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DNC Will Find Overrun Chicago Inhospitable

By Joe Guzzardi

When Chicago hosts the Democratic National Convention in August, the Windy City will be less hospitable than the DNC and President Joe Biden hope for. In his statement, Biden said that Chicago is “a great choice” to host the convention where Democrats can “showcase our historic progress including building an economy from the middle out and bottom up, not from the top down.”

Before getting too giddy about Chicago as an ideal city to tout his party’s “historic progress” on “building an economy,” Biden would gain insight from listening to what black Democrats think about the illegal alien invasion that has devastated working-class citizens’ lives.

Here’s a sampling of excerpted comments from residents directed to Mayor Brandon Johnson who presided over the March 20 City Council meeting.

The first commentor, a legal immigrant woman who lives in the Gage Park area, a working-class, Hispanic neighborhood now converted into illegal alien camps, said that her family is a “prisoner” in their own home. Packages have been stolen from her porch. Illegal aliens have urinated in her front yard and sell food without licenses. Police come but do nothing. “They [illegal aliens] need to leave now, we demand it. Taxpayers have been put in harm’s way; we want our park back.” The media “censors our voices.”

Second, a black man, said that the illegal aliens “keep on coming,” and Chicago houses them “in nice hotels,” while veterans are sleeping on the streets as Chicago spends “millions and billions on migrants.”  [Exclusive of costs incurred by other agencies that include Chicago Public Schools, the Department of Streets and Sanitation and Cook Country Health, in the past year-and-a-half, Chicago has spent nearly $300 million.] “Fake news” covers up the truth.

Third, a black woman, criticized Chicago’s sanctuary city policy that allows Johnson “to stick people in our neighborhoods.” She exposed WOTC, Illinois’ Work Opportunity Tax Credit, intended as an incentive for employers to hire veterans and welfare recipients but is being used instead to hire fraudulent asylum seekers. We “promise to vote you out.”

Fourth, a black man, “Blacks get nothing…who are these people? Are you a criminal? A pedophile? Why are you pushing out black people? Sell out…evil… corrupt…most corrupt city in America…not wading across the Rio Grande to help blacks…[they’re] selfish.”

Fifth, an immigrant woman and Gage Park resident, “We are the taxpayers. I dare you to walk by at night…I promise you will not like it, we want our safety back…our neighborhood is trash. My children cannot go into the yard, overwhelmed by marijuana smoke. The system is failing us. We are the ones who put you there [in office] and we are the ones who can take you back.”

Sixth, a black woman, “You [Johnson] have appointed a Deputy Mayor for Immigrant Affairs [Beatriz Ponce de León, Deputy Mayor of Immigrant, Migrant and Refugee Rights]. Where, the woman asked, is the Deputy Mayor for black affairs? Chicago has added 5,000 students to its public-school enrollments but, she emphasized, hasn’t built a single new school. In a remark directed to blacks, “we’re being led to slaughter.”

Each speaker was allotted three minutes; at the end of their time, Johnson had the same insincere response: “Thank you very much for your comments.” Many more blistering anti-Johnson, anti-Biden online comments, 6,700 as of March 25, were posted near-unanimously in support of the Chicago residents. Most noted, correctly, that Johnson had no interest in the citizens’ fate.

Sure enough, just days after the City Council meeting, Johnson took a bow for Chicago’s accommodating approach to the illegal aliens’ influx that has devastated Gage Park and other overwhelmed locales. In his press conference, Johnson boasted about Chicago’s “open and quite accommodating” approach to resettling illegal immigrants when compared to other blue cities like New York, Denver, and Washington D.C.

In the four-plus months that remain until the Democrat’s convention, Chicago’s betrayed citizens’ temperatures will grow higher. The sweltering summer months will bring more brazen crime, more public weed smoking, and less likelihood that the Chicago people will support the craven politicians that have so assiduously worked to displace them.

Joe Guzzardi is an Institute for Sound Public Policy analyst who has written about immigration for more than 30 years. Contact him at jguzzardi@ifspp.org.

Opening Day 1969 When ‘The Kid’ Returned

By Joe Guzzardi

During the 1969 spring, spirits were high in the nation’s capital. The cherry trees along the Potomac River were in bloom. Cautious optimism prevailed that newly inaugurated President Richard Nixon would fulfill his campaign promise to end the Southeast Asian war. But more than anything for DC’s sports’ fans, legendary Green Bay Packers coach Vince Lombardi had agreed to assume the Washington Redskins general manager and head coach positions. And Hall of Fame great Ted Williams, “The Kid,” accepted owner Bob Short’s offer to manage the moribund Washington Senators. Baseball fans were shocked that Williams, nine years after he homered on his last at bat, agreed. Earlier, Williams had rejected Red Sox owner Tom Yawkey’s offer to manage Boston, spurned the Detroit Tigers’ offer, and once said that he considered managers the lowest form of human life.

