Category: Guest Authors

Wolf Expresses Half Right Ideas

Wolf Expresses Half Right Ideas

By Leo Knepper

With all of the chaos of the Iowa Caucuses, the Senate wrapping up its impeachment proceedings, and the State of the Union address, you might have missed Governor Wolf’s budget address last week. The budget address is similar to the State of the Union; it is mostly a piece of political theater.

In the speech, the Governor lays out the administration’s policy vision for the next year. Governor Wolf’s budget addresses have primarily contained the same bad ideas and half-truths every year. This year was no exception. The Governor is still insisting that the natural gas industry isn’t paying their “fair share.” It’s worth noting that the impact fee paid by the natural gas industry will likely generate close to $200 million in 2020, a decrease from 2019’s record-breaking numbers (due to lower natural gas prices). Governor Wolf also wants to reduce school choice options, increase the minimum wage, and increase public assistance in covering the cost of childcare. Ironically, raising minimum wage costs will have a ripple effect and make childcare even more expensive, and that would probably require even higher levels of public assistance.

In the midst of all of the terrible ideas, Governor Wolf did touch on two policy requests that he got at least half-right. First, Wolf suggested that Pennsylvania lower its corporate net income (CNI) tax rate. The Commonwealth has the second-highest CNI in the country, and it is often cited as a reason why businesses don’t locate or expand in Pennsylvania. He paired the tax rate reduction with some complicated changes to the tax code, called combined reporting that will make it more burdensome for businesses to file their taxes and end up increasing their tax bills in the state.

He requested the combined reporting change to make up for “lost revenue” from the lower tax rate. A better way to pay for the reduction in the tax rate is to eliminate the corporate welfare and targeted tax breaks offered by the Commonwealth to politically connected firms. This would create a level playing field and improve the overall business environment. Over time, a better climate would encourage new businesses and business expansion, and that would generate even more revenue for the treasury.

The Governor’s other good idea was tapping into the $250 million Race Horse Development Fund. The fund, replenished annually, is derived from Pennsylvania’s casinos and subsidizes the horse racing industry. One notable beneficiary was the multi-billionaire, Vice-President of the United Arab Emirates. There are quite a few other items that should have priority over subsidizing the sport of kings.

Governor Wolf is proposing to use the funds from the Race Horse Development Fund to create grants for students attending Pennsylvania’s state universities. Decreasing the cost of education is laudable, but a complete overhaul of the state’s universities would accomplish the same goal. And, while we’re at it, the universities should probably look at what percentage of the students’ tuition is going to education versus what is spent on administration and empire-building through the construction of new buildings, etc.

The House and Senate will be conducting budget hearings for the next couple of months. We will be sure to keep our readers informed of any notable developments.

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

Wolf Expresses Half Right Ideas
Wolf Expresses Half Right Ideas

Trump Vs Sanctuary State California

Trump Vs Sanctuary State California

By Joe Guzzardi 

In his State of the Union address, President Trump made clear his disgust with sanctuary state California. During the Trump administration’s first three years, the Department of Justice was unable to convert its multiple threats to California and other blatant sanctuary havens to withhold funding. In March 2018, then-Attorney General Jeff Sessions traveled to Sacramento to address several hundred California law enforcement officers. Sessions defended the White House’s lawsuit against California’s sanctuary practices, and correctly noted that federal law is the nation’s “supreme law.” Former Gov. Jerry Brown quickly demonized Sessions, and accused him of waging war against California.

Trump Vs Sanctuary State California

The first round went to California as the state blatantly ignored warnings, and the feds failed to use its full power to force Brown and his equally contemptuous AG Xavier Becerra to comply. Under California’s permissive laws, the state – home to an estimated 2.5 million illegal aliens – protects illegal immigrants by limiting state and municipal cooperation with Immigration and Customs Enforcement.

For the ensuing two years, California’s illegal sanctuary status continued. ICE only apprehended a fraction of the number of illegals in California versus the number arrested in Texas. For example, the Los Angeles ICE field office averaged only about 35 criminally charged arrests monthly compared to 300 per month for Dallas in non-sanctuary state Texas.

