First and foremost, illegal immigration is the problem. Since I left two decades ago, California has collectively spent hundreds of billions of dollars on illegal aliens and their bills — public schools, free meals at school, special bi-lingual teachers, healthcare, housing allowances, low income energy assistance, aid to families with dependent children, prisons, cops, courts, public defenders, welfare, food stamps, and a hundred other government handouts. And don’t forget special lower college tuition for illegal immigrants. Wayne Allyn Root
House poised to advance immigration reform, wrapped in an agriculture bill
Republicans and Democrats over the years have exhausted nearly every legislative avenue without producing a bipartisan deal on immigration reform.
Now, the House is set to advance an agriculture bill that makes another attempt at reforming long-broken immigrant farmworker rules, and it has bipartisan support.
One top Democratic aide described the bill aptly: “It’s a small slice of the immigration pie, but one where there is definitely bipartisan compromise.”
The House Judiciary Committee on Wednesday is set to advance a measure that would, for the first time, provide a pathway to permanent legal status, and eventually citizenship, for immigrants who are currently working illegally in the nation’s agriculture sector.
The measure would also establish the nation’s first mandatory E-verify system by requiring it for all agriculture workers (some federal contractors and some states already have the requirement.)
E-verify and a pathway to legal status for illegal immigrants are among goals long sought by both Democrats and Republicans, and the compromise helped the measure earn serious bipartisan support.
So far, 24 Democrats and 22 Republicans have signed on to the bill, and lawmakers are aiming for a floor vote by the end of the year and perhaps a chance for consideration by the GOP-led Senate, though that is considered unlikely.
“We’ve been talking to senators,” Democratic Rep. Zoe Lofgren of California, the lead sponsor, told the Washington Examiner. “I think there’s a possibility.”
Lofgren called the measure “an important bill,” but she downplayed the immigration component. “It’s an agriculture bill.”
If it passes the House, the measure would become the first significant bipartisan immigration reform bill to win approval in Congress since 2013, when the Senate passed comprehensive legislation that was later blocked by the House.
The measure would address a significant part of illegal immigration in the United States.
The nation’s agriculture sector utilizes proportionally more illegal workers than any other U.S. business sector, the Pew Research Center reported.
Farming, fishing, and forestry workers represented nearly a quarter of the 7.8 million illegal workers aged 18 and over in the labor force in 2016.
Rep. Dan Newhouse of Washington is the Republican lead co-sponsor and is a third-generation farmer.
Newhouse said farmers and ranchers across the country report that labor shortages are a major problem.
“Our nation’s agriculture industry is diverse and flourishing, but producers are in desperate need of a legal and reliable workforce,” Newhouse said in a statement.
He called the measure “a strong, bipartisan workforce solution to provide certainty to both farm owners and workers through an accessible, employment-based program.”
The top Republican on the House Judiciary Committee, Doug Collins of Georgia, opposes the bill, and many other Republicans are likely to vote against it. “If there is any doubt about the point of this bill, one only has to look at the very first thing it does: It grants mass amnesty and a path to citizenship to agricultural workers and their families who illegally live and work in the United States," said Collins. He also said the bill has no chance of passing in the Senate.
BLOG: ONLY NANCY PELOSI AND DIANNE FEINSTEIN WORK HARDER FOR OPEN BORDERS THAN MITCH McCONNELL
A representative for Majority Leader Mitch McConnell could not provide any information about whether the bill may reach the Senate floor if it passes the House.
Democrats tout the bill’s top change to immigration law. It would allow agriculture workers who are working here illegally to earn legal status by gaining access to five-year, renewable agriculture visas and eventually earn legal permanent resident status.
Most permanent residents can also eventually apply for citizenship.
The bill would make significant changes to the nation’s guest-worker program that many farmers and immigrants utilize.
One big change sought by dairy farmers would permit some guest workers in the agriculture sector who utilize H-2A visas to remain in the U.S. year-round without having to return home.
