Category: Immigration

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.

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

9 Million Overstay Visas

By Joe Guzzardi

The Migration Policy Institute, which describes itself as a nonpartisan think tank that seeks “to improve immigration” through its research and analysis, recently published a report stating that in FY 2018 the State Department issued 9 million temporary visas to nonimmigrants. Although the 2018 total represents a 7 percent decline from FY 2017, 9 million is still a staggering number, the rough equivalent of New Jersey’s population.
 
MPI blames the visa issuance’s decline on President Trump’s more restrictive immigration policies and his “harsh rhetoric” that conveys the impression that the U.S. has become a “less welcoming place.” Be that as it may, the huge 9 million number indicates that the U.S. is generous, not restrictive, in its approach to foreign workers and visitors. Moreover, MPI didn’t outline the benefits to American citizens of fewer temporary workers and students on visas.
 
Employment visas – which give foreign nationals the right to legally work in the U.S. – include the H-1B for skilled employees, the H-2A for seasonal agricultural workers, the H-2B and the H-2R  for seasonal nonagricultural workers, the O-1 and O-2 for workers with allegedly extraordinary ability or achievements, the P-1 for athletes and artists, the L-1 for intracompany transferrers, the E visa for investors and, finally, the TN visa for Canadian and Mexican professionals, as well as their spouses and minor children. Critics have long insisted that many of the visas are unnecessary, and hurt Americans.
 
For example, H-2B visas, limited to 66,000 annually, are granted to overseas workers who, among other positions, take landscaping, lifeguard and hospitality jobs – jobs Americans would eagerly do.
 
Temporary worker visa issuance has been on a dramatically upward trend since 2014. The number increased from 732,000 in FY 2014 to 911,000 in 2017 and to 925,000 in 2018. Basically, the presence of employment-based visa holders means that for Americans job competition is more intense, and citizens who hold jobs may find their employment status at risk from foreign, often cheaper workers.
 
For U.S. citizen students, especially those who hope to matriculate at their local state universities, the 27 percent decline from an estimated 1 million student visas in FY 2015 to 781,000 in FY 2018 means less international competition. Since overseas students pay higher tuition, college admissions offices prefer them to U.S. students who pay lower instate fees. The top international student sending nations are China, India, South Korea, Brazil and Germany which represent 39 percent of all student visas issued in FY 2018.
 
But the most troubling aspect of the huge inflow of foreign temporary visitors is that an estimated 40 percent of illegal aliens entered the U.S. legally on visas, but overstayed and thus became illegally present. Temporary eventually becomes permanent. Most overstays find white-collar jobs. In 2017, the Department of Homeland Security reported that during a recent 12-month period, nearly 740,000 foreign nationals didn’t return home in accordance with their visas’ terms. Their illegal presence is one of the major contributors to illegal immigration. Analysts have found that in each of the last seven years, visa overstays have exceeded illegal crossings.
 
The sad truth is that the federal government isn’t looking for overstays, and if it did look would have no idea where to start its search. But if Costco can immediately locate every brick of cheese in its 762 worldwide stores, then the federal government should be able to track down foreign visa overstays. A program exists that would help reach that goal – a biometric entry/exit system – but Congress has been indifferent to implementing it.
 
Fewer visas is good news for prospective U.S. college students and American workers. The fewer visas that are issued also means that the illegal alien population as well as the population in general will not continue to swell with overstayers.
 
Immigration advocates always push for more visas, so fewer is a refreshing change of pace that results in tangible advantages for many American workers and students.
 
 
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

9 Million Overstay Visas

Ag Amnesty Again Passes House

By Joe Guzzardi

Last week, the U.S. House of Representatives passed the Farm Workforce Modernization Act of 2019 (HR 5038), a massive amnesty that the bill’s title tries to disguise. The final vote, mostly along party lines, was 260-165.

By giving the legislation a sympathetic but totally misleading name, its Open Borders signatories hope that the public will get behind it, and encourage the Senate to pass it. The House dares not identify HR 5038 as what it is: an amnesty that includes lifetime valid work permits, Green Cards and a path to citizenship for up to 1.5 million illegal aliens who have been employed – or claim they’ve been employed – in ag at least part-time during the last two years. Amnesty would also be granted to their family members.

Illegal alien ag workers who spent as little as weekends-only on the job would qualify. But a big caveat, the Green Cards won’t come until the workers have been subjected to a minimum of four years of slave-like labor. Growers know that once their laborers have Green Cards in hand, the workers will leave their indentured servitude positions to head off for better jobs in construction, manufacturing or retail. History confirms this pattern. The 1986 Immigration Reform and Control Act granted amnesty to about 1.1 million so-called Special Agricultural Workers, or SAWS, plus their spouses and minor children. But once the government issued the Green Cards, the ag workers quickly found more lucrative employment.

