Cagle World

No sooner had the Trump administration announced its intention to impose a new rule that will deny public benefits like food stamps and Medicaid to some legal immigrants, then 13 lawsuit trigger-happy states filed action against the Department of Homeland Security. Immigrants who are likely to rely on welfare benefits for their survival are generally referred to as public charges.

In their complaints, Colorado, Delaware, Illinois, Maryland, Massachusetts, Michigan, Minnesota, Nevada, New Jersey, New Mexico, Rhode Island, Virginia and Washington agreed in principle that the new rule would reverse a decades-old policy of granting affirmative benefits to immigrants, would violate the Immigration and Nationality Act, and is “arbitrary, capricious, and an abuse of discretion.”

New York Attorney General Letitia James, who said her office also would sue, struck an emotional note when she said that eliminating benefits to new permanent residents is “un-American, anti-immigrant, and unlawful…”

But contrary to critics’ high-pitched objections, according to Section 212(a)(4) of the INA, any individual seeking admission to the United States, or applying for a Green Card, is ineligible if s/he is likely to become a “public charge.” But, the guidelines have been ignored for decades and throughout Republican and Democratic administrations. Public charge first appeared on the scene in 1645, when Massachusetts was still a British colony, and European governments paid for their poorest residents to migrate to America. The legislation reflected colonists’ belief that residents were obligated to care for themselves.

Federal immigration laws have reinforced the goal of assuring that new immigrants are self-sufficient. In 1996, President Bill Clinton signed two bills – the Personal Responsibility and Work Opportunity Reconciliation Act and the Illegal Immigration Reform and Immigrant Responsibility Act – that required immigrant petitioners to sign a legally binding support affidavit acknowledging their financial responsibility. The laws also clearly stated that new immigrants would be, for a period of five years after their admission, ineligible for means-tested federal benefits. These standards which immigrants agree to are often ignored, hence the renewed DHS push.

Although mainstream media readers would never know it from the brouhaha, public charge restrictions are a positive for the U.S. With literally millions of foreign nationals eager to migrate to America, public charge policy ensures that those who become permanent residents will contribute.

Public charge should not be perceived as anti-immigrant, but rather a common sense plan that help immigrants thrive in American society. High welfare use creates dependency, a condition that’s often difficult to emerge from. Remember, the Census Bureau predicts that, assuming the immigration status quo remains unchanged, tens of millions more immigrants will arrive by 2060. With their children, immigrants will be the leading population driver. That most immigrants, young and adult, can contribute is important.

New York Times journalist Bret Stephens supports public charge, at least in his broad vision of it. In his July 2018 column, “Democratic Socialist is Dem Doom,” Stephens wrote that social democracy falls apart on the contradiction between “nearly unlimited government largess and nearly unlimited immigration.” Several years ago, Nobel Prize-winning economist Milton Friedman reached the same, still-true-today, conclusion as Stephens: “It’s just obvious you can’t have free immigration and a welfare state.”

Immigration must work for immigrants and Americans. The public charge rule helps both reach that important and worthy objective.

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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].

Shortly before Congress adjourned for its summer break, what it aggrandizingly likes to refer to as “constituent work days,” the House of Representatives passed a horrible immigration bill.

Rep. Zoe Lofgren (D-Calif.), who never met a bill to expand the foreign-born labor pool at American workers’ expense she didn’t lovingly embrace, championed the Fairness for High-Skilled Immigrants Act, urging her colleagues to vote for the bill which she claimed would make a “modest, but important change to our immigration laws.”

In short, the bill would prioritize employment-based Green Cards nationals from one country – India. Over the next decade, and assuming the bill which will end country caps becomes law, an estimated 600,000 Indian nationals will receive their Green Cards. Other nationals hoping to work in the U.S. will be shut out. Lofgren and other supporters argue that the “fairness” from the bill’s title is required because of the huge backlog of Indians awaiting their Green Cards.