The current program defines agriculture workers as seasonal employees and does not permit year-round legal status in the U.S.
ONE THIRD OF ALL FARM
WORKERS END UP ON WELFARE IMMEDIATELY. NONE RETURN TO MEXICO, NONE BECOME
EDUCATED, ALL VOTE DEMOCRAT FOR MORE!
House
ag-worker amnesty bill is progressive cronyism; Dems get 500K extra voters by
2030, while ag-biz degrades farm communities into 'company towns.' Americans
lose wages, wealth & communities, but media will treat the debate as 'civil
rights' vs 'racism'
First and
foremost, illegal immigration is the problem.
Since I left two decades ago, California
has collectively spent hundreds of billions of
dollars on illegal aliens and their bills —
public schools, free meals at school, special
bi-lingual teachers, healthcare, housing
allowances, low income energy assistance,
aid to families with dependent children,
prisons, cops, courts, public defenders,
welfare, food stamps, and a hundred
other government handouts. And don’t forget
special lower college tuition for illegal
immigrants. Wayne Allyn Root
NANCY PELOSI
GOT RICH OFF ELECTED OFFICE AND SERVICING THE “CHEAP” LABOR LOBBIES - Jim
Gilchrist asked the question about Nancy Pelosi’s ethics that should be on the
minds of every law-abiding American – including those immigrants who are
following the law to become citizens here the proper way: “Do we really need a
House Speaker whose every action is calculated to enhance her own financial
interests, instead of focusing on how porous borders will affect the security
of everyday American citizens?”
Chamber
of Commerce Backs Farmworker Amnesty but Wants More Migrants and Lower Wages
5 Nov 2019276
7:33
The U.S. Chamber of Commerce
wants Congress to loosen the
wages for the migrants who will provide the nation’s agricultural workforce under the Democrats’ pending farmworker amnesty bill.
“The proposed
prevailing wage levels for temporary agricultural workers … should be more
responsive to market needs,” the business group said in an October 30 letter.
The U.S. Chamber of Commerce supports the Farm Workforce
Modernization Act, which would take important steps to address the growing
struggle of agricultural employers to meet their workforce needs.
…
We are committed to working with members of both parties to
address these and other issues to improve the bill as it proceeds through the
legislative process.
The pending
legislation provides a gradual amnesty for
the resident population of 500,000-plus illegal migrants who accept low-wage
jobs at farms, meat-processing slaughterhouses, and food canneries. Democrats
want the amnesty to spur their political support, but any amnesty would allow
the industry’s labor force to take up their green cards and get jobs in urban
areas.
So the
bill creates a replacement workforce
by streamlining the unlimited inflow of H-2A visa workers and by capping the
wages paid to those imported visa workers.
The migrants’ wages are to be capped at state or federal minimum
wages — unless unions can bargain for a better deal — or by agency officials.
This arrangement between Congress and employers effectively federalizes the
future agricultural workforce, and so it denies American farmworkers — and
their children — the chance to win higher wages amid normal labor shortages.
The resulting flood of low-wage H-2A migrants is likely
to displace the roughly half-million American employees who work in the
agriculture sector, so further shriveling the economic health of the nation’s
agricultural districts.
The
bill acknowledges the likely damaging
impact of unlimited H-2A visa workers on Americans, saying on page 64 that
government officials should study the economic impact and report back to
Congress:
Beginning in fiscal year 2026, the Secretary of Agriculture and
Secretary of Labor shall jointly conduct a study that addresses— ‘‘(i)
whether the employment of H–2A workers has depressed the wages of United States
farm workers; ‘‘(ii) whether an adverse effect wage rate is necessary to
protect the wages of United States farm workers in occupations in which H–2A
workers are employed; ‘‘(iii) whether alternative wage standards would be
sufficient to prevent wages in occupations in which H–2A workers are employed
from falling below the wage level that would have prevailed in the absence of
H–2A employment;
But the bill does not mandate a fix for the likely damage to
wages and careers of Americans, even though it is sponsored by 20 GOP
legislators and 24 Democrats.