According to Pew, Los Angeles metro has twice as many illegal aliens as the Dallas metro area which means that Los Angeles ICE doesn’t arrest thousands of criminal aliens. Nationwide in 2018, ICE issued detainers for criminal aliens collectively responsible for 2,500 murders, nearly 30 percent of the nation’s 9,049 homicide arrests. More than 3 million aliens with criminal records currently live in the U.S.

Regardless of the feckless, hallow sanctuary defenses that brazen sanctuary advocates put forward, the aggregate statistics are shocking and indefensible. Earlier this month, Orange County (CA) Sheriff Don Barnes announced that 1,500 illegal aliens with detainers were released in 2019. Of those, 238 were re-arrested for committing new preventable crimes, including assault and battery, rape and robbery. The Immigration Reform website found that the recidivism rate among criminal aliens is 25 percent. Nevertheless, during the last three years, the number of sanctuary cities has doubled.

Individual victims’ stories are heartbreaking. As part of his SOU address, President Trump referenced Junior “Gustavo” Garcia-Ruiz, a repeat illegal alien offender with previous arrests for assault, robbery and drug offenses, who was charged with murdering Tulare County resident Rocky Jones. On December 18, 2018, at a local gas station, Garcia-Ruiz shot Jones in the face several times. Garcia-Ruiz was incarcerated just days before he murdered Jones, and he also committed multiple other crimes within a 24-hour period. Yet despite Garcia-Ruiz’s numerous prior arrests and earlier deportations, the Tulare County Sheriff’s Office ignored the ICE detainer. Later during the same month that he murdered Jones, Garcia-Ruiz died during a police chase.

After telling Jones’ story, President Trump urged Congress to pass legislation that would allow sanctuary city victims to sue government officials who violate federal immigration laws. North Carolina Sen. Thom Tillis promptly introduced S. 2059, the Justice for Victims of Sanctuary Cities Act, that would give local officials immunity for assisting federal immigration officers and would also allow Americans to pursue legal action against sanctuary cities.

S. 2059 is all well and good. But legislation that empowers the federal government to swiftly act against sanctuary cities and their irresponsible leaders is already on the books. 8 USC 1324 states that a person who knowingly “conceals, harbors, or shields from detection” illegal aliens is punishable by up to ten years in prison.

The time to end mollycoddling the more than 564 sanctuary cities and ten sanctuary states is over. Not a single tangible reason exists to tolerate American taxpayers and citizens funding the costly, craven sanctuary city fallout with money and lives.


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.

Trump Vs Sanctuary State California

Montco Child Support Case Rigged?

Is Montco Child Support Case Rigged?

By Elaine Mickman

My son’s child support was unlawfully terminated December 2018 when he was a minor public school student. I filed all proper legal recourse, but hearings and due process were denied.

The Domestic Relations Director suggested February 2019 that I file a “New Complaint” for which preliminary proceedings occurred March 2019, April 2019, and May 30, 2019 while my child suffered without support.

Is Montco Child Support Case Rigged?

A Sept. 13, 2019 Order reconvened the Support Master Evidentiary Hearing for Jan. 6, 2020, but my Ex flouted the Rules by prematurely filing for an Exceptions Hearing at the Courthouse without a required Recommended Master Order, without purchasing both Support Master proceeding transcripts, and without the Support Master Hearing concluding so that he could bypass the Support Master Hearing where evidence and testimony are presented to eliminate a Record.

A Montgomery County Court Judge “ordered-away” my Constitutional Due Process Right November 2019 at the request of my Ex, compelling me to file an appeal Dec. 11, 2019.The Court scheduled Ex’s Exceptions proceeding for Jan. 7, 2020 while the Court postponed my Jan. 6, 2020 Child Support Master Hearing to Feb. 7, 2020 at the additional demand of my Ex. Just 3 days prior to the Feb. 7, 2020 Support Master Evidentiary Hearing, the Judge entered a Feb. 4, 2020

Order stating that my Child Support Master Hearing was Stayed because a Dec. 11, 2019 appeal was pending regardless that the Judge conducted my Ex’s Jan. 7, 2020 Exceptions Hearing, applying a “double-standard” to favor my Ex while “starving-out” the UNEMANCIPATED child who has been without support for 14 months and further delaying a hearing for due process. The Judge took my Ex’s Jan. 7, 2020 Exceptions “under advisement”, but “Justice delayed is justice denied”.There is no explanation for the Judge’s actions in which my Ex received “Special Treatment” to bypass the Rules, other than my Ex “buying access to the court” otherwise known as Quid Pro Quo.

