Cagle World

The troubling news that U.S. veterans hoping to see the Army-Navy game in Foxboro, Mass. earlier this month had their hotel reservations canceled to provide illegal aliens shelter could be a blessing in disguise, assuming the vets vote in unison to preserve the country they’re sworn to defend.

Kicking vets out of their lodging to reward aliens with coveted hotel rooms represents the latest affront to Americans by open borders advocates. Open borders are a continuing, shameful offense and assault on U.S. sovereignty. Most offended are veterans. Data that the Department of Veterans Affairs released showed that the veteran population is 19 million.

Imagine the 19 million plus their spouses, children, siblings, friends and neighbors disgusted by the audacity of federal and state officials sanctioning the unceremonious booting of vets from their rooms, leaving them to fend for themselves to find alternate housing for an event that’s sold-out months in advance. Massachusetts Democratic Gov. Maura Healey claimed to be “distressed” when she learned that a New Jersey travel agent had displaced the vets to make rooms available to the migrants. Healey’s “distressed” claim cannot be taken at face value. Like most of Massachusetts, Healey is an immigration expansion advocate.

Massachusetts’ migrant crisis is so acute that Lt. Gov. Kim Driscoll urged Bay State taxpayers to open their homes to illegal aliens. Reacting to Healey’s declaration that migration has put the state in emergency mode, Driscoll asked residents who might have “…an extra room or suite in your home, [to] please consider hosting a family. Safe housing and shelter is our most pressing need.” Driscoll said that Massachusetts is spending about $45 million monthly in taxpayer dollars on migrants’ shelter needs.

Some support Driscoll, and cited Massachusetts’ history as one of the first colonies founded by European migrants. The supporters have ample chance to back up their words with action. Massachusetts has 5,600 illegal alien homeless families that include infants and pregnant women, an 80 percent increase from the 3,100 families a year ago.

The governor could also step up to the plate. Healey has a four-bedroom, single family home in Arlington, Mass., that she shares with her partner. Healey’s living arrangement frees up three bedrooms, and would take some of the burden off the state she governs. Or, Healey could make sheltering aliens a condition of continued employment for the state’s 438,000 workers. As long as the northern and southern borders remain open, and unchecked migration continues, no solution that immigration advocates dream up is, in their view, asking too much. Remember Driscoll’s overview of the role residents should play in the state’s right- to-shelter crisis: “Everyone has something they can share.”

As long as the federal government welcomes millions of unvetted, impoverished aliens, including convicted criminals and FBI terrorist suspects, the U.S. Military Academy at West Point and the U.S. Naval Academy in Annapolis might as well shut their doors. The mission of the graduates of the institutions is to protect the homeland, a goal that the White House actively undermines. Under Biden, the homeland is wide open for the world to access. A House Subcommittee on Immigration Integrity, Security and Enforcement report found that through March 2023, 99 percent of the arriving 2.1 million foreign nationals remain in the U.S. Only 6 percent have been thoroughly vetted, showing a complete disregard for citizens’ “safe housing” that Driscoll rhapsodized about.

In the Biden administration’s latest nonsolution to a state’s migration catastrophe, Department of Homeland Security Secretary Alejandro Mayorkas will send a team to Boston to, in government-speak empty words, “assess the current migrant situation and identify ways to improve efficiencies and maximize our support for communities that are addressing the needs of migrants.” The feds have already sent $2.8 billion in taxpayer funds to help Massachusetts out of a problem that has no monetary resolution.

New West Point grads, new Annapolis grads and veterans, along with their relatives and friends, might total 50 million taken together, a large enough bloc to swing the election toward a much-needed candidate committed to enforcing U.S. immigration laws.

In the 2024 presidential election, other simmering issues will be hotly debated – abortion, the economy, crime, war in the Ukraine and the Middle East – but nothing will be more important than restoring U.S. sovereignty.

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Copyright 2023 Joe Guzzardi, distributed by Cagle Cartoons newspaper syndicate.

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

During much of Dianne Feinstein’s 20 years in the U.S. Senate, I lived in California and wrote political commentary for two San Joaquin Valley dailies. Regardless of my topic, out of professional curiosity, I asked my subjects’ off-the-record opinion about the California governor and their local congressional representatives.

When I inquired about Feinstein, most replied with indifference. At no point did I sense voter enthusiasm about Feinstein, or detect the feeling that, in their minds, her re-election was paramount to California’s well-being.

Yet, after Republican Sen. Pete Wilson resigned in 1991 to run for governor, Feinstein won the 1992 special election, and was then re-elected five times – 1994, 2000, 2006, 2012 and 2018, a remarkable achievement. Prior to her Senate success, Feinstein came in third in the 1975 San Francisco mayoral election to winner George Moscone, and lost the 1990 gubernatorial general election to Wilson. As so often happens in politics, death, retirement and shifting winds played a major role in Feinstein’s ascendancy.

