Cagle World

While Congress is focused on impeachment, impeachment and more impeachment drama, a proposed behind-the-scenes bill shows that the Swamp is up to its same, unshakable pro-immigration agenda.

Two things stand out about the Immigrant Investor Program Reform Act (S 2778). First, while Democrats usually take most of the heat for endorsing immigration spikes, the bill’s sponsors are Republicans. Second, the bill deals with EB-5, a fraud-ridden, aimless visa that Congress could, and should, eliminate. The sponsors are three Republican senators: Lindsey Graham of South Carolina, John Cornyn of Texas, and Mike Rounds of South Dakota. All three have long voting histories of subverting Americans in favor of foreign nationals.

Fundamentally, the EB-5 is a citizenship-for-sale visa that allows wealthy overseas investors to obtain Green Cards for themselves and their families, including minor children. To qualify, they must begin a business that creates at least ten permanent full-time jobs for Americans. The proposed legislation is a knee-jerk attempt to derail important changes that the Department of Homeland Security will put into effect this week. DHS intends to shift the EB-5 investors’ focus back to underdeveloped and rural communities that need a boost, the program’s original intention when the Immigration Act of 1990 created the visa.

Investors, however, quickly got savvy to the wealth potential in large cities like New York, Los Angeles and other major financial capitals. As far as the EB-5 crowd is concerned, the hinterlands are nowhere. For example, Senior White House advisor Jared Kushner and his real estate partners exploited an EB-5 loophole to develop what The Washington Post described as “an opulent, 50-story residential tower in this city’s [Jersey City] booming waterfront district.”

Since dozens of investors have deceptively skirted the existing EB-5 guidelines, they oppose DHS’ tighter standards. As an added bonus, the proposed bill would fast-track 30,000 backlogged EB-5 applicants through another controversial immigration vehicle, parole, a free pass for otherwise inadmissible aliens. Since the visa holder can bring his spouse, and children who are under age 21, aggregate admissions will far exceed 30,000. A maximum 5,000 EB-5s are granted annually, but many more applications are submitted.

Fraud has consistently plagued the EB-5 program. In August, a scam surfaced when the State Department’s Diplomatic Security Service assisted in getting indictments totaling $110 million against three major players. They lured 200 unsuspecting Chinese investors hoping to get Green Cards via the San Francisco Regional Center that promised “Safe Investments to set your family on the path to American Citizenship.” And in a South Dakota case, Rounds’ home state, 16 of 17 of the jobs created were given to illegal aliens.

The federal government is also a fraud enabler. In 1995, 31 families were granted EB-5s, but could not come up with the minimum investment. Thanks to U.S. Customs and Immigration Services largesse, more than two decades later, those families remain in the country.

Calls to end EB-5 are widespread and include several big business and immigration advocates like the aforementioned Post, The New York Times and Bloomberg. From a Post editorial, EB-5 is “a corruption-prone visa program…” and “ending it should be a no-brainer.” The Times headline was “Program that Lets Foreigners Write a Check, and Get a Visa, Draws Scrutiny,” and Bloomberg wrote that the program has fallen victim to fraud and abuse.

Congress refuses to end the needless EB-5 program that helps immigration lawyers and D.C. lobbyists, but few others. Allegedly, EB-5 generates jobs for Americans. But a little basic math shows that the program’s effect is minimal as a percentage of the working American population of 157 million. Citizenship for sale is an unthinkable concept, and grossly unfair to less fortunate prospective immigrants.

On the strength of that alone, Congress should terminate EB-5.

–

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

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 are Latino or Hispanic, 15 percent are African-American, and 5 percent are 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. Of low-wage workers, about 14 million people are the only earners in their families, with $20,400 median family earnings. Another 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.

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 million deferred 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 [email protected].

Democratic presidential candidate Elizabeth Warren shocked most observers, including her New England neighbor and fellow White House hopeful Bernie Sanders, when she announced the $52 trillion price tag for her Medicare for All proposal. Sanders’ plan for essentially the same universal coverage would come in at a comparatively modest $32 trillion.

Despite the mind-numbing costs, Warren, with a straight face, said her proposal would not increase taxes on the middle class “by one penny,” a point disputed by many. But most alarming was Warren’s lack of compassion when she brushed off the large numbers of working Americans who would lose jobs under her plan.

