Category: Guest Authors

Willfully Blind White House Ignores Border Chaos

Willfully Blind White House Ignores Border Chaos

By Joe Guzzardi

The daily Southwest border updates are generating nationwide concern except in Washington, DC, where indifference reigns. The latest Department of Homeland Security report showed that in February more than 100,000 people were either apprehended by, or surrendered to, federal immigration officials on the U.S.-Mexico border. Those totals, a 14-year high, include about 9,460 unaccompanied minors and more than 19,240 family units which reflect 62 percent and 38 percent increases, respectively, when compared to January’s statistics.

Willfully Blind White House Ignores Border Chaos

Nonetheless, President Biden, his DHS Secretary Alejandro Majorkas, and his Press Secretary Jen Psaki refuse to even hint that the administration’s lax border policies need immediate reining in. For his part, Biden has not spoken officially about what his administration calls a border challenge. But Psaki refused to call the border rush a crisis, instead labeling it “an enormous challenge.” Mayorkas, when asked a similar question about whether the border events represented a crisis, answered with a flat out “no.”

But Texas Gov. Greg Abbott didn’t hesitate to call the growing border chaos a crisis. Abbott has a better perspective on the border influx than White House operatives, and the governor formed Operation Lone Star to deploy personnel from the Texas Department of Public Safety and the Texas National Guard to the border to secure the area. Abbott said Operation Lone Star’s goal is to “deny Mexican cartels and other smugglers the ability to move drugs and people into Texas.”

While the White House border rhetoric has focused almost exclusively on what it describes as the need for a humanitarian response to migration, it’s ignored the undeniable connection between open borders and human smuggling. Sen. Rob Portman (R-Ohio) is the Senate Homeland Security and Governmental Affairs top Republican who has overseen three separate committee investigations that date back over several administrations.

Portman’s 2016 investigation, “Protecting Unaccompanied Alien Children from Trafficking and Other Abuses,” uncovered that the Department of Health and Human Services failed to adequately vet or to conduct in-depth background checks on the Ohio adults to whom it released minor children. The adults turned out to be human smugglers. The 2018 report, “Oversight of the Care of Unaccompanied Minor Children,” came to similarly shocking and dangerous conclusions. HHS and DHS didn’t make the recommended post-2016 changes to trafficking crimes and to tracking whether released aliens report for their designated immigration court dates.

Biden appears either under-informed or indifferent to the growing human trafficking trade that his administration encourages. After ending the Remain in Mexico policy, the latest federal government’s inducement for more unaccompanied children to rush the border is that HHS will pay for minors in its custody to be flown to their sponsor or family member’s home, often illegal immigrants, when, as is invariably the case, the receiving adult cannot pay. Furthermore, Biden’s DHS submitted a notice to the Federal Registerto withdraw an existing proposed rule that would require the receiving immigrant to sponsor and care for an arriving migrant once s/he becomes a lawful permanent resident.

While Biden and those close to him debate semantics, last week DHS reached its breaking point, and begged ICE deportation officers to travel to the border ASAP to help with what the agency called “security operations” for the illegal immigrant children and families that have overwhelmed a swamped Border Patrol. Michael Meade, Immigration and Customs Enforcement acting director, pleaded for “immediate action.” Volunteers would include civilians with medical or legal experience as well as drivers and food servers.

Officials on the scene won’t speculate on when the emergency request for increased border assistance might be called off. The Biden administration is in full denial, and the president refuses to travel to the border to evaluate conditions. As the surge with its associated criminal and COVID risks intensifies daily, an educated guess is that the existing calamitous circumstances will remain unchanged well into the peak summer months.

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.

Willfully Blind White House Ignores Border Chaos

American Fractured Fairy Tale

American Fractured Fairy Tale

By Joseph B Dychala

America presents: A Fractured Fairy Tale –  “The Push-a-Button
Generation” or “What Do The Boomers To Us To Gen Z All Have In Common.

American Fractured Fairy Tale

Today we can push a button and have it all: streaming music, streaming
video, climate control, food heated in seconds, literally anything
imaginable delivered to our front door.

During our nation’s founding there was no button to push to heat the
dwelling or cook food. Ben Franklin passed up a fortune by giving away
his Franklin Stove design.