Elected to the San Francisco Board of Supervisors in 1969, Feinstein served as the board’s president in 1978, during which time Mayor George Moscone and City Supervisor Harvey Milk were assassinated. Feinstein succeeded Moscone as mayor, and Wilson’s decision to give up his Senate seat opened up national office opportunities for Feinstein which she capitalized on. When fellow Democrat Alan Cranston retired in 1993, Feinstein became California’s senior senator.

Once an established incumbent, and even though California was not yet the solidly blue state it is today – Republican Wilson was, after all, just a few years removed from his governorship – Feinstein coasted. Feinstein’s uninspiring GOP challengers Tom Campbell, Dick Mountjoy and Elizabeth Emken eased her path.

As Feinstein’s Senate seniority advanced, she got plum assignments, including with the Senate Rules Committee. Feinstein also chaired the Select Committee on Intelligence, an ironic appointment since, as later discovered, she was chauffeured by a Chinese operative the FBI suspected of gathering government secrets before he absconded back to China.

Considered a moderate when she arrived in Washington, Feinstein quickly adopted the established Democratic positions, especially on an issue that roiled Congress from her career’s inception to its end: immigration.

In the early 1990s, at a press conference on the California-Mexico border, Feinstein said that illegal immigration was too costly to allow it to continue. In California alone, Feinstein continued, taxpayers spent $2 billion annually on illegal immigration. Feinstein added that illegal immigration involved a battle for “space” between the aliens and citizens – space for jobs, for classroom seats and for housing. More immigration means less space for citizens, said Feinstein.

Thirty years later, however, Feinstein joined the Senate’s open borders faction. Over her three decades in the Upper Chamber, Feinstein’s immigration grade dropped from C to D.

Unbeknownst to the public, Feinstein also championed private immigration bills. She introduced more bills that protected illegal immigrants from deportation than any other legislator. Her singular attempts to circumvent immigration laws to provide for her special causes mostly involved tourist visa overstays. Some remained unlawfully present for as long as 17 years after their visas expired, hardly compelling circumstances that require Senate intervention.

On October 2, Gov. Gavin Newsom named EMILY’s List President Laphonza Butler to fill the remaining 15 months of Feinstein’s term. EMILY’s List works to elect female Democrats who support abortion rights. Per an August Federal Election Commission filing, Butler was a Maryland resident. Butler was then quickly sworn into office by Vice President Kamala Harris, for whom Butler had worked on Harris’ failed 2020 presidential campaign.

What happens next in the post-Feinstein era is uncertain. A special election involving Butler is probable, but no one knows whether the appointee or any of the other declared candidates for the full six-year term will run. Announced candidates Reps. Barbara Lee, Adam Schiff and Katie Porter are evaluating their decisions vis-à-vis the special election.

Despite California’s whopping $32 billion budget deficit, its affordable housing crisis, a soaring homeless population, endemic smash-and-grab crime and a collapsed education system, whoever permanently replaces Feinstein will vote straight “yea” on immigration expansion bills – as if more immigration is the solution to California’s monumental problems. Lee, Schiff and Porter have F- immigration grades from NumbersUSA.

Feinstein is gone, but her age, 90, and her vast $64 million wealth, exclusive of prime real estate holdings, raise questions about imposing term limits, and whether millionaires married to billionaires can fairly represent the average citizen. Feinstein commuted from San Francisco to D.C. on her private $6 million Gulfstream G650 jet. Term limits and personal wealth should but will never be considered as candidacy restrictions.

Still, Feinstein’s congressional pro-immigration allies can take comfort that her replacement will carry on with the departed senator’s sovereignty-eroding immigration expansion legacy.

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Copyright 2023 Joe Guzzardi, distributed by Cagle Cartoons newspaper syndicate.

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

For all of Kevin McCarthy’s bluster about his impeachment inquiry into President Joe Biden’s corrupt finances, skeptics have deep doubts about the House Speaker’s priorities.

The Biden family’s financial double-dealing is small potatoes compared to the nation’s lost sovereignty that the administration’s open border agenda promotes. While the evidence that Oversight Committee Chair James Comer uncovered reveals a well-established pattern of the Biden family’s dubious dealings, McCarthy has said little about the more compelling border disaster.

Biden’s blatant refusal to enforce even to the minimum extent the nation’s immigration laws is easily proven. This flagrant abdication of duty to enforce laws for the security and safety of U.S. citizens and sovereignty of the country represents a series of impeachable offenses. McCarthy, Comer, House Judiciary Committee Chairman Jim Jordan, et al, don’t have to subpoena bank records or review the 5,400 emails that Biden wrote under his pseudonyms Robert Peters, Robin Ware and JRB Ware. House leadership simply has to visit the border to see that Biden has aided, abetted, facilitated, orchestrated and promoted illegal immigration, crimes for which he should be removed from office.

