Illegal Immigration And Illicit Wildlife Trade

Illegal Immigration And Illicit Wildlife Trade

Increasingly Rare Jaguars Targeted for Fangs, Bones, Pelts

By Maria Fotopoulos

Converging and growing criminal operations in human and drug trafficking, money laundering, and wildlife trade – legal and illegal – add more pressure to animal species already under threat of extirpation in Central and South America, according to new research from the Jack D. Gordon Institute for Public Policy in Florida.

Incredibly rich in biodiversity, Central and South America are home to 17 percent of Earth’s wildlife, as well as crime and violence – Latin America has more than 40 of the 50 most dangerous cities in the world. The combination makes the region ripe for environmental exploitation. 

In “Triads, Snakeheads, and Flying Money: The Underworld of Chinese Criminal Networks in Latin America and the Caribbean,” the authors of the research, Leland Lazarusand Alexander Gocso, write: “China is, by far, the largest market for illegal wildlife products.” Lazarus and Gocso describe several Chinese criminal groups that were infiltrated by an NGO, ELI, to obtain information and evidence in order to disrupt illicit activities in the wildlife trade in Latin America.

Among the criminal operators are the M2 Network (Mexico-2) which operates in the United States, Mexico and China, with a base in Baja California; M3, located in Central Mexico and run by Cantonese Chinese nationals; Bolivian-based SA4 (South America-4); SA1 in Suriname, with Brazilian, Guyanese and French Guianan operatives, and SA8 operating in many countries. All are names most Americans likely have never heard of. These bad actors traffic in a variety of off-limits sea creatures, including abalone, sea cucumber, seahorses, sharks and totoaba. The criminal organizations operating in Latin America also traffic in jaguars for their body parts. Weighing in between 220 and 350 pounds, the jaguar (Panthera onca) is one of the world’s five big cats, an apex predator who plays a major role in keeping ecosystems in check.

The range of the jaguar in the past included all of Mexico and Central America, most of South America and parts of the United States, but now has shrunk by approximately 50 percent, according to the World Wildlife Fund. Except for an occasional lone male who may migrate possibly seeking a mate, there are no jaguars in the United States or Canada, and they are no longer found in El Salvador and Uruguay. 

It’s not breaking news that wildlife numbers continue to drop as human numbers increase. The human population in Latin America and the Caribbean has increased from 168 million in 1950 to 665 million today. The jaguar population is now estimated to be only 163,000 (2017), across 18 countries, with the majority of jaguars in Brazil, Columbia and Peru, down from an estimated 300,000 in 1960. Habitat loss due to ever-encroaching land appropriation by humans is the primary cause of diminishing wildlife. For big cats, farmers and ranchers are another threat. Poaching is another significant threat to this cat and other animals, with environmental crimes now accounting annually for an estimated $110 billion to $281 billion “industry” worldwide.

From the murders of these stunning sentient beings, Chinese buy jaguar skins for decoration and jaguar fangs for jewelry. Chinese also want jaguars for “traditional Chinese medicine,” or what others might call bogus drugs. The jaguar’s body is boiled and turned into a paste that is promoted for healing joint pain, pumping up sexual potency and improving health. A jar of jaguar paste in China reportedly sells for $3,000. As well, a “bone wine” is concocted from jaguars. 

Per the Lazarus-Gocso research, Mexican criminal organizations sell “legal and illegal wildlife products to Chinese traders in exchange for fentanyl and methamphetamine, which they send to the United States, Europe, and elsewhere.” In a piece for the Brookings Institution, “China-linked wildlife poaching and trafficking in Mexico,” author Vanda Felbab-Brown writes that, more so than in other areas of the globe, in Mexico, “poaching and wildlife trafficking for Chinese markets is increasingly thickly intermeshed with drug trafficking, money laundering, and value transfer in illicit economies.”