It’s not Warren’s only unsound proposition. Her promise to decriminalize illegal border crossings and defang interior enforcement would lead to endless migratory waves from all the world’s corners with major societal consequences on domestic employment, health care, education and population growth.

In recent years, erasing the border has become an increasingly popular goal among elites. In fact, Congress has repeatedly demonstrated more concern about Syria’s border than the shared U.S. border with Mexico where neglect has festered for decades. With only token resistance, the U.S. has ceded border control to criminal operations, including the Sinaloa Cartel, that wreak havoc along and inside Texas, Arizona, New Mexico and California.

Last month, President Donald Trump defended the United States’ troop withdrawal from northern Syria by saying that “it’s not our border” and that “we shouldn’t be losing lives over it.” Congressional Democrats and many Republicans roundly condemned the president. Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell objected forcefully to President Trump’s action. In a Washington Post op-ed, McConnell called the troop withdrawal “a grave strategic mistake.” McConnell said that pulling out of Syria leaves the U.S. homeland more dangerous and encourages our terrorist enemies.

If only McConnell and his congressional colleagues were concerned about the southwest border crisis, where the drug war is ongoing, with powerful cartels pushing their deadly products stateside. Why Congress continues to ignore the mounting chaos at the southern border is a question Americans should be asking of their elected representatives. Acting Citizenship and Immigration Services director Ken Cuccinelli said that savvy northern Mexico cartel bosses – “the most evil, vicious, awful people in the western hemisphere” – have turned the border “into a toll booth.”

Experts on the front line describe how the cartels have taken over. Jackson County Sheriff Andy Louderback explained that every minute of every day cartel lords perpetrate human and drug trafficking, among their many criminal activities. They also are responsible for a record 33,341 murders last year alone in Mexico that are a signature method of maintaining control over their methamphetamine, marijuana, cocaine and heroin distribution centers in key metroplex areas, including Phoenix, Los Angeles, Denver and Chicago. Other local authorities concur. Otero County, New Mexico Sheriff David Black said that lax enforcement has given the cartels “the green light” to continue their deadly criminal behavior.

Yet Congress remains mostly mum about inadequate enforcement, especially as it applies to asylum seekers traveling with minor children, who the cartels are particularly adept at manipulating. While some border security improvements have been initiated, others have remained in limbo since the Secure Fence Act of 2006.

But even excluding the cartels’ deadly dominance, open borders is a horrible, indefensible policy. The Census Bureau predicts that if the status quo remains, by 2060 U.S. population will hit an unmanageable 404 million, up from today’s 330 million. If Warren and other candidates who champion open borders get their way, over the next five decades, today’s population of 330 million people is likely to approach a nightmarish 500 million.

–

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

The World Series is over, and so ends the noise pollution barrage that Fox Sports’ announcers besieged their viewers with.

Perhaps Joe Buck and John Smoltz were under an executive office edict to never stop talking – leave no second of airtime empty. Much of what Buck and Smoltz parroted was beyond the grasp of a large audience segment – exit velocity, launch angle, spray charts, WAR, Whip and other superfluous sabermetric mumbo jumbo.

Dinosaur fans remember the days when a single broadcaster occupied the booth to provide merely the baseball basics – the pitch count, inning, on-deck hitter. But when the Los Angeles Dodgers’ Vince Scully retired in 2016, that ended the long-ago era when silence was golden.

In their commitment to talk more but say less, Buck and Smoltz never followed up on the 1933 Washington Senators, as the Nationals were then known. They mentioned numerous times that the 1933 Senators were, until 2019, the last Washington team to appear in the World Series. More’s the pity that Buck and Smoltz dropped the ball because that Senators team had Hall of Fame frontline players, and a supporting cast that was even more interesting.

Led by 26-year-old shortstop/manager Joe Cronin and sluggers Heinie Manush and Goose Goslin, the Senators ended the season with a seven-game regular season margin over the Ruth-Gehrig New York Yankees. Bit Senators players included Cecil Travis whose Hall of Fame-bound career ended when in World War II his feet became frostbitten. There was also part-timer Moe Berg, whom Casey Stengel called “the strangest man ever to play baseball,” a reference to the catcher’s Princeton University and Columbia Law School degrees, and to his subsequent assignment as a World War II Officer for Strategic Services, later the CIA. The OSS licensed Berg to kill, literally.