The latest Customs and Border Protection stats are shocking, even for people who follow invasion data regularly. A total of 35,000 illegal aliens entered the U.S. for the weekend beginning Friday, September 15 and ending Monday, September 18, and the agency processed most of them. More accurately, Customs and Border Protection released 35,000 unvetted aliens into the interior. Previous surges included convicted criminals and possible terrorists on the FBI watch list.

In this unending human flow across the border, thanks to the Biden administration, consider also the doomed migrants who never reach their intended destinations. Their deaths are true human tragedies. The Wall Street Journal reported in March that in FY 2022 U.S. authorities discovered 890 bodies at the Southwest border, while hundreds of migrants are considered missing. Speculation is that somewhere in the border’s broad, rugged terrain, thousands more corpses lie undiscovered.

Human trafficking is a $150 billion industry, and traffickers have taken advantage of Biden’s inexcusable refusal to secure the homeland against foreign invaders who deliver deadly amounts of fentanyl and transport minors predestined for the sex trade or used and mistreated as underage labor. Federal code states that one single person found guilty of a trafficking violation will face a lengthy prison term, “potentially including life imprisonment for conduct involving actual or attempted killing, kidnapping, or aggravated sexual abuse.”

Taken on whole, the administration has, with Biden’s blessing, permitted one immigration crime after another. While Biden’s financial chicanery should lead to jail time, enriching of family won’t destroy the nation. But Biden’s open borders policy has the gravest of consequences – an end to sovereign America.

In a preview of future border-caused fiscal calamities to come for Chicago, Washington, D.C., San Francisco and other municipalities, Biden has brought New York City to its knees. Mayor Eric Adams is begging for a financial bailout to help subsidize the 110,000 migrants who have arrived in the Big Apple since April 2022. Evaluating his plight, Adams, speaking the truest words he’ll ever utter, said: “Never in my life have I had a problem that I did not see an ending to. I don’t see an ending to this. This issue will destroy New York City.”

Adams has correctly summed up the migrant invasion: no ending is in sight for New York or the nation. To offset the city’s projected cost of $12 billion to support aliens, some progressive Democrats propose a 5 percent state tax, the so-called “migrant tax.”

The GOP’s pre-2022 Election Day “Commitment to America” failed to deliver on lofty promises, including a pledge to prevent illegal crossings, stop cartel trafficking, end catch-and-release loopholes and require legal status to get a job. Keeping score, that’s zero for four, a .000 average. Such an across-the-board GOP failure diminishes confidence in the party and puts Speaker McCarthy on shaky ground when he’s trying to sell his point of view, in this case that Biden’s financial hanky-panky is more important than vanished borders.

If voters were asked which of the two crimes they consider more egregious, Biden’s open borders – the consequences of which are ruining their communities – or the money laundering and influence peddling, the result would be a landslide. The outcome: Impeach Biden now before he can do more harm to American sovereignty.

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Copyright 2023 Joe Guzzardi, distributed by Cagle Cartoons newspaper syndicate.

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

Congress is back from its August recess, the weeks-long period away from its always-contentious, mostly unproductive business.

The House and the Senate have about a week until the Sep. 30 deadline to pass a federal budget. On Oct. 1, a new fiscal year begins. If lawmakers cannot push through their spending bills, the nation will face a government shutdown.

With time short for congressional action, the more likely outcome, albeit a temporary one, is that lawmakers could pass a continuing resolution which would avert a shutdown and fund the government at its current levels until a mutually agreed upon date.

Some in the GOP caucus view shutdown threats, which would adversely affect only a small percentage of the population, as foolish saber-rattling. They suggest that a more urgent problem than a government services’ pause is the nation’s $2 trillion deficit and $33 trillion national debt.

Writing in “City Journal,” Manhattan Institute Senior Fellow Nicole Gelinas in her article, “The Permanent Crisis Economy,” observed that during the administrations of Barack Obama, Donald Trump, and Joe Biden, Congress has approved record levels of deficit spending, paid not through tax collections but via Treasury debt.

“In 2007, the government owed $8.6 trillion in today’s dollars. As of the end of 2022, it owed more than triple that, $26.9 trillion, including $4.8 trillion in pandemic-era borrowing,” Gelinas wrote. “Much of this was printed by the Fed: its balance sheet went from $1.3 trillion just before the financial crisis to a high of $8.9 trillion in 2022, as it conjured zeros on computer screens to buy Treasury debt, thus financing federal deficits.”

While Republicans are intent on cutting spending, a continuing resolution would also provide Congress with an opportunity to rein in the raging, unlawful border crisis, which is overwhelming major cities. including New York, Chicago, Philadelphia and Denver.