During the Civil War there was no button to push to administer pain
medicines to the wounded. Men were held down, limbs sawed off to
prevent infection.

During the Westward expansion there was no button to push for GPS.
Families left the relative comfort of those days for uncertain
journeys with nothing but Faith to guide them.

During the World Wars there were no buttons to push, no drones to fly.
Combat was hand to hand and very brutal. But our Every Man beat their
Super Man and delivered the world from tyranny. Peace and Prosperity
were the fruits of our Greatest Generation’s struggles, sacrifices and
blood shed.

But soon we had buttons. Buttons on the television, the car radio, the
microwave oven. Buttons to heat our homes, to wash our clothes. Soon
after we began to lose our way. Things became too easy.

We can press a button today and bring the entire globe to our
fingertips yet many people have never experienced such isolation, such
disconnect from their fellow humans, from their own humanity.

So we seek out more buttons and frantically push them hoping to feel
something or to fill some perceived void. We push a button and gamble
away a life savings rather than become entrepreneurs. We push a button
and invite all kinds of depravity into our homes rather than seek out
meaningful relationships. We push a button to escape into a virtual
world “farming” or “building” while allowing our food supply to be
genetically modified and our jobs to be outsourced.

The United States is at a cross roads in 2021. Will we continue to
demand instant gratification (that inevitably led to so called cancel
culture and will lead to much, much worse if left unchecked) or will
we with temperance, master technology and regain our own humanity in
the process.

This is our moment in history. Will you define the moment or let the
moment define you. You still have a choice, for now. Choose wisely.

Joseph B Dychala is a resident of Aston, Pa.

American Fractured Fairy Tale

Government Cares Not For Your Thoughts

Government Cares Not For Your Thoughts

By Leo Knepper

In recent polling, the Pew Research Center found that 71 percent of Americans believe that government officials DO NOT care about what they think. The vast majority of people that we hear from share that belief. The public points to outrageous salaries, healthcare paid for by taxpayers, and a revolving door between elected officials, lobbying jobs, and appointments to lucrative government jobs.

Government Cares Not For Your Thoughts

Pennsylvania is famous or infamous depending on your perspective regarding politicians “taking care of” friends and family at taxpayer expense. Most Boards and Authorities created by the legislature include seats to be filled by the “leadership” of the House, Senate, and the Governor. Many of those seats come with a high salary and little observable work. One example of a Board packed with former lawmakers is the PA Gaming Control Board (GCB). 

Of the seven Board members, three are former lawmakers. One of those lawmakers is former-Representative Frank Dermody (D-33), who lost his reelection bid in November. The fact that his salary went up to $145,000 probably gives Dermody some consolation. Former lawmakers aren’t the only ones to benefit from spots on the GCB.

Last week, we learned that Jake Corman (R-34), President pro tempore of the Senate, named Frances Regan to the GCB. Mrs. Regan is the wife of Senator Mike Regan (R-31). Between his Senate salary and her GCB salary, the Regan’s are now collecting over a quarter-million dollars per year in government salaries. When you consider that lawmakers only pay 2 percent of their annual salary for medical coverage, it paints an even worse picture. And, according to a 2019 news story, Senator Regan stayed in the lucrative legislative pension program (which is underfunded by $78 billion) instead of opting into a 401-k type plan. Finally, Mr. and Mrs. Regan will also be collecting two federal pensions on top of everything else due to their time working for the federal government. At what point is enough taxpayer money enough?

How likely is that out of 12 million Pennsylvanians, Mrs. Regan was the most qualified person in the state? It certainly looks like this is another case of politicians taking care of themselves and their friends at taxpayers’ expense.

Is it any wonder that the public believes that elected officials are only in it for themselves? With numbers like these, it’s hard to argue anything else in this case.

Government Cares Not For Your Thoughts

Border Failures Grow Population

Border Failures Grow Population

By Joe Guzzardi

Among President Biden’s first day Executive Actions is one that promised to tackle climate change, a primary concern of Congress. Included as part of the Biden administration’s climate change objectives are rejoining the Paris Agreement and leading what the administration called a clean energy revolution that will, by 2035, achieve a carbon pollution-free power sector. On Earth Day 2021, Biden will host a Leaders’ Climate Summit where he’ll emphasize his ambitious agenda.