Short, a trucking and hotel mogul, had previously owned basketball’s Minneapolis Lakers and moved the team to Los Angeles before selling the Lakers for $5.2 million, a $3 million profit. Among Short’s goals were to entice more Senators fans, turn a profit. To achieve those objectives, he wanted a big name to take the Senators’ helm.

The new owner’s first moves were to fire general manager George Selkirk, the New York Yankee outfielder who took Babe Ruth’s place in right field, and to boot pilot Jim Lemon, a one-time Senators’ slugger. Under consideration to replace Lemon were Jackie Robinson, Elston Howard, Maury Wills, Monte Irvin, and Williams who rejected Short’s first offer. Short had reveled in Teddy Ball Game’s 1938 Minneapolis Millers, AAA American Association career. Williams won the Triple Crown with a.366 batting average, 43 home runs, 142 runs batted in, thirty doubles, nine triples, and 114 walks. But then the persistent new owner solicited American League president Joe Cronin to persuade Williams to reconsider. Cronin and Williams spent several seasons together as Red Sox teammates.

Williams was certain that he could help the punchless Senators. When Short offered a five-year, $65,000 annual salary with perks that included a $15,000-a-year hotel suite, an unlimited expense account, a title as vice president and an option to buy 10 percent of the team for $900,000, Williams became the new Senators manager, and set out to prove that he had leadership skills.

The woebegone Senators that Williams inherited were mocked throughout baseball including in their home city. The 1968 Senators finished in 10^th place, dead last, with baseball’s worst record, 65-96. The team also drew the fewest fans, 565,000, a 206,000 decrease from 1967.

The 1968 club had a .623 on-base-plus-slugging percentage, fourteen points below the league average. In 1969, Senators batters had a .708 OPS, eighteen points above the league’s .690. The Senators drew 630 walks in 1969, compared to 454 the previous season. Even with the rule changes that lowered the pitcher’s mound and tightened the strike zone, the Senators showed an astounding improvement of 176 free passes. Williams understood the age-old axiom that a walk is as good as a hit.

Pitchers also improved under rookie manager Williams. The hurlers listened to Williams’ daily spring-training sermons on hitting and how to exploit American League opponents. In 1968, the Senators ERA of 3.64 was sixty-six points above the league average, 2.98. The next season, Washington’s pitchers reduced their ERA to 3.49, 14 points below the rest of the AL, 3.63. Williams’ 1969 Senators won eighty-six games, a 21-game improvement over 1968 and the team’s best record since 1945.

Fans flocked to Robert F. Kennedy Stadium to watch the Senators; the team drew 900,000 paid admissions, and Williams won the Manager-of-Year Award. Unfortunately, the 1969 Senators proved to be a one-year wonder, returning in 1970 to their habitual doormat as “first in war, first in peace, and last in the American League.” A 70-92 record landed the Senators in sixth and last place in the American League East

Despite high-profile trades, which brought Curt Flood and a washed-up Denny McLain to the Senators in 1971, the team declined to 63-96. The Cleveland Indians spared them last place in the American League East.

Short had raised ticket prices, and fans refused to pay more to watch a lousy team play in an unsafe neighborhood. Senators’ frustrated fans—14,500, about twice the daily 1971 attendance– saved their worst behavior for September 30, the final American League game played in Washington. When the fans destroyed the field, umpire James Honochick forfeited a Senators’ 7-5 lead to the visiting Yankees. The fall out: a long-anticipated September 1971 announcement that Short was moving the Senators to the Dallas-Fort Worth Metroplex, to the ingloriously named Turnpike Stadium. The Senators were renamed the Texas Rangers.

Williams befuddled the baseball world when he agreed to accompany the limping Senators to Texas. One disastrous year in Texas was enough for “The Kid.” The Rangers lost one hundred games, had a .217 team batting average, a 15-game losing streak, and finished 20-1/2 games behind the next to last California Angels. Williams retired, and headed home to Islamorada to pursue bonefish, a skill that gained him a place in the International Game Fishing Hall of Fame.

For more than three decades and through multiple league expansions, Washington unsuccessfully sought a major league team. Finally, in 2005, the Montreal Expos moved to D.C. to become the Washington Nationals, the 2019 World Series champions.