New York Mayor Eric Adams declared that the illegal alien surge into his city has the potential to destroy it. Adams’ prediction is dramatic, but spot on. The city, inconveniencing and displacing thousands of New York taxpayers who fund the invasion, is housing about 60,000 aliens in 200 sites, including more than 140 hotels.

At a press conference, the mayor did the math for his incredulous audience: “For each family seeking asylum through the city’s care, we spend an average of $383 per night to provide shelter, food, medical care and social services. With more than 57,300 individuals currently in our care, on an average night, it amounts to $9.8 million a day, almost $300 million a month, and nearly $3.6 billion a year.”

Adams ominously added that these costs represent the floor, not the ceiling of potentially higher costs. New York’s Democratic congressional caucus that includes the powerful Sen. Majority leader Chuck Schumer, Sen. Kirsten Gillibrand and House Minority Leader Hakeem Jeffries have shown zero interest in border enforcement which would ease the ever-mounting pressure on Adams. Congressional Democrats to Adams: “Good luck. You’re on your own.”

For persons serious about ending the border crisis, now is the hour to use the upcoming spending battle to create meaningful border security and pro-American immigration reform. In May, the House passed H.R. 2, the Secure Border Act of 2023, which would end many of the immigration abuses that global migrants have unsurprisingly taken advantage of and that the Biden administration has fully encouraged.

Among many other positives, the bill would close asylum loopholes – the invasion’s main driver – and would mandate E-Verify which would protect American jobs. Other enforcement features include ending catch-and-release and parole abuse, while deporting visa overstays and tightening lax family unit and unaccompanied minors’ entry guidelines. The bill’s most significant provisions, restoring credibility to asylum petitions and cutting the jobs’ magnet through E-Verify, would end the pull enticement that lures migrants.

The House, which holds the purse strings of Congress, has an opportunity to end the border insanity if it attaches its immigration bill to the must-pass continuing resolution.

“If something cannot go on forever, it will stop,” said Herbert Stein, Chairman of the Council of Economic Advisors under Presidents Richard Nixon and Gerald Ford.

The border calamity has already lasted more than two years, way too long. Assuming the GOP can get its act together, their immigration bill can be the key to ending the sovereignty-destroying invasion.

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Copyright 2023 Joe Guzzardi, distributed by Cagle Cartoons newspaper syndicate.

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

When the Chicago Cubs called up Ken Holtzman from the Rookie Pioneer League in 1965, some within the organization predicted that the lefty would be the next Sandy Koufax. Both were tall, lean, and Jewish flamethrowers.

Holtzman had an outstanding 17-year-long career that included two stints with the Cubs, and one go-around each with the Oakland Athletics, the Baltimore Orioles and the New York Yankees. He peaked in the mid-1970s, winning the 1972 World Series opener against the Cincinnati Reds and a stacked lineup that included Pete Rose, Johnny Bench, Joe Morgan and Tony Perez. Holtzman ultimately won three World Series with the A’s, and hurled two no-hitters during his 15-year career.

During his early years with the Cubs, Holtzman was matched up against his boyhood idol and the hurler he had been compared to, Sandy Koufax. The matchup took place at Wrigley Field on the day after Yom Kippur, and neither pitcher was in uniform – both were observing the Jewish Holy Day.

After Cubs manager Leo Durocher directed anti-Semitic slurs at Holtzman, the pitcher demanded a trade, a fortuitous development for the lefty. In exchange for outstanding Cubs outfielder Rick Monday, an Arizona State All-American, Holtzman went to the A’s, a team on the cusp of winning three consecutive World Series championships. One of Holtzman’s new teammates was Mike Epstein, a one-time University of California fullback and defensive tackle. The irreverent, bombastic A’s nicknamed Holtzman and Epstein, “Jew” and “Superjew.” Neither took offense at the crude clubhouse labels.

On September 5, 1972, during an off day in Chicago, when news reached Holtzman that Palestinian terrorists took 11 Israeli Olympic athletes hostage, and killed two, he sought out Epstein. They walked the streets, comforting each other, wondering what the Israelis had done to precipitate such hate, and why the Munich Massacre happened.

Explaining their long walk on Chicago’s empty streets, Epstein who had once drawn the Star of David on his mitt, said to a Pittsburgh Press reporter: “I put on tefillin at different shuls in different cities. I was Bar Mitzvahed. I can read Hebrew. I’m a Jew.” The next day, in remembrance of the deceased, Holtzman and Epstein donned black arm bands on their jerseys’ sleeves, and kept them on through the playoffs. Remembered Epstein: “It was an emotional period. I’m glad we did something.”

After Epstein went hitless in the 1972 World Series, A’s owner Charles O. Finley dumped him and his 26 home runs to the Texas Rangers. Two years later, Epstein ended his nine-year career with the California Angels where he hit .206. Out of baseball, he began a successful batting school on the West Coast. Now retired, Epstein is 80.