Where’s the Judicial fairness and impartiality ?

Why are the County Commissioners “championing” the court rather than exercising Executive branch actionsince Commissioner Arkoosh is a member of the Family Judicial Advisory Board and the Court is funded by the County which is losing Federal funding by my child, and other children, being denied child support?

Is this Montgomery County personnel/elected Official’s “self-interest” over County interest?

Mrs. Mickman is a resident of Lower Merion

Montco Child Support Case Rigged?

Iowa Chaos Pennsylvania Precursor?

Iowa Chaos Pennsylvania Precursor?

By, Lowman S. Henry

The ballrooms were rented, the stages festooned with red, white and blue, hundreds of supporters gathered anxiously awaiting results and hoping their candidate would take to the podium to give a victory speech.

But there were no victory speeches – or concession speeches – because there were no results. The much-touted new technology used by the Iowa Democrat Party to tabulate caucus results failed, and “inconsistencies” were found as numbers were checked against a paper trail.

So began the 2020 Presidential Election.

The chaos that engulfed the Iowa Caucus may be a preview of what Pennsylvanians can expect as most counties roll out new voting machines and a wide range of election “reforms” are implemented in a high turn-out, high-profile election year.

Kathy Boockvar is Pennsylvania’s Secretary of State. That department oversees voter registration and elections in Pennsylvania. She spoke recently to the Pennsylvania Press Club explaining the election changes approved by the General Assembly last year. During her remarks, she admitted the obvious: state and county election officials face a difficult task implementing the new rules.

All of this is made more difficult due to the fact presidential elections generate the highest voter turn-out in the four-year cycle. Rather than phase-in new procedures and new technology in an off-year election, everything will now happen at one time in a high turn-out election.

The Wolf Administration was heavy-handed in forcing most counties to replace their voting machines mandating that all systems must have a paper trail in addition to any electronic component. Donald Trump’s 2016 victory in Pennsylvania, which Democrats are convinced is illegitimate, has caused them to fixate on election security.

While we all want our elections to be secure and free of fraud, virtually every “reform” being implemented actually increases the opportunity for tampering. The handful of counties that rolled out new voting systems in last November’s elections had problems that resulted in delays, late counts, and a likely under-vote as voters walked away from polls when equipment malfunctioned.

York County was the poster child for what could – and did – go wrong. Officials there then further eroded voter confidence in the system by hiring a new elections director who has zero experience in the field. He managed to accomplish the unique feat of unifying Republicans and Democrats – who all blasted his appointment.

Setting aside the already proven problems of implementing new voting systems, process changes designed to improve voter participation open new avenues for fraud.

Among the changes is no-excuse absentee balloting. In years past a voter had to be out of town, or ill to qualify to cast an absentee ballot. Now there is “no excuse” absentee balloting which is a defacto vote by mail process. Adding administrative complexity to the process those ballots will now be accepted up until the polls close on Election Day.

County election bureaus will also have to deal with a new voter registration deadline. Previously, new voters had to register by 30 days prior to the election. That window has been shortened to 15 days prior to the election. Thus the administrative process of updating the voter rolls in time for materials to be packaged and sent to the precincts is significantly less.

Having more eligible voters actually voting is a noble goal, and the election law changes may ultimately accomplish that goal. But, every change brings with it not only administrative challenges but also vote security challenges. Doing this in a high turn-out election year is folly.

Although the genesis of these changes and the mandate for new machines came from the Left, even Left-leaning interest groups have voiced concerns over the implementation of these changes. Their concern is valid and proves fears over election chaos and fraud is not just some Right-wing conspiracy theory.

The good news is elections are implemented by 67 county election bureaus which are largely staffed by highly competent, hard-working individuals. But, they have been given a tremendously difficult task to accomplish and a set of tight deadlines in which to do so.