Border Failures Grow Population

Biden’s goals are noble, but assuming they’re eventually achievable, they’re down the road. Ever-growing human populations, with their larger carbon footprint, are a big variable in climate change. But Biden is ignoring the current Southwest border crisis that will add tens of thousands of people to the nation’s 330 million residents. The Wall Street Journal reported that, through February, Customs and Border Protection will have taken 9,000unaccompanied minors into custody, an unprecedented crisis. Biden’s administration also announced that it will admit 25,000 asylum seekers held in Mexico.

Making northbound travel more appealing to prospective asylees, Biden ordered Immigration and Customs officials to lay out the red carpet. The federal government is, at taxpayer expense, flying aliens to mainland destinations where their presence, proof of the unpopular border surge with voters, will be less visible. Under Biden, the children and adult asylees will remain in the U.S. indefinitely, raise families and add to the U.S. carbon footprint as automobile, housing and durable goods consumers. When family reunification kicks in, the number of new, settled migrants will increase by a factor of more than 3, the number that Princeton University found represents the average number of immigrants from abroad that will join their stateside relatives. The average U.S. carbon footprint for each individual in the U.S. is 16 tons, among the world’s highest.

Population growth, whether created through natural increases by births outnumbering deaths or in-migration outpacing out-migration, is, the Census Bureau confirms, the leading cause of the United States’ ever-larger carbon footprint. Regulations like those the Biden administration hopes to put in place cannot negate the nation’s current immigrant intake of more than 1 million annually plus whatever unknown number of illegal aliens successfully cross the border.

During the early 1970s, President Richard Nixon signed several laws aimed at reducing each American’s per capita effect on the environment. Five decades ago, when Nixon was president, the U.S. population was 203 million; today immigration-fueled growth has pushed the nation’s population to 330 million. According to the Census Bureau, the U.S. receives one net international migrant every 666 seconds. The Census Bureau also predicts that by mid-decade, immigration will be the largest contributor to a U.S. population that exceeds 400 million, and will inevitably create a larger carbon footprint.

Whatever legislative changes the Biden administration may rule on in the guise of clean energy and reducing climate change impacts, their positive impacts will be reduced or completely negated by the increased emissions from millions of new people. Research in 2020 from The Journal of Population and Sustainability evaluated 44 countries, including the U.S., and found that emissions arising from population growth between 1990 and 2019 wiped out two-thirds of the emission reductions that arose from greater energy efficiency programs.

Blame Congress, not immigrants. Newly arrived migrants require more urban development – housing, schools, health care, governmental services, streets, parking, waste removal and places to work, shop and worship. The result is more urban sprawl, and its irreversible habitat loss.

In 1996, President Clinton, as part of his “Population and Consumption Task Force Report, President’s Council on Sustainable Development,” urged that immigration be discussed “with sensitivity and care” on behalf of “the American future.” Republicans and Democrats alike have ignored Clinton’s sound advice for 25 years. Their shameful cowardice – they know if they spoke the truth about immigration and population, the public wouldn’t support their agenda – ensured that runaway growth would escalate during those two and a half decades.

Joe Guzzardi has written about immigration, population and the environment for more than 30 years. More @OurCarbonFootprint on FB. Contact Joe at jguzzardi@pfirdc.org.

Border Failures Grow Population

Big Business Endorses Amnesty And So Do The Universities

Big Business Endorses Amnesty And So Do The Universities

By Joe Guzzardi

Once again, the big guys, those with money, power and influence, are ganging up on the little guys, Americans struggling in the neverending pandemic shutdown to earn a sustenance-level income.

As is too frequently the case, immigration, and specifically President Biden’s U.S. Citizenship Act of 2021, is the focal point of the ongoing lopsided battle of the elite versus the working classes. At the February 19 New England Business Immigration Summit (NEBIS), Harvard’s president, Lawrence S. Bacow, along with biotech executives and other higher education leaders gathered virtually to urge Congress to pass the amnesty legislation that Biden promised as a candidate.

Big Business Endorses Amnesty And So Do The Universities

The group urged Congress to grant citizenship to illegal aliens as well as to deferred action for childhood arrivals and temporary protected status recipients. Conference participants also want the federal government to issue more employment-based visas to overseas workers which President Trump paused because of COVID-19 concerns (still valid), and to restore refugee levels to the pre-Trump totals of 100,000 or more annually.

