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America Last For Biden

By Joe Guzzardi

For the roughly 70 million disappointed America First voters, dark clouds have already formed over Capitol Hill. Former Vice President Joe Biden’s Attorney General and Department of Homeland Security Secretary candidates, rumored to be on his short list for those critically important posts, have political philosophies far afield from the mainstream.

California Attorney General Xavier Becerra is a leading contender to become the U.S. Attorney General. Before replacing AG Kamala Harris in Sacramento, Becerra was a 17-term U.S. Representative who represented Los Angeles, and at one time chaired the Congressional Hispanic Caucus. During his tenure as California’s A.G., Becerra has sued the Trump administration over 100 times. Becerra’s primary anti-President Trump litigation targets have been immigration related, and are issues that are well within the administration’s legal authority – primarily federal law enforcement, sanctuary cities, amnesty, refugee resettlement, the southwest border wall and deferred action for childhood arrivals.

Becerra advocates for decriminalizing illegal immigration, and once said that unlawfully present foreign nationals don’t act “violently or in a way that’s harmful to people. And I would argue they are not harming people indirectly either.” Such a statement is an emotional defense of illegal immigration and ignores the well-documented crimes, many of them violent, that aliens have committed in California, and the U.S. worker job displacement that their presence represents. Illegal immigrant workers are covered at taxpayer expense by all the protectionsstate and federal law provide statewide for all employees. California employers have hired an estimated 1.6 million aliens, the majority of which work in nonagricultural industries. In addition to his previous 100-plus lawsuits against the Trump administration, Becerra has promised to sue over any lame duck executive orders the White House may issue.

The irony is that Becerra and Gov. Gavin Newsom have repeatedly violated 8 U. S. C. §1324, a felony to “encourage or induce an alien to come to, enter, or reside” unlawfully in the U.S. For decades, the toothless federal government has allowed California and its local authorities to violate immigration law, and go unpunished. Should Becerra ascend to the U.S. Attorney General’s office, expect even more tolerance of illegal immigration.

In another sobering announcement, Biden’s transition team appointed Ur Mendoza Jaddou and Cecilia Muñoz to its staff. Jaddou was once U.S. Citizenship and Immigration Services counsel under then-President Barack Obama, and is currently the DHS Watch Director at America’s Voice. America’s Voice is one of Washington, D.C.’s most influential pro-immigration lobbies, and advocates for giving the nation’s illegal immigrant population, estimated from 11 million to 30 million people, a full path to citizenship. The establishment media cites the 11 million, but a more knowledgeable source, Mexico’s former ambassador to the U.S., puts the total at 30 million.

Before serving in the Obama White House, Muñoz spent two decades as the National Council of La Raza’s Senior Vice President for the Office of Research, Advocacy, and Legislation. La Raza, now called Unidos US, has promoted loose borders and amnesty legislation since 1968.

Becerra, Jaddou and Muñoz are surely jockeying for a high-level Cabinet appointment. But even if Biden selects others, those three will have significant influence over the final choices. Immigration expertise isn’t required to predict the Biden team’s disastrous consequences on border security and enforcement. Among the first of President Trump’s America improvements to go may be his Migration Protection Protocols (MPP) wherein Mexico agreed to hold asylum seekers from countries other than Mexico until U.S. federal immigration courts adjudicated their claims.

When nationals from El Salvador, Guatemala, Honduras and figured out that often-fraudulent asylum claims wouldn’t automatically mean release into the U.S. interior, they returned home. Analysts foresee a huge border surge that the coronavirus, deteriorating Central American economic conditions and the presumed lax Biden border policies have precipitated. Until President Trump, previous administrations had been unable to effectively manage border surges.

Biden’s immigration agenda is good for cheap labor-addicted employers, Wall Street and Silicon Valley billionaires who want no cap on H-1Bs, as well as other employment-based visas. The population increases that open borders create lead to more job competition, more school overcrowding, more urban sprawl and, for all but the 1% elite, a diminished quality of life. In Biden’s White House, corporate money will come first; Americans will finish last.

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.

