Cagle World

Summer is half over which means that many people have taken their traditional driving vacation, and likely encountered oppressive traffic. But even for those whose road trips have just been to the local supermarket this summer, odds are excellent that drivers have encountered mind-boggling, frustrating traffic jams.

Road construction, off-ramp closures and more drivers on the roads have slowed traffic to the point where the prudent motorist adds a 50 percent variable to his travel time – the trip that used to take 30 minutes may now takes at least 45 minutes, and maybe even an hour, and that doesn’t include driving in circles looking for parking.

Sometimes there flat out just isn’t any parking. At Yosemite National Park, tourists pay a $30 entrance fee, then endure traffic jams, honking horns, delays of up to three hours as they search, often in vain, for a parking space – hardly the vacation they had in mind. Park officials report that road rage and accidents at Yosemite are up.

In Colorado, traffic congestion has driven residents out of the state to which they moved seeking a more tranquil way of life. On their way out of the state, Coloradoans bemoan how overpopulation has wrecked the Rocky Mountain vista, destroyed the once pristine rivers and plowed under productive farmland.

And in middle Tennessee, as 30,000 new residents move into the area each year, the traffic is described as nightmarish, and the cause of a sharp increase in automobile accidents during the last five years. Nashville along with other urban sprawl-effected metropolises like Oklahoma City; Birmingham, Ala.; Richmond, Va., and Raleigh, N.C. are, to the surprise of many, among the most congested, while San Francisco, Los Angeles, Houston and Atlanta are further down the list.

Local legislators in Tennessee have embarked on a costly but Pollyannaish $8.6 billion, 25-year plan that they hope will alleviate congestion. However, the harsh reality is that no transportation plan can successfully accommodate perpetual growth. The same failure in logic applies nationwide and is reflected in federal immigration policy. According to U.S. Census Bureau data, during 2014 and 2015, 3.1 million legal and illegal immigrants settled in the United States, a 39 percent increase over the two prior years.

Immigration is – and has been for years – an explosive, toxic domestic political hot potato. But it’s indisputable that immigration is the major population growth accelerant. Immigration, births to immigrants and lawful permanent residents that petition for their family to join them will push the U.S. population from 328 million today to an estimated 438 million by 2050.

Those millions of new arrivals will need transportation. In its research report on traffic, the Brookings Institute wrote that America’s vehicle population has been increasing even faster than its human population. From 1980 to 2000, 1.2 more automotive vehicles were added to the vehicle population of the U.S. for every 1 person added to the human population. Brookings concluded that because of increases in cars and the number of drivers, “prospects for reducing peak-hour traffic congestion in the future are dim indeed.”

Disappointingly, Brookings didn’t mention the immigration variable. Immigration levels aren’t set in stone, and Congress can and should adjust them to minimize even more overcrowding. Although immigration at its existing rate is diminishing the qualify of life for most average Americans, lowering the total number of immigrants has been a non-starter in Congress to date.

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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 as troubling an immigration story as anyone will read this summer, between December 2017 and April 2018, U.S. Border Patrol and other immigration officials detained nearly 600 pregnant illegal aliens. All hope to give birth to children who will automatically be granted the world’s most coveted and cherished prize, United States citizenship.

Atop most analysts’ immigration grievance lists would be anchor baby citizenship, the process through which any child born on U.S. soil automatically receives U.S. citizenship. Over the decades that birthright citizenship has been adopted as common practice, even though the Supreme Court has never ruled on its legitimacy, tens of thousands of new American citizens have been born.

The birth tourism industry adds another ugly layer to the citizenship scam. The infants’ mothers, several months pregnant, enter the U.S. legally, but deceitfully, on a temporary tourist visa. Along the way, they lie to immigration officials about the true purpose of their travel which is not to go mall shopping as they claim. Instead, their travel goal is, specifically and excluding all else, to give birth to a U.S. citizen child.

Lying to immigration officials, called willful misrepresentation, and falsifying facts on an immigration document are crimes that can result in inadmissibility and being banned from the U.S. for up to 10 years. They may carry financial penalties too. The mothers and their spouses who fund the extravagant journey, mostly from China to California, show contempt for U.S. law.