David Greene, Maine’s Colby College president, said that only an immediate immigrant infusion can save New England. Greene’s statement is an insult to unemployed and underemployed New Englanders. For his part, Bacow wants more opportunities for international students to remain in the U.S. for employment, a consequence that, if realized, would come at the expense of U.S. college graduates.

Whenever big names like NEBIS smooth-talkers get together openly to advocate for more legally present immigrants, an age-old ploy that dates back at least to the 1986 Immigration Reform and Control Act, their objective is to convey to and sway the public that when so many prominent, successful people agree on a single government policy, in this case amnesty, they must be right. After all, an elitist “summit” has rendered its pro-amnesty verdict – case closed!

In truth, immigration expansionist advocates are misguided, and if their encouragement to Congress succeeds, millions of new, lifetime-authorized workers will join the pandemic-crippled, automation-driven economy. To begin with, no one knows the size of the illegal immigrant population that Biden has vowed to reward with amnesty. Former Department of Homeland Security Kirstjen Nielsen admitted on national television that DHS is clueless about whether there are 11 million or 30 million illegal aliens in the U.S. If Nielsen doesn’t know, then nobody does. Even the lowest estimate, 11 million, plus DACAs, TPS and more employment visas would mean that the labor market will be flooded with a minimum of 12 million legal workers who will provide the cheap labor that employers covet.

At NEBIS, David Barber whose family founded Barber Foods, a Maine-based food company, insisted that Maine “doesn’t have enough people to fill their jobs.” In a 2017, $4.2 billion transaction, Tyson Foods acquired Barber Foods’ parent company. Barber’s claim about not enough Mainers to fill jobs is false.

A few years ago, during a similar worker shortage allegation, the Bangor Daily News published a story titled “Amid Foreign Worker Shortage, Bar Harbor Businesses Turn to Local Workers.” Readers reacted with vehemence. They concluded that “after crying for years” about how Maine businesses will fail without the foreign workers used for years to hold down wages, employers now admit that they’ll need to hire locals. Employers should offer higher wages to their neighbors – the traditional solution to filling jobs – before hiring from abroad.

Universities are, like private-sector employers, money-driven. International students who attend public universities pay out-of-state tuition fees that greatly exceed instate tuition. The nearly 1 million foreign-born students, 52 percent Indian and Chinese, enrolled in public colleges contribute to the financial well-being of those institutions. On average, annual out-of-state tuition costs $15,000 more, a gap that grows wider every year.

Historically, an international student who entered the U.S. on an F-1 student visa would return home after graduation. Today, however, the Optional Practical Training (OPT) program allows science, technology, engineering and math students to gain employment in well-paid, white-collar jobs for periods up to three years following graduation. DHS estimates that more than 200,000 F-1 visa holders, about 20 percent of the international student enrollment, are working with OPT authorization. Biden’s amnesty proposes automatically granting a Green Card to every STEM graduate.

Follow the money trail, the old saw, applies to immigration advocacy. Proponents want cheap labor and higher profits, even if those goals hurt Americans. Biden’s amnesty, examined closely, offers nothing to improve Americans’ lives, but is from its first page to the 353rd deliberately calculated to harm.

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.

Big Business Endorses Amnesty And So Do The Universities
Big Business Endorses Amnesty And So Do The Universities

Transformative Immigration Bill Hits Congress And It’s Bad

Transformative Immigration Bill Hits Congress And It’s Bad

By Joe Guzzardi

Now that analysts have had enough time to wade through the 353 pages that makes up the U.S. Citizenship Act of 2021 (USCA), the small print comes into focus. The USCA’s broad strokes have been widely publicized: the legislation proposes to grant amnesty to an estimated 14.5 million or more unlawfully present foreign nationals, increase annual legal immigration totals, issue more employment-based visas, and otherwise completely overhaul established immigration law.