With the deadly example of the current fentanyl-fueled drug crisis in the U.S., what happens south of the border clearly doesn’t stay south of the border. In 2022, with no mitigation of Biden’s Border Crisis, more than 110,000 people died in the U.S. from fentanyl, according to statistics compiled by the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC). Also from CDC data, from 2016 to 2021, fentanyl drug deaths in the U.S. increased by 279 percent. Certainly when the federal government responsible for ensuring the safety and security of our border willfully opens it to 8 million illegal aliens in under three years, any pretense of upholding law and order is gone. The net impact is an administration that is enabling and enriching drug cartels, human traffickers and other criminal organizations, encouraging them to continue and grow illegal activity.

Lazarus-Gocso outline broad policy prescriptions for policymakers in China, Latin America and the U.S. But with criminal operators essentially aided and abetted by the current iteration of the U.S. government, and as multiple criminal activities converge, it’s reasonable to expect an increase in wildlife crime until there is a major change in leadership with responsible priorities.

For a reversal, strong countermeasures need to be developed, working with the multiple involved countries, and then deployed. Don’t expect much from China, the major recipient of the illegal wildlife trade from this area. First, thanks again to the Biden administration, U.S.-China relations are strained. So until there is a change in U.S. leadership, working together seems unlikely.

Second, systemic corruption in China’s government shields operators who traverse both legitimate and illegitimate businesses. Lazarus-Gocso reference a Chinese approach to business which stresses “harmony and tolerance, even in illicit activities like extortion.”

Third, China deflects responsibility, most evident in its response to the fentanyl crisis in the U.S., taking the position that it’s the responsibility of the U.S. and Mexico to keep the precursor chemicals for fentanyl from illicit drugmakers.

Needed too is a much-more educated and engaged body politic who understands the implications of wildlife loss and will pressure leadership to develop the policies and working relationships that will provide for the safety and security of jaguars and other wild living beings.

*****

How can you help?

Work for the safety and security of the jaguar: panthera.org

Support commonsense immigration policies: numbersusa.com

*****

Maria Fotopoulos writes about the connection between overpopulation and biodiversity loss, and from time to time other topics that confound her. On FB @BetheChangeforAnimals and givesendgo.com/calliescathouse.

Illegal Immigration And Illicit Wildlife Trade

Illegal Immigration And Illicit Wildlife Trade Illegal Immigration And Illicit Wildlife Trade

Delco Woman Describes Trauma Suffered In Sanctuary County

Delco Woman Describes Trauma Suffered In Sanctuary County — Sharon Devaney is the inaugural guest on Communityreviews.org Podcast which aired today, Sept. 11.

Sharon describes the on-going misery she is experiencing stemming from an April 10, 2017 accident in Haverford Township, Pa. in which her car was struck by one driven by an illegal alien as she drove her daughter to her parents.

Sharon was left crippled by the crash and suffered cancelling on social media and other orchestrated attacks when she spoke out against illegal immigration.

Police had refused to arrest the driver who was from Trinidad and Tobago since Delaware County, where Haverford is located, is a sanctuary county.

Sharon said she also experienced cancelling when she notedthat Delco’s congresswoman, Mary Gay Scanlon (D-Pa5) is supporter of Marxist groups.

She said that her children’s books began getting bad reviews on Amazon, whereas before they were universally praised.

We wrote about Sharon on Aug. 20.

CommunityReviews.org began in 2019 and allows for anonymous airings of community concerns.

Here is the podcast: https://rumble.com/v3gugqa-communityreviews.org-podcast-1.html#1

Delco Woman Describes Trauma Suffered In Sanctuary County

Delco Woman Describes Trauma Suffered In Sanctuary County

Great Replacement In Chester Pa?

Great Replacement In Chester Pa? — Upland Mayor and Delaware County Council candidate Bill Dennon tells us that immigrants — mostly apparently from Guatemala — are being moved to Chester, Pa. under the noses of its residents.

Bill says these people are being sheltered in decrepit housing and living in squalor.