They will do their best, but if the Iowa Caucus was a prologue, the voters of Penn’s Woods may also face long election counts in April and November.

Lowman Henry is Chairman & CEO of the Lincoln Institute and host of the weekly Lincoln Radio Journal

Iowa Chaos Pennsylvania Precursor?
Iowa Chaos Pennsylvania Precursor?

Walking Media Pa With John Gilmore

Walking Media Pa With John Gilmore

By John W. Gilmore

Media, a quiet little town just north of Chester, Pa., didn’t have much going on in the ’80s. The major hang out spot near where I lived was the Old State Tavern on Old State Road. It featured various local rock bands playing rock music, dance music, and pop music accompanied by drinking, dancing, and outright partying.

Walking Media Pa With John Gilmore
The Seven Stones Gallery in Media, Pa.

People often visited the most popular restaurant, the Plumstead, located downtown at the center of everything. That’s not true anymore. When I arrived to take my walk 2020 and explore the new happenings I almost got lost because the landscape had changed so much and so much more was going on. I parked my car on East State St. and headed toward downtown not even knowing if I were headed in the right direction.

I passed large buildings encircling a large flat park near State and Manchester. It didn’t look the same as I remembered. Several sets of old concrete steps led up to the large open space dotted tastefully with just a touch of trees and greenery. Upon further inspection I realized that there had been houses in that field. They had been knocked down, only leaving the stairways for the continued use of the new residents.

The town had been subjected to major construction. As I got back in my car circling for some familiar reference point I noticed several large buildings and a very large number of banks for such a small town. I finally found a free parking place next to a clump of churches on Church and Franklyn Sts. in front of the Media Presbyterian Church. Near the churches and in the downtown section there was not a spot of dirt or piece of trash anywhere. The building’s were even clean, showing very few signs of wear and tear.

I parked my car, since there was no no-parking sign, and headed north toward the center of town walking past a Citizens Bank. I was perplexed for a moment. I thought it was a TD bank when I drove in. I noticed a TD Bank to the right of the Citizens Bank touching it, and a large WFSC Bank right across the street with a United Savings Bank nearby.

There were many thriving local businesses: JP Cleaning; Baker Printshop; Media Fellowship; and the House Restaurant in large two and three story buildings–some with bevelled roofs and old fashion fire escapes.

Walking down the street reminds you of the old times in the ’50s and ’60s when people didn’t spend their time shopping in enclosed spaces, but took themselves out into the natural elements scurrying from one store to the next during winter months and strolling, slowly during beautiful spring days doing their weekly shopping.

On the left you’ll find an old fashioned hardware store, on the right, Deals, not a dollar store, but something resembling a 5 and 10 cent store. A myriad of restaurants and shops all under matching green awnings along with the Media Town Mall located at State and Orange stand out. The old Plumstead is now replaced with an upscale bar named Brick and Brew. I can see the dark brown stools bolted to the floor with customers eating, drinking, and cavorting in the middle of the Friday afternoon. It is surprisingly full, located next to a large, open courtyard overlaid with dark brown bricks and benches where people can pass through down to Baltimore Pike, or just sit and look at some of the other shops or watch people passing by in this small downtown section within a downtown section. Several shops are closed waiting for the weekend onslaught, but the open ones have plenty customers.

The choices of shops to visit are many for such a small strip of road and the parallel block of Bethlehem Pike just around the corner. Everything from bookstores to nail salons, from 7 Stones Store, which sells spirituality odds and ends to juice bars, from gyms to Massage Therapy and Healing Centers all right there, within a few blocks, along with a variety of food and restaurants.

Making my way to the end of the street I retrace my steps looking for a quick lunch spot.

I finally stop at Jaco’s Taco and Juice Bar, order a large orange juice and two Tijuana Style tacos. I take the last open table. The places at the bar fill completely as I watch people pouring in and wonder where all of these people are coming from during the middle of the day. Seems that this lazy, little town has become a hotspot in the Delaware County.