Transformative Immigration Bill Hits Congress And It's Bad

Millions of new work permits would be granted. The 353 pages don’t contain a single provision that helps American citizens or recently arrived lawfully present residents who are struggling during the coronavirus pandemic to establish themselves. Also harmed and insulted are immigrants who waited years and paid significant fees to come to the U.S. through proper channels. U.S. Sen. Bob Menendez (D-N.J.) and U.S. Representative Linda Sanchez, (D-Calif.) introduced the bill, and its cosponsors are long-time immigration expansionists.

From his first day as president, Biden urged Congress to draft and pass USCA. Menendez called the legislation “a moral and economic imperative.” And Sanchez said that the bill “is our moment to finally deliver big, bold, and inclusive immigration reform that our nation and its people deserve.” But the details prove otherwise.

For example, the bill allows every illegal alien that the Trump administration deported to return, and apply for amnesty. Under Biden’s concept, aliens who have gone through either expedited removal or been ordered deported by a Department of Justice immigration judge – a lengthy and thorough process – will be welcomed back to the U.S. and put on a path to citizenship. The Federation for American Immigration Reform estimates that because of amnesty and other relaxed laws, 52 million more legal and illegal immigrants will eventually join the general population.

Another large chunk of the bill will retrain Customs and Border Protection agents about where and when they can enforce immigration laws. Although USCA doesn’t include the specific language, Capitol Hill insiders have learned that the Biden administration plans to, within 90 days, dismantle Immigration and Customs Enforcement by abolishing deportation officers’ jobs and removing only hardened criminals.

While USCA is winding its way through Congress, some Biden officials have promoted the idea of flying to the U.S., at taxpayer expense, Central American asylum seekers currently detained in Mexico as part of President Trump’s  “Remain in Mexico” program. A United Nation’s official relayed to the Reuters news agency the federal government’s interest in transporting the asylum-seekers by air into the U.S. where they’ll be given a date to appear before an immigration judge. Immediately after the U.N. created a website that allowed asylum seekers to register remotely for processing at the U.S.-Mexico border, hundreds of migrants signed up.

Biden’s radical immigration agenda is best reflected in his administration’s directionto the Department of Homeland Security to stop using the words “alien” and “illegal alien” in public communications or in intra-agency exchanges. The word “alien” is part of U.S. code, and is historically used to define “any person not a citizen ornational of the United States.”

In a memo from U.S. Citizenship and Immigration Services to DHS, however, U.S. Citizenship and Immigration Services acting director Tracy Renaud wrote that the language changes must include using “noncitizen” instead of “alien,” and “undocumented noncitizen” or “undocumented individual” instead of “illegal alien.” Assimilation, most new immigrants’ decades-old goal, has also been deemed offensive, and must be replaced by “integration or civic integration.” The administration’s new rhetoric is, said officials, “more inclusive.”

The proposed immigration overhaul is so extreme that Democrats on the front lines – Texas and other border states – are alarmed about possibly losing control of the House of Representatives in 2022. Calling Biden’s plan a “catastrophe,” and a “recipe for disaster,” U.S. Rep. Vicente Gonzalez (D-Texas) cautioned him against “going off the rails,” the course he perceives that Biden is traveling.

Other Texas House members echoed Gonzalez’s fears. Border municipalities are in an uproar too. The mayor of Del Rio, Texas, has asked Biden to stop releasing untested illegal immigrants into his community. Mayor Bruno Lozano said the city doesn’t have the resources to help illegals, and he fears health risks to his citizens.

As currently written, USCA provides lots more immigration and lots less enforcement, and it has little public support. But the legislation could be parceled into smaller, standalone bills or snuck into major must-pass legislation. Either way, the Biden administration could remake 21st century immigration, and in the process permanently destroy millions of working Americans’ livelihoods and their children’s futures.

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.

Transformative Immigration Bill Hits Congress And It’s Bad
Transformative Immigration Bill Hits Congress And It’s Bad

Problem Polls For Biden

Problem Polls For Biden

By Joe Guzzardi 


Presidential honeymoons have remarkably different lengths. President Barack Obama’s honeymoon, at least with the press, began the day he announced his candidacy, February 10, 2007, and the blissful union continues today. On the complete opposite end of the honeymoon spectrum is President Donald Trump, an impeachment target from before his inauguration in 2017 until February 2021, a month after he left office.