But since birth tourism abuses are rarely prosecuted, foreign nationals continue to arrive with impunity. Maybe a gullible Congress has applied the “Keep Families Together” mantra to birth tourism, a troubling but not farfetched probability. Over the last several Congresses, numerous well-intended bills have been drafted which would require that for a newborn to become a citizen at least one parent must be a citizen, a lawful permanent resident or a military enrollee. The bills received little floor debate and only a handful of votes.

The dire consequences of Congress’ winking at anchor baby citizenship grow graver daily. According to the Congressional Budget Office, and based on data compiled from the Department of Homeland Security and other immigration offices, it estimates that about 4.5 million U.S. citizens, anchor babies, under the age of 18 have at least one inadmissible or deportable parent.

The 4.5 million anchor babies estimate exceeds the four million American children born every year. In the next decade, the CBO projects that there will be at least another 600,000 anchor babies, which would put the anchor baby population on track to exceed annual American births – assuming a stable U.S. birthrate – by more than one million anchor babies. Birthright citizenship is a huge illegal immigration lure.

Furthermore, CBO’s projection excludes the likely millions of anchor babies over the age of 18, and anchor babies living overseas with their deported foreign parents, but who nevertheless retain U.S. citizenship.

Even retired Sen. Harry Reid (D-NV) recognized the ruinous anchor baby effect. In 1993, Reid, then a bastion of immigration enforcement, said about birthright citizenship: “No sane country would do that… .you break our laws by entering this country without permission and give birth to a child, we reward that child with U.S. citizenship, and guarantee full access to all public and social services this society provides – and that’s a lot of services.”

An immigration do-nothing Congress lets the anchor baby abuse roll on even though demographers predict that it, along with legal immigration and immigrants’ children, will add 103 million to the U.S. population from 2015 to 2065.

Disregarding the anchor baby folly only increases the problem’s magnitude, and will lead to yet more unsustainable population growth.

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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].

Calls to abolish Immigration and Customs Enforcement began as whispers, but today are a lion’s-roar demand, at least among illegal immigration advocates and their congressional allies. Early on, the loudest end-ICE voices were the usual suspects, with California Senators Dianne Feinstein and her junior colleague, Kamala Harris, leading the pack. Massachusetts Sen. Elizabeth Warren, who labeled ICE “ugly and wrong,” soon joined the fray.

Last month, Feinstein introduced a bill that would essentially ban arresting any prospective illegal alien who is within 100 miles of the border. Then, on cue, the House dropped its own anti-ICE legislation.

How seriously Americans should take the bravado was in question until leading 2020 Democratic presidential candidate and sitting New York Sen. Kirsten Gillibrand also jumped on the abolish-ICE bandwagon, and called the agency a “deportation force.” Once highly visible presidential hopefuls start sabre rattling, the hour to take the abolish ICE movement seriously is at hand.

What’s unclear is how much thought the anti-ICE faction has put into their position. First, if “abolish ICE” is a rally cry for mid-term and 2020 elections, it’s a bad strategy. The idea is unpopular among mainstream voters.

And second, eliminating ICE would mean ending the internal enforcement process that allows for the removal of thousands of criminals who break U.S. laws once they cross the U.S. northern and southern borders, or otherwise illegally enter the country. Moreover, shutting down ICE would encourage more illegal immigration, and among other foibles, would expose working and unemployed Americans to more foreign-born job competition.

Non-enforcement proponents claim that humanitarian concerns motivate them. But, as is often the case, little concern is shown toward the many victims of non-enforcement, the average, vulnerable citizens and illegal immigrants who the emboldened aliens would target.

While the specifics regarding the end-ICE campaign are not being offered and the movement is, at this embryonic stage, still a one-liner, a few common goals have surfaced, all of them nation-busters.