Then, there’s Senators’ outfielder Sam Rice, who was involved in one of the World Series’ most controversial plays. The play’s final disposition – safe or out – wasn’t resolved until after Rice died. In the 1925 series against the Pittsburgh Pirates, Rice dove over the center field fence to stab a long fly. Rice, recognized as a peerless ballhawk, emerged waving his glove with the ball intact. The umpire signaled out. But since Rice was outside of everyone’s on field line of vision, the Pirates immediately challenged the call, and ultimately appealed the safe decision to Commissioner Judge Kenesaw Mountain Landis’ office. Landis declared that he couldn’t override the ump.

For years, journalists pleaded with Rice to come clean. Rice would only say that the ump ruled “out,” case closed. Finally, at Rice’s 1963 Hall of Fame induction, he promised that he would provide the specifics in a letter to be opened after his death. When ten years later Rice’s letter was read, he had written that at no time did he lose control of the ball.

In 1933, D.C. was on a high. President Franklin Delano Roosevelt replaced Calvin Coolidge in the Oval Office. Prohibition was over. FDR’s New Deal gave hope to the Depression-ravaged nation. When the loaded Senators clinched the pennant, D.C. fan euphoria was as high as it was in 2019. Despite winning 90 games or more in 1930, 1931 and 1932, the Senators finished behind the hated Yankees.

But unfortunately for the Senators, the New York Giants, managed by first baseman/manager Bill Terry, ran roughshod over the D.C.-nine. The Senators fell in five games, losing two to future Hall of Famer Carl Hubbell. Not for nothing was Hubbell nicknamed “the Meal Ticket.” In his two complete game victories, the lefty didn’t allow an earned run.

Skeptics who question why anyone should care about a World Series played more than eight decades ago must remember that baseball history is American history.

Sabermetrics, on the other hand, is just cold numbers, incomprehensible to most.

–

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

Every week, immigration stories demonstrate how frustratingly elusive, even after decades, common sense reform that would benefit immigrants and citizens alike remains.

Sustained border surges and inadequate enforcement have pushed the immigration court backlog to an impossible-to-process 1 million-plus cases. Illegal border crossings hit a 12-year high as border patrol agents detained 851,000 foreign nationals during fiscal year 2019. A billion-dollar Indian outsourcing firm abused the rules that govern the B-1 visa but paid only a token fine. And that’s just a recent sampling of stories.

But every so often, something comes along to restore hope.

It comes as no surprise that former Obama administration Attorney General Eric Holder, who is an advisor to the California legislature, is committed to higher immigration levels and to a comprehensive immigration reform amnesty. In fact, few public officials have more disdain for President Trump than Holder.

Yet in a recent CNN interview with David Axelrod, Holder told his fellow Democrats, and especially the 2020 presidential candidates who support decriminalizing illegal crossings, that “borders do mean something.” Holder also reminded the candidates that President Obama had “robust” deportation totals as well, even higher than the Trump administration and that existing immigration laws have been on the books “for about 100 years,” and should be honored.

Holder even trotted out talking points normally associated with enforcement advocates. Having a secure border, wanting to vet who comes to our nation and protecting the American people shouldn’t be a left versus right issue. Secure borders should be an issue everyone of us agrees on. We’re a nation of laws. People need to respect those laws, especially if they want to become American citizens. Our government has an obligation to protect the American people first. And part of that protection means securing our borders, just as every other nation in the world does.

Former Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid, former Department of Homeland Security Secretary Jeh Johnson and former Immigration and Customs Enforcement acting director John Sandweg concurred with Holder about the folly of abolishing borders.

Other prominent Democrats have also sounded alarm bells about the potentially fatal, electorally speaking, empty promises to dissolve borders. One of the most visible decriminalization critics is one-time Obama administration immigration policy advisor Cecelia Muñoz. According to Muñoz, decriminalizing unapproved border crossings would make it harder for Democrats to combat President Trump’s populist appeal.