Walking Media Pa With John Gilmore

Unraveling California’s Quick Demise

Unraveling California’s Quick Demise

By Joe Guzzardi

Through incredibly good fortune, I’ve been unable to watch the tedious impeachment trial. I’m traveling and my destinations don’t have television. I can’t report having the same luck, however, with the daily immigration news. Bulletins pour into my email inbox, and since immigration has been my journalism beat for more than 30 years, I’m professionally obligated to keep current. The news is relentlessly dreary, and reflects how far from the rule of law California has drifted.

Unraveling California’s Quick Demise

In its story “This Immigration Lawyer Understands Her Clients; She’s Undocumented,” the Los Angeles Times was almost giddy over illegal alien Lizbeth Mateo and her representation before the Executive Office for Immigration Review (EOIR) of a fellow illegal alien. Let that sink in: an illegal alien lawyer defending an illegal alien in a U.S. Court. According to a former legacy Immigration and Naturalization employee, no one can serve as an attorney or be a member of the state bar if they are criminals – Mateo entered and reentered the United States illegally. Nor are they eligible to represent an alien before the EOIR since their immigration status conflicts with the laws at issue.

Instead of focusing its story on the absurdity and legal questionability of an illegal immigrant subject to immigration laws, including arrest and deportation, representing another illegal immigrant, the Times instead referred to Mateo as “polished, savvy” which may be true but is also incomplete. Mateo is certainly savvy. Several years ago, she and eight other activists, known collectively as the The Dream 9, traveled to Mexico, then demanded and received reentry permission so they could protest what they perceived as President Obama’s harsh immigration policy.

That California would be the epicenter of such an outrageous immigration failure surprises no one. In 2013, as it began its slide into the depths of incomprehensible catering and entitlement-dole-out to unlawfully present migrants, then-Gov. Jerry Brown signed AB 1024, legislation that allowed illegal aliens who passed the California bar to receive law licenses.

During the same week, Brown also approved state-issued drivers licenses for aliens. A boastful Brown said, “While Washington waffles on immigration, California’s forging ahead, I’m not waiting.” One year later, Brown signed more expansive legislation that ordered the 40 licensing boards which the California Department of Consumer Affairs recognizes to, by 2016, accept applications regardless of immigration status. To replace the previously required Social Security number on all professional license applications, aliens could substitute the easily acquired federal Individual Taxpayer Identification Number.

Brown was correct, but not in the way he imagined, when he called Washington an immigration waffler. In the nearly seven years that have passed since Brown signed AB 1024, Congress has done little to end the privileges like driving, sanctuary city protection, and access to lower in-state university education fees that states and counties have awarded to illegal immigrants. As a California native and long-time immigration analyst, the question I’m most often asked is: What happened to the Golden State? In recent memory California was a conservative bastion under U.S. Sen. Richard Nixon, and Governors Ronald Reagan and Pete Wilson.

But then, as president, Reagan went rogue and signed the Immigration Reform and Control Act of 1986. During the ensuing years, tens of thousands of legal and illegal immigrants arrived. The legal immigrants and their children who came of age in the late 1990s and early 2000s favor higher immigration levels, self-define as Democrats and vote accordingly. Among the illegal alien contingent that came to California, many have remained, and some have received amnesty and therefore voting rights. They too support immigration expansion.

Today in California, as the EOIR example proves, federal immigration laws are meaningless. If they’re willing to objectively study California’s immigration history, other states could learn an important lesson. Too much identity politics accelerates great states’ declines and fall. In about a half-century, California went from being America’s most coveted destination to today’s societal mess from which residents with options can’t flee fast enough.


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.

Unraveling California’s Quick Demise

H-2B Visas Hurt American Wages

H-2B Visas Hurt American Wages

By Joe Guzzardi

In what has become an annual display of businesses’ addiction to cheap labor, commerce leaders are lobbying the acting Department of Homeland Security Secretary, Chad Wolf, to increase the H-2B visa cap. The H-2B is a seasonal, temporary, nonagricultural visa with a current 66,000 cap, and is frequently used in landscaping, hospitality and construction industries – blue-collar jobs where wages have been stagnant for years. Last year, the cap was increased by 30,000 visas.