The fundamental rough outline is that any foreign national who alleges that he’s exposed to gang threats, for example, or she’s a domestic violence victim, would be granted asylum, given a lifetime work permit, eventual citizenship and voting privileges. Vacationers would be able to overstay their visas without penalty, take U.S. jobs and remain indefinitely. Finally, longstanding illegal immigrants would be given quasi-automatic amnesty and lawful permanent residency, as well as the affirmative benefits that accompany legal status.

Some of the more prudent in the abolish-ICE camp are hedging their bets as they realize how extreme their position is. Their slightly more toned-down version, which may or may not be sincere, tries to make the point that ICE wouldn’t be eliminated but that a more forgiving agency would replace the current version. But absent from immigration advocates’ modified talking points is any mention of removal except for convicted alien felons.

The chasm between the enforcement and the open borders crowds has never been wider. Earlier in her Senate career, Feinstein was middle of the road. Between 1996 and 2013, Feinstein consistently voted to end the visa lottery, and she also voted for an amendment to complete 700 miles of border fencing. Today, Feinstein is an abolish ICE heroine, but may not be extreme enough to win her re-election bid against State Sen. Kevin de Leon who recently hosted an ABOLISH ICE CREAM SOCIAL.

Anti-ICE advocates’ two most pressing problems are that they offer no specific proposal for the agency’s replacement. More problematic for the abolitionists is that shutting down ICE, assuming it were to happen, doesn’t take existing immigration laws off the books.

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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 Population Rises, Leaders Ignore the Obvious

The Washington Post recently published a column titled “Why do we need more people in this country anyway?” which is making an internet splash among stable population and true environmental advocates.

Michael Anton, a former national security official, wrote his piece in the wake of the recently derailed congressional effort to pass an amnesty that would sharply increase today’s U.S. population, 328 million and rising, over the coming years. The Pew Research Center projected, chillingly, that the U.S. population will reach 441 million people by 2065, and 88 percent of the 113 million person growth will be from immigrants and births to immigrants, the result of federal immigration policies.

Anton points out what slower population champions have argued, correctly but unsuccessfully, for decades – that immigration is a net benefit to the immigrants and to their cheap labor devotee employers. But as for the U.S. residents, both the native-born and lawful permanent residents, pinpointing the tangible benefit to continuously adding more than one million legal immigrants annually, and tolerating several hundred thousand illegal immigrants, is difficult. And perhaps the best reason to adopt a more viable immigration policy is that the current one isn’t sustainable and already shows signs of collapse. Drive anywhere in the U.S., and as motorists crawl along, they find themselves entrapped by road constructions signs.

Discount expansionists’ distracting, specious claims that the U.S. is a nation of immigrants, and that more immigration reflects who we are as Americans. The reality is quite different. More people leads to, among other negatives, more strain on our already inadequate schools, our crumbling infrastructure and our delicate, overburdened ecosystem.

Step back in time to President Richard Nixon’s administration. During his years in office, Congress passed the National Environmental Policy Act of 1969 (NEPA) and created the Environmental Protection Agency in 1970. Also passed were the Clean Air Act of 1970, the Marine Mammal Protection Act of 1972 and the Endangered Species Act of 1973. The Safe Water Drinking Act of 1974 was introduced by President Nixon, and eventually signed by President Gerald Ford.

But the modern immigration wave has brought 60 million immigrants since the 1970s through 2015, and their arrival has done much to negate the Nixon era’s environmental advances.

Bulldozing millions of acres of prime farmland and natural habitat during the last decades to make space for development has resulted in what’s commonly referred to as urban sprawl, a term too benign to adequately describe what is widespread loss of fields, pastures, wetlands and woodlands, an area larger in the aggregate than Maryland, lost in just an eight-year period in the early 2000s to build housing projects and strip malls. More than half the lost land was in what the Census Bureau identifies as Urban Areas or, more simply stated, places where people live. Neighborhoods where families have settled and are enjoying their lives are disrupted as more people encroach on their turf.