Perhaps other Democratic candidates will emerge. But this particular group appears tone deaf to likely voters’ immigration sentiments, and they proceed at their own peril. A June Gallup poll showed that a record high 23 percent named immigration as the public policy issue that most concerned them, the highest level since Gallup first mentioned immigration in 1993. About 35 percent of Americans want immigration decreased.

The more years that pass, the more likely that Americans will want less immigration. The Census Bureau projects that future net immigration, the difference between the number coming and number leaving, will total 46 million by 2060, and the total U.S. population will reach 404 million. From 1990-2017, immigration grew the U.S. population by 43 million.

The current crop of Democratic presidential hopefuls doesn’t realize it, but an open borders platform is a loser.

–

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

For much of the summer, the House of Representatives obsessed over the Fairness for High-Skilled Immigrants Act (HR 1044), a bad bill that would eliminate the traditional 7 percent country caps imposed on employment-based visas, largely H-1Bs. By so doing, the bill would ensure that the overwhelming majority of those coveted employment-based visas would go to Indian nationals, nearly 100 percent according to U.S. Citizenship and Immigration Services.

With only 40 minutes of debate, in July, the House passed HR 1044, 365-65, meaning tech workers from other countries would be shut out. As for American workers, the House passage means those elected to represent the interests of Americans are fine letting American families, figuratively speaking, swing in the wind.

When the Fairness for High-Skilled Immigrants Act (S. 386) reached the Senate, champion Mike Lee (R-Utah) attempted but failed – barely – to secure unanimous consent and expedited proceedings. Lee promised to try, try again. Much of what’s gone on so far regarding the Fairness for High-Skilled Immigrants Act is caught up in arcane congressional procedures. But the H-1B visa back story is, as such tales often are, more compelling.

To understand the complete, historical picture, recognize that the H-1B visa has, since Congress created it as part of the Immigration Act of 1990, displaced U.S. tech workers on a massive scale, and it essentially slams the door shut on American job applicants.

Even though U.S. colleges graduate more than enough skilled tech workers each year to fill existing vacancies, fewer than 30 percent of Silicon Valley tech workers are U.S. citizens. The abundance of aspiring American workers is likely to continue into the foreseeable future. A January feature story in The New York Times titled “The Hard Part of Computer Science? Getting into Class” noted that campuses across the country “are rushing in record numbers to study computer science.” Seats are at such a premium that qualified students, including minorities and females, have been shut out. Let American kids swing in the wind, too.

Silicon Valley’s exaggerated worker shortage claim has been well-known to the Capitol Hill powerful for more than 20 years. That fact makes Congressional inaction on tightening the H-1B programs, and not calling out the unscrupulous employers who callously pass over Americans to hire cheaper, less talented foreign nationals, all the more disappointing.

In 1998, the H-1B visa cap was raised from 65,000 to 115,000, despite the Clinton administration’s strong suspicion that, as White House memos indicated, the tech industry was bluffing about its “shortage of really highly skilled and desirable workers.” At the same time that tech industry captains were whining about a nonexistent labor shortage, it was laying off workers.

Despite numerous congressional testimonies and countless nonpartisan studies that support the facts that the H-1B displaces U.S. tech workers and provides a bottom-line boost to employers, the visa’s issuance continued for years unchecked. The pro-immigration Migration Policy Institute found that in 2016 the USCIS approved 114,503 H-1B visas for initial U.S. employment, and in the same year, the agency authorized 230,759. The total U.S. tech jobs that those visas displaced or that shut out recent college graduates: a staggering 345,262.

In his 1992 testimony to the House Immigration Subcommittee, Labor Department Deputy Wage and Hour Administrator John R. Fraser summed up the H-1B problem, saying that “increased immigration should be the last – not the first – public policy response to skills shortages.”

The failure of Congress to protect Americans against a nonstop H-1B flow and the unwillingness to reject Silicon Valley’s hollow pleas for more overseas labor is staggering in its totality. U.S. jobs should go only to citizens or lawful permanent residents, and not to foreign nationals who have no ties, family or otherwise, to America.

–

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 1977, on one memorable October evening, New York Yankees outfielder Reggie Jackson became “Mr. October.”