H-2B Visas Hurt American Wages



Adding foreign-born workers to an economy that President Trump touts as the greatest in America’s history would be counter-productive and hurtful to middle-class U.S. workers who are just starting to benefit from a tight labor market. A record-high 158.8 million Americans are currently employed.

The H-2B visa has a long history of being used by employers to pass over qualified Americans and, under the false labor shortage narrative, hire instead cheap, pliant foreign-born labor. A U.S. Government Accountability Office report confirmed that multiple employers in numerous states violated wage, housing and documentation standards among H-2B workers. And a Buzz Feed News exposé based on Labor Department statistics and titled “All You Americans Are Fired” found that “many businesses go to extraordinary lengths to skirt the law, deliberately denying jobs to American workers so they can hire foreign workers….”

Last week, the Congressional Budget Office reported that mass immigration, which the U.S. has experienced for decades, adversely affects the wages of Americans who compete directly with new immigrants for employment. Expansionists argue that immigration grows the economy, a half-truth. More people mean a bigger economy, but per capita income suffers. From the CBO: “And there are many new immigrant workers to compete with. Immigrants account for about half of all newcomers to the workforce each year.” The CBO concluded that wages are negatively affected in whatever category in which American workers must compete in a labor market artificially inflated by mass immigration.

The degree to which Americans have suffered because of a surfeit of immigrant labor is eye-opening. Census Bureau data from the first quarter of 2019 show that 5 million adult immigrants without a bachelor’s degree have been allowed to settle in the country just since 2010. As a result, wages have stagnated or declined for the less educated. Since 2000, the bottom quarter of earners saw just a 4.3 percent real-wage increase – equivalent to an annual raise of just 0.2 percent. An immigrant labor overage most adversely affects teenagers, U.S.-born blacks and other minorities.

Despite pleas from big business that H-2B visa hikes are necessary to offset an acute labor shortage, and even avoid bankruptcy, numerous nonpartisan studies find no evidence of scarcity. Among other respected bipartisan organizations, the Economic Policy Institute, a liberal, pro-immigration, Washington, D.C.-based research firm found “no evidence at all of labor shortages in the labor market.”

The H-2B visa has been so flawed for so long, and has been so harmful to American workers, that even hard-core pro-immigration Democratic senators have written to Wolf and Labor Secretary Eugene Scalia urging them to reject corporate crocodile tears about worker shortages. Calif. Sen. Dianne Feinstein, Conn. Sen. Richard Blumenthal and Ill. Senator Richard Durbin, all of whom throughout their long congressional careers have consistently voted in favor of more employment-based visas, joined their Republican colleagues Iowa Sen. Charles Grassley and Ark. Sen. Tom Cotton to object to increases in the existing 66,000 cap. In their letter to Wolf and Scalia, the senators asserted that the H-2B visa incentivizes employers to hire foreign nationals and pass over qualified Americans.

President Trump is the wild card in the equation. From time to time, the president has demonstrated an understanding about how excessive immigration hurts American workers. But President Trump’s recent comments about the need for more skilled immigration, talking points taken straight from the Chamber of Commerce’s playbook, have the pro-American labor lobby on edge. As is often said around Capitol Hill, when it comes to President Trump’s thinking, no one ever knows.


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.

H-2B Visas Hurt American Wages

Lawmaker Leaving With $120K Pension

Lawmaker Leaving With $120K Pension

By Leo Knepper

Heading into the election season, 14 Pennsylvania lawmakers, so far, have announced that they will be retiring at the end of their term in December. It is worth noting that for one of them, their annual pension payment will exceed their current salary by roughly $30,000.

Lawmaker Leaving With $120K Pension
Fat and happy politics doth make

By our calculations, Representative Thomas R. Caltagirone will be walking out the door with an annual pension payment of roughly $120,000. In addition to this golden parachute, he will also receive lifetime health insurance benefits “generously” subsidized by taxpayers. With only limited exceptions, private-sector employees are offered a defined-contribution retirement plan, such as a 401(k). On average, they can expect to retire with a nest egg that provides them with 50 to 75 percent of their final salary. 