Completely missing from the effort to rein in rampant population growth are the very groups that should be leading the charge – the prominent environmental organizations that, according to their mission statements, are profoundly concerned about America’s ecological future. To the contrary, evidence points to the disturbing conclusion that these so-called environmentalists don’t value domestic ecological sustainability enough to publicly promote immigration policies that might make it achievable. Instead, they consider population as a singular global issue rather than a destructive local one.

In past years, environmental groups educated the public about population growth’s inherent dangers. Even though President Bill Clinton’s 1997 sustainability task force concluded, “This is a sensitive issue but reducing immigration levels is a necessary part of population stabilization and the drive toward sustainability,” those who claim the environmental mantle continue to ignore his warning.

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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 1976, for one unforgettable season, Mark “The Bird” Fidrych shone brighter than Elvis, Liz or Ali – maybe brighter than all three rolled into one.

Fidrych’s ascent into the baseball elite had been remarkable. Detroit Tigers’ manager Ralph Houk kept Fidrych in the bullpen during the season’s early weeks before giving him his first start in mid-May against the Cleveland Indians. Fidrych tossed a two-hitter to beat the Indians, 2-1.

Along his way to stardom the “Bird,” as Fidrych soon became known, pitched back-to-back 11-inning victories and also defeated the Twins on a Tigers’ earlier visit to Minneapolis.

By July 20, the date of his second start against the Twins, Fidrych had rocketed to national stardom thanks to a national television appearance on ABC’s Monday Night Baseball against the New York Yankees. In between talking to the ball and patting down the mound, Fidrych dominated the Yankees 5-1 in a mere 1:51 to put his record at 8-1. Fidrych figured prominently in another national showcase, the All-Star Game, when manager Darrell Johnson gave him the starting nod, a rare honor for a rookie. In a departure from form, Fidrych pitched ineffectively in his two-inning stint.

During the 1976 summer, I traveled frequently to Minneapolis on assignment from my New York office. On a late July trip, the buzz around town was that Fidrych would pitch that week against the hometown Twins.

With Fidrych-mania at its peak, I couldn’t miss being among the fans at the old Metropolitan Stadium. I asked my plugged-in banking friends who had behind-home-plate box seats if they had an extra ticket. No way! Ticket brokers laughed. They offered to put me on their list but warned it was already 150 names deep.

By game night, I was still ticketless. I drove out to the Met, confident I’d find a scalper. But only buyers milled around. I walked through the parking lot hoping that tailgaters would have a no-show. Again, I came up empty.

Resigned to listening to the game on the radio, I headed back to my car. At the last minute, I tried the only thing left. I walked to the ticket booth to ask if there was one seat available. The reply: “This is your lucky night. I have exactly one.”

Because of an overflow crowd, a common phenomenon at Fidrych performances, the game started a half hour late. And it was further delayed by a pre-game stunt. To commemorate Fidrych’s 13th start, Twins’ owner Calvin Griffith ordered 13 homing pigeons released from their cages perched on top of the mound.

The Twins, featuring a hard hitting line-up that included Rod Carew and Tony Oliva, roughed Fidrych up early. But the Tigers pecked away, and eventually put the game out of reach after a Rusty Staub home run. For all practical purposes, Staub’s homer ended the game. Final score: Tigers 8-Twins 3. Fidrych’s line: 9 IP; 10 H; 3 ER; 2 BB; 2 K.

After the game, Fidrych showed why he was such a media favorite. A reporter asked Fidrych what he thought of Oliva who went 4-4 with a run scored and an RBI. Replied Fidrych: “Who’s Oliva?”

In 1976, Fidrych led the American League in ERA (2.34), complete games (24) and won the Rookie of the Year Award. By most accounts Fidrych, 19-9, should have won the Cy Young Award, but it went instead to Jim Palmer.

By early 1977, Fidrych developed arm trouble and won only ten games over, his next four seasons. Fidrych died in 2009, age 54, in a freak accident at his Massachusetts farm; his maximum salary during his Tigers’ career was $125,000.

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Joe Guzzardi is a Society for American Baseball Research historian. Contact him at [email protected].