Joe Guzzardi is a Society for American Baseball Research and Internet Baseball Writers Association member. Contact him at guzzjoe@yahoo.com The 2024 season’s opening day is today, March 28.

Weaponized Immigration Wrecking Sovereign America

By Joe Guzzardi

Weaponized immigration has come to America and is bringing low-skilled illegal aliens to the labor market. Since July 2018, the economy has created zero jobs for American-born workers.

Kelly Greenhill, a senior research scholar at MIT Center for International Studies and author of “Weapons of Mass Migration: Forced Displacement, Coercion and Foreign Policy,” wrote in her analysis that the U.S. has been a frequent weaponized immigration target dating back as long ago as President Dwight Eisenhower’s administration and through George W. Bush’s eight years in the early 21^st century. Greenhill blamed Western governments—Europe is also a migrant warfare target—that don’t understand how engineering the movement of foreign nationals across international borders exploits political divisions within the targeted countries. Unless policymakers confront the forces that enable weaponized migration “it is unlikely to go away anytime soon,” she concluded.

Since 1951, Greenhill has identified 81 worldwide cases, all of which achieved their weaponized immigration objectives. The targeted countries were disproportionately liberal democracies whose lax attitudes toward the threat determined the degree of success the subversive mission achieved. The Biden administration is a perfect fit for nations that want to implement weaponized migration to undermine the sovereign U.S. Not only has Biden demonstrated enthusiasm for the open border policy that he created and encouraged, but his administration has also promoted, at every turn, globalism at the expense of nationalism.

Nicaragua is a major weaponized immigration enabler. Motivated by his deep hatred of the U.S., President Daniel Ortega loosened visa requirements for Cubans in 2021, and then expanded his list to include Haiti, other Latin American countries and eventually several Asian and African nations that include Indians, Uzbekistanis, and nationals from Mauritania and Senegal. Travelers going through Nicaragua avoided the dangerous trek through the Darien Gap, and Ortega could not only subvert America, but he could also make big money at the same time. Nicaragua hired a private company to organize contracts with charter flight companies across Asia, Europe, and Africa. The flights pay landing fees, and travelers are assessed airport taxes that range from $100 to $200 per person. Transporting migrants from their home countries to Nicaragua is a multimillion-dollar business.

With weaponized migrants arriving at the U.S. border faster than officials could detain them, the Department of Homeland Security decided to process them into the U.S. rather than deport them. The strategy culminated in the May 2023 “The Circumvention of Lawful Pathways Final Rule.” The title summarizes the objective: for illegal immigrants, DHS created, without congressional approval, an entirely new set of administratively sanctioned methods of being processed into the U.S. DHS moved “to expand safe and orderly pathways for migrants to lawfully enter the United States.” Included are “establishing country-specific and other available processes to seek parole for urgent humanitarian reasons or significant public benefit; expanding opportunities to enter for seasonal employment; putting in place a mechanism for migrants to schedule a time and place to arrive in a safe, orderly, and lawful manner at ports of entry via use of the CBP-One mobile app; and expanding refugee processing in the Western Hemisphere.” 

An earlier DHS document, the “Los Angeles Declaration of Migration and Protection,” which 21 countries endorsed in June 2022, resulted in the U.S. committing to resettle 20,000 so-called refugees from Central America during fiscal 2023 and 2024. In fiscal 2022, the federal government issued more than 19,000 H-2B visas to Guatemalans, Hondurans and Salvadorans, a 94% increase from the previous fiscal year. Not surprisingly the 21 endorsing countries were overwhelmingly potential migrant sending countries: Ecuador, El Salvador, Guatemala, Mexico, Haiti, Honduras and other economically failing nations.

As part of making their case to impeach DHS Secretary Alejandro Mayorkas, the House Committee on Homeland Security’s Republicans identified more than a dozen parole programs which, they argue, Mayorkas illegally created to circumvent congressionally established immigration laws. Texas, Florida, and other states have sued over many of DHS’ programs that have allowed illegal border crossers to remain in the U.S., concurring with the committee’s chairman, U.S. Rep. Mark Green, R-Tenn., who led the impeachment charge. Always a long shot in the Senate, the House has not yet sent impeachment articles to the upper chamber. Even though the Senate outcome is predetermined, enforcement-minded, patriotic Americans will be denied the cold comfort of a Mayorkas impeachment trial. Worse, the consequences of his brazen disregard for enforcement and protecting the homeland will continue to play out until January 2025, or until Mayorkas’ DHS releases about two million more illegal aliens into the interior, bringing the total to well over 10 million during his term as secretary.

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

Weaponized Immigration Wrecking Sovereign America