Mayor Thaddeus Kirkland seems indifferent but then he is a lame duck and when did he ever care about anything anyway?

For what it’s worth, the Democrat-controlled Delaware County Council is also shrugging its shoulders.

Great Replacement In Chester Pa?

Create A Catastrophe By The Numbers

Create A Catastrophe By The Numbers

By Joe Guzzardi

850,000 visitors who overstayed their visas and remained in the country in 2022. Included in visa overstays are tourists, H-1Bs, J-1s, and F-1s as well as assorted other visa categories of which dozens are State Department-approved.

More executive branch overreach: the Biden administration has expanded its migrant program to accept up to 522,000 asylum seekers into the U.S. per year. In January the president announced he would let up to 360,000 asylum seekers into the country annually, provided they apply through the CBP One phone app. That program has since been expanded from 1,000 appointments per day to 1,450, meaning up to another 162,000 migrants could be ushered into the U.S. In Biden’s view, these are legal immigrants even though the vehicle he created that allows them to enter, the CBP app, has not been congressionally approved and is illegal. Meanwhile, the CBP app entrants will be using their work authorized status to displace low-skilled black, Hispanic and other diverse Americans from the job market.

What’s certain is that the border surgers’ and visa overstay totals, whatever they may be, represent record levels of illegal immigration that’s Biden’s unlawful agenda. Neither Biden nor DHS Secretary Alejandro Mayorkas have the authority to authorize releasing aliens, or as happens in most cases, to grant them parole with work authorization. Despite the cooked-books style of revised DHS accounting, Southwest border encounters are still roughly four times the level at which President Obama’s DHS Secretary Jeh Johnson said constituted a crisis. Federal law requires that all these illegal aliens be detained throughout their asylum proceedings, but most are being released. Immigration lawyers call CPB’s subversion aiding and abetting illegal immigration a federal felony subject to fines and imprisonment.  

The fall-out from Biden’s lawless immigration agenda is well underway. Every day, an estimated 1,000 needy migrantsarrive in New York. The city, by its own admission, doesn’t have adequate housing or food to properly care for them. Tent cities abound. Mayor Eric Adams is pleading for federal assistance. Other big city mayors in Chicago and Washington D.C.  also begged for funding to cope with the migrant overflow. In Massachusetts the alien emergency is so dire that Governor Maura Healey and Lieutenant Governor Kim Driscoll have implored residents to share their homes with aliens. Their desperate refrain: “Become a sponsor family…. Have an additional family be a part of your family.” Taxpayers are subsidizing illegal aliens most every move once they’ve crossed the border. One estimate puts the aggregate cost to date at $20.5 billion./p>

With 18 months to go in Biden’s presidency that will include a lame duck session when any immigration outrage is possible, the nation’s intake of illegal immigrants could approach ten million, roughly the size of Los Angeles Country. Remember too that legal immigration continues on autopilot, and brings in annually more than one million lawful permanent residents with lifetime valid work permission. Those new LPRs can petition their immediate and non-nuclear family members, a total that Princeton University conservatively calculates as three persons per new immigrants. Today’s one million LPR’s is tomorrows three million new U.S. residents. Chain migration drives most U.S. population increases, and arriving migrants may be pregnant and could eventually grow his existing family.

From 1990 to today, the U. S. grew by 82 million people, and the nation is on a reckless course to match or exceed that unsustainable pattern. In 2022, all immigrant classifications included, the nation added 6.9 million people—the state of Indiana’s population. Those that entered legally, 1.1 million, may have job and English language skills. Illegal immigrants, however, are poor, unskilled, and will be dependent on affirmative government assistance programs. They’ll need the basics—housing, medical care, education, all of which will be taxpayer provided.

Create A Catastrophe By The Numbers
Photo Taken by Kevin Lynn, La Joya, Texas (August 2023)

Absorbing the new arrivals will adversely alter Americans’ quality of life. The American Farmland Trust reported that over the last 20 years, the U.S. has lost more than 11 million acres of farmland to development to accommodate the nation’s soaring population. Housing hasn’t kept up with immigration-driven population growth, and prices have spiked. Over the past two decades, immigrants currently account for about 33 percent of all U.S. household growth, and have been a critical factor in the housing market’s recent boom. Blue collar workers and citizens aspired to own their first homes have been most adversely affected.

Unquestionably, new immigrants arrive in the U.S. to become consumers; their intention to buy goods and services is the main reason corporate America is so welcoming. But immigrants will also consume natural resources, most importantly water. The U.S., beset by relentless drought, is drying up, especially in the nation’s Western states, and rain isn’t falling fast enough to offset increased water consumption.  When water supplies are limited, and more people consuming the essential resource, shortages will get acute. Ask the 40 million residents of the seven states that rely on the Colorado River for water what their feelings are about more and more immigrant water consumers lowering the reservoirs.

A final, important note:The White House’s hell-bent-for-leather welcome-the-world immigration agenda is unarguably a disaster for sovereign America. The media coverup is nearly as criminal and corrupt as Biden’s governance. America’s future is in your hands—you the voters. When Congress returns after Labor Day, the election 2024 cycle will begin in earnest. As you evaluate the White House, Senate and House of Representative candidates, focus on whether the incumbent has stepped up in an effort to protect the American nation or supported and encouraged Biden as illegal immigrants overwhelm the country. Immigration is the most critical issue on the ballot. Fight back with the most important tool you have—your vote.

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Joe Guzzardi is a Project for Immigration Reform analyst who has written about immigration for more than 30 years. Contact him at jguzzardi@ifspp.org.

Create A Catastrophe By The Numbers Create A Catastrophe By The Numbers

Delco Woman Still Suffers From Crash Caused By Illegal

Delco Woman Still Suffers From Crash Caused By Illegal — Sharon Devaney’s life got worse when her Toyota Camry was t-boned at Lawrence and Ellis roads in Haverford Township, Pa. about 8 a.m., April 10, 2017.

Sharon, then 44 of Havertown, was dropping her daughter off at her parents before work.

She said it was lucky that the crash was on her side as her girl, who was just a middle-schooler, might not have survived.

As it was, Sharon was left with permanent injuries to both legs.

“I used to go running. I can’t run any more,” she said. “I can’t bike. There is so many things I can’t do.”

She said the other driver was doing about 70 mph when she hit. She was an illegal alien from Trinidad and Tobago.

Police would tell her they couldn’t turn her over to immigration authorities as Delaware County had declared itself a sanctuary county.

Delco Woman Still Suffers From Crash Caused By Illegal
Sharon Devaney

And that was when it was controlled by the GOP.

We wrote about it which brought forth much protesthing from the powers that were.

Anyway, the lady from Trinidad escaped serious punishment and she remains in the area today.

Sharon began making illegal aliens an issue.

This was the right thing to do. Exempting a group of people from the laws of the land is basically committing social suicide, after all.

She said, however, this made her the subject of a vicious harassment campaign.

A series of customers claiming bad service and implying racism caused her to leave a job as a massage therapist in Lawrence Park. She had never before received complaints and her children are bi-racial.

She said that for the first time the children’s books she wrote started getting bad reviews on Amazon.

Her Facebook account was cancelled and the Haverford Township Free Library wouldn’t let her do a book reading.

Remember, she is a township resident and a published author. Her books are not controversial.

This is a library that has no problem letting large, sexually confused males dress as women and read to children.

She was also was rejected for an opening on the Library Board.

Sharon has had both knees replaced and four surgeries on her legs. Doctors are afraid to do any more on her left.

“I had to learn to walk again twice,” she said.

She has a handicapped placard for her car. She walks with a brace. In winter when its icy she needs a cane.

“It’s humiliating,” she said.

Delco Woman Still Suffers From Crash Caused By Illegal

Scary Report From Panama About Illegal Influx

Scary Report From Panama About Illegal Influx Noted war correspondent Michael Yon has been in Panama covering the impending surge of immigrants as the Biden administration prepares to abandon Title 42 on May 11.

Title 42 was the health law imposed during the coronavirus pandemic to control migration at the U.S.-Mexico border.

Yon, in a terrifying tweet, described it as a “war invasion”.

“These people will later be armed, uniformed, and informed they can take your life and your property,” he said. “Folks who have followed my war work for many years know that I do not write flippantly or inaccurately. And that I am careful with my words. You. Are. At. War. Lethal war. Ultimate consequences. Including genocide. Randomly pick any of my work over the past twenty years. Read a dozen random dispatches. Do an audit of my accuracy. Inaction now is death later.”

He also says that the masses of people have made disease rampant in Panama and that the Chinese have weaponized dengue fever.

Scary Report From Panama About Illegal Influx
Scary Report From Panama About Illegal Influx

Mayor Adams Goes To El Paso

Mayor Adams Goes To El Paso

By Bob Small

Seeing a line on the scroll at the bottom on Fox 29 10 p.m. news we wondered whether we’ve seen it correctly. This was that Mayor Eric Adams (NYC) went to El Paso to meet with the mayor of El Paso to discuss  the immigrant crisis, keeping in mind that immigrants are persons who are in crisis due to lack of solutions due to various federal governments.

At first the search (using Duck Duck Go) of the meeting above only lead to four items of the first 10 on the first page, but by three days (Jan. 18) there were there were 20 articles using “Mayor Adams visits El Paso”.

In the Politico article, Adams called it a “fact finding mission”, and he was hosted by fellow Democrat Mayor Oscar Leseer of El Paso. He pledged to start a “coalition with mayors facing similar situations”. 

Next week at  the annual US Conference of Mayors. (Hear that Mayor Kenney?) where he will try to coordinate American mayors to say “How do we respond to this directly?”

Mayor Adams Goes To El Paso

He further stated “There should be one (FEMA) to coordinate everything that is happening dealing with migrants and asylum seekers in our country”. He went on to say that the city spent $366 million and received just a total of $10 million from a combination of FEMA and Senate Majority Leader Chuck Schumer.

Adams told Fox News that the refugee resettlement, “should be coordinated by our national government, not only done locally by these NGO’s, but it should be done by our national government. That is not happening.”

Others, however, are concerned that Adams is trying to foist his problems on all taxpayers.

Hopefully, we will have a bipartisan effort so that we can have a coherent federal plan to work with the migrants and the cities, rather than dumping “the migrant crisis” on the cities by federal inaction.

US Assisting Child Traffickers Whistleblower Says

US Assisting Child Traffickers Whistleblower Says — Project Veritas has released an interview with a government whistleblower who claims that Biden Administration is knowingly sending children to be used as sex or labor slaves.

Tara Lee Rodas of The Council of the Inspectors General on Integrity and Efficiency says the unaccompanied minors taken at the Mexican border are fed and clothed by our authorities then flown directly to a trafficker at US taxpayer expense.

The fig leaf is that the trafficker is someone who who will allegedly care for the child, often pretending to be a family member. The child has a note with the name of the person on them for our border authorities to find.

She said 44 children have been sent to just one address alone in Texas. Project Veritas went to several of these addresses and found young children living with multiple unrelated men.

Lara Logan described the same thing in an interview with Diamond and Silk.

Yes, the government knows this is going on. Yes, the government doesn’t care.

Can you say sick and evil?

Can you ask why we are not stopping it?

Will you feel shame if you voted for this bunch?

A child being sex trafficked has a life expectancy of two years.

Here’s the Project Veritas story.

US Assisting Child Traffickers Whistleblower Says

US Assisting Child Traffickers Whistleblower Says

Tech Layoffs Help American IT Workers?

Tech Layoffs Help American IT Workers?

By Joe Guzzardi

Elon Musk, Twitter’s new chief executive officer, and the firings he immediately called for that included H-1B visa holders, as well as the tech industry’s mass, across-the-board layoffs, raise a three-decade-old question: should the H-1B visa be eliminated, and should U.S. tech workers be put first in line for the white-collar, well-paid jobs?

Musk, who completed his $44 billion Twitter takeover last month, declared that he would end lifetime bans from his platform and tweeted that diverse viewpoints would be welcome. He has a golden opportunity not only to end censorship and restore free speech as he’s promised, but to also hire U.S. tech workers when workforce needs again grow.

Going forward, Musk would have a chance to replace the Twitter employees that he’s fired with U.S. tech workers. The firings – about half the Twitter staff, or around 3,700 employees – are allegedly a cost-cutting measure. He summarily dismissed big earners like CEO Parag Agrawal, $30 million annually; Chief Financial Officer Ned Segal, $18.9 million; Chief Legal Officer Vijaya Gadde, $17 million; and General Counsel Sean Edgett, whose salary is unknown, but likely in the same range as his peers. A class action lawsuit was filed against Twitter in San Francisco federal court claiming that the employees were not given the mandatory 60-day notice prior to the layoffs.

Many of the fired Twitter workers may be in the double-whammy vortex. As H-1B employees, unless they find another job within 60 days or successfully change their immigration status, they must leave the U.S. or risk deportation. H-1B holders who are legally required to leave must depart and not overstay their visas which the federal government clearly identifies as temporary. The U.S. Immigration and Immigration Services estimates that about 8 percent of Twitter’s 7,500 employees, between 625 and 670, have H-1B visas.

Tech and social media are either laying off workers by the thousands or imposing hiring freezes. With Intel’s 20 percent slash, Snapchat’s 20 percent cut and hiring freezes at Amazon and Apple, H-1B holders are on edge. Meta, formerly known as Facebook, cut 11,000 jobs, 13 percent of its staff, after Mark Zuckerberg admitted that his so-called metaverse project was a $15 billion bomb. Meta/Facebook is in a tough spot vis-à-vis its H-1B layoffs. Per the Department of Labor classification, this means 15 percent or more of Meta’s full-time employees are H-1B nonimmigrant workers.

For more than 30 years, Silicon Valley and other employers have falsely claimed that without nonimmigrant H-1B visa employees, their businesses would suffer. Yet now, with widespread tech layoffs that include H-1B holders, admitting 85,000 international workers in 2023, the visa’s annual cap, would further hurt U.S. tech workers who are either displaced and forced to train their replacements or denied interviews. Because H-1B employees are cheaper to hire than U.S. tech graduates, the corporate elite prefer them over more skilled, more well-educated Americans.

The Wall Street Journal hosted a panel discussion that featured two advocates who favor expanding the H-1B program and one critic who urges major reforms. The advocates, David Bier, the Cato Institute’s immigration studies associate director, and Theresa Cardinal Brown, the Bipartisan Policy Center’s managing director of immigration and cross-border policy, argued that the H-1B visa cap should be increased and that their labor market presence makes America a more prosperous place.

The critic, Dr. Ron Hira, Howard University, political science associate professor and Economic Policy Institute research associate, countered that the rigged H-1B system is a transfer-of-wealth scam that makes the employers wealthy winners, and the workers, low-wage losers. Dr. Hira added that employers aren’t required to prove that a U.S. worker shortage exists before hiring an H-1B, that H-1B workers’ wages are set too low, and that the compliance system doesn’t hold employers accountable. “Guest-worker programs are supposed to fill domestic labor shortages. The H-1B program does not fill shortages,” Dr. Hira said.

Tech Layoffs Help American IT Workers?

The Journal debate represents the challenge that H-1B critics face. No matter how many H-1B visa holders lose their jobs, or how economically depressed the tech sector is, the demand for more visas will remain. Pro-immigration media supporters like the Journal, immigration advocacy groups, lawyers, corporate America and the powerful Chamber of Commerce will incessantly lobby Congress for more, more, more H-1B visas.

Ray Marshall, President Jimmy Carter’s Labor Secretary and University of Texas Professor Emeritus, gave a no-frills summary of the H-1B that its advocates should heed: “One of the best con jobs ever done on the American public and political systems…H-1B pays below market rate. If you’ve got H-1B workers, you don’t have to do training or pay good wages.” Musk has an opportunity to set an example for Meta and others to follow: hire U.S. tech workers.

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Joe Guzzardi is a nationally syndicated newspaper columnist who writes about immigration and related social issues. Joe joined Progressives for Immigration Reform in 2018 as an analyst after a ten-year career directing media relations for Californians for Population Stabilization, where he also was a Senior Writing Fellow. A native Californian, Joe now lives in Pennsylvania. Contact him at jguzzardi@pfirdc.org.

Tech Layoffs Help American IT Workers?

Everything Isn’t Enough For Immigration Expansionists

Everything Isn’t Enough For Immigration Expansionists

By Joe Guzzardi

Imagine if White House officials, the Chamber of Commerce, the establishment media, corporate America and ethnic identity advocacy groups agreed to an immigration roundtable. Then, further imagine that the moderator asked three questions.

The first question: “Given that fiscal year 2022 ended with a record 2.4 million migrant encounters exclusive of 599,000 known ‘gotaways,’ but including 238,000 in September alone, how many more migrants should be admitted before enforcement begins?”

Second: “Assuming Congress passes amnesty for every unlawfully present alien, would you agree to stop or at least pause in your support for unlimited immigration?” Finally: “Research indicates that loose borders harm mostly black Americans in terms of depressed wages and lost job opportunities. Immigration also provides higher incomes and profits for businesses while redistributing wealth from the native poor to the native rich. Do those findings cause you to question your immigration advocacy?”

A decade ago, advocacy groups agreed to participate in such a discussion; the hypothetical others weren’t present. No matter how the moderator pressed for answers to questions about how many immigrants were too many, no specific response was forthcoming.

The moderator prefaced his questions by acknowledging that most legal and illegal immigrants are hard-working individuals who want better lives for their families and that, with the exception of having broken civil law by being in the U.S. without permission, most aliens are law abiding.

For their part, the pro-immigration debaters insisted that family reunification remain unchanged and that employment-based immigration continue indefinitely. And while vaguely concurring that some numerical limits should be set, none of the participants was willing to set a fixed total. Either speaking on behalf of their group or expressing a personal opinion, the participants refused to discuss, even hypothetically, what the maximum number of immigrants should be or what might represent permissible enforcement regulations. Advocates repeatedly stressed what they perceived as immigration law’s “inhumanity,” but at the same time wouldn’t specifically define why open borders should be perceived as humane. In summary, the open borders coalition demanded unlimited immigration, but rejected border or interior enforcement as quid pro quos.

Everything Isn't Enough For Immigration Expansionists

Ten years later, the Biden administration has rewarded immigration advocates with a clearcut victory. Their immigration wish list, identified a decade ago, has come true beyond their wildest imaginations. While Congress hasn’t passed an amnesty per se, interior enforcement is gutted, making removal unlikely for most illegal immigrants. Moreover, many of the millions of migrants have been granted parole, a misused and abused immigration status that includes work authorization. Not precisely an employment-based visa, parole nevertheless effectively provides the same affirmative immigration benefit – legal access to U.S. jobs.

Going beyond complying with advocates’ wish list, U.S. Citizenship and Immigration Services has diluted the citizenship test. Long used as the basic guideline for identifying which among the recently arrived lawful permanent residents qualify for coveted naturalization, the standards have been dramatically loosened. USCIS director Ur M. Jaddou said that, under certain circumstances, the exam can be bypassed. This represents how the agency “is removing barriers to naturalization…” Jaddou’s reasoning: the public is “better served” by “eliminating questions and language barriers that no longer have practical utility and were redundant.”

At first glance, the Biden administration through its various immigration violations, which some dismiss as merely loosening inconvenient laws, is an overt attempt to swell the Democratic voter base, especially among Hispanics. But with porous borders having pushed Hispanic voters away, the inescapable conclusion is that the administration’s primary goal is to cancel, by any and all possible means, sovereign America.

Imagine if White House officials, the Chamber of Commerce, the establishment media, corporate America and ethnic identity advocacy groups agreed to an immigration roundtable. Then, further imagine that the moderator asked three questions.

The first question: “Given that fiscal year 2022 ended with a record 2.4 million migrant encounters exclusive of 599,000 known ‘gotaways,’ but including 238,000 in September alone, how many more migrants should be admitted before enforcement begins?”

Second: “Assuming Congress passes amnesty for every unlawfully present alien, would you agree to stop or at least pause in your support for unlimited immigration?” Finally: “Research indicates that loose borders harm mostly black Americans in terms of depressed wages and lost job opportunities. Immigration also provides higher incomes and profits for businesses while redistributing wealth from the native poor to the native rich. Do those findings cause you to question your immigration advocacy?”

A decade ago, advocacy groups agreed to participate in such a discussion; the hypothetical others weren’t present. No matter how the moderator pressed for answers to questions about how many immigrants were too many, no specific response was forthcoming.

The moderator prefaced his questions by acknowledging that most legal and illegal immigrants are hard-working individuals who want better lives for their families and that, with the exception of having broken civil law by being in the U.S. without permission, most aliens are law abiding.

For their part, the pro-immigration debaters insisted that family reunification remain unchanged and that employment-based immigration continue indefinitely. And while vaguely concurring that some numerical limits should be set, none of the participants was willing to set a fixed total. Either speaking on behalf of their group or expressing a personal opinion, the participants refused to discuss, even hypothetically, what the maximum number of immigrants should be or what might represent permissible enforcement regulations. Advocates repeatedly stressed what they perceived as immigration law’s “inhumanity,” but at the same time wouldn’t specifically define why open borders should be perceived as humane. In summary, the open borders coalition demanded unlimited immigration, but rejected border or interior enforcement as quid pro quos.

Ten years later, the Biden administration has rewarded immigration advocates with a clearcut victory. Their immigration wish list, identified a decade ago, has come true beyond their wildest imaginations. While Congress hasn’t passed an amnesty per se, interior enforcement is gutted, making removal unlikely for most illegal immigrants. Moreover, many of the millions of migrants have been granted parole, a misused and abused immigration status that includes work authorization. Not precisely an employment-based visa, parole nevertheless effectively provides the same affirmative immigration benefit – legal access to U.S. jobs.

Going beyond complying with advocates’ wish list, U.S. Citizenship and Immigration Services has diluted the citizenship test. Long used as the basic guideline for identifying which among the recently arrived lawful permanent residents qualify for coveted naturalization, the standards have been dramatically loosened. USCIS director Ur M. Jaddou said that, under certain circumstances, the exam can be bypassed. This represents how the agency “is removing barriers to naturalization…” Jaddou’s reasoning: the public is “better served” by “eliminating questions and language barriers that no longer have practical utility and were redundant.”

At first glance, the Biden administration through its various immigration violations, which some dismiss as merely loosening inconvenient laws, is an overt attempt to swell the Democratic voter base, especially among Hispanics. But with porous borders having pushed Hispanic voters away, the inescapable conclusion is that the administration’s primary goal is to cancel, by any and all possible means, sovereign America.

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Joe Guzzardi is a nationally syndicated newspaper columnist who writes about immigration and related social issues. Joe joined Progressives for Immigration Reform in 2018 as an analyst after a ten-year career directing media relations for Californians for Population Stabilization, where he also was a Senior Writing Fellow. A native Californian, Joe now lives in Pennsylvania. Contact him at jguzzardi@pfirdc.org.

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