Cagle World

Early Sunday morning, a commercial boat in the San Diego Bay called to report a distressed vessel near Point Loma. The vessel, maneuvering in seven-foot swells, fog and light rain, broke apart after hitting rocks.San Diego Lifeguard Lt. Rick Romero said that people were flailing about, drowning and getting sucked under by the currents.

Four people died, and 28 survived, five of whom were transported to a local hospital, one in critical condition. The smuggling boat was dangerously overcrowded, and had inadequate safety equipment on board.

When the U.S. Border Patrol arrived at the scene, it advised in a statement made later that all but two of the passengers were Mexican foreign nationals with “no legal status to enter the U.S.” The two remaining non-Mexicans were a Guatemalan national and a U.S. citizen identified as the boat’s captain who was turned over to Immigration and Customs Enforcement, Homeland Security Investigations.

Jeff Stephenson, a Border Patrol supervisory agent, said that human and drug traffickers have found the Pacific Ocean a more expeditious smuggling route than land, especially after President Trump began wall construction, tightened enforcement and initiated Migrant Protection Protocols, also known as Remain in Mexico. In fiscal 2020, Border Patrol agents detained about 1,200 people during maritime trafficking efforts – a 92 percent increase over fiscal 2019.

The chances are excellent that if the trafficking vessel hadn’t capsized, the smuggler would have succeeded in his effort to get more than 30 illegal immigrants ashore, and into the general population. If President Biden has shown no interest in strengthening border patrol agencies, then he isn’t concerned about ocean or waterway smuggling either.

Through their refusal to enforce immigration laws, Biden and Vice President Kamala Harris actively protect illegal immigrants, and encourage criminal human trafficking. A U.S. Attorneys’ Annual Statistical Report concluded that illegal immigration leads to myriad other federal felonies, including more trafficking. From the report: “Illegal immigration provides the initial foothold which criminal elements, including organized crime syndicates, use to engage in a myriad of illicit activities ranging from immigration document fraud and migrant smuggling to human trafficking.”

Whenever President Biden lectures the nation about its humane immigration policies, or hectors that enforcing immigration laws “isn’t who we are,” remember Point Loma, the tragic, avoidable loss of life, and the flagrant disregard a U.S. citizen had for following federal laws Congress passed, and a U.S. president signed.

The White House can manage immigration in any of three ways. First, declare the borders open which would immediately put traffickers out of business. Second, shut the borders, clamp down on interior enforcement and pass mandatory E-Verify to remove the jobs magnet. Or Biden can continue along his current path that winks at the border crisis, encourages human trafficking with its inevitable loss of lives, and enables, as the Department of Justice predicted, future immigration-related crimes.

To date, Biden is comfortable with his steadfast refusal to acknowledge the border mess, and content to let his immigration czar Harris shirk her responsibilities as the administration’s designee in charge of border control.

If nothing else, Biden is tone deaf. A new Harvard-CAPS Harris Poll found that 80 percent of respondents consider the Southwest border surge “a crisis that needs to be addressed immediately.” About 170,000 migrants were apprehended at the U.S. southern border in March, a 15-year high. Moreover, 22,000 unaccompanied migrant children are currently residing in the U.S.

Going into the 2022 mid-term elections, the party in power almost always pays a price. Presidents Clinton, Obama and Trump suffered major congressional losses. None had as glaringly visible failures as Biden’s border breakdown. Biden has time to recover, but he’ll need to reverse himself quickly, something he’s shown no sign of doing.

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Joe Guzzardi is a Progressives for Immigration Reform analyst who has written about immigration for more than 30 years. Contact him at [email protected].

The annual refugee resettlement kerfuffle is underway.

As usual, on one side are the immigration expansionists: President Joe Biden, Vice President Kamala Harris, congressional Democrats and predictable GOP defectors, immigration lawyers who see dollar signs in their futures, resettlement agencies who also profit disproportionately, and the tirelessly active pro-immigration lobby.

On the other side are American voters, who want to see an admission cap that’s consistent with the nation’s ability to absorb refugees, the current economy and, in 2021, the possible consequences from a still-threatening COVID-19 that refugees might carry. Americans also want to maintain the country’s well-deserved image as a compassionate, caring nation.

For decades, refugee admissions have been a political hot potato. Until President Trump set the annual level at 15,000, the previous levels ranged widely. Under former presidents George W. Bush and Barack Obama, the U.S. resettled an average of 81,000 refugees annually. Then, President Trump gradually cut back to his final 15,000 cap – from 45,000, to 30,000, and to 18,000 during successive fiscal years.

Although President Trump set his 2020 cap at 15,000, the administration admitted only 12,000 refugees, a cautionary response to the coronavirus. The caps represent an upper limit on how many refugee applications the State Department is willing to review during a fiscal year, and not a mandated goal.