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During the upcoming mid-term elections, the 35 Senate races and the 435 House of Representatives campaigns will feature candidates who promise to help create more jobs. Their pledge to improve the labor market for unemployed and underemployed American workers will be at their platforms’ core.

Often, however, job addition can come about through job subtraction, namely when immigration policies that are hurtful to American workers are revised to instead help them.

An example: A dateline New Delhi, India story explained that the Trump administration’s proposed end to the H-4 visa that gives H-1–visa holders’ spouses and children under age 21 employment permission could open up as many as 100,000 jobs for Americans.

A brief, straightforward H-4 visa history lesson is in order. Since Congress enacted the 1990 Immigration Act and created the H-1B, spouses and children under age 21 were specifically denied work authorization. An H-1–who accepted a U.S. assignment knew that his spouse – H-4s are mostly women – would not be able to legally work at any job, low- or high-skilled. After decades of intense but unsuccessful lobbying, however, the Obama White House circumnavigated Congress, and issued one of its several pro-immigration executive actions that gave work permission to certain H-4s. Congress has sole authority over immigration.

The executive order artificially inflated the labor market which fundamentally had no need for job seekers. No oversight agency determined that the skills of H-4s are in demand as is the practice with H-1Bs. And the H-4s, unlike their spouses, have no labor protections, which could make them vulnerable to employers’ abuse. Finally, the H-4s’ academic and previous employment credentials obtained thousands of miles away from their U.S. homes are difficult to confirm and are often overstated.

Some may have worthwhile skills. Still, the incoming deal they made was that they would not have work permission. And displacing an American, or competing with one for employment, violates the spirit of the deal they accepted.

Interestingly, if reports out of San Francisco are true, then the working H-4 population could decline without federal intervention. When the Harris Poll asked 171 San Francisco-based HR professionals and hiring managers about their global recruiting practices, only 8 percent responded that they proactively seek out foreign nationals, and 54 percent said that sourcing overseas labor is not very important to their current talent acquisition strategy.

Moreover, San Francisco employers said that they’re hiring 33 percent fewer foreign nationals while the same trend is in progress nationwide; 26 percent of corporations are less reliant on overseas workers. Assuming the trend continues, fewer H-1Bs means fewer of their H-4 spouses.

While the Bay Area replies may be in part to deflect public criticism, they reflect a concern about tighter immigration practices that could slow foreign labor’s flow even though the companies insist they need them. The White House has promised to make it harder for tech firms to hire foreign workers and announced more vigorous onsite enforcement to weed out fraud, even though the companies all still insist they need them.

In the end, the universal truism applies. As the number of foreign workers rises, so does the workers’ general population. The more workers, including those from overseas, the less likely wages will rise, or for Americans to be employed.

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

Put aside the victory lap that Trump administration is taking over the Supreme Court s 5-4 decision to uphold the White House s travel ban from several mostly Muslim majority countries. Ignore the outrage of the refugee advocacy groups over what they call a retreat from traditional American values. Chief Justice John Roberts wrote in his majority opinion that, plain and simple, U.S. presidents have the final authority over immigration.

Reducing the refugee flow could and should be a shot in the arm for unemployed and under-employed, low-skilled Americans. Refugees are, according to the U.S. Citizenship and Immigration Services website, aliens authorized to work. As such, they can immediately compete with American job seekers or possibly displace citizen job holders.

Many major American employers have embarked on a campaign to hire refugees and give them jobs that most citizens and already-present lawful immigrants would eagerly accept. A 50-strong coalition of employers brainstormed on ways to provide greater opportunities to recently arrived refugees.

When Time asked the U.S. Committee for Refugees and Immigrants for estimates about employment totals, it said that its nine-agency network placed 4,816 refugees in jobs within six months of their arrival. The employers include hotel and resort chains Hilton and Marriott, and upscale supermarket Whole Foods. Refugees provide convenient, pliable cheap labor.