But why is the backlog so long for India? The H-1B visa, originally temporary for three years with a quasi-automatic three-year renewal, is now dual intent, meaning that the visa offers the path to a Green Card. For a long-term perspective on how the H-1B has changed over the decades, in the early 1990s, “60 Minutes” correspondent Lesley Stahl in her segment titled “North of the Border” laughed out loud at the suggestion that a six-year visa could be considered temporary. But now the H-1B all but guarantees permanent residency. And Indian multinationals, such as Infosys, Tata and Wipro, have long dominated the H-1B visa.

When Congress returns after Labor Day, the Senate will take up S. 386. In the Upper Chamber, the bill will receive more resistance, although not necessarily enough to kill it. The bill, originally sponsored by senators Mike Lee (R-Utah) and Kamala Harris (D-Calif.), has 34 cosponsors, including 19 Republicans. The 34 are cravenly indifferent to the U.S. job loss that Americans have suffered because of the harmful H-1B. Not only has cheap labor displaced Americans from their well-paid jobs, they have had to suffer the indignity of training their less-qualified replacements, and then have to try to put their lives back together, no small task for someone who is unemployed and middle age in a country where it now seems acceptable to openly discriminate against those over the age of 50.

Advocates on both sides of the bill are gearing up for an intense fight once Congress reconvenes. The pro side is extraordinarily well-funded, and plugged in, while the groups fighting to protect U.S. workers are counting on a grassroots uprising, the kind that defeated the 2013 “Gang of Eight” amnesty and employment-based visa giveaway.

While advocates that hope to defeat the misnamed bill have focused their attention almost exclusively on retaining the country cap guidelines, a larger threat looms. Immigration Voice, one the bills wealthy advocates, is considering expanding its goal to include the tens of thousands of Chinese nationals also in line for their Green Cards.

A Washington Examiner op-ed supported Senator Rand Paul’s radical bill, the BELIEVE Act, to more than double employment-based visas. This is an American job-busting idea so far off the rails that it’s impossible to digest. Paul proposes that the total number of employment-based visas allotted increase to 270,000 from 140,000, and would also grant work permission to foreign nationals’ spouses and their teenage children.

For American workers, the post-Labor Day legislative session represents crunch time; it’s well-heeled lobbyists and their compliant congressional friends versus citizens who repeatedly have expressed a desire for less immigration.

The outcome is uncertain, but crucial to the nation’s future.

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

Citing irreconcilable differences, I have filed for divorce from Major League Baseball. Rob Manfred, baseball’s chief bean counter, thinks fans want more excitement, e.g., more home runs, and shorter games, automatic intentional walks and, under consideration, starting extra-inning games with a baserunner on second. But I’m from the era when baseball was considered the thinking man’s game ‒ a walk is as good as a hit, the hit and run was a key part of a manager’s strategy, and the suicide squeeze was an effective way to score a run.

My amicable divorce from baseball saddens me. For more than six decades, baseball and I had a perfectly loving relationship. I bought tickets and the league’s made-in-China junk. In turn, baseball provided me with reliable entertainment. I devoured the morning-after box scores. But gradually we drifted apart. I’ve opposed every bureaucratic-imposed change in baseball since the 1961 expansion.

As with every teetering relationship, a point of no return arrives that kills the once passionate romance. For baseball and me, that moment was the 2019 Home Run Derby. No doubt I’m missing something, but I don’t get the fascination. A citizen lobs a cookie into the batter’s pre-identified wheelhouse. Then, the batter hits a jacked-up ball 425 feet, and the awestruck crowd gasps. Suddenly, I saw the light. Manfred’s vision for baseball’s future is that every game will be a modified home run derby.

If Manfred wants more home runs, he’ll get them. MLB owns Rawlings, the leading baseball manufacturer. No need to summon Sherlock Holmes to figure out how in 2019 MLB is on a record-breaking home run pace. The June 10 Diamondbacks’ 13-8 win over the Phillies that featured 13 homers may be Manfred’s ideal, but to most it’s boring. As Justin Verlander said about Manfred’s foolish insistence that the ball isn’t jacked, fans aren’t stupid.

For years, I’ve been telling friends that given a choice between spending five hours and a small fortune at an MLB game or staying home with my baseball history books, I’ll take the latter every time. As good luck would have it, an outstanding book that took me back to my childhood, and the old Pacific Coast league, has just been published, “Left on Base in the Bush Leagues,” authored by veteran sportswriter Gaylon H. White.