That is bad
news for agriculture regions of the United States, most of which have been
falling behind as Democratic-run urban districts gain in wages and wealth. In
December 2018, Breitbart News reported:
Elite zip codes added more business establishments during [President
Barack] Obama’s economic recovery, between 2012 and 2016, than the entire
bottom 80 percent of zip codes combined. For instance, while more than 180,000
businesses have been added to rich zip codes, the country’s bottom tier has
lost more than 13,000 businesses even after the economic recovery.
House GOP & Democrats are quietly
drafting an amnesty for 1M farmworkers amid media noise on impeachment. Dems
get future voters & farm companies get cheaper workers, but Americans get
lower wages & fewer robots, and Trump loses leverage for 2021 reforms. http://bit.ly/2B1W3Uk
GOP Politicians Draft Farm Sector Amnesty with Democrats
Advocates for the bill say they negotiated the text with
employers and with a labor union that wants to legalize roughly 500,000 illegal
workers and also to import more migrants. The press release said:
“When I speak to farmers and ranchers across the country, labor
is often their number one concern. Our nation’s agriculture industry is diverse
and flourishing, but producers are in desperate need of a legal and reliable
workforce,” said [Washington GOP] Rep. [Dan] Newhouse. “As a
third-generation farmer, I understand the invaluable contributions made by
farmworkers to American agriculture, and we must modernize our guestworker
program to work for farmers, ranchers, and farmworkers in the 21st Century.”
…
“The success of our farmers, growers, and producers is essential
not only for our economy but for our national security. For far too long, we’ve
suffered from a broken H2A system—making it difficult for farmers to hire the
workforce necessary to provide to the American people,” said [Florida GOP]
Rep. Diaz-Balart.
“After months of negotiations, the UFW and UFW Foundation are
enthusiastic about passing legislation that honors all farm workers who feed
America by creating a way for undocumented workers to apply for legal status
and a roadmap to earn citizenship in the future without compromising farm
workers’ existing wages and legal protections,” said … Arturo S. Rodriguez,
President Emeritus of United Farmworkers & Spokesperson of UFW Foundation.
The 20 GOP sponsors include several of the most
business-friendly GOP leaders and several former GOP leaders in the House:
Rep. Mark Amodei (R-NV-02); Rep. James Baird (R-IN- 04); Rep.
Susan W. Brooks (R-IN-05); Rep. Tom Cole (R-OK-04); Rep. John Curtis
(R-UT-03); Rep. Rodney Davis (R-IL-13); Rep. Mario Diaz-Balart (R-FL-25); Rep.
Bob Gibbs (R-OH-07); Rep. Doug LaMalfa (R-CA-01); Rep. Cathy McMorris Rodgers
(R-WA-05); Rep. Paul Mitchell (R-MI-10); Rep. Dan Newhouse (R-WA-04);
Rep. Devin Nunes (R-CA-22); Rep. Tom Reed (R-NY-23); Rep. Mike Simpson
(R-ID-02); Rep. Elise Stefanik (R-NY-21); Rep. Steve Stivers (R-OH-15); Rep.
Fred Upton (R-MI-06); Rep. Greg Walden (R-OR-02), and Rep. Don Young (R-AK- At
Large).
In contrast, the population of roughly 500,000 American
agriculture workers — including many ex-immigrants — are likely to gain if the
amnesty bill crashes.
They will
gain because agriculture companies will be pressured to raise their wages and
to equip them with expensive, high-productivity, labor-saving machinery — just
as non-farm workers are now gaining from company investment in technology. This
automation trend is now accelerating as farms buy machines
and companies develop new technologies to offset the farmers’ rising payroll
costs.
For example, a tweet from the United Farm Workers union shows
farmworkers in New York picking up cabbages and throwing them into a container
at the front of a tractor:
Farm workers harvesting cabbage as it rains
today in upstate New York. #WeFeedYou / Trabajadores agrÃcolas que cosechan col mientras llueve hoy en el estado
de Nueva York.