By extension then, the total number of refugees placed in U.S. jobs in recent years is likely to be in the tens of thousands. Most USCRI-placed are employed in low-level jobs, earning an average of $10.26 per hour. The total of working refugees and their earnings may seem insignificant to the casual observer unless he happens to be an unemployed or under-employed American. An abundance of low-skilled immigrants drives down opportunities and wages for similarly low-skilled native-born.

On the other hand, many refugees don t enter the labor market, but instead depend on social services. The pro-immigration Migration Policy Institute found that welfare usage varied widely depending on country of origin. But refugee families immediately qualify for cash welfare benefits, food assistance and public health insurance.

Most other legal immigrants are ineligible to receive these benefits for their first five years of residency, and illegal immigrants are barred altogether. Consequently, the refugee population as a whole is more likely to receive U.S. taxpayer-subsidized affirmative benefits than either the nonrefugee immigrant or the U.S.-born populations.

Immigrants simply are expensive for American taxpayers. In 2016, 42 percent of noncitizen households received some type of federal assistance, most often cash, food stamps and Medicare. The Supreme Court outcome will also slow the importation of poverty, a questionable public policy in light of the nation s acute income inequality disparity, on the increase since 1970.

By slowing the refugee stream, the Supreme Court decision means that the labor market will tighten, and therefore create more employment chances for Americans and likely at higher wages than previously offered. Those who live below the poverty line and are welfare-dependent should also decline.

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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].

Exactly 100 years ago in World War I England, a baseball game like no other before or since was played.

On July 4, 1918, before an enthusiastic crowd that included King George V, Queen Mary and Winston Churchill, then Minister of Munitions, and other dignitaries, the U.S. Army and U.S. Navy squads faced off in a nail biter. All of England s attention was focused on what became known as “The King s Game.”

Baseball in England had been around in various forms since 1890 when the National Baseball League of Great Britain made its debut. The American sporting goods tycoon A.G. Spalding provided financial assistance to the new league, but it lasted just a single 44-game season. The London Baseball Association followed in 1894, but it too failed. Other leagues came and went. Then in 1914, the New York Giants and the Chicago White Sox traveled to London as part of their world tour. A large and boisterous crowd that included King George watched the Pale Hose eke out a 5-4 win.

When America entered the World War in April 1917, baseball went along too. Nearly every unit of the Army, Navy and Marine Corps had at least one good baseball team that drilled on the basics in anticipation of the future games that they would soon play.

Eventually, in 1918, 30 London-based expatriate American businessmen founded the Anglo-American Baseball League. The four Canadian and four American military teams played in and around London, often in British soccer stadiums. Red-white-and-blue posters promoted the league s games from lampposts and walls across the crowded metropolis. Old Glory flew side-by-side with Union Jack atop government buildings to symbolize the shared commitment of America and Britain to beat back Germany. Churchill: “Germany must be beaten until she knows she is beaten.”

AABL s spokesman and chief umpire was Walter Arlington “Arlie” Latham, a colorful former major league ballplayer, coach, shoemaker, vaudevillian, bar owner, jokester, deli owner and hustler. Latham, whose baseball days dated back to the era before players wore gloves, tutored King George on pitching mechanics so that His Majesty could throw out the first ball in the game named after him. The King, according to Latham, needed “Speed, more speed.”

When July 4 rolled around, the Army and Navy rosters were dotted with crackerjack active and former ML–players, including Hall of Fame 241-game winner Herb Pennock, infielder “Minooka” Mike McNally, and first baseman Hughie Miller. McNally was an ML–fixture for more than 50 years as a player, manager, scout and executive.

The “baseball match,” as London newspapers referred to it, was highly anticipated on both sides of the Atlantic. As 34,000 fans, or cranks as they were called stateside, streamed into Stamford Bridge, home of the Chelsea Football Club, specially assigned personnel gave them a brief overview of baseball s rules.

The cranks were treated to a topnotch baseball match. Behind Pennock s left-handed slants, Navy bested Army Captain Edward “Doc” Lafitte, formerly of the Detroit Tigers and the Federal League s Brooklyn Tip-Tops, 2-1. The Times of London reported that “The afternoon was crammed full of extraordinary moments. It passed in such a pandemonium as was perhaps never heard before on an English playing field; not even on a football ground.”

Few were more delighted with the day s events than King George who, upon returning to his Buck House home, wrote in his diary: “Large crowds&Quite exciting. Only got home at 6:00.”

Baseball never caught on in England. But the King s Game had global significance. The Illustrated London News wrote that “&the Great War was won on the baseball ground at Chelsea.”

And indeed, as Jim Leeke wrote in his book, “Nine Innings for the King,” the game boosted English spirits and laid the foundation for the special U.S.-British relationship that continued throughout the Great War, into World War II, and beyond.

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Baseball historian Joe Guzzardi is a Society for American Baseball Research member. Contact him at [email protected].

On Independence Day, America Struggles to Remain Sovereign

Editor’s note: This column is written to be run on Wednesday, July 4.

For decades, Democratic and Republican White Houses have winked at border and interior immigration enforcement, tolerated catch and release, abided sanctuary cities, ignored visa overstays, looked the other way at visa fraud, and promoted a nonstop stream of unnecessary employment-based visas. And on Independence Day 2018, the recent emotionally driven, short-on-truth border folderol brings the obvious but painful probability to the forefront: unless sanity is restored to U.S immigration, America cannot remain a sovereign nation.

The foreign-born population has been and is predicted to continue on a straight upward trajectory. In 2015, a record 43.2 million foreign-born lived in the U.S., 13.4 percent of the nation’s total and a fourfold increase from the 1960 9.7 million and 5.4 percent totals. In its study, Pew projected that immigration and births to immigrants will, by 2065, reach 78 million immigrants, with 81 million children of immigrants. Immigration will be the primary driver in a U.S. population increase from today’s 328 million to 441 million in 2065.

The demographic forecasts that portend lost sovereignty would become dramatically more severe if the open border advocates, loud and increasingly influential, prevail. They already have a leg up. Because federal judge Dolly Gee, an activist in robes, decreed in 2015 that alien minors could not be detained longer than 20 days, their parents use them as pawns in their asylum bids. Warned that her order would trigger a border surge similar to the one that occurred in 2014 when 70,000 adult-child units and 70,000 unaccompanied minors were apprehended illegally crossing into the U.S., Judge Gee dismissed what turned out to be wise council as, in her words, “fear-mongering.”

While the White House is struggling to maintain its “zero tolerance” toward illegal entry, and hope against hope to influence Judge Gee to lift or at least to extend the 20-day hold, the contingent of open borders boosters has ratcheted up its agenda.

Last week, California Senator Dianne Feinstein introduced her “Keep Families Together Act” that would essentially ban detaining illegal immigrants who come within 100 miles of the border, thereby allowing them a clear path to U.S. asylum with its lifetime valid work permits, other affirmative benefits and eventual citizenship.

With such an unbridled, plum opportunity, worldwide migrants would gather in aiding and abetting Mexico to head north to the American promised land. During previous surges, migrants from India, Africa, Cuba and the Middle East were identified near the border as they awaited their chance to enter.

Many in the Senate are charter open borders members, and Feinstein is a shining example of all that’s wrong with Congress. Feinstein is a multimillionaire married to another multimillionaire, investment banker Richard Blum. The couple lives in San Francisco’s exclusive Pacific Heights neighborhood where home values range up to $20 million. Feinstein and Blum also own condos in Kauai and Tahoe City, and multi-million dollar homes in Colorado and Washington, D.C. Being more out of touch with the struggling Californians at the low end of the state’s income inequality spectrum is impossible.

Yet despite no major legislative achievement during her 26 years in the Senate, the 85-year-old Feinstein is running for a fifth term. Once an immigration moderate, Feinstein has moved severely left now that her 2018 challenger is Kevin Alexander Leon, aka Kevin de Leon.

Since De Leon’s parents are Guatemalan-born, and since a large contingent of Central American migrants are also Guatemalan, Feinstein’s “Keep Families Together Act” is her way to convince California’s 46 percent undecided voters that she’s as committed to open borders as her challenger who authored California’s sanctuary state law.