Why do Harrisburg’s politicians remain such a costly anomaly? Because they determine their own salary and benefits. In the Pension Grab of 2001, Caltagirone voted to increase his pension by 50 percent. This pension increase, signed into law by Governor Ridge, is one of the primary reasons the Commonwealth’s pension system is in dire financial condition. (For a list of all of the lawmakers who voted for the pension hike, see this blog post on our website.)

Rep. Caltagirone is the only member of the Golden Parachute Club, i.e., lawmakers whose pensions will equal or exceed their current salary, to announce his retirement so far this year. Getting to the Golden Parachute level requires lawmakers to “serve” in the legislature for 35 years or more and be enrolled in the pre-2017 pension program.

According to our research, the other members of the Golden Parachute Club are Representatives Bob Freeman (D-Bethlehem) and Tony DeLuca (D-Pittsburgh). Senator David Argall (R-Lake Hauto) will be joining the Club in November of 2020, provided he remains in office, and there are all indications that he will be sticking around.

There is no limit to how large the legislators’ defined-benefit pension can grow, so long as they stay in office. The Golden Parachute is the most corrupting influence on members of the General Assembly. It makes them prioritize their re-election above everything else, even the well-being of their constituents and the financial health of the Commonwealth

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

Lawmaker Leaving With $120K Pension

Uber Wants Foreign Labor But Not For Drivers

Uber Wants Foreign Labor But Not For Drivers

By Joe Guzzardi

Uber, the multinational ride-hailing company that burst onto the scene in 2009, and made Yellow Cab passé, has, at least superficially, enjoyed a phenomenal success record. Only a little more than a decade after its formation, Uber operates in more than 60 countries, 785 municipal centers and has an estimated 110 million worldwide users.

Uber Wants Foreign Labor But Not For Drivers


 
The San Francisco-based Uber also, like its Silicon Valley neighbors Facebook, Apple, eBay, Google and Yahoo, among others, has displaced its U.S. software engineers with H-1B visa holders. Like its corporate partners-in-crime, Uber denies the charges that it laid off Americans in favor of employing foreign nationals.
 
But in its investigative journalism story, The Mercury News reported that Uber’s Sept. 10 filing with California’s employment regulator showed that in August it had laid off 88 workers from its San Francisco offices, and in October would lay off 320 more in its San Francisco and Palo Alto offices. Most were senior software engineers.
 
During 2019’s first three quarters, Uber filed about 1,800 preliminary applications with the Labor Department for H-1B visas for new software engineer jobs and about 1,500 for new senior software engineer jobs, proof that the company hopes to hire visa holders to replace the outgoing U.S. tech workers.
 
More evidence that money motivates the cheap labor-addicted Uber: its applications put nearly half the senior software engineer positions at the Labor Department’s Level 2 wages, the same level it listed for more than half of the non-senior jobs: a minimum of $109,242 for employment in Palo Alto and $121,077 in San Francisco.
 
But Ron Hira, a Howard University associate professor and H-1B expert, told The Mercury News that the Labor Department says that any software engineer’s job description that includes “senior” in its title should command a Level 3 wage, $132,184 in Palo Alto, and $147,597 in San Francisco.
 
Uber is just one more craven employer to terminate qualified Americans and replace them with pliant foreign workers. For example, in 2015, Toys “R” Usand Disney laid off their most experienced employees and, after forcing the outgoing Americans to train their less qualified replacements, filled the jobs with H-1Bs visa holders. Before and after 2015, the pattern of Americans out, visa holders in has been well established.
 
In its November 2019 report, Challenger Gray & Christmas, Inc., a global outplacement and business and executive coaching firm, stated that the tech sector announced 7,292 cuts in November. Furthermore, through November, tech companies estimated that they would reduce their payrolls by an additional 63,447 jobs. Tech’s annual job slashing total is 380 percent higher than the 13,222 cuts it announced during the same period in 2018 – 380 percent higher!
 
With H-1B visa abuse finally on Americans’ radar, President Trump is on the spot to deliver on the grandiose campaign promises he made to get tough. From candidate Trump’s March 2016 press release: “I will end forever the use of the H-1B as a cheap labor program, and institute an absolute requirement to hire American workers first for every visa and immigration program. No exceptions.”
 