In those days, the PCL had eight teams: the Hollywood Stars, Los Angeles Angels, San Diego Padres, San Francisco Seals, Oakland Oaks, San Diego Padres, Seattle Rainiers and Portland Beavers. From those eight squads came many outstanding major league players like Ted Williams, Joe DiMaggio, Luke Easter, Billy Martin, Bill Mazeroski and others less well known, but still solid.

White has written a fascinating account of a better time in baseball, the minor leagues during the 1950s and the 1960s where any town that was big enough to have a bank was large enough to have a ball club. During the minor league’s heyday, there were 59 leagues that fielded a total of 464 teams.

My team back in the 1950s was the Hollywood Stars, so called because ownership consisted of a silver screen syndicate of Tinseltown personalities that loved baseball. An evening spent at Gilmore Field, the Stars’ home ballpark, was certain to include a Clark Gable, Natalie Wood or Gregory Peck sighting.

The stars were accessible and exchanged friendly words with the fans. Then, there was the 1955 day when Jayne Mansfield was crowned Miss Hollywood Stars. When a barely clad Miss Mansfield emerged from the dugout, the crowd gasped in unison. But rough and tumble baseball was always the main attraction, and to the fans’ delight, as many as 200 games each season were played up and down the West Coast with visiting teams staying in town for a week.

For fans that missed out on minor league baseball’s magic, White’s book will fill you in. For fans like me who were part of the scene, “Left on Base in the Bush Leagues” is a happy reminder of baseball’s better days.

“Left on Base in the Bush Leagues,” written by veteran sportswriter Gaylon H. White, is available at Amazon.com and Rowman.com.

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

Democratic presidential candidates have unanimously embraced the $15 federal minimum wage. House Speaker Nancy Pelosi threw her support behind the wage hike that would more than double the current $7.25 rate. Pelosi claims that not only would the wage increase give Americans more money in their paycheck, but would also boost the gross domestic product. When people have more purchasing power, they’ll spend more, and, predicted Pelosi, the GDP will therefore rise.

But a far more credible economic source than Pelosi made the opposite calculation. The Congressional Budget Office calculated that overall the $15 hourly wage would “would reduce the nation’s output slightly.” The CBO found that as many as 27 million workers, assuming they remained employed, could benefit. On the other hand, up to 3.7 million workers might lose their jobs as employers respond to higher overhead. Goods and services costs to consumers would inevitably rise.

That’s the thing about the $15 minimum wage hype – only one side of the story is told. A wage increase won’t be effective if employers don’t hire or if they dramatically reduce their hourly payrolls to adjust for the steep bump.

Moreover, the $15 wage is an artificial solution to increasing Americans’ paychecks. The lasting correction is to tighten the labor pool. The federal government can tighten the employment market in two ways: first, reduce the 1 million-plus legal immigrants who, as employment-authorized lawful permanent residents, enter the labor force annually. Further, the government could reduce the roughly 750,000 temporary guest workers that come to the U.S. to perform an assortment of jobs that, for the most part, Americans would do, assuming a fair wage. The second tightening variable, and more immediate way to drive up wages, is to use E-Verify, the online program that ensures only legally authorized workers hold U.S. jobs.

To analyze how large influxes of immigrant workers, in this case, construction workers, impact the market, the Los Angeles Times studied the Southern California building trade. The Times wrote that over a few decades, construction workers went from being majority union, and majority U.S.-born, to majority immigrant. In the article conclusion, journalist Natalie Kitroeff wrote, “Nonunion shops made aggressive inroads into home building with workers who had less experience. The result: Today slightly more than 1 in 10 construction workers are in a union, compared with 4 in 10 in the 1970s… an influx of immigrants who would work for less made it easier for builders to quickly shift to a nonunion labor force…” A footnote: in a relatively short time, immigration played a leading role in eliminating solid, blue-collar United Brotherhood of Carpenters jobs that paid middle-class wages, offered health care, paid vacations and pensions.

But since major immigration reductions are not in the immediate future, the government could help by passing mandatory E-Verify. If passed, the program that would prevent unscrupulous employers from hiring illegal aliens and slow the flow of unlawful job-seeking foreign nationals, once the word was out. A tighter labor market results in an increase in wages for U.S. workers.