America Last For Biden

Scranton Joe and Immigration

 By Joe Guzzardi 

On the rare occasions that Joe Biden emerged from his basement into the daylight in the run-up to the election, he touted his Scranton roots. Biden’s tone was along the lines of, “Hey, it’s me, plain old Blue-Collar Joe, a guy from working-class Scranton who will make American workers’ concerns my administration’s priority.” Biden chided President Trump for playing golf with his wealthy pals, disingenuously inferring that that the president’s friendships with the elite meant that he’s incapable of defending everyday Americans.

But even a cursory analysis of Biden’s immigration agenda shows that his goals represent the most radically anti-U.S. worker agenda in presidential history. Especially harmed will be residents in cities like Scranton where people are struggling to stay afloat. The last thing needed by small-town citizens looking for employment or hoping to hold onto their jobs is competition from millions of newly work-authorized immigrants.

Biden has repeatedly vowed – “we owe them [the illegal immigrants]” – to grant amnesty to the existing illegal immigrant population, at least 11 million people, but possibly as many as 20 million. Also included in Biden’s wish list is increasing refugee resettlement from President Trump’s 15,000 to 125,000 annually, more generous asylum guidelines, quasi-open borders, freezing deportations during his first 100 days, and a restructured – read watered down – Immigration and Customs Enforcement agency.

In addition, Biden’s priorities include reviewing with an intention to expand foreign nationals who qualify for Temporary Protected Status, reinstating deferred action for childhood arrivals – DACA – and reversing President Trump’s travel ban on 13 nations that affected mostly Muslim countries. Under Biden, legal immigration would soar. Biden nonchalantly claimed that the U.S. could “in a heartbeat” absorb another 2 million legal immigrants per year which would put the annual permanent lawful residents intake to more than 3 million.

Biden’s appointment of Ron Klain as his chief of staff ensures more employment-based visas. Klain has lobbied on behalf of Silicon Valley for an endless inflow of H-1B visas that displace U.S. tech workers or deny recently graduated science, technology, engineering and math university students opportunities to vie for IT jobs. About 650,000 H-1B visa workers are in the domestic labor market at any one moment, and more than 85,000 U.S. tech jobs are at risk annually because of the H-1B visa.

While calculating the precise number of new lifetime valid work permits that would be issued under a four-year Biden administration, the total could easily reach or surpass 35 million, an outcome that would be bad news for Scranton residents and others who live in similar lower middle-class cities.

The most recent Census Bureau data shows that 85 percent of Scranton residents don’t have college diplomas, and only 56 percent of the working age population are employed. In 2018, the median Scranton household income was $39,000, the per capita income $22,000 and the percent of individuals living in poverty, 24 percent.

Nevertheless, Scranton voted overwhelmingly for Biden because, wroteThe Philadelphia Inquirer, he connected with Northeastern Pennsylvania’s working-class people in places like Northeastern Pennsylvania by touting his Scranton upbringing. The Biden family left Scranton nearly 70 years ago when manufacturing, mining and railroading were thriving. In his lifetime, Biden has never held a job outside of politics, and has had three failed presidential campaigns.

Like Biden, Scranton’s U.S. Representative, Matt Cartwright (D), is no friend to local workers. Although his website states that his “number one priority is to bring good-paying, family-sustaining jobs to Northeastern Pennsylvania,” Cartwright has since his 2012 election consistently voted in favor of amnesty enticements, more employment visas and less border enforcement.

The simple and indisputable conclusion is that more immigration, which Biden, Cartwright and others on both sides of the congressional aisle enthusiastically endorse, harms working Americans. Especially hurt are those with less than a college education and minorities, a fact that eluded Scranton voters and millions of others who cast 2020 ballots.

The takeaway going forward is that pro-America candidates must do more effective messaging – address the readily available Census and Department of Homeland Security information to connect higher immigration levels to more work-authorization documents. Pro-American isn’t anti-immigrant. Being a native son, like Pennsylvania-born Biden is, shouldn’t be the deciding factor that elevates a candidate who puts American interests last into the White House. But wily candidates like Biden capitalize on under-informed voters. As the old truism in political circles goes, “Every nation gets the government it deserves.”


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.

Scranton Joe and Immigration Scranton Joe and Immigration