Playing the Los Angeles Dodgers in the World Series’ sixth game, Jackson clobbered three home runs, all on first pitches. Three pitches, three baseballs propelled into the faraway seats. Broadcasting the game, the incomparable Howard Cosell exclaimed: “Goodbye! Oh, what a blow! What a way to top it off!”

Jackson became the second MLB player to ever hit three home runs in a World Series game, and joined Babe Ruth’s three home run performance in the 1926 and 1928 World Series. Since 1977, Albert Pujols in 2011 and Pablo Sandoval in 2012 joined the exclusive company. In keeping with his penchant for self-promotion, in 2002 Jackson trademarked “Mr. October.”

Jackson’s remarkable feat, however, came during a single game. On the other hand, Yankees catcher Yogi Berra, over his 19-year career that included 10 championships, 18 All-Star games and three MVP seasons, put together a much more impressive World Series record. Berra’s World Series stats: 71 hits, 41 runs, 39 RBIs and 12 home runs.

Adding an extra dimension to Berra’s World Series resume is the controversial, brazen Brooklyn Dodgers’ Jackie Robinson’s steal of home in the 1955 series’ first game. The umpire, Bill Summers, called Robinson safe. Berra immediately got in Summers’ face, perhaps protesting more vigorously since Robinson’s steal represented the winning run in the tight 6-5 opener. To his dying day, Berra insisted that Robinson was out. And a review of the tape confirms that Berra’s outrage was understandable. The short-statured Summers stood at least two feet behind Berra, and could not have gotten a clear view of whether Whitey Ford’s pitch landed in the catcher’s glove in enough time to let Yogi tag Robinson out.

Although Berra never let go of what he perceived as a grave baseball injustice, he had fun with it. On the many occasions that Berra and Robinson’s widow, Rachel, attended the same social function, they always greeted each other the same way, and not by their respective given names. Rachel to Yogi, “Safe.” And Yogi’s retort to Rachel, “Out.”

Because so much attention is given to Berra’s hitting skills, his fielding has been overlooked. In the 19 seasons that Berra caught, his fielding percentage was a .989, which places him sixth among baseball’s catchers. As his manager Casey Stengel said about Berra’s fielding skill, “He springs on a bunt like it was another dollar,” a reference to his catcher’s penurious nature. Berra grew up poor in St. Louis, signed with the Yankees in 1947 for $5,125, and never earned more than $65,000.

Berra was too modest to make much ado about his military record, but it’s even more impressive than his baseball resume. During World War II, the 19-year-old Berra served in the U.S. Navy as a gunner’s mate on board a rocket-launching landing craft during the D-Day Omaha Beach invasion. As Berra recalled, “It was like a Fourth of July celebration,” a reference to the machine gun fire that surrounded him.

For his courage, Berra earned a Purple Heart, a Distinguished Unit Citation, two battle stars and a European Theatre of Operations ribbon during the war. In 2009, Berra was awarded the Navy’s Lone Sailor Award, granted to the best and bravest. In 2013, Berra received the first Bob Feller Act of Valor Award, inspired by the late Cleveland Indians Hall of Fame pitcher who after the Pearl Harbor bombing also put his baseball career on hold for four years to join the military. Finally, in 2015, President Barack Obama presented the Presidential Medal of Freedom posthumously to Berra’s family.

Another important distinction between Jackson and Berra: Unlike Jackson, Berra was beloved by his manager, his teammates, his fans and even his opponents.

As Stengel said about Berra, the eternal Yankee, he was simply “superlative.”

–

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

On Tuesday, 12 Democratic presidential hopefuls took to the stage at Otterbein University near Columbus, Ohio, to pitch their credentials. The dozen are at the very least advocates for loose borders. Ask the candidates their positions on the environment and ecological stability, and the dozen would be on board about the importance of a green America. But the reality, which they prefer to ignore, is that open borders are incompatible with protecting the nation’s environmental future.

The candidates are more than willing to talk about the perceived benefits of Medicare for All, income inequality, gun control and climate change. But record high legal immigration and quasi-open borders, an informal policy that has for decades allowed hundreds of thousands of people to come to the U.S. illegally, remain taboo, even though there are significant negative environmental consequences.