Holtzman never achieved the Koufax-like Hall of Fame success that some had predicted for him. He won nine more games in his career than Sandy Koufax’s 165 total which made Holtzman history’s winningest Jewish pitcher.

In 2007, Holtzman briefly returned to baseball when he managed the Israel Baseball League’s Petach Tikva Pioneers. His experience with the league was an unhappy one, and he left the team before the season ended. Holtzman, now 77, is retired and lives outside St. Louis, his birthplace.

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Copyright 2023 Joe Guzzardi, distributed by Cagle Cartoons newspaper syndicate.

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

President Biden’s Justice Department has filed a lawsuit against SpaceX, the Elon Musk-founded company. In its 13-page complaint, the Justice Department alleges that SpaceX “discriminated against asylees and refugees throughout its hiring process, including during recruiting, screening, and selection, in violation of the Immigration and Nationality Act.”

The case’s outcome will be a landmark in corporate, immigration and labor law.

The Justice Department contends that from September 2018 to May 2022, the privately owned space company discouraged asylees and refugees from applying for positions “by wrongly stating that SpaceX can only hire U.S. citizens and lawful permanent residents.” The department further argues that Space X’s illegal hiring policies were “routine, widespread, and longstanding, and harmed asylees and refugees.”

For its part, SpaceX countered that because the company designs, manufacturers and launches advanced rockets and spacecraft, it can only hire U.S. citizens and lawful permanent residents, pursuant to U.S. laws and regulations. A complex series of federal laws and regulations govern SpaceX and its competitors. Known as “Export Controls,” the regulations are comprised of the ITAR (International Traffic in Arms Regulations) and EAR (Export Administration Regulations) and collectively administered by the Departments of Commerce, State and Treasury. Export Controls are “designed to prevent the spread of sensitive technologies to foreign actors that could threaten U.S. interests… [These] controlled technologies include defense articles, e.g., missiles, defense services, e.g., integration of a spacecraft onto a launcher, and dual-use items, e.g., commercial spacecraft and components.”

“Foreign actors that could threaten U.S. interests” deserves further analysis. Bona fide asylum seekers who filed an Application for Asylum, Form I-589, but have not received approval within 180 days, qualify for a work permit and employment despite potentially being in the U.S. illegally. Refugees admitted legally must apply for permanent residency within a year of arrival or are subject to deportation, but are immediately employable.

Through a non-lawyer’s eyes, Musk and his SpaceX legal team appear to have the stronger hand. In Musk’s defense and in support of hiring citizens only, recent asylees and refugees include foreign nationals from Syria, Afghanistan, Russia, Cuba, Iraq, Somalia and Iran, active or potential U.S. enemies. Furthermore, SpaceX contends it can’t hire non-U.S. citizens because it must comply with the above-referenced export control restrictions.

Musk also cited a current Executive Order 11935, and called upon the Justice Department to sue itself for its seemingly, in view of its suit against SpaceX, discriminatory hiring practices. As per the executive order, “only United States citizens and nationals” can be hired for federal jobs. As an example of the feds discrimination against SpaceX, a post on X, formerly known as Twitter, cited a tweet by economist George Mason University economics professor Alex Tabarrok, who pointed out that the job requirements for the federal Bureau of Prisons specify “U.S. citizenship is required.” Musk concluded, correctly, that DOJ’s action is “yet another case of weaponization of the DOJ for political purposes.”

The most foreboding challenge SpaceX faces is the Biden administration’s contemptible disregard for immigration law. For nearly two years, Biden and his corrupt Department of Homeland Security Secretary Alejandro Mayorkas have unconstitutionally sanctioned granting parole, which includes work permission, to thousands of unvetted worldwide migrants.

In 1952, Congress granted the executive branch parole authority, which “should be surrounded with strict limitations … in emergency cases, such as the case of an alien who requires immediate medical attention … and a witness or for purposes of prosecution.” Instead of obeying congressionally passed law – the absolute minimum Americans should expect from their president – Biden has paroled en masse unvetted aliens who are inadmissible under any immigration category.

The sad but unsurprising truth is that, given what’s known about Biden and his anti-American agenda, the Justice Department is suing SpaceX because Musk’s company wants to hire U.S. citizens.

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Copyright 2023 Joe Guzzardi, distributed by Cagle Cartoons newspaper syndicate.

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

Survivors of the deadly fires in Maui are being offered a $700-per-household payment by FEMA (the Federal Emergency Management Agency) and temporary shelter.

But in Maui, $700 doesn’t go far. Estimated monthly living costs for a family of four are $7,203. The token $700 represents less than 10 percent of a family’s living costs, an insult to the suffering residents who have, in some cases, lost everything they own.

Public outcry over the First Family’s perceived indifference has more or less forced Joe Biden and his wife, Jill, to visit Maui.