Since Biden entered the White House, the refugee debate has taken on another antagonistic dimension: Biden’s waffling.

Biden, a cosponsor with the late Sen. Ted Kennedy of the Refugee Act of 1979, initially committed to extending former President Trump’s 15,000 cap, a decision he said was “justified by humanitarian concerns and is otherwise in the national interest.” But after getting intense blowback from influential Democrats like Illinois’ Dick Durbin, the Senate’s second-ranking Democrat, immigration lawyers and resettlement profiteers, Biden quickly reversed his course, and signed an Executive Order that committed to a 125,000 refugee ceiling in fiscal year 2022.

Biden relented under heavy pressure from Durbin who had sharply reprimanded Biden, calling a 15,000 ceiling “unacceptable.” Biden also came under attack from immigration lawyers who scorned his “cowardly” failure to fulfill his campaign promise to lift President Trump’s annual cap from 15,000 to 125,000. One immigration lawyer questioned why Biden is “perpetuating Trump’s racist, anti-immigrant legacy.”

Most craven among Biden critics were nine taxpayer-funded refugee resettlement agencies: Church World Service, Ethiopian Community Development Council, Episcopal Migration Ministries, Hebrew Immigrant Aid Society, International Rescue Committee, U.S. Committee for Refugees and Immigrants, Lutheran Immigration and Refugee Services, U.S. Conference of Catholic Bishops and World Relief Corporation. The International Rescue Committee whole-heartedly endorsed Biden’s Executive order. The agencies have a keen interest in maximizing resettlement. In 2012, a critical analysis from the General Accounting Office found that agencies’ annual federally funded budgets are determined by the number of refugees they resettle.

The Federation for American Immigration Reform (FAIR) published a report that quantified for taxpayers precisely how much refugee resettlement costs. FAIR’s study found that the cost of resettling refugees is about $1.8 billion per year, with about $867 million representing welfare payments. Other resettling costs include processing, education and housing assistance. That works out, FAIR research found, to a per refugee cost to taxpayers of nearly $75,600 during the refugee’s first five resettled years.

Biden’s backers insist that increasing refugee resettlement will preserve the U.S. position as the world’s most welcoming nation for migrants. But America’s status as the world’s most charitable – with or without admitting more refugees – cannot be challenged. In 2020, the United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees compiled data which showed that the U.S. was the top 2020 donor to UNHCR’s global refugee activities. The nearly $2 billion in U.S. contributions is about four times the total contributed by the source that ranked second, the entire European Union which gave an aggregate $522 million.

Refugees qualify for immediate work permission. With millions of Americans unemployed, underemployed or COVID-19 furloughed, more employment-authorized refugees create unnecessary competition for increasingly scarce jobs that citizens and lawfully present residents deserve.

Biden’s original reaction – to hold steady at 15,000 refugees for the upcoming fiscal year – was correct. Unfortunately, Biden didn’t have the courage of his convictions, and folded under the pressure Democratic extremists put on him.

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Joe Guzzardi is a Progressives for Immigration Reform analyst who has written about immigration for more than 30 years. Contact him at [email protected].

Responding to the consequences of President Biden’s wildly out-of-control border mess, Arizona Attorney General Mark Brnovich sued the administration in the U.S. District Court of Arizona.

At issue is Biden’s unilateral decision to stop border wall construction, and to end the policy which requires asylum seekers to remain in Mexico while their petitions are reviewed. The wall and Mexican Migration Protocols are among former President Trump’s signature immigration accomplishments, and helped to slow population growth in Arizona and other states.

Biden’s irresponsible, illegal border permissiveness violates the National Environmental Policy Act, which recognizes that population directly affects the environment. Today, 90 percent of that growth is caused by immigration. The act requires that every agency considering an action that will affect the environment must analyze and publicize those outcomes before going forward. The published analysis is officially called an Environmental Impact Statement.

Yet the Department of Homeland Security and, before it, the Immigration and Naturalization Service have steadfastly refused to comply with the National Environmental Policy Act, even though it’s federal law. Environmentalists like Julie Axelrod, Center for Immigration Studies Director of Litigation and a former Trump administration senior Environmental Protection Agency policy advisor, had their logical arguments fall on deaf ears.

From the Arizona complaint which lays out the indisputable truths:

“Migrants (like everyone else) need housing, infrastructure, hospitals, and schools. They drive cars, purchase goods, and use public parks and other facilities. Their actions also directly result in the release of pollutants, carbon dioxide, and other greenhouse gases into the atmosphere, which directly affects air quality. All of these activities have significant environmental impact which, as discussed above, courts have recognized as cognizable impacts under NEPA.”