E-Verify has the overwhelming support of Americans and of companies like Costco that have used it for years. Early this year, a Houston Chronicle editorial made the interesting point that E-Verify would not only help legally present workers keep jobs, but also would protect exploited illegal immigrant workers from low pay and harsh conditions that, because of deportation fears, they’re afraid to report. With E-Verify, the onus is on employers to hire only legal workers.

For all the ballyhoo about the $15 minimum wage, nothing is ever said about tightening the labor market through lower immigration or mandating E-Verify, two solutions that would help the U.S. pay rate, still stuck at 1970 levels, to increase through normal market functions.

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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 H-1B visa that allows U.S. employers to temporarily employ foreign workers in specialty occupations typically is associated with tech industry use. But the visa can have more far-reaching applications, as recent Capitol Hill actions showed. With the H-1B visas of 25 Baltimore teachers expiring, five Democratic members from the Maryland congressional delegation began to push for extensions.

The teachers’ H-1B history and the advocacy on their behalf to have them remain in the U.S. are familiar. They came to the U.S. years ago, 23 from the Philippines and two from Jamaica, as part of an effort to fill alleged job shortages in teaching slots for math, science and special education. According to a letter the Maryland teachers sent to then-Labor Secretary Alex Acosta, the teachers have been in the U.S. for between eight and 12 years, are dedicated and have now built lives in the U.S.

Let’s allow that the foreign-born teachers are dedicated professionals and that returning home after extended U.S. stays might be disruptive. At the same time, let’s reject the intellectually insulting suggestion that no qualified American math and science instructors are available on the East Coast who might want Baltimore teaching positions.

Teaching in Baltimore and other major cities is no doubt challenging. Among the drawbacks are that teachers have to cope with overcrowded, frequently unruly classrooms and must deal with largely unsympathetic parents, principals and state education department bureaucrats.

Since eliminating the teaching profession’s negatives is impossible, the other variable to analyze in an effort to attract more local candidates is wages which could be adjusted upward so that they’re more consistent with the demands of the jobs. The average starting salary for Maryland teachers is $44,675, which will net about $36,600 or about $3,000 monthly.

Assuming Maryland’s congressional representatives are sincere about finding a permanent solution to their teacher shortage, the place to begin would be increasing salaries and not importing more foreign-born instructors. For years, school districts in California, Texas and other states have been misusing the H-1B visa to displace higher salaried, more experienced teachers and also remove teaching opportunities for young, college graduates who have trained to be teachers.

The pattern for H-1B teachers is the same as for Silicon Valley tech workers ‒ the H-1B visa program expands the pool of young, cheaper workers with mostly basic skills and legally displaces Americans, often experienced workers over age 35, with guest workers who earn lower wages, and are tied to the employers who hold their visas.

The H-1B program’s dual intent allows employers to sponsor workers for Green Cards, which extends the period the worker is tied to the employer – indentured servitude 21st century style. It also creates long backlogs of foreign guest workers who hope to permanently resettle in the U.S. Immigrants are allowed to bring their spouses on H-4 visas, a category that includes employment authorization, thanks to an executive order signed by former President Obama.

Whether the profession is tech or teaching, no shortage of potential workers exists. The issue is one of wages. Steadily declining teacher pay has led to more strikes, and more disruption in students’ education, the last thing that American kids need. The public perceives teachers’ wages as so inadequate that 73 percent of community residents, nationally, would support a walk out.

But before significant teacher wage hikes sweep the nation, more H-1B instructors might be in U.S. classrooms. The push for more visas is relentless, no matter how much evidence shows that employees are available in all the labor categories.

Before he left office, U.S. Customs and Immigration Services Director Francis Cissna said he hoped to see the day when the federal government stops issuing employment-based visas. Cissna didn’t serve long enough to realize that accomplishment, but his goal remains one 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].

During a recent meeting with the Department of Homeland Security, the State Department and about 20 other representatives from agencies involved in immigration, the Trump administration floated the idea of zero refugees in 2020.