But for Afghanistan and the Ukraine, the Biden administration can’t shell out money fast enough, with no limit to its wasteful ways. In early August, Biden asked Congress for about $40 billion in new spending to support the efforts of the Ukraine to beat back invading Russia. In its letter to lawmakers, the White House Office of Management and Budget asked for $13 billion in new military aid and $8.5 billion in additional economic, humanitarian and security assistance for Ukraine and other war-impacted countries.

The White House’s funding request also includes other forms of assistance for Ukraine, including more than $12 billion for disaster relief and for other emergency domestic funds, like hurricanes, as well as tens of millions of dollars to boost pay for firefighters battling the wildfires that have hit many parts of the country.

In Biden’s mind, wildfires in Ukraine are a more urgent concern than the Maui wildfires that destroyed the town of Lahaina and took the lives of at least 114 people, with 1,000 missing at the time of this writing.

In total, the U.S. has sent more than $100 billion to Ukraine. Displacing millions of people, the 18-month-old proxy war has left a reported 500,000 dead or injured. And there is no end in sight. Biden said that the U.S. will remain committed for “as long as it takes,” which means that taxpayers will continue to fund a war in which they have no stake.

In Afghanistan, the U.S. is supporting the Taliban-controlled government with more than $2.35 billion since the botched 2021 withdrawal. John Sopko, the special inspector general for Afghan reconstruction, admitted in his April report to the House Oversight Committee that he “cannot assure this committee or the American taxpayer we are not currently funding the Taliban.” Further, he said the Biden administration has blocked any and all investigative efforts as to whether American dollars sustain the Taliban or “other nefarious groups” like ISIS.

While neglecting the home front, and funding corrupt foreign countries, Biden also has provided for them on U.S. soil. Programs such as “Uniting for Ukraine” and “Operation Allies Welcome” have made available resettlement benefits and parole – an immigration status that includes work permission – to many thousands of foreigners. Additionally, more than 70,000 Ukrainians have not arrived via Biden’s official program but rather have come illegally through the Southwest border. Thousands of Afghans have been successfully resettled since America’s hasty and ill-conceived Afghanistan withdrawal.

Both Afghan and Ukrainian nationals have been granted Temporary Protected Status, which officially protects them from removal even though such an action would be unlikely under all but the most extraordinary circumstances. The status also includes employment authorization. With that, program recipients can compete with citizens or other legal immigrants for jobs.

The Biden administration’s multi-billion-dollar outlay to Ukraine and Afghanistan and its red-carpet acceptance of those countries’ nationals, with minimal vetting, proves that no matter how dire conditions may be for U.S. citizens, e.g., Hawaiians, foreign governments receive priority, despite their crooked backgrounds.

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Copyright 2023 Joe Guzzardi, distributed by Cagle Cartoons newspaper syndicate.

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

On August 1, the rating agency Fitch dropped the U.S. government’s long-term credit rating from AAA to AA+.

Fitch said the downgrade “reflects the expected fiscal deterioration over the next two or three years, a high and growing general government debt burden, and the erosion of governance.”

The surprise is that, in light of Fitch’s concern about how the Biden administration manages the federal government, the rating agency didn’t downgrade further. Save for the detrimental effect a further downgrade would have on the markets, a bigger lowering is justified.

In a Fitch statement, the agency said: “There has been a steady deterioration in standards of governance over the last 20 years, including on fiscal and debt matters. The repeated debt limit political standoffs and last-minute resolutions have eroded confidence in fiscal management.”

U.S. debt has surpassed $31 trillion and is expected to reach $52 trillion in 2033. Rising interest rates, as the Fed attempts to cool down inflation, have fueled Fitch’s concerns about the overall debt burden. The prediction of the Congressional Budget Office that the ratio of federal debt-to-GDP would nearly double from 98 percent in 2023 to 181 percent in 2053 is a nightmarish worry.

In an alternative but more troubling scenario drafted by the Committee for a Responsible Federal Budget, the debt-to-GDP ratio could soar even higher, hitting 222 percent of GDP by 2053. In the past 17 months, the Federal Reserve has hiked its overnight bank lending rate 11 times. More increases are certain. Analysts predict the obvious – that the U.S. is on a course of “drowning in debt.”

When Fitch refers to “the erosion of governance” – meaning bad governance – surely those who pass judgment on the U.S. debt must have in their minds the wild, imprudent spending spree that the Biden administration immediately embarked on.

A sampling: the “American Rescue Plan,” a $1.9 trillion bill disguised as a COVID-19 relief package; second, the “American Jobs Plan” at $2.3 trillion, falsely advertised as legislation that would upgrade the nation’s infrastructure, and third, the “American Families Plan,” $1.8 trillion in spending that’s vaguely defined as a bill to expand access to education, reduce the cost of child care and support women in the workforce.