Problem Polls For Biden



Surprisingly, the polls show that President Joe Biden is, after only four weeks in the White House, having a rough go of it with the very Democrats that helped elect him. The Morning Consult poll, a partnership with the left-leaning journalism company Politico, found that several of Biden’s Executive Orders, especially those immigration-related, are among the most unpopular with voters.

Of the voters polled, only 45 percent support including illegal immigrants in the census, and only 46 percent approve halting the Trump administration’s Remain in Mexico policy which the Biden administration has undone. Effective February 19, the first of an eventual 25,000 migrants will begin entry into the United States. Others entered earlier and illegally were, despite the COVID-19 pandemic, caught and released with orders to appear in immigration court at a later date.

Biden’s lenient immigration policies have encouraged large migrant caravans to come north. As one of thousands of border-bound Hondurans told CNN, Biden is “going to help all of us” to become legal residents. When askedhow the administration could refute the widely held perception that the 100 percent surge increases meant that migrants interpreted that the borders were open, an opinion Mexican President Andrés Manuel López Obrador shares, White House press secretary Jen Psaki avoided giving a straightforward answer.

The least popular among Biden’s Executive Orders is his goal to expand refugee admission to 125,000 from President Trump’s 15,000, a greater than 800 percent increase. Among those polled, 48 percent of voters somewhat or strongly oppose the president’s plan to increase refugee resettlement in the upcoming fiscal year, while 39 percent support it.

Summing up the February 5-7 survey among 1,986 registered voters, and accounting for a 2 percent error margin, Morning Consult’s Senior Editor Cameron Easley wrote that “Orders pertaining to immigration and immigrant rights constitute five of his seven least popular actions among voters, and are particularly animating for Republicans.” As a result, Easley concluded, “immigration will be tricky political territory for the president.”

The nationwide apprehension about Biden’s expansive immigration executive orders is easily understandable. At the border, COVID-untested migrants, their total as yet unknown, have been released into Texas, a development that State Sen. Juan “Chuy” Hinojosa (D-McAllen) called “very alarming.”

From Texas, many migrants enter other states’ general populations, and could put those residents at risk. An anonymous Customs and Border Protection official told local reporters that as per a longstanding practice, when long-term holding solutions become impossible, “some migrants will be processed for removal, provided a Notice to Appear, and released into the U.S. to await a future immigration hearing.” Without identifying catch and release, the anonymous CBP officer identified the process to a tee.

Biden’s proposed refugee intake increase has generated similar concernsabout Americans’ health and safety. Weaker screening and less vetting of international refugees could unnecessarily add to the domestic COVID crisis.

Americans are puzzled at what the thought process may be behind Biden’s Day One urgency to liberalize immigration laws when there’s no link to how his actions help the millions of economically distressed, employment-anxious citizens and lawfully present residents. Biden’s immigration actions will expand the labor pool – the Bureau of Labor Statistics employment-population ratio that measures the number of people employed against the total working-age population is a dismal 57.5 percent.

Biden is urging Congress to pass amnesty that would legalize and provide lifelong valid work permission to millions of aliens, a big gamble for the new president. With only a five-seat margin in the House of Representatives, the Senate tied at 50-50, and with history showing that the mid-term elections cost the majority party about 25 seats, Biden could be, as the Morning Consult poll editor warned, plunging into cold and murky water.


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.

Problem Polls For Biden Problem Polls For Biden

American Workers Brace for Elitists’ Amnesty

American Workers Brace for Elitists’ Amnesty

By Joe Guzzardi


Congress has announced the details of President Biden’s major amnesty that will reward illegal aliens, the total population of which may be as low as 11 million or as high as 30 million. No one knows.

American Workers Brace for Elitists’ Amnesty

Among the benefits included in the U.S. Citizenship Act of 2021 are what Biden called “a reasonable path to citizenship” for illegal immigrants or in Biden’s preferred parlance, “noncitizens,” a greatly expanded refugee resettlement program, looser asylum regulations, an increase in illegal immigration and an end to President Trump’s public charge rule that prohibits public benefit-dependent immigrants from receiving Green Cards.

For Biden, passing amnesty will be a battle. At-risk 2022 Democrats, which GOP leadership estimates to be a total of 47 in the House and at least three in the Senate, may, to preserve their seats, cast “nay” votes. Who controls Congress in two years hence will also depend on the 2022 political climate that surrounds Biden.