HR 5038 extends its damage beyond the ag industry. The bill’s sponsors kept the numerically unlimited H-2A category for seasonal work. But, HR 5038 expanded the H-2A guest worker program to include dairy, meat and fish processing, and canning employment, and would also set aside 20,000 H-2A visas each year that could be used for year-round agricultural jobs traditionally held by American workers.

The bill would also create 40,000 additional Green Cards each year for longtime H-2A workers and other low-skilled foreign workers. If HR 5038 becomes law, it would virtually ensure that Americans employed or seeking employment in several industries would be shut out or possibly lose the jobs they already hold. Passed without debate, the legislators didn’t acknowledge the inconvenient truth that legal immigrants or U.S. citizens hold about 50 percent of agriculture or agriculturally related positions.

HR 5038 offers not a modicum of modernization. The House bill, bowing to the powerful ag lobby made up of mostly former federal employees, spends more than $100 million annually to guarantee that growers will have continued access to unproductive, low-wage immigrant labor. True modernization means mechanization. Unlike humans, robots can operate 24/7 and have been successfully put to use worldwide. Machines manufactured in Australia, Holland and Japan harvest radishes, brussels sprouts, kale and other crops at, compared to manual picking, lightening-like speed.

Once employers become foreign worker-dependent, they stop looking for practical alternatives like mechanization. Employers count on immigrant workers’ continuous presence in their future plans instead of taking full advantage of the no-cap H-2A visa. At the same time, foreign workers come to depend on their meager earnings to support their families, thereby vastly increasing the likelihood that the “guests” will become permanent fixtures. As the old and often-repeated immigration bromide goes, nothing is more permanent than a guest worker.

Congress has introduced an ag amnesty bill every year for more than a decade. Anti-American worker Rep. Zoe Lofgren (D-Calif.), who during her 25-year congressional career has an unbroken record of endorsing more worker visas, is the original sponsor of HR 5038. But if Congress really wanted to help farm workers instead of their hooked-on-cheap-labor employers, it would slow, instead of promote, more guest programs that will eventually include amnesty.

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.

Ag Amnesty Again Passes House

Gavin Newsom Ignores Crisis Afflicting California

By Joe Guzzardi

I recently returned to my Pittsburgh home from a trip to Sacramento. I went reluctantly. When I fled my native California in 2008, I vowed never to return. A better way to phrase my departure would be to say that I felt pushed out. Overdevelopment sprawl and an increasingly reckless government made California unrecognizable to me. But a close friend’s retirement party drew me back.
 
My instincts to stay away were correct. Sacramento, within living memory, a quiet Central California city, is well on its way to matching Los Angeles and San Jose for unsustainable, quality of life-killing growth. As for societal trends, my hotel was located directly across the street from the State Capitol building, a favorite homeless encampment. Last month, homeless transients attacked state groundskeepers. The last thing a Sacramento visitor would want to do is take an after-dinner stroll around the block.
 
Calif. Gov. Gavin Newsom, like many other state officials trying to sweet talk their way out of citizens’ backlash against indifference to the public health and safety concerns that the homeless create, has promised more housing programs. During his first ten months in office, Newsom signed $1.75 billion in new housing initiatives. Newsom also helped pass laws that would reduce evictions and exorbitant rent hikes.
 
Realists, however, know that more housing cannot keep up with Sacramento’s exploding population growth. Sacramento is growing at 1.5 percent, making it the fastest expanding large California city. Sacramento’s surrounding counties have also undergone major population increases. The City of Trees, as Sacramento is fondly but inaccurately remembered, is also the nation’s most competitive rental market and ranks among the highest when measured by monthly fee increases.
 
Given California’s population doubling between Ronald Reagan’s gubernatorial administration, 1967 to 1974, from about 20 million to today’s 40 million and projected to exceed 50 million within the next three decades, prudent leadership would try to slow immigration and thereby take the pressure off of the state’s already seemingly insurmountable problems. Yet Newsom walks on the opposite path, and at every turn foolishly encourages more immigration. Calling them “a stain on our nation’s history,” Newsom has relentlessly attacked President Trump’s reasonable attempts to bring about practical immigration reform, and instead has expanded illegal immigrants’ rights and protections. Under Newsom’s new guidelines, illegal immigrants will be allowed to serve on government boards and commissions, and Immigration and Customs Enforcement will be banned from making immigration violation arrests in statewide courthouses.
 