Last week, Brnovich said on Fox News that the average border crosser carries about six to eight pounds of trash. Using the best estimate of 2 million aliens illegally entering the U.S. this year, Brnovich said that translates to “about a million of pounds of trash each month.” Brnovich insisted that the so-called environmental movement, which includes the hypocritical Sierra Club, cares only about raising money, not safeguarding America’s beauty.

U.S. immigration-driven population growth is dire, and should be a matter of grave concern to Congress. The U.S. Census Bureau estimates that immigrants and births to immigrants represent more than 80 percent of the nation’s population growth. Yet Congress refuses to develop a responsible immigration policy that would provide a better quality of life for the nation’s native-born and settled immigrants.

Instead, Congress is intent to let unchecked population increases propel the nation, figuratively speaking, off a cliff. In 2016, respected environmental scientist and natural resources planner Leon Kolankiewicz, working with Progressives for Immigration Reform, completed a three-year study which led to a Programmatic Environmental Impact Statement, an analysis of the long-term, cumulative effects of immigration on America’s environmental resources.

Summarized, the study assessed three alternative immigration scenarios, all projected out to 2100: 1) the No Action Alternative, in which current immigration rates of approximately 1.25 million per year would be maintained; 2) the Expansion Alternative, or 2.25 million annual immigration; and 3) the Reduction Alternative, 250,000 annual immigration, the historic level.

As of Earth Day 2021, the U.S. population stands at slightly more than 330 million. In approximate numbers, the No Action Alternative would lead to a U.S. population of 524 million in 2100; the Expansion Alternative, the option the Biden administration is committed to, would create a 669 million U.S. population in 2100, and the Reduction Alternative would lead to a 379 million U.S. population in 2100, not ideal but the most manageable of the three options.

Assessing each of the three possible immigration levels’ outcomes and their potential environmental impacts on urban sprawl and loss of farmland, habitat loss and impacts on biodiversity, water demands and withdrawals from natural systems, carbon dioxide emissions and resultant climate change, and energy demands and national security implications, the results are widespread, ominous and highly adverse.

Congress has a long way to go to make up for ground lost since former Wisconsin senator and governor Gaylord Nelson founded Earth Day more than half a century ago. As Nelson’s daughter Tia said, her father would be “deeply distressed” by the lack of progress on environmental causes. And, immigration is intimately related to environmental issues. As the Earth Day founder said, “… (I)t’s phony to say, ‘I’m for the environment but not for limiting immigration.’ It’s just a fact that we can’t take all the people who want to come here.”

Arizona’s lawsuit puts environmentalists back in the game. If other border states, such as Texas and New Mexico, joined Arizona, then environmentalists’ important goal – to preserve America’s magnificence – could start to be within reach.

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Joe Guzzardi is a Progressives for Immigration Reform analyst who has written about immigration for more than 30 years. Contact him at [email protected].

In mid-20th century Southern California, the place to see and be seen was the Brown Derby restaurant.

The Derby had various locations in the greater Los Angeles area, but the most famous was on North Vine Street where, as legend has it, Clark Gable proposed to Carole Lombard, and where the nonalcoholic Shirley Temple drink was first served. Other familiar Hollywood icons who dined at the Hat were John Wayne, Bing Crosby, Rita Hayworth, Frank Sinatra and Betty Grable.

Partners Bob Cobb and Herb Somborn, one of Gloria Swanson’s five husbands, comanaged the restaurants. But after Somborn’s sudden death in 1934, Cobb took over, and proved a skilled restaurateur. Cobb created the Cobb Salad, an upscale Chef’s Salad that he served on cold plates with chilled forks. He also refined the pot roast, rice pudding and onion soup to such excellence that Hollywood’s elites stopped off in the wee hours after a night of revelry to sober up on one of those dishes.

But Cobb’s talents extended beyond the kitchen. In 1939, Cobb, a lifelong baseball fan, seized the opportunity to purchase the Pacific Coast League’s Hollywood Stars. Cobb put together a syndicate to acquire the Stars that included Gene Autry, George Burns, Gracie Allen, Cecil B. DeMille and William Frawley, who played the grouchy neighbor Fred Mertz on “I Love Lucy.” Crosby invited the players to join him on the golf course, and Jimmy Stewart often hosted dinner at his home for his favorite Stars. The stars loved the Stars.

Almost immediately, as Dan Taylor explained in his new book, “Lights, Camera, Fastball: How the Hollywood Stars Changed Baseball,” Cobb applied his creative skills to the national pastime. For a few seasons, the Stars played in short pants and lightweight tee shirts. Manager Fred Haney, anticipating more stolen bases, said, “We think these suits will give us more speed. They will also permit much greater freedom of motion in fielding and throwing.”

The Stars also were the first to wear batting helmets, to employ movie star beauty queens as cheerleaders, to pioneer televised baseball, to eschew trains for Western Airlines charter travel, and to offer fans unique ballpark food – like its famous 10-cent skinless hot dog served hot off a charcoal grill on a freshly baked milk bun, washed down with coffee and real cream. Ushers wore pressed dark blue slacks and an ironed white shirt with a matching navy tie and jacket.

Like eating at the Derby, an evening at Gilmore Field watching the Stars was first class all the way.

On any given night, Gable, Jimmy Stewart, Barbara Stanwyck, Humphrey Bogart and dozens more from the Silver Screen cheered on their favorite team from Gilmore Field’s deluxe boxes and grandstands. Bat Day had a unique only-in-Hollywood twist: Gable, Stanwyck or equally handsome Silver Screen glitterati distributed miniature bats to young fans.

During the Stars’ peak years, from 1950 to 1957, the team had an operating agreement with the Pittsburgh Pirates, and sent several players to the Buccos who eventually had roster spots on the 1960 World Series winners: Hall of Famer Bill Mazeroski, slugging first baseman Dick Stuart, backup first baseman R.C. Stevens, platoon outfielder Roman Mejías, and hard-throwing pitcher George Witt.

Pacific Coast League play was consistently high caliber, and league officials anticipated that the PCL would soon join the American and National Leagues as the third major league.

But things worked out differently. The Dodgers moved from Brooklyn to Los Angeles in 1958, a transition that sent the Stars packing to Salt Lake City to become the decidedly less glitzy Bees. The Brown Derby, a victim of ever-shifting eating fads and dining trends, served its last meal in 1985, 15 years after Cobb passed away at age 70.

Los Angeles has never been the same since the Derby, the Stars and Bob Cobb faded away.

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Joe Guzzardi is a Society for American Baseball Research and Internet Baseball Writers Association member. Contact him at [email protected].

Under the guise of the “This is not who we are. America is better than this” language spoken by our current president, no accommodation is too generous for Northern Triangle migrants.

To gauge how much taxpayers are required to tolerate while underwriting an endless stream of affirmative benefits offered to recently arrived migrant noncitizens, turn to San Diego, Calif. For more than a year, some 130,000 children enrolled in the San Diego Unified School District have been relegated to remote, online education. School administrators blame the COVID-19 pandemic, and have insisted that for the teachers’ personal safety, and in the best interests of their students, remote learning is mandatory.

Imagine, then, the shock parents must have experienced when they learned that teachers in the district would be instructing young migrants in person at the San Diego Convention Center where they’re currently housed.

In other words, teaching in person is okay, but only if the students are foreign nationals and not San Diego’s kids.

During his interview with the national media, Reopen California Schools founder Jonathan Zachreson said that the confirmed COVID-19 infection rate among the alien children the teachers will be instructing is 9 percent. But among the San Diego students the teachers have betrayed, the infection rate is a microscopic .0018 percent.

In its statement to the press, the San Diego County Office of Education wrote, “We also have a moral obligation to ensure a bright future for our children,” an apparent reference to the migrants. They didn’t mention concern for the San Diego students whose futures have been harmed, perhaps irreparably, by the county’s year-long stay-at-home order.

On April 12, San Diego schools will – tentatively – shift to hybrid learning while the in-person migrant program will remain active through July.

Shortly after district officials confirmed the April 12 return date, teachers immediately pushed back. An internal union email that Voice of San Diego obtained showed the teachers are hedging on the date, and suggested that classroom conditions are not yet safe for returning. The email read, in part, “Any date for a required return is a projection and not set in stone.”

To restate the obvious: the teachers and their union throw up flimsy objections to educating San Diego’s citizen children, but don’t hesitate to sign up to instruct Mexican and Central American migrants.

The Office of Education stressed that its illegal immigrant education program will emphasize English as a Second Language and social-emotional learning opportunities, a direct slap in the face to San Diego’s enrolled thousands of limited English speakers and special needs students.

Statewide, California’s quality of education has been in freefall for decades. In the 1960s, California had the nation’s most efficient and most admired K-12 public school system. But in 1978, Proposition 13 cut property taxes and, as a result, slashed counties’ available funds for school construction and upkeep.

Today, California has more than 6.1 million students enrolled in nearly 11,000 campuses. For more than a year, the majority have been denied an in-person public education, a lost school year that can never be recovered. But for frustrated, furious parents to realize that teachers’ priority is educating unaccompanied, illegally present foreign national asylum seekers while their children’s academic needs are neglected is a burdensome reality to cope with.

In his press release, California Republican Rep. Darrell Issa sided with the parents. Said Issa: “The decision to provide in-person instruction to illegal migrants is outrageous and parents have every right to be angry.”

Summarizing, teachers refused to return to their contracted jobs until, first, they were vaccinated, received more money, and COVID cases fell. Now the teachers have been vaccinated, California schools got $15.3 billion as their part of the American Rescue Plan Act, and cases have plunged. Yet, the teachers still don’t want to go to their San Diego classrooms.

Such is the state of things in California, and in today’s Washington, D.C., where the illegal immigrant is preferred to the citizen.

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Joe Guzzardi is a Progressives for Immigration Reform analyst who has written about immigration for more than 30 years. Contact him at [email protected].

While justified criticism about President Biden’s border fiasco rages on, an interesting and significant legal action has gone largely unnoticed.

Texan Brian Harrison, formerly President Trump’s Department of Health and Human Services chief of staff, and co-plaintiff Steven Pace filed a 20-page brief in an Amarillo federal court which seeks to resume the Trump-era, no exception practice of returning unaccompanied minors to their home country.

The suit argues that the Biden administration hasn’t given a legal defense for ending the policy, which was intended to protect Americans’ health and well-being during the coronavirus pandemic. Named as defendants are Health and Human Services Secretary Xavier Becerra, Homeland Security Secretary Alejandro Mayorkas and Centers for Disease Control and Prevention Director Dr. Rochelle Walensky.

In his legal filing, Harrison, who is on the May 1 special election ballot for the vacant U.S. House of Representatives’ seat that recently deceased Ron Wright held, has submitted a two-prong argument. First, in March 2020, the CDC invoked Title 42 which, allows the federal government to bar migrants from entering the U.S. during a health crisis. But on February 2, Biden ordered a CDC review which quickly resulted in the agency’s February 17 notice that Title 42 would be suspended as it pertained to returning unaccompanied alien minors. And second, Harrison’s filing claims that the Biden administration didn’t follow the Administrative Procedure Act protocols which require federal agencies to justify any policy changes.

Since February, the inflow of unaccompanied minors has continued unabated. Worse, a space shortage at border holding facilities has forced the Biden administration to release the migrants, some COVID-infected, into the U.S. interior without a notice to appear at a later date in immigration court.

The most recent federal data showed that among 11,300 child and teen illegal immigrants in HHS care, 2,900 are laboratory-confirmed COVID-19 positive. White House Press Secretary Jen Psaki made Biden’s policy clear when she confirmed that “we have been letting unaccompanied minors stay.”

In an effort to curb negative publicity, Biden’s Office of Personnel Management sent a memo to several government agency department heads requesting volunteer deployments for as long as four months to help Customs and Border Protection (CBP) deal with the unaccompanied minors’ border surge. More border re-enforcements will be needed during the summer months when, traditionally, migration peaks.

Within a 24-hour period last week, CBP took in 111 individuals smuggled north in three separate trucks. CBP officials identified the perpetrators as possible human smugglers and said those in custody were foreign nationals from Ecuador, El Salvador, Guatemala, Honduras and Mexico. None were wearing masks or other protective gear. Being forced to deal with the uptick in human trafficking detracts the CBP, as one of its officials said, from its “enduring mission priorities of countering terrorism, combating transnational crime, securing the border, facilitating lawful trade, protecting revenue and facilitating lawful travel.”

Americans just now are seeing the flickering light at the end of the year-long COVID-19 lockdown tunnel, and are increasingly concerned that the border releases could spark another round of stay-at-home-orders. Released asylum seekers who tested COVID-positive at a Brownsville, Texas, bus station told local reporters that their destinations included North Carolina, Maryland and New Jersey. Documents leaked to the media predict that the surge will last more than seven months. Consequently, other states will soon be receiving COVID-positive migrants.

Testing after Customs and Protection releases migrants gives the illegal aliens freedom to travel unrestricted throughout the U.S., an insult to the hundreds of thousands of Americans who lost their jobs and businesses. Also taken away during the government-imposed lockdown was personal choice for Americans to educate their children in public schools, and individuals’ constitutional rights to worship at churches, synagogues and mosques.

The question that the Biden administration should answer is what happens after the illegal aliens settle in the U.S. interior. On his border fact-finding mission, Sen. Tom Cotton (R-Ark.) learned directly from the adults that their main reason for coming to the U.S. is to find a job. The under-18 population will require public education in already overcrowded and largely failing K-12 classrooms. Many among both the minor and adult population will need taxpayer-funded health care, and will have access to other affirmative benefits.

Although Americans take pride in their humanitarianism, the nation has been through a grueling year-plus of lockdowns and employment furloughs. Putting Americans first until normalcy returns is the course of action that the Biden administration should be ethically obligated to pursue.

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Joe Guzzardi is a Progressives for Immigration Reform analyst who has written about immigration for more than 30 years. Contact him at [email protected].

As the border conditions worsen, concerned Americans wonder where and when the crisis will end.

If left unchecked, President Biden’s existing come-one, come-all policy will allow about 1.2 million illegal immigrants to settle in the U.S. within the first full year of his administration. The 1.2 million projected annual figure is based on February’s 100,000 unlawful entrants that Customs and Border Protection apprehended, and assumes that the monthly total will remain the same, if not increase, during the traditional summer migratory peak.

More than 3,250 unaccompanied minors have been detained at the Southwest border, triple late February’s total. Over 1,360 of the children have been detained longer than the legal 72 hours, the maximum wait period before a minor must be transferred from CBP to the Department of Health and Human Services. In all, about 13,000 unaccompanied minors are in custody. Human smuggling rings, raking in huge cash payments for their illicit services, transport the minors from Mexico’s interior to the border where the children are dropped off, and left to fend for themselves as best they can.

No compassionate American, including Biden’s voters, supports the border tragedy. But, in an effort to obscure the crisis, the Biden administration has placed a gag order on border officials to prevent them from talking to the media. Greater public awareness would result if border officials could share first-hand accounts. Border and sector chiefs have been denied traditional ride-alongs that provide reporters will a first-hand view of conditions; only anonymous sources speaking on the condition that they would remain unidentified dared to release limited information.

But while the Biden administration’s willful blindness about the border is difficult to comprehend, a few things are clear. Biden didn’t campaign on border lawlessness, at least not directly. And voters didn’t elect Biden to throw open the border. Welcoming thousands of more desperate individuals during an era when millions of Americans are unemployed, and while 34 million live in poverty – 10.5 percent of the 2019 U.S. population – is unfathomable. Migrants from Africa and Asia have entered the U.S. unlawfully, and paid exorbitant fees to human trafficking cartels to be smuggled to the border illegally. The World Bank estimates that this year 150 million people will try to exist on less than $1.90 daily. Certainly, they too aspire to the generous American way that Biden promises.

Because Biden won’t travel to the border, hasn’t given a press conference, and rarely appears in public, 47 percent of likely U.S. voters believe that, according to a Rasmussen poll, he is a puppet president and allows others to make behind-the-scenes decisions for him. Capitol Hill insiders have identified as the true movers and shakers Vice President Kamala Harris, who governmenttracker.us ranked as the most liberal Senator ahead of Vermont’s Bernie Sanders and Massachusetts’ Elizabeth Warren, and Obama holdover Susan Rice, the former National Security Director and current While House Domestic Policy Director.

Biden’s border muddle has deepened so quickly that even Democrats are concerned. Long-time Democratic strategist Doug Schoen, a critic of President Trump and an advisor to President Bill Clinton, said that the border is in “full-on crisis mode” and that the manner in which the Biden administration has handled immigration will end up “as a tragedy for all of us.” And Henry Cuellar, a U.S. Representative from the front-line 27th Texas District that includes McAllen and Nuevo Laredo, is the latest Democrat to criticize the White House. As Cuellar bluntly put it, because of the consequences for Texas and other border states, “You just can’t say, ‘Yeah, yeah, let everybody in.’”

No one knows the Biden/Harris/Rice end game. But what’s certain is that whoever gets into the U.S. will be only the iceberg’s tip. Once in, no migrant will ever be sent home. Eventually, the migrants will petition other family members from international locations. And parents will soon join the unaccompanied minors.

Today’s avoidable border crisis will have a long-lasting overcrowding effect on an already crowded nation, a consequence that’s unlikely to benefit most Americans.

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Joe Guzzardi is a Progressives for Immigration Reform analyst who has written about immigration for more than 30 years. Contact him at [email protected].

The daily Southwest border updates are generating nationwide concern, except in Washington, D.C., where indifference reigns.

The latest Department of Homeland Security report showed that in February, more than 100,000 people were either apprehended by or surrendered to federal immigration officials on the U.S.-Mexico border. Those totals, a 14-year high, include about 9,460 unaccompanied minors and more than 19,240 family units, which reflect 62% and 38% increases, respectively, when compared to January’s statistics.

Nonetheless, President Biden, DHS Secretary Alejandro Majorkas, and Press Secretary Jen Psaki refuse to even hint that the administration’s lax border policies need immediate reining in. For his part, Biden has not spoken officially about what his administration calls a border challenge. But Psaki refused to call the border rush a crisis, instead labeling it “an enormous challenge.” Mayorkas, when asked a similar question about whether the border events represented a crisis, answered with a flat out “no.”

Texas Gov. Greg Abbott didn’t hesitate to call the growing border chaos a crisis. Abbott has a better perspective on the border influx than White House operatives, and the governor formed Operation Lone Star to deploy personnel from the Texas Department of Public Safety and the Texas National Guard to the border to secure the area. Abbott said Operation Lone Star’s goal is to “deny Mexican cartels and other smugglers the ability to move drugs and people into Texas.”

While the White House border rhetoric has focused almost exclusively on what it describes as the need for a humanitarian response to migration, it’s ignored the undeniable connection between open borders and human smuggling. Ohio Sen. Rob Portman is the Senate Homeland Security and Governmental Affairs top Republican who has overseen three separate committee investigations that date back over several administrations.

Portman’s 2016 investigation, “Protecting Unaccompanied Alien Children from Trafficking and Other Abuses,” uncovered that the Department of Health and Human Services failed to adequately vet or to conduct in-depth background checks on the Ohio adults to whom it released minor children. The adults turned out to be human smugglers. The 2018 report, “Oversight of the Care of Unaccompanied Minor Children,” came to similarly shocking and dangerous conclusions. HHS and DHS didn’t make the recommended post-2016 changes to trafficking crimes and to tracking whether released aliens report for their designated immigration court dates.

Biden appears either under-informed or indifferent to the growing human trafficking trade that his administration encourages. After ending the Remain in Mexico policy, the latest federal government’s inducement for more unaccompanied children to rush the border is that HHS will pay for minors in its custody to be flown to their sponsor or family member’s home, often illegal immigrants, when, as is invariably the case, the receiving adult cannot pay. Furthermore, Biden’s DHS submitted a notice to the Federal Register to withdraw an existing proposed rule that would require the receiving immigrant to sponsor and care for an arriving migrant once s/he becomes a lawful permanent resident.

While Biden and those close to him debate semantics, last week DHS reached its breaking point, and begged ICE deportation officers to travel to the border ASAP to help with what the agency called “security operations” for the illegal immigrant children and families that have overwhelmed a swamped Border Patrol. Michael Meade, Immigration and Customs Enforcement acting director, pleaded for “immediate action.” Volunteers would include civilians with medical or legal experience as well as drivers and food servers.

Officials on the scene won’t speculate on when the emergency request for increased border assistance might be called off. The Biden administration is in full denial, and the president refuses to travel to the border to evaluate conditions.

As the surge with its associated criminal and COVID risks intensifies daily, an educated guess is that the existing calamitous circumstances will remain unchanged well into the peak summer months.

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Joe Guzzardi is a Progressives for Immigration Reform analyst who has written about immigration for more than 30 years. Contact him at [email protected].

World Hearing Day is celebrated every March, with this year’s theme, “Hearing Care for All.” Down through Major League Baseball’s rich history, several deaf players have enriched the national pastime.

In his book “Deaf Players in Major League Baseball: A History 1883 to the Present,” R.A.R. Edwards explained how players’ deafness enhanced their diamond skills, and helped broaden Americans’ understanding about the hearing-impaired community. Luther Taylor, one of John J. McGraw’s most reliable New York Giants’ hurlers, won 116 games during his nine-year career from 1900-1909.

In 1945, the Cincinnati Reds’ Dick Sipek played left, center and right field. Sipek’s career ended prematurely when he broke his collarbone diving for a fly ball. More recently, Curtis Pride, who studied at William and Mary College and currently coaches at Gallaudet College, enjoyed productive years in the big leagues from 1993 to 2006 where he hit a career .250.

The most well-known among hearing-impaired baseball players is the Dead Ball era superstar William Ellsworth Hoy who had the then-acceptable but today unthinkable nickname “Dummy.” Hoy’s nickname never offended him. He promptly reminded those who addressed him as Bill or William that he preferred “Dummy.”

In Hoy’s 14 years that began in 1888 and ended in 1902, he demonstrated Hall of Fame credentials. Hoy, who played in four different major leagues, could hit, .288, steal bases, and cover a wide swatch of center field grass; he set long-standing games played, assists and outfield double plays records. In 1889, playing for the Louisville Colonels, Hoy also set an MLB record, since tied twice, by throwing out three runners at home in one game. The catcher who recorded the outs was baseball immortal Connie Mack.

A historic baseball moment occurred in 1902 when Hoy, then with the Reds, batted against the Giants’ Taylor – the only time two deaf players faced each other, pitcher versus batter. When Hoy first took his place in the batter’s box, he signed to Taylor, “I’m glad to see you!” and then singled crisply to center. Modern day fans mistakenly attribute Hoy for having developed hand signals for outfield play. Instead, his fellow outfielders waited to hear Hoy’s call – his roommate Tommy Leach called it “a little squeaky sound” – indicating that he was about to make the catch. Efforts to get Hoy inducted into the HOF, mostly led by the USA Deaf Sports Federation, fell short. But Hoy was a beloved figure wherever he went until his 1961 death at age 99.

Post-1961, medical science made huge advancements in hearing impairment treatment. The improvements helped New York Yankee jack-of-all-trades Gil McDougald who played ten seasons, including as part of eight pennant-winning teams and six World Series crowns, while alternating between second, third and shortstop with equal skill. All-Star voters elected McDougald, the 1951 Rookie of the Year, to the mid-season classic six times at all three positions.

McDougald is inexorably linked to Cleveland Indians’ flamethrower Herb Score when in 1957 his line drive struck the lefty in his eye and nearly blinded him, a tragedy from which the Yankee batsman never fully recovered.

Years later, and well after his Yankees’ 1961 retirement, McDougald would have his own sensory challenges. Struck by an errant batting practice ball back in 1955, McDougald, now a Fordham University coach, noticed a hearing loss that gradually became more pronounced. Eventually, McDougald withdrew from society. He sold his businesses, stopped using the phone, and unable to understand family table-talk, dined alone in his room.

By the late 1980s, McDougald was totally deaf. But when a New York Times sports reporter wrote about McDougald’s deafness, New York University Medical Center’s otolaryngology chief received the struggling ex-player’s permission to perform a cochlear implant. Six weeks later, McDougald could hear again, and he campaigned until his death at age 82 for others to undergo the procedure.

Like Taylor, Sipek, Pride and Hoy before him, McDougald was admired among his peers, and is an inspiration to the world’s 400 million hearing-impaired, and baseball fans everywhere.

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Joe Guzzardi is a Society for Baseball Research and Internet Baseball Writers Association member. Contact him at [email protected].

Among President Biden’s first day executive actions is one that promised to tackle climate change, a primary concern of Congress. Included as part of the Biden administration’s climate change objectives are rejoining the Paris Agreement and leading what the administration called a clean energy revolution that will, by 2035, achieve a carbon pollution-free power sector. On Earth Day 2021, Biden will host a Leaders’ Climate Summit where he’ll emphasize his ambitious agenda.

Biden’s goals are noble, but assuming they’re eventually achievable, they’re down the road. Ever-growing human populations, with their larger carbon footprint, are a big variable in climate change. But Biden is ignoring the current Southwest border crisis that will add tens of thousands of people to the nation’s 330 million residents.

The Wall Street Journal reported that, through February, Customs and Border Protection will have taken 9,000 unaccompanied minors into custody, an unprecedented crisis. Biden’s administration also announced that it will admit 25,000 asylum seekers held in Mexico.

Making northbound travel more appealing to prospective asylees, Biden ordered Immigration and customs officials to lay out the red carpet. The federal government is, at taxpayer expense, flying aliens to mainland destinations where their presence, proof of the unpopular border surge with voters, will be less visible.

Under Biden, the children and adult asylees will remain in the U.S. indefinitely, raise families and add to the U.S. carbon footprint as automobile, housing and durable goods consumers. When family reunification kicks in, the number of new, settled migrants will increase by a factor of more than three, the number that Princeton University found represents the average number of immigrants from abroad that will join their stateside relatives. The average U.S. carbon footprint for each individual in the U.S. is 16 tons, among the world’s highest.

Population growth, whether created through natural increases by births outnumbering deaths or in-migration outpacing out-migration, is, the Census Bureau confirms, the leading cause of the United States’ ever-larger carbon footprint. Regulations like those the Biden administration hopes to put in place cannot negate the nation’s current immigrant intake of more than 1 million annually plus whatever unknown number of illegal aliens successfully cross the border.

During the early 1970s, President Richard Nixon signed several laws aimed at reducing each American’s per capita effect on the environment. When Nixon was president, the U.S. population was 203 million. Today immigration-fueled growth has pushed the nation’s population to 330 million. According to the Census Bureau, the U.S. receives one net international migrant every 666 seconds. The Census Bureau also predicts that by mid-century, immigration will be the largest contributor to a U.S. population that exceeds 400 million, and will inevitably create a larger carbon footprint.

Whatever legislative changes the Biden administration may rule on in the guise of clean energy and reducing climate change impacts, their positive impacts will be reduced or completely negated by the increased emissions from millions of new people. Research in 2020 from The Journal of Population and Sustainability evaluated 44 countries, including the U.S., and found that emissions arising from population growth between 1990 and 2019 wiped out two-thirds of the emission reductions that arose from greater energy efficiency programs.

Blame Congress, not immigrants. Newly arrived migrants require more urban development – housing, schools, health care, governmental services, streets, parking, waste removal and places to work, shop and worship. The result is more urban sprawl, and its irreversible habitat loss.

In 1996, President Clinton, as part of his “Population and Consumption Task Force Report, President’s Council on Sustainable Development,” urged that immigration be discussed “with sensitivity and care” on behalf of “the American future.”

Republicans and Democrats alike have ignored Clinton’s sound advice for 25 years. Their shameful cowardice – they know if they spoke the truth about immigration and population, the public wouldn’t support their agenda – ensured that runaway growth would escalate during those two and a half decades.

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Joe Guzzardi has written about immigration, population and the environment for more than 30 years. More @OurCarbonFootprint. Contact Joe at [email protected].