In contrast, Youtube provides multiple videos of farms using
European-developed machines to accomplish the same task in much less time, For example,
a farm in California’s Salinas Valley is using a Danish-built machine to
accelerate the cabbage harvest:
In fact, on
October 21, the Chamber touted the value of
American-made, labor-saving machinery for African farmworkers:
The U.S. Chamber of Commerce, with support from members such as
Bayer, John Deere, and IBM, showcased the impact of technology on agriculture
supply chains in Africa. To highlight developments with precision agriculture
technology, representatives from John Deere discussed how their company is
finding innovative ways to help farmers manage their equipment and crop data to
improve profitability.
…
The relevance of emerging technologies cannot be emphasized
enough when it comes to agriculture in 21st century Africa.
New technologies are changing the face of Africa’s agriculture
value chains. For example, developments in seed technology, precision agriculture,
and mobile financing apps are expanding opportunities for countless families
and farmers across the 54 countries that make up Africa. Technology such
as John Deere’s ExactApply solutions allows for better weed and pest
control, promoting crop growth.
The chamber’s letter also said it also has concerns about the
bill’s requirement that agriculture companies use the free E-Verify service to
ensure the legality of job applicants: “The transition period for agricultural
employers to utilize the E-Verify system should be extended in order for
employers to better adjust to the new compliance burdens being foisted upon
them.”
The E-verify rule was added to the bill to give a talking point
for House legislators who face opposition to the amnesty.
But the E-verify rule makes little difference because it only
covers hiring in the agriculture sector, not hiring by the urban restaurants,
warehouses, and retail stores that employ most of the nation’s population of
illegal aliens.
Democrats draft crony amnesty bill to give
the farm industry cheaper labor now in a swap for 1 million+ illegal-migrant
voters after 2030. But it offers nothing to Americans who lose wages, nor $$ to
hasten labor-saving automation. A giveaway like #S386 http://bit.ly/34eqqnk
House Pushes Amnesty, Subsidy for Lower-Tech, Cheap Labor
Farms
America's Farmers Don't Depend on
Illegal Immigration
Liberals frame the debate over
illegal immigration as a dilemma: either America grants amnesty to aliens or
the economy will collapse. Some even imply that Americans will starve to
death because of higher food prices – who will pick America's fruits and
veggies if not illegals? Bruce Goldstein, president of a nonprofit called Farmworker Justice, boldly claims that if we were to deport
all illegal aliens, "our agricultural system would collapse." Collapse.
This is nonsense. American agriculture will not
collapse without illegal labor. Why? Because there are plenty of
technological solutions and American workers available to pick up the slack.
It is time to put this myth to bed.
Agriculture is not a labor-intensive
industry, and it has not been for decades. Less than 2 percent of Americans work in
agriculture, according to the World Bank. This figure has declined since
1960, when roughly 6 percent of Americans worked on farms. If trends
continue, we can expect the number to continue to fall. This is because
of the wonders of mechanization: machines now do everything from threshing
wheat to milking cows. The bottom line: Most farmers do not "benefit"
from cheap illegal labor, since their labor costs are minimal to begin
with.
The "exceptions" to this
rule are fruit and nut farms, located primarily in California. Crops like
raspberries and almonds are notoriously difficult for machines to pick.
There are many reasons for this, including the fact that berries require
a "soft touch" – they ripen at different times, and bushes are tough
for machinery to navigate. These labor-intensive farms are the main agricultural
culprits when it comes to hiring illegal workers. After all, they have
the most to gain.
But realistically, even
labor-intensive agriculture does not depend upon illegal labor. Orchards
could get by without illegal workers since only four percent of American
agricultural workers are illegal aliens, according to a report in National Review. Likewise, only one in six workers in California's nut orchards is an illegal alien.
Removing illegals from the system would be inconvenient for them, but it
would not drive them out of business – the remaining employees would simply
have to work a few hours of overtime per day.