Advocates immediately pushed back against the proposal, but the White House insisted that ever-fewer admissions is consistent with national security, and also in line with the downward resettlement trend. In 2017, 53,716 refugees were admitted, and 22,491 in 2018, according to Refugee Processing Center data, with 21,260 refugees admitted through June 30 of this year.

The president determines and approves the refugee cap and announces it prior to the new fiscal year’s start, October 1. That means more than two months for intense partisan wrangling, a period that would be better used now to discuss how refugee resettlement became the most abused federal program in Washington, D.C. (that’s saying something) and how immediately it needs to be overhauled.

In 2017, the nonpartisan Government Accountability Office issued a report which found that while the State Department and the U.N. High Commissioner for Refugees have worked toward a more effective refugee processing system, much remains undone.

But the unaddressed refugee resettlement question, which applies to all other immigration programs, is how are U.S. citizens affected, specifically their employment prospects? As well, how do these programs impact America’s population growth, already headed to a total of more than 400 million people by 2060?

With refugee resettlement, first, refugees receive immediate work authorization, a good thing for them since integration into mainstream society is a desirable goal that employment will accelerate. But for an unemployed or displaced American job seeker, more competition represents another hurdle, and many corporations have pledged to hire more refugees.

Second, on population growth, family reunification is a top refugee resettlement priority. Under the UNHCR/USA resettlement program, families are a broad category that includes the spouses, unmarried children under age 21, and the parents of the refugees requesting reunification. Chain migration will eventually allow more family categories like siblings, cousins and others admission. A Princeton University chain migration study learned that each lawful permanent resident petitions about 3.45 family members to come to the U.S.

Princeton’s research concluded that chain migration is the biggest immigration driver that leads to higher population.

Whether the refugee resettlement totals are the 110,000 annually that President Obama endorsed or President Trump’s current 30,000 limit, the number represents only an infinitesimal fraction of the world’s estimated 70 million displaced persons. The goal should be to help as many millions as possible, and not merely the lucky handful that the UNHCR selects for resettlement.

Toward that end, proposals have been put forward that could help 12 refugees live safely in camps near their home countries for about the same cost as resettling one refugee in the U.S. This approach is called “proximity help,” and Oxford University scholars Alexander Betts and Paul Collier refer to it as a way to help refugees help themselves.

Historically, immigration is always about more. Advocates insist that the nation urgently needs more workers on H-1B high-skilled labor visas as well as more low-skilled laborers on H-2A and H-2B visas. More employment-based visas are always presented in the best possible light. More welcoming asylum and refugee admission laws are positives, we’re told.

But often, a pause in the status quo is required to provide time to re-evaluate and improve. U.S. refugee 2020 admissions are unlikely to decline to zero. But taking a more comprehensive look at what the U.S. has done and should do going forward to best assist refugees would be a valuable exercise.

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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].

Summers come and go. And some are more memorable than others – better weather, extraordinary family road trips or exciting new adventures.

But for decades, all summers have one sorry common denominator – the continuation of the State Department’s Summer Work Travel (SWT) program. Despite compelling, irrefutable evidence that SWT harms job prospects for young American workers, the program keeps on ticking. When those young U.S. workers lose employment opportunities to international students, they miss out on the chance to earn money they could use to pay college tuition, develop on-the-job experience or pay down their debt load.

In brief, here’s how the decades-old SWT program works. The State Department, under the guise of initiating valuable cultural exchange between international nations and the U.S., provides J-1 visas to young foreign nationals. The J-1 visas provide employment authorization. So, right off the bat, the program is problematic. The more international kids who compete for a relatively small pool of summer jobs, the more difficult it becomes for U.S. youths to find jobs – Economics 101, supply and demand.

But where the equation gets completely thrown out of whack is when an employer considers that his J-1 workers are not subject to a minimum wage requirement and that he isn’t legally obligated to pay their Social Security, Medicare, and federal and state unemployment taxes. Nonpayment of these taxes that would apply to Americans is an employer bonanza. And little (if any) federal oversight of the SWT has allowed unscrupulous employers to work their international employees’ fingers to the proverbial bone without overtime or regard for their personal safety.