In total, the Biden administration has laid out $6 trillion that it doesn’t have for bills with questionable purposes that will produce dubious results, if any.

Also raising eyebrows over at Fitch regarding sound governance must be the White House’s determination to support Ukraine in its endless war against Russia. Ukraine is now the top recipient of U.S. foreign aid, and the White House has poured more than $75 billion into a corrupt country’s coffers without any accountability for how the funds have been disbursed. The consensus opinion is that the war has no end in sight and may drag into 2025, thereby sucking up more U.S. taxpayer money.

Fitch must also interpret the unprecedented Southwest border invasion as poor governance. The arriving migrants are mostly poor, undereducated and therefore likely to become government assistance-dependent.

Estimated at more than 5.5 million since Biden’s inauguration, the migrants’ presence has disrupted major cities, including New York City and Chicago, as well as many Texas border communities. Because the migrant crisis is so severe and far-reaching, Massachusetts Gov. Maura Healy has asked Bay State residents to house Haitian and Central American illegal aliens. The invasion costs taxpayers billions of dollars, and the costs are mounting. Since no one truly knows the migrants’ backgrounds and intentions, or what their total number may eventually reach, Fitch analysts must view the open border with skepticism, another example of misguided governance.

Finally, looking ahead to 2024, Fitch must look askance at the prospect of either former President Donald Trump, who will be 78 on Election Day, or Biden, who then will be 82, in the White House. Whoever wins, four more years of divided government is assured.

Looking at the whole disheartening picture, Fitch’s AA+ grade is generous. The piling of more debt onto the mountain of existing debt, the unnecessary and expensive entanglement in a foreign war that has no bearing on the U.S., an open border – an obvious national security threat – that’s given entry to known terrorists and enabled drug and human trafficking, and a contentious federal government at least until 2028 are all huge waving red flags.

The agency’s declaration that the outlook for the U.S. is “stable” is highly doubtful.

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Copyright 2023 Joe Guzzardi, distributed by Cagle Cartoons newspaper syndicate.

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

Actor Charles Durning’s D-Day memories were so painful that for decades he suppressed them.

Drafted at age 20, Durning eventually earned a Silver Star for valor, a Bronze Star for meritorious service in a combat zone, and three Purple Hearts, given in the president’s name to those wounded or killed in military service. Just out of high school, which he didn’t complete until the war ended, Durning was the only survivor in a unit that landed on Omaha Beach on June 6, 1944.

Durning’s World War II experiences are unfathomable, and his actions in defense of his fellow soldiers, selfless and heroic. During the Normandy battle, Durning killed seven German gunners, but suffered serious machine gun wounds to his right leg and shrapnel wounds throughout his body.

After a six-month recovery in England, Durning was rushed back to the front lines to fight against the German Ardennes offensive. During the Battle of the Bulge, Durning suffered more wounds, this time in hand-to-hand bayonet combat when he was stabbed eight times. Despite the vicious assault, Durning summoned up the strength to kill his attacker with a rock, which earned him a second Purple Heart.

Soon after, his company was captured and forced to march through the Malmedy Forest. In the ensuing “Malmedy massacre,” German troops opened fire on the prisoners, and Durning was among the few who escaped.

Durning would earn his third Purple Heart when, in March 1945, he moved into Germany with the 398th Infantry Regiment, where he was severely wounded when a bullet struck him in the chest. Private First Class Durning was evacuated to the U.S. to spend the remainder of his active Army career recovering until he was discharged in January 1946.

Born in 1923, Durning grew up in Highland Falls, N.Y., near the U.S. Military Academy at West Point. His father, James, an Irish immigrant who had joined the Army to gain U.S. citizenship, lost a leg during World War I and died when Charles was 12. James’ widow Louise supported her five children by working as a laundress at West Point. Four other children died from scarlet fever.

After the war, Durning used dance as physical therapy to strengthen his badly injured leg and speech therapy to smooth out a stutter that had developed. He began training at the American Academy of Dramatic Arts, but was told he lacked talent. Undeterred, he took small roles with Joseph Papp’s New York Shakespeare Company and taught ballroom dancing at the Fred Astaire studio.

Eventually, Durning achieved his lifelong goal when he landed parts in television and the movies. His most memorable silver screen appearances among his 200 films include “The Sting,” “Dog Day Afternoon,” and “Tootsie.” His significant honors include numerous Academy, Emmy and Tony Award nominations.

Reluctant to visit the site where so many of his comrades lay, Durning returned to Normandy only once after the war ended. Looking back during a 1994 Memorial Day service to recognize the invasion’s 50th anniversary, Durning noted remorsefully that the U.S. had engaged in at least five wars since World War II – Korea, Desert Storm, Panama, Grenada and Vietnam. He said that each war is pertinent to only the individual who was there.