Without Aliens, Who Will Pick the
Crops?
There are two ways for the
agriculture industry to replace illegal workers: they can either hire Americans
or invest in better technology.
At this moment, there are roughly 23 million unemployed Americans, some of whom have experience in agriculture. On top
of this, America has a massive problem with seasonal unemployment for its college students. Either
way, there are more than enough Americans to fill the potential labor shortage.
The only reason Americans are not working in agriculture is because they
are out-competed by cheap illegal workers. Data from the Bureau of Labor Statistics reveals that millions of Americans –
of all races – currently work as janitors, laborers, and agricultural workers.
If
farmers were required to pay market wages, they would not have a problem
finding employees.
The counterpoint: If farmers hire
Americans, the price of food will go up! Yes – but not by much.
Higher labor costs can result in higher prices only to the degree that
labor impacts the product's cost. For example, higher wages for train
conductors does not appreciably impact rail shipping costs because there are so
few conductors per unit of freight – rail is capital-intensive. Contrast
this with some retail outlets that spend 70 percent of their revenue on labor costs.
Agriculture – even fruit and nut
orchards – is relatively capital-intensive – i.e., the
labor costs aren't all that significant per unit of produce. Proof is in
the numbers. A 2011 report published by the Federation for American Immigration Reform found that the agriculture industry was one of
America's most profitable sectors and could easily afford to pay its workers
20-30 percent more without significantly impacting profits.
Furthermore, research conducted
by Philip
Martin, a leading
expert on farm labor and migration issues, found that labor costs are
negligible compared to the retail cost of produce. In 2006, Martin found
that only 5-6 cents of every dollar spent on produce is due to labor costs.
Therefore, if illegal aliens were removed from the labor force entirely,
and labor costs rose by up to 40 percent to attract American workers, labor
would still only account for 7-9 cents. Over the course of a year, this
works out to just $9.00 extra for the average household. This is
nothing, especially when you remember that illegal immigration costs America between $115 billion and
$140 billion annually.
The second option, improving
technology and embracing mechanization, is the strategy employed by America's
wheat, corn, and dairy industries. Ever had trouble affording flour or
milk? Probably not. Thank mechanization for this fact, not illegal
aliens.
Although adopting new technology can
be expensive, it brings costs down in the long run. And as it turns out,
there is a good argument to be made that the American fruit and nut industry's
addiction to cheap illegal labor has stifled technological development and kept
prices artificially high. Farmers should and could mechanize – today.
The technology exists. If only America's fruit farms would embrace
it. For example, an American company called "Abundant Robotics" has developed a fruit-picking
robot that can harvest apples and peaches. Other companies have developed machines that are able to pick much smaller,
more delicate fruit, like grapes and strawberries.
America's farmers do not
rely on illegal alien labor. This is a myth cooked up by the pro-illegal
immigration lobby to further its agenda. Nothing more.
Meanwhile, America pays the price.
Vox Shock: Donald Trump
Rejects State Department Advice on Migration
Evan
Vucci/AP Photo
NEIL
MUNRO
7 Nov 20191,148
5:30
President Donald Trump spurned the
advice of establishment diplomats as he fought to implement his campaign
promises, according to a report by Vox.
The November 7
article described the elected president’s decision to ignore the
self-serving view of agency officials:
Senior State Department
officials and career diplomats repeatedly warned the Trump administration that
taking away legal protections for [400,000 migrants] from El Salvador,
Honduras, and Haiti would put
national security, foreign relations, and the immigrants’ American-born
children at risk, according to internal State Department documents.
But Trump did it anyway
— and concerns about the 2020 election appear to have helped determine the
timeline for requiring immigrants to leave, according to the documents, which
will be released in a report by the Senate Foreign Relations Committee [and
Sen. Bob Menendez (D-NJ)] on Thursday.
Trump was elected
president on an America First platform, and he has had to fight the
establishment every day to implement his platform.
Vox is part of the
establishment, so Vox’s shocked report about politicians overruling experts
provides a useful Civics 101 lesson for American K-12 students: Presidents with
change agendas will face strenuous opposition from the establishment.
Other reports show how
Trump has had to fight the establishment. The New York Times, for
example, described a showdown in the Oval Office where Trump demanded
more effort to block migrants:
In the Oval Office that
March [2019] afternoon, a 30-minute meeting extended to more than two hours as
Mr. Trump’s team tried desperately to placate him.
“You are making me look
like an idiot!” Mr. Trump shouted, adding in a profanity, as multiple officials
in the room described it. “I ran on this. It’s my issue.”
…
The president’s advisers
left the meeting in a near panic.
In the following months,
Trump revamped his staff, fired top aides, fended off appeals from business
lobbies, and then achieved a huge strategic success by threatening to impose
tariffs on Mexico.
The Vox article also
showed how the State Department is focused on its own priorities and rarely is
willing to help fix other national problems if those fixes create problems for
the diplomats. That self-serving attitude was spotlighted by the diplomats’
arguments against Trump’s plan to end the migrants’ Temporary Protective Status
(TPS), as described in Vox:
Thomas Shannon, the most
senior foreign service official in the State Department at the time, appealed
to [then Secretary of State Rex] Tillerson to renew protections for immigrants
from the three countries.
“It is rare for the
State Department to be asked to comment on an issue with such immediate
domestic political ramifications,” he wrote in a previously undisclosed memo in
October 2017. “I understand the delicate nature of the decision. However, it is
our purpose to provide the best possible foreign policy and diplomatic advice.
From my point of view, that advice is obvious: extend TPS for the countries
indicated.”
…
Given that most
Hondurans who migrate do so for economic reasons, adding tens of thousands of
deportees to an economy that is not prepared to integrate them will only
exacerbate the principal cause of irregular migration,” Heide Fulton,
then-interim head of the US Embassy in Honduras, wrote in a June 29, 2017,
diplomatic cable. “This would impose severe burdens on a cooperative but
underresourced [Honduran government] and be counterproductive to US interests.”
In October, Trump won a
migrant-reduction deal with El Salvador by offering to partially extend TPS for
El Salvadorean migrants now living in the United States. That diplomatic trade
would not have been possible if the State Department’s do-nothing advice had
been accepted by Trump.
Democrats expressed
shock that politics played a role in Trump’s political decision:
The almost 80 pages of internal State Department memos and
diplomatic cables — obtained by the Senate Foreign Relations Committee as part
of an investigation commissioned by Sen. Bob Menendez, the top Democrat on the
committee.
…
“Trump administration
political appointees thus injected electoral considerations not contemplated
under the TPS statute, raising the likely prospect that the Trump
administration elevated electoral concerns over US national security and the
personal safety of nearly 400,000 TPS recipients and an estimated 273,000
American children,” Menendez writes in the report.
But Vox also revealed
the Democrats’ political strategy behind Menendez’s rehearsed shock about
politics playing a role in politics:
The Ninth Circuit could
rule any day now in one of the cases over the Trump administration’s decision
to end TPS. No matter the decision, it will likely set up a high-profile
showdown over TPS at the Supreme Court. If the administration prevails, it had
previously agreed to establish a minimum 120-day wind-down period for TPS
protections.
Tom Jawetz, vice
president of immigration policy at the Center for American Progress think tank,
said that the new evidence in the report suggesting the Trump administration
was swayed by political motivations over the dangers to American children in
deciding to end TPS could be helpful to legal challenges.
“This strongly supports
the argument that the decision to terminate [TPS] for these three countries at
least was arbitrary and capricious,” he said.
Even if a judge blocks
Trump’s TPS termination by declaring it to be “arbitrary and capricious,”
Trump’s deputies will appeal the decision up to the Supreme Court.
House ag-worker amnesty bill is progressive
cronyism; Dems get 500K extