits and improve work conditions to attract a native workforce.
Neoliberal technocrats also are culpable in this and other tragedies stemming from the trafficking of illegal aliens. These are the toadies that carry the water for the oligarchs who seek to maximize profit via the unbridled movement of people and capital across international borders. They despise the concept of the nation state with its quaint and, in their minds, antiquated concepts of societal norms and democracy. They filter and shape the news and commentary to fit their deranged world views. And in this way, they are most culpable in all of this.
Kevin Lynn is the executive director of Progressives for Immigration Reform. Contact him at klynn@pfirdc.org.