For more than 35 years, major amnesties have failed because when recessing legislators take their constituents’ temperatures, they quickly learn how unpopular it is among their voters to reward illegal behavior. Voters consider amnesty a betrayal.

One of amnesty’s inexplicable ironies is the unanimous support from the Congressional Black Congress (CBC) for bills that give employment permission to foreign nationals who will compete head-to-head with low-income African-American workers in a shrinking labor pool, an inarguable fact. Amnesty also adversely effects other low-income, low-skilled residents – an estimated 17 million Americans are currently unemployed – but none are as gravely damaged as blacks.

In 2020, the African-American unemployment rate was 11.4 percent, 1.4 times as great as the 8.1 percent national average. During most of the last half century, black Americans have suffered through unemployment rates that were, had the entire population endured them, recessionary. Throughout those same 50 years, African-American unemployment has consistently been about twice that of white America.

While congressional elites are enamored of amnesty, grounded black analysts have a greater understanding of its perils. Peter Kirsanow, a member of the United States Commission on Civil Rights serving his fourth consecutive six-year term, explained immigration and amnesty’s dire consequences on African-Americans, especially the low-skilled. With amnesty pending, in a co-authored 2013 letter to then-President Obama, Kirsanow wrote that granting legal status to illegal aliens will disproportionately and further harm lower-skilled African-Americans by making it more difficult for them to obtain employment and depressing their wages when they finally do become employed. Kirsanow concluded that, then as now, “the economy has a glut of low-skilled workers.”

Today, with Biden’s amnesty looming, true black leaders are reiterating Kirsanow’s irrefutable arguments. In a recent interview, U.S. Representative Burgess Owens (R-Utah) scorned what he labeled “black elitists” like CBC members who have “lived the American dream,” but “… hurt those that are trying to get their first ladder up to the middle class.” Owens added that all of Biden’s policies which include opening the borders to workers who will vie against black Americans defeats the quest of the nation’s underclasses “to live the American dream and get to the middle class.” Summing up, Owens said that regardless of their skin color, elitists are America’s biggest threats.

In 2019, Yvette D. Clarke (D-NY), an elitist CBC member and a U.S. Citizenship Act of 2021 co-sponsor who during her eight-term career has voted for more immigration and against enforcement at least 120 times, proclaimed that immigration is a “black issue.” Clarke warned her opponents to “never forget” it. But Clarke and her like-minded Capitol Hill allies are wrong.

Immigration is an elitist cause that benefits cheap labor-addicted employers, the billionaire class, housing developers, consumer goods producers, immigration lawyers and open borders/immigration expansionist groups. But, at the same time, immigration harms down-on-their-luck Americans who need a break in the form of a tighter labor market, a helping hand they won’t get from the Biden administration.

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.

American Workers Brace for Elitists’ Amnesty

Pennsylvania Court Corruption Would Be Stifled By HB 38

Pennsylvania Court Corruption Would Be Stifled By HB 38

By Rep. Russ Diamond

Pennsylvania is known for its chocolate, its mountains — and its many opportunities for corruption.

In the days leading to my introduction of House Bill 38, I received the usual and expected rebuttals from mainstream journalists and Harrisburg lobbyists. I was accused of inserting gerrymandering into judicial elections and disenfranchising voters, while at the same time lectured about how “merit selection” (involving a 13-person panel) would somehow not disenfranchise them.

I can’t say I am surprised. As an outsider in Harrisburg, you can always expect pushback from special interests and the media who are always in their pocket.

Still, it makes you wonder why on earth every group of lawyers, journalists, and unions are against a bill that would seek to diversify the geographic makeup of our appellate courts. And then you remember the real problem you were seeking to solve in the first place before all of the “critics” descended: corruption.

My bill would not just diversify the gender, demographic, or geographic makeup of our appellate courts. It would also chop at the deep-seated subversion of justice in Pennsylvania.

Corruption is not something we should tolerate or ignore. It’s an embedded weed that has deep roots and has strangled other plant roots underground along the way.

For too long, Pennsylvanians have been given a raw deal by our judicial system and have been the butt of jokes about our public officials. From House speakers to trial court judges to traffic court judges, to Supreme Court judges, the commonwealth has had its fair share of judicial malpractice and public corruption.