“I don’t know what they went through; they don’t know what I went through,” said Durning. “Each person fights his own war. Each person is on a one-to-one basis with whoever’s opposite him.” Durning added: “That war changed history as we knew it. It was the greatest armada that ever hit any country, anywhere, anytime in the history of mankind. No one will ever see anything that enormous again.” World War II was, Durning said, the last war that had a well-defined purpose.

In January 2008, Durning was honored with the Screen Actors Guild Life Achievement Award, and his star was placed on the Hollywood Walk of Fame adjacent to the actor he most admired, Jimmy Cagney. Durning died of natural causes at his Manhattan home on Christmas Eve December 24, 2012, aged 89. Two days later, Broadway theaters dimmed their lights in his honor.

Durning is buried at Arlington National Cemetery, the ultimate tribute to an American hero.

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Copyright 2023 Joe Guzzardi, distributed by Cagle Cartoons newspaper syndicate.

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

Good news for the agricultural industry. Robotics have become more affordable, smarter and easier to operate. Soft fruits like strawberries can be picked mechanically now.

Florida-based Harvest CROO has developed technology that can pick ripe strawberries without damaging the delicate fruit. A primary goal of the company is to help reduce U.S. obesity by keeping the supply of “super foods” like strawberries readily available and reasonably priced. A related benefit is that growers who opt for Harvest CROO’s technology won’t have to worry about labor shortages and will no longer have to rely on tedious back-breaking stoop labor.

In California’s Salinas Valley, Taylor Farms manager David Offerdahl demonstrated his Automatic Romaine Lettuce Harvester to CBS News. The harvester uses a high-pressure water stream to cut five heads of lettuce at a time. Workers then pack the lettuce into boxes while standing under a shaded canopy, thus ending stoop labor. Offerdahl said that the robot can harvest twice the lettuce in half the time. As well, for every two low-paying jobs mechanization eliminates, one higher paying job is created.

The term to describe the increasingly popular transition to robotics is “precision agriculture,” which means applying new technology to increase crop production while reducing waste. The market for advanced farming tools was estimated to be about $7 billion in 2020, but projected to reach $12.8 billion over the next four years.

Despite the obvious advantages robotics presents, Congress remains stuck in the technological dark ages and heeds the industry’s annual laments about worker shortages. Harvest CROO and the Automatic Romaine Lettuce Harvester have proven that technology is a better way to go than temporary employment visas.

Nevertheless, in early July, Congress did what it does most effectively and most consistently – rejected 21st century solutions and, at the same time, undermined American workers by approving unnecessary work visas. After markups and hearings, the Republican-led House Appropriations Committee approved a $91.5 billion Department of Homeland Security spending bill. But a portion of the bill had nothing to do with defending the homeland.

Tucked away in the DHS legislation are provisions that would greatly expand the H-2A visa for agriculture workers, which allows employers to hire foreign-born laborers, and the H-2B visa for non-ag workers. Originally, the agricultural employment-based visas were temporary in nature; the employee had to return home when the season ended. But the language describing the H-2A that permitted the worker to remain for up to three years will be rewritten, and the jobs will no longer be classified as seasonal. The worker will be available for continuing and perhaps continuous employment.

The H-2B visa program allows U.S. employers to import about 66,000 foreign workers for seasonal nonagricultural jobs in industries like construction, landscaping, hospitality and food services. These industries are chronic complainers that a labor shortage puts their companies at bankruptcy risk. A new wrinkle written into the DHS spending bill which would expand the H-2B visa program will exempt foreign-born workers who arrived on H-2B visas during the last three years from the annual cap, a provision that could result in at least 200,000 additional H-2B workers.

On the plus side, the GOP-led Appropriations Committee, which has a 34-27 majority, drafted a bill that ramps up border security and interior enforcement. The bill also cuts taxpayer dollars used to allocate cash to open border-supporting NGOs. On the downside, the work visa totals will increase, obviously needlessly, as millions of low-skilled migrants, mostly employment-authorized through their parole status, pour across the border.

Big ag has gotten away with relying on cheap labor for decades. Instead of encouraging continuous dependence on low-cost imported labor by providing more H-2A and H-2B visas, Congress should demand that employers invest in proven robotic harvesters that can work 18 hours a day, never call in sick and, within a short time, pay for themselves.

The H-2A has a long, documented history of fraud and abuse that includes a recent lawsuit. which charged a western Michigan farm of trafficking foreign-born H-2A visa workers into blueberry picking jobs where they were paid slave wages and housed in squalid conditions with other exploited workers.

Given the H-2A’s past track record that includes criminal wrongdoing, Congress should use its power to demand that farmers, within a reasonable time period, mechanize. Out with slave labor and in with efficient, humane and modern farming practices.

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Copyright 2023 Joe Guzzardi, distributed by Cagle Cartoons newspaper syndicate.

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