Senate Minority Leader Chuck Schumer called Feinstein’s bill symbolic, meaning that it has no chance to become law. Perhaps so. But Feinstein’s proposed legislation is absolutely representative of the trolling for votes mindsets of incumbents and challengers’ political grandstanding.

Preserving American sovereignty, protecting the U.S. from unsustainable population growth and creating a thriving labor market should be among Congress’ top concerns. Instead, Congress chooses to welcome the world, thereby adding to population growth and flooding the employment market with cheap labor, ultimately causing instability and thus threatening the nation.

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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].

Back on Father’s Day, I got a call from another Dad, my friend Billy Inman. Billy’s call must have been tough for him. On Father’s Day 2000, intoxicated Mexican national and illegal alien Gonzalo Harrell-Gonzalez, driving above the speed limit, killed Kathy and Billy Inman’s 16-year-old son, Dustin.

The family had stopped at a red light on their way to a fishing trip when Harrell-Gonzalez rear-ended them. Despite being in the U.S. illegally, Harrell-Gonzalez received a North Carolina-issued driver’s license. Kathy sustained injuries that would keep her in a wheelchair for life; Harrell-Gonzalez fled to Mexico where he remains today.

Family separation’s root cause isn’t overly harsh immigration laws, but foreign national parents who knowingly violate U.S. federal law. Consider the manner in which the children, often accompanied but sometimes traveling alone, arrive at the border: crossing miles of desert on foot, traveling atop trains, being handed off to human traffickers or swimming across the Rio Grande River under duress. The U.S. would classify those actions as crimes of felony child abuse, which carry a possible lifetime prison sentence, and most certainly would lead to custody loss.

In a nationally televised interview, National Border Patrol Council Vice-President Art Del Cuerto explained what he and his agents see each day. Compare Del Cuerto’s from-the-front reality reporting to the purposely distorted perspectives from some at Capitol Hill and newsrooms. Del Cuerto said that daily his agents see migrants “literally drop the child and run” to escape capture. In egregious cases, Del Cuerto said that children are stuffed into vehicle trunks, then handed off to coyotes. As for the so-called cages the minors are allegedly detained in which has created a media circus this week, Del Cuerto described them as, in reality, “similar to boarding schools.” For example, Casa San Diego offers the children play areas, language classes and hot meals before they’re eventually released to sponsors.

One solution is already available to migrants. According to Attorney General Jeff Sessions, migrants who enter through a national port of entry with their children can request asylum. Parents would not be prosecuted and the family unit would remain intact while the petition is adjudicated. Another potential fix could keep asylum-seeking migrant families together: Designate the U.S. Embassy in Mexico City as the starting point for all petitions – no congressional action required, and neither minor nor adult would be confined while officials decide the case.

The U.S. welcomes valid asylum claims. “Valid” is key. According to the Transactional Records Access Clearinghouse, nearly 80 percent of more than 15,000 of the asylum claims made between 2012 and 2017 from El Salvador were denied. Pursuit of a better life or other economically motivated reasons are not valid asylum claims. A 2017 Pew Research report found that El Salvadoran, Guatemalan and Honduran migrants cite economic opportunity as among their main reasons for traveling north.

In midst of the frenzy about illegal immigrants separated from their children, the nation would do well to remember that the Inman family, the Kate Steinle family and thousands of other victim families endure the forever-lasting pain of separation that is the result of illegal immigrants’ criminal actions.

I asked Billy what Kathy and he feel when they watch the wall-to-wall mainstream media’s frenzied coverage. Billy said that he hurts for every child kept from his parents, however briefly. But for Kathy and Billy, Dustin was permanently taken from them 18 years ago, and counting. In most cases, the Central American minors face separation of a few days.

On a personal note, I lived in Guatemala, and traveled extensively throughout Central America. My takeaway from my time spent with Central Americans is that, overwhelmingly, they want to stay with their people, their language, and their culture. Removing asylum loopholes would go a long way toward establishing common sense on the border.

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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].