The simple fact of the matter is that Philadelphia and Allegheny have been playing by their own rules while people like my constituents in Lebanon County suffer.

Of the most recent seven appellate court judges convicted or accused of serious crimes, four of them were from Allegheny or Philadelphia. Of the 19 judges on the Pennsylvania Superior Court, the court that decided that Speaker Bill DeWeese and Speaker John Perzel do not need to pay fines for their crimes, 12 of them are from Philadelphia or Allegheny.

You see, the current system of statewide elections for appellate court judges breeds a political class exempted from the rule of law.

Pennsylvanians for Modern Courts, the major special interest group pushing against my bill, noted in its own April 2017 study that our commonwealth “has not been a stranger to judicial scandals.” The group perceived the ethics of our higher court judges to be of such concern it issued a report in 2011 on the state’s judicial disciplinary system.

But instead of proposing a decentralization of power that could help prevent such corruption from encompassing government, Pennsylvanians for Modern Courts is proposing to move power away from the voters into the hands of a politically savvy merit selection board.

Real reform gives Pennsylvanians a fair shake instead of rigging it for the politically connected.

That’s why every special interest, media outlet, and lawyer lobbyist is against my bill. Unfortunately for them, they won’t dissuade me and other honest legislators. We will fight to get this bill approved so it becomes a ballot question, giving you a voice and opportunity to end corruption in our judicial system.

Rep. Diamond, a Republican, represents the 102nd District in the Pennsylvania House.

Pennsylvania Court Corruption Would Be Stifled By HB 38

(Note: CAP CEO, Leo Knepper had an opportunity to speak with Rep. Diamond about the proposed amendment on February 1, 2021. The video of the interview can be seen below.)

Pennsylvania Court Corruption Would Be Stifled By HB 38

Wolf Income Tax Hike Would Reward The Corrupt

Wolf Income Tax Hike Would Reward The Corrupt

By Leo Knepper

Every year Pennsylvania’s Governor presents a “budget proposal” to the General Assembly. Governor Wolf’s budget addresses have typically included items that would be harmful to Pennsylvanians. For example, Wolf has requested a new extraction tax on natural gas producers every year. And every year, the General Assembly declines. They point to the impact fee that generates millions of dollars per year for the Treasury to justify their correct decision.

Wolf Income Tax Hike Would Reward The Corrupt
Worst governor? Tough competition but in the running.

Governor Wolf decided that simply recycling his standard bad ideas just wouldn’t cut it this year. Instead, he added a request for a massive personal income-tax increase. How large of a tax increase does he want? The Governor is asking the General Assembly to increase the personal income tax rate by 46 percent. He notes that Pennsylvania has a “structural deficit” and that his tax increase would increase education funding. (See, he’s doing it for the kids.)

Governor Wolf didn’t mention that the structural deficit was caused by chronic overspending by the General Assembly. Nor did he say that he made it worse due to his unilateral decision to shut down vast swaths of the Pennsylvania economy last year. It must have surprised him to learn that shuttered businesses wouldn’t provide the same level of tax payments as open ones. As a side note on educational funding, Pennsylvania spends over $20,000 per year per pupil and ranks ninth in the country for per-pupil spending.

The Governor also included a call for increasing Pennsylvania’s minimum wage to $15 per hour. We doubt that he has considered how many of the businesses who survived his shutdown can now afford higher labor costs.

It’s doubtful that the Republican-controlled General Assembly will go along with either proposal. It’s hard to rule it out entirely, though. Remember that Pennsylvania now has one of the country’s highest gasoline taxes thanks to a Republican Governor, Tom Corbett, and Republicans in the General Assembly. However, we don’t anticipate either the House or the Senate going along with much of Governor Wolf’s budget proposal. We’ll keep you informed as the budget process moves forward over the next few months.

For a more in-depth examination of the Governor’s budget proposal, watch the video below. CAP CEO Leo Knepper sat down with Carl Marrara, Vice President of Government Affairs for the Pennsylvania Manufacturer’s Association, to discuss the Governor’s budget address and its impact on the Commonwealth’s economy.

Mr. Knepper is executive director of Citizens Alliance of Pennsylvania.

Wolf Income Tax Hike Would Reward The Corrupt