The list of J-1 abusers is long, and ranges from big corporations like Hershey to small Myrtle Beach tourist joints. The international students have not only been cheated out of their rightful wages, but the promised comfortable accommodations have not been delivered. Instead, the J-1s, thousands of miles away from their Eastern European, South Asian, Central American and Caribbean homes, are often housed in inadequate, dangerous apartments or cheap motels.

The latest SWT bad actor, Grand America Hotels & Resorts, has a shameful history of hiring and exploiting foreign labor. In 2014, Grand America paid a $2 million fine to the Department of Homeland Security for employing illegal immigrants who used fake names and falsified documents to get their jobs. An employer like Great America, with its documented criminal record of violating U.S. employment laws, should, by definition, be excluded from the SWT program. But, as mentioned earlier, the State Department doesn’t concern itself with SWT oversight.

To the surprise of no immigration analyst who has studied the SWT’s disgraceful pattern for years, when the State Department allowed Grand America to participate in the so-called foreign exchange program, one of its workers reported in a federal lawsuit filed against the company that he and others were routinely plied with energy stimulants so they could work 16-hour shifts. The maximum work week allowed under SWT guidelines is 32 hours.

In 2017, The Wall Street Journal reported that President Trump’s administration was considering reducing the number of visas issued under SWT. Two years later, the same old, same old remains the status quo even though the SWT could be quickly ended, and no one would miss it. The winners are the cheap labor-addicted businesses who cry foul and predict bankruptcy whenever their sources of pliant workers are threatened. Other winners include the unscrupulous placement agencies that charge thousands of dollars in fees to nae¯ve international youths, and make promises they can’t meet.

The losers are the unsuspecting foreign workers who anticipate a cultural experience but get instead a rude awakening into quasi-slave labor. Also on the short end are U.S. students who want to work, and foolishly expect that the federal government will protect their best interests.

Unfortunately, the government has proved time and again that it can’t develop a visa system that works on Americans’ behalf or end a program like the SWT that it knows is a dismal failure.

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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].

A Harvard University Center for American Political Studies/Harris Poll showed that immigration is now voters’ top concern, surpassing health care as the nation’s No. 1 issue. By a 42-38 margin, registered voters selected immigration as the major issue. Given that stories from and about the porous southwest border have dominated the news cycle for months, the poll’s finding aren’t surprising. Mark Penn, the poll’s co-director, said that as the border crisis’ “full nature” became evident, voters’ awareness increased correspondingly.

The Harris Poll results have apparently not reached the Swamp, where congressional Democrats remain locked in a fierce battle to outdo each other in efforts to encourage more illegal immigration and promote more amnesty seekers whose claims may be invalid. Among the bad ideas immigration advocates irresponsibly floated are decriminalizing illegal entry and free comprehensive health care for residents regardless of their immigration status. The obvious consequences of such lax policies would be to incentivize illegal immigration to levels never before seen or even imagined.

The current record for preposterous pandering by immigration extremists – certain to be short-lived – goes to New Jersey Sen. Cory Booker. The junior senator who aspires to be the 2020 Democrat candidate for the White House, polling at less than 5 percent, traveled to Mexico to help five women who had been returned to their native country to file asylum claims. Border conditions are bad enough without dangling yet more carrots in front of a global population anxious to take advantage of what is widely known. That is: The U.S. immigration system is in chaos due to political extremism that allows anyone who gets to and across the border to stay.

In his insightful, sobering Atlantic article, “America’s Asylum System Is Profoundly Broken,” writer David Frum painfully spelled out the border challenges, noting the huge numbers of people entering our country. In May 2019, 133,000 aliens were apprehended on the southwest border, and, barring a significant change, the likely 2019 fiscal year total will exceed 1 million.

The prospective asylees come from dozens of nations. No distance is too far to travel, and no sum too great to take advantage of the loophole-filled U.S. immigration laws that will eventually lead to lawful permanent residency, citizenship and work authorization. A smuggler’s going rate to transport Central American aliens to the U.S. border is thousands of dollars.