Author, lawyer and long-time H-1B critic John Miano put together a list of seven steps that the president could take that include working with Congress to write legislation that would prevent foreign nationals from displacing Americans. But President Trump’s early promises have proven empty; he’s done little to alleviate the scandalous displacement of U.S. tech workers.
 
The H-1B visa benefits only the foreign nationals who come to the U.S. to take good jobs and the employers that hire them. The big losers are displaced Americans who will struggle to find new jobs. Also, on the stick’s short end are recent university STEM graduates who will be shut out because of employers’ cheap labor addictions. Congress and President Trump have, so far, refused to protect 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.

Uber Wants Foreign Labor But Not For Drivers

Most Want Immigration Slowed, Stopped

Most Want Immigration Slowed, Stopped

By Joe Guzzardi

A year-end Associated Press poll showed that the two top 2019 stories were, first, the House of Representatives’ vote to impeach President Trump and, second, the president’s immigration agenda. The media and the president’s critics refer to Trump’s immigration views as hardline when in fact they reflect his desire to enforce the laws as written and congressionally approved decades ago.

Incumbent Trump versus whichever pro-immigration Democrat survives the endless debate cycle sets up an interesting showdown. Another late December poll, this one taken by Rasmussen, found that Americans are becoming more aware of immigration’s effect on the qualify of life, and understandably so. The nation cannot add more than 1 million new immigrants year after year, as has been the long- standing practice, without societal consequences. Until the Immigration Act of 1965, immigration averaged 250,000 annually.

Included in Rasmussen’s findings: 47 percent of likely voters polled want to slow immigration-driven population growth, and 14 percent want no immigration-related growth. Further, 68 percent believe the federal government should limit legal immigration to no more than 1 million annually – a total it currently exceeds – and 36 percent want no more than 500,000 admitted each year. With regard to population-busting family reunification, also referred to as chain migration, 59 percent of voters think legal immigrants should only be allowed to bring their spouse and minor children with them, while 32 percent favor maintaining the current practice that allows them to eventually bring in other adult relatives, including extended family and their spouse’s families.

Americans have shown a growing concern about immigration-related quality-of-life issues. Once more or less limited to border states like California, Texas and Arizona, immigration has now added population to every state, with dire effects on housing and the environment. The impacts are visible in more and more sprawl, overcrowding and traffic congestion.

Consider Virginia, for example. Virginia’s three fast-growing counties – Fairfax, Arlington and Prince William, all located adjacent to Washington, D.C. – reflect immigration’s consequences on population growth. Since 1990, hundreds of thousands of Hispanics and Asians have moved into the area, and today account for 32 percent of the 1.8 million aggregate residents in the counties. This is triple their 1990 level. During Northern Virginia’s local elections in 2018, some candidates, in response to constituents’ concerns, considered imposing population limits in various affected regions.

The Census Bureau – the ultimate nonpartisan source – projects that if the immigration status quo remains unchanged, future net immigration, the difference between the number coming and number leaving, will total 46 million by 2060, and the total U.S. population will reach 404 million, up from today’s 330 million. Census Bureau data projects that immigration will account for 95 percent of population growth between 2017-2060. Readers can do their own informal poll by asking their friends and neighbors how they feel about adding 75 million more people in the coming decades. The likely result is that most would be overwhelmingly opposed.

Yet, the federal government continues on its current path, apparently unconcerned about the nation’s future or cowed by likely xenophobia charges or a combination of both. But ignorance and cowardice are not leadership qualities. Two years ago, senators Tom Cotton (R-Ark.) and David Perdue (R-Ga.) introduced the Reforming American Immigration for a Strong Economy Act (the RAISE Act) that would, over a ten-year period, reduce immigration by 50 percent. The bill had only two cosponsors. Reintroduced in 2019, along with Sen. Josh Hawley’s (R-Mo.) endorsement, the proposed legislation has only the original three signatories, plus Sen. Marsha Blackburn (R-Tenn.). In short, Congress is making little if any effort to comply with American voters’ wishes for less immigration.

In U.S. politics, nowhere is the divide greater between voters and elitist Congress than on immigration.


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.

Most Want Immigration Slowed, Stopped
Most Want Immigration Slowed, Stopped