The link between immigration – illegal or legal – and environmental degradation is indisputable. Years ago, before huge illegal immigrant border surges overwhelmed agents, the Government Accountability Office issued a report that outlined the challenges that illegal crossings presented to land management agencies, specifically the Bureau of Indian Affairs, the Bureau of Land Management, the Fish and Wildlife Service, the National Park Service and the Forest Service. The GAO found that rising illegal activity on the border and its federal lands threatens law enforcement officers, visitors and employees, and “damages fragile natural resources.” Human traffickers smuggling aliens into the U.S. have destroyed irreplaceable vegetation and natural species. Lax immigration enforcement has led to blatant disregard for the 1973 Endangered Species Act.

Various amnesties, including the 1986 Immigration Reform and Control Act, and other immigration actions have also blatantly disregarded the National Environmental Protection Act (NEPA), signed into law in 1970, which obligates “any agency considering an action that will affect the environment to analyze and publicize those effects.” In a recent lawsuit, nine plaintiffs brought a lawsuit against the Department of Homeland Security for its crass indifference to NEPA in its immigration policies. The fallout from DHS’s ignoring NEPA has been great, the lawsuit charged. American communities have suffered from poor air quality, urban sprawl, excessive water demands, traffic congestion, school overcrowding, green space loss, including farmlands and forests, and loss of wildlife. These are inarguable conclusions.

Nevertheless, the presidential candidates embrace their commitment to more immigration. In the previous debate, Joe Biden endorsed bringing in an additional 2 million legal immigrants annually to the existing more than 1 million. Assume Biden got his wish. The annual 3 million total will need housing, transportation, education and medical care that will create pressure to develop more land. The 3 million will eventually mushroom into millions more. Once these new immigrants become lawful permanent residents, through chain migration, they can petition to bring family members from abroad. On immigrants’ needs and how to fulfill them once they’re U.S. residents, Biden and other immigration advocates remain mum.

The Pew Research Center, using Census Bureau data, projects that new immigrants and their descendants accounted for a population increase between 1965 and 2015 of 65 million, and will be responsible for a staggering 103 million more residents by 2065. Looking back at historical immigration levels, the comparison is shocking. Between 1776 and 1965, annual immigration averaged 250,000 people per year. Changes to immigration laws in the 1950s, 1960s and 1990 sent the numbers skyrocketing.

No one is calling for an end to immigration. But presidential candidates who claim to have America’s best interests at heart should campaign on returning to the traditional 250,000 immigrants per year. The 750,000 reduction would benefit the environment and the individuals who hope to enjoy nature’s bounties.

–

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

Countless reports, all based on irrefutable federal data, have been published that show immigration non-action has reached crisis level. But no matter how dire the reports’ content may be, meaningful progress that would benefit Americans and immigrants alike crawls along at a sub-glacier pace.

The American Bar Association concluded in a new report the nation’s immigration courts are irreversibly dysfunctional and on the verge of collapse. As of August, the total cases pending exceeded 1 million, an increase of 200,000 cases in a single year. The case load is so overwhelming that the average wait time is 696 days, an injustice to deserving immigrants.

The ABA noted that migrants with valid persecution claims often have to wait years to be granted asylum, but individuals with non-meritorious claims are allowed to remain in the country for long periods, possibly forever.

Many factors contribute to the soaring backlog. Among them are the Obama era’s lax immigration laws, the 70 lower court rulings against President Trump’s efforts to discourage immigration, and a booming U.S. economy that always provides the pull factor from people across the globe to cross illegally.

Slowing the flow of unlawful workers could be ended quickly with mandatory E-Verify that would confirm an individual’s legal right to U.S. employment. But, indefensibly, Congress refuses to bring E-Verify to the House floor for a full vote despite passing through previous Judiciary Committees. E-Verify, which Americans strongly support, has the added advantage that it would open up jobs Americans would do in hospitality, construction, manufacturing and retail. As an extra bonus, E-Verify would discourage identity theft, estimated at several hundred thousand incidents annually.

Yet little tangible progress has occurred. The Illegal Immigration Reform and Immigrant Responsibility Act of 1996 created the Basic Pilot Program, since rebranded as E-Verify. Instead of protecting American workers with E-Verify legislation that would slow illegal hiring, Congress has displayed a quarter of a century of craven indifference. Ironically, every congressional staffer must pass an E-Verify check.