With the human flood, stateside charitable organizations that pledged to help a recent 300-stong Central African caravan quickly ran out of money. In San Antonio, a destination preferred by Central Americans and Africans, the city and various charities spent more than $600,000 in just a few months. But with no end in sight to the border surge, cities like San Antonio that want to help are trapped between a rock and a hard place. The compassion is there, but the money isn’t.

Lost in the well-intended rush to help the African migrants are San Antonio’s struggling residents. San Antonio is ranked among the nation’s poorest cities, and has nearly twice the poverty rate of Washington, D.C. The San Antonio mayor said that the expectation with the 2019 budget is to bring San Antonio’s poorest neighborhoods up to par with other, more well-served parts of town. But with so much money going toward needy and unanticipated foreign-born asylees, San Antonio’s poor, both citizens and immigrants, are unlikely to get much of a financial boost.

To be optimistic about border conditions may be foolhardy. After The Atlantic published Frum’s article, U.S. Customs and Border Protection, Del Rio, Texas, sector, announced that since June 10, more than 1,000 Haitian nationals, mostly family units, had been arrested. Prior to June 10, the Del Rio sector had arrested only 17 Haitian nationals during the entire fiscal year. Overall, Del Rio reported a doubling in arrests to 40,000 over the prior fiscal year. More than 80 percent of those arrested are from countries other than Mexico.

Congress must recognize that the border tragedy isn’t a partisan issue, and that innocent people are being lured to the U.S. where, in most cases, municipalities can’t provide adequate care. Closing the immigration law loopholes, which a cooperative Congress could do, would slow the flow, a result that would keep migrants from making the dangerous journey to the U.S. and ensure that scarce funding first be directed to America’s poor.

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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].

Time was, baseball bugs circled Independence Day as a milestone on their calendars.

First, baseball’s longstanding axiom held that the team in first place on July 4 was the likely pennant winner. Second, July 4 offered fans a host of doubleheaders – two games played one immediately following the other for the price of a single admission. On Independence Day 1956, the New York Yankees took on the Boston Red Sox. That afternoon, fans watched the year’s Most Valuable Player, Mickey Mantle, three-time MVP Yogi Berra, and the best hitter who ever lived, Ted Williams, all Hall of Famers. Berra, by the way, caught both ends of the double dip, just as he did 117 times without complaint during his storied career.

Those were the days of two leagues and 16 teams. Today, there are 30 teams, six leagues and multiple playoff levels. With so many games played, the July 4 barometer no longer holds true. And owners long-ago realized that offering two games for the price of one was financial folly. Now, if cancellations force make-up doubleheaders, fans have to endure the insulting day-night split admission.

When owners, players and their union conspired to eliminate regularly scheduled doubleheaders, they also killed off the traditional holiday rivalries that sparked such passion among their devotees. Baseball has new, less compelling traditions – the opener, the four-inning start, instant replay, the Google All Star ballot, and games played overseas in Tokyo and London to grow the $10 billion MLB internationally. Selling more caps and t-shirts abroad is a new and potentially unlimited revenue source.

Harken back to what was perhaps baseball’s all-time greatest, most intense holiday rivalry that dates back to 1867 and intensified after 1902 – the American Association’s AAA Minneapolis Millers versus the St. Paul Saints. On the days that led up to those holiday twin bills played on Memorial Day, Independence Day and Labor Day, local residents spoke of little else. Crop prices, the summer weather and U.S. Sen. Hubert Humphrey’s speeches paled in significance to passionate arguments about upcoming big games.

The Millers and the Saints often played against each other 22 times. But the jewels were those holiday doubleheaders. The opening morning game would be played in one city, and the afternoon contest in the other. Cranks, as they were called in the early 20th century, walked across the bridge over the Mississippi River that connected St. Paul and Minneapolis, or they took public transportation. The games were the thing, and fans would not be denied.

Although technically minor league franchises, fans of the Millers and Saints saw outstanding baseball. Among the Millers who passed through Minneapolis were future Hall of Fame superstars Ted Williams, Willie Mays and Hoyt Wilhelm. Only 19 when he joined the Millers in 1938, Williams won the American Association Triple Crown. Williams also led in walks, total bases and runs scored. For the year, Williams hit .366, slugged 43 home runs, knocked in 142 runs, hit 30 doubles, nine triples, and drew 114 free passes.