As part of Newsom’s immigration expansiveness, California became the first U.S. state to offer taxpayer-funded Medicaid health care benefits to low-income aliens younger than 25. The new policy is the irrational and costly entitlement follow up to Gov. Jerry Brown’s 2016 decision to allow children under age 16 access to health care regardless of their immigration status. A gloating Newsom commented that when it comes to health policy, “… (W)e [California] are the most un-Trump state in America.” Prospective migrants’ interpretation: Come one, come all! California will take good care of you.
 
Newsom’s pre-public servant career included investments in Napa Valley wineries – with assistance from the billionaire Getty family – and a restaurant and clothing chain, through which he amassed a multimillion-dollar fortune that enabled him to buy a Russian Hill mansion. As one of California’s most elite, immigration increases don’t affect Newsom. But the governor is elected to represent all his constituents, not just a select demographic that he’s decided to favor.
 
Newsom should ask exactly how many more immigrants California can support. If he answers honestly, he should act accordingly and act sensibly, something he’s shown no interest in doing.
 
 
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.

Gavin Newsom Ignores Crisis Afflicting California

53 Million Hold Low-Wage Jobs

By Joe Guzzardi

The Brookings Institution’s Metropolitan Policy Program just released a study that casts serious doubt on President Trump’s insistence that the economy is improving, and that the employment market is strong.
 
Brookings’ findings confirm that working doesn’t necessarily translate into earning a decent wage. Despite record low 3.6 percent unemployment, the Brookings’ report, “Meet the Low-Wage Workforce,” shows that 53 million Americans – 44 percent of all workers age 18 to 64 – hold low-wage jobs, earn median hourly wages of $10.22 and have a $17,950 median annual income.
 
Brookings’ research revealed that low-wage workers are racially diverse: Fifty-two percent are white; 25 percent, Latino or Hispanic; 15 percent, African-American, and 5 percent, Asian American. Both Latino and black workers are overrepresented relative to their share of the total workforce, as are women who account for 54 percent of low-wage workers, higher than their 48 percent total workforce share.
 
Economic hardship is widespread among many Americans. Brookings found that 30 percent of low-wage workers live in families earning below 150 percent of the poverty line; 16 million low-wage workers get by on very low incomes – about $30,000 for a family of three and $36,000 for a family of four. Of low-wage workers, 26 percent, or 14 million people, are the only earners in their families, with $20,400 median family earnings and another 25 percent, or 13 million people, live in families in which all workers earn low wages.
 
“Meet the Low-Wage Workforce” exposes a national disgrace, and makes the U.S. immigration policy that brings in more than 1 million immigrants each year, and issues them lifetime valid work authorization documents, indefensible. No intelligent argument can be made that, in an era when so many Americans are underemployed, immigration should continue at the pace that has been maintained for decades. More immigration means an expanded workforce when what’s needed is a much tighter labor market. In order to keep pace with immigration-fueled population growth, the economy must add 150,000 jobs per month. But the October Bureau of Labor Statistics establishment survey showed that total nonfarm payroll employment increased by only 128,000 jobs.
 
Travel into the weeds to learn how hurtful the immigration status quo is to Americans. For every five new American workers who turns 18 and enter the job market, one work-authorized immigrant receives a Green Card. The guest or temporary worker inflow is also a major challenge that job-seeking Americans must overcome. Although the federal government doesn’t maintain exact statistics on annual guest worker totals, data suggests that between 750,000 and 1 million low-skilled and high-skilled foreign nationals arrive each year on employment-based visas. In 2016, the Congressional Research Service reported that “employment-based admission has more than doubled from just over 400,000 in FY1994 to over 1 million in FY2014,” but workers aren’t subject to any skill-based labor market tests which could affirm their potential contribution to the U.S. economy.
 
Finally, according to the Pew Research Center, in 2017 the civilian workforce included about 7.6 million illegal aliens, and another 1 milliondeferred action for childhood arrivals (DACA) and temporary protected status recipients were employed.
 
Despite evidence to the contrary, Congress, elites, the media, immigration advocates and, perhaps most threatening of all, the current Democratic presidential candidates – those who if elected might influence the federal government on the future of immigration – insist that the U.S. needs expanded immigration which means that, by extension, there will be continuously loose labor markets.
 
The important immigration questions have yet to be asked in Democratic debates. With the open borders which the candidates endorse, will there be jobs for new migrants without further displacement of American workers? Proposals to limit immigration to sustainable levels are invariably met with racism or xenophobia accusations. But citizens’ employment needs must come before foreign nationals’ interests, a priority that’s long overdue.
 
 
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

53 Million Hold Low-Wage Jobs