In its June editorial, the Janesville Press Gazette wrote that according to a 2017 Federal Reserve Bank of Dallas study, states that used E-Verify had fewer illegal immigrants living and working there. The editorial urged President Trump to start “touting” it, an especially valuable goal since E-Verify precipitated steep declines in the illegal work force in Alabama, Arizona and Mississippi. Disappointingly, however, President Trump rarely mentions E-Verify.

Returning to the immigration courts, the ABA wrote that the best way to restore order is to transfer adjudications away from the politically charged Executive Branch and relocate them under a newly created Article 1 court in the Judicial Branch where federal court judges would hear them.

Great, but hardly a new idea. Nearly four decades ago, the U.S. Select Commission on Immigration and Refugee Policy came to the same conclusion which was then endorsed by former House Judiciary counsel in his Notre Dame Law School Review. By anyone’s definition, 40 years of inaction on changes that would speed up the badly bogged down immigration court process is discouraging and frustrating.

Recent Gallup polling found that illegal immigration is the top concern of likely voters. Nonetheless, Congress marches to its own drummer, and ignores Americans’ wishes to end the flow, which has been constant since the mid-1980s.

–

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

A recent Economic Policy Institute Study titled “CEO Compensation Has Grown 940 percent since 1978” is a Labor Day lament for American workers whose wages during the same period have only increased a meager 12 percent.

EPI’s analysis found that this exorbitant, unconscionable earnings differential is the major income inequality contributor, and has persisted through equally indifferent Democrat and Republican administrations.

In its analysis, EPI emphasizes that CEOs earn more not because of demand skills, extraordinary productivity or other tangibles, but rather because of their absolute power to set and increase their pay scales. As a result of soaring CEO incomes, and more generally, higher executive compensation, the top 0.1 percent and 1.0 percent income brackets have exploded, while workers in the lower 90 percent of the earnings’ bracket have been left in the cold for more than four decades.

EPI also noted that the economy wouldn’t suffer if CEOs were paid less or taxed more, or if profits were distributed more fairly among all employees.

CEOs have unquestionably taken full advantage of their power to enrich themselves, and suppress lower-echelon employee wages. But another variable that contributes to 40 years of flat wages for hourly workers is the executive suite’s addiction to cheap, foreign labor.

With what has been an unbroken inflow of illegal immigrant and legal guest workers, between 750,000 and 1 million annually, corporations have no incentive to increase domestic workers’ salaries – and they haven’t.

Unwittingly, a New York Times story provided an excellent example of how the immigration variable depresses the domestic salary scale. In “Is Immigration at its Limit? Not according to Employers,” so many immigrants have come to the South Florida area that not enough labor is available to fill all the restaurant, nursing home and retail store jobs.

The story was a typical immigration cheerleading piece that offered the well-worn and misleading talking points. From Douglas Holtz-Eakin, former Congressional Budget Office director and now the immigration advocacy group American Action Forum’s leader: “Without immigration, we shrink as a nation.” Holtz-Eakin added that two ingredients drive GDP growth – the size of the workforce and how efficiently those workers produce goods and services.

Columbia Business School Dean Glenn Hubbard has a better understanding of GDP. Last year. Hubbard said that the goal isn’t GDP, but rather to deliver mass prosperity that makes people feel like they’re all part of the same system instead of being left behind. Hubbard calls his theory the economics of dignity, something that the EPI study confirmed that the U.S. has moved far away from.

Hubbard and others would also be skeptical of how more immigration into South Florida could contribute to mass prosperity. By 2030, the state’s population is projected to increase from today’s 21 million to 26 million – with that unchecked growth comes more traffic, more sprawl, more school overcrowding, higher housing costs and a lower quality of life.

That immigration grows the economy is the age-old, half-truth argument. Sure, more people and more workers create a bigger economy. But immigration does not help the per capita income. Immigration’s benefits accrue to the immigrants and to their employers, and not the general public. The traditional solution to filling job openings is to offer higher wages, not import more cheap labor. With more than 6.1 million people unemployed, that pool should be tapped first.

Congress will soon reconvene, but as it has been for too many legislative sessions, creating a fairer immigration system that protects instead of harms American workers isn’t on the agenda.

–

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