As for the Saints, in back-to-back 1947 and 1948 seasons, Brooklyn Dodger three-time MVP Roy Campanella broke the American Association’s color line, and Edwin “Duke” Snider patrolled the St. Paul outfield. Duke hit .316 and slugged 12 round trippers in just 66 games. For his part, Campy in only 35 games, batted .325, slammed 13 homers, and drove in 39 runs, forcing the struggling Brooklyn Dodgers to recall him. Campy’s bat prowess was good news for Verlene Price Booker’s extended family of 15. Each homer that Campy slugged won him a free case of Wheaties from Minneapolis-based General Mills. Campy donated his winnings to the Booker family.

In 1960, Washington Senators’ owner Calvin Griffith received MLB’s approval to move his franchise to Minneapolis where in 1961 the team became the Twins.

Sadly, big league baseball’s arrival in the Twin Cities marked the end of the historic, decades-long Millers-Saints intense competition that thrilled countless thousands. But the Saints-Millers games live on as an important part of baseball and America’s history.

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

Pinch me! I must be dreaming. After years of displacing U.S. tech workers, the Optional Practical Training (OPT) program has finally appeared on Congress’ radar.

OPT has gobbled up U.S. jobs at an alarming rate and is now larger than the notorious H-1B visa program, created as part of the Immigration Act of 1990, that grants 85,000 employment-based visas to foreign nationals each year even though there’s an abundance of skilled American workers available.

OPT has accounted for more than 200,000 foreign students remaining in the U.S. to work in each of the last few years.Overall, between 2008 and 2016, OPT workers increased by 400 percent. It’s important to know that Congress never approved OPT, and the program exists solely through regulation.

The abused OPT evolved from the F-1 student visa which originally granted overseas students permission to study in the U.S. The government’s original intention was that students, after completing their academic curriculum and training, would return home to use newly acquired education and skills for the betterment of their homelands.

Over the years, the government made adjustments. But the haymaker punch as far as U.S. workers are concerned came at a Washington, D.C., cocktail party of elites. Over drinks, Microsoft’s Bill Gates cried to then-Department of Homeland Security Secretary Michael Chertoff that his company, and other multibillion-dollar tech corporations, needed more H-1Bs but were unable to sway Congress. Tech lobbyists and DHS then concocted a scheme that eventually evolved into OPT for students with science, technology, engineering and math degrees (STEM) receiving work permission for up to the program’s current 42-month level. An extra bonus for craven employers is that unlike H-1B visas, OPT has no numerical cap and no government oversight.

An 11-year-old lawsuit challenging OPT is in a circular pattern going nowhere. Candidate Trump indicated an interest in squelching OPT, but as president his interest has dimmed. Enter Arizona congressman Paul Gosar, who is introducing legislation to end the job-killing, corporate enriching OPT. Gosar also is urging President Trump to sign an executive order that would terminate OPT. In his no-nonsense letter to President Trump, Gosar wrote that the media and corporations have promoted the false narrative that no qualified U.S. workers are available.

Bloomberg Law reporter Laura Francis provided readers with valuable insights into why employers addicted to cheap labor covet OPT workers, reporting that employers get a “15.3 percent tax discount for hiring OPT workers instead of U.S. workers.” Among those that have profited the most by spurning Americans in favor of international students are the usual suspects: Amazon (3,655), Intel (1,707), Google (1,501), Microsoft (1,022), Facebook (798) and IBM (633) were in 2017 top OPT employers. DHS data showed that Amazon earned nearly $25 million in tax breaks for hiring foreign nationals instead of U.S. tech workers.

Deconstructing how OPT grew into the job-eating monster it’s become begins with that tony cocktail party. One of the world’s richest men, Gates, whose net worth then exceeded $50 billion, approached one of the federal government’s most powerful officials, Chertoff, and they concocted a scheme to present to the Obama administration, the most anti-American worker presidency in U.S. history. The co-conspirators’ strategy was simple and successful – proceed in stealth, keep the public mired in darkness and, at all costs, keep Congress out of it.

With luck, Gosar’s intervention will encourage President Trump to take long-overdue action, and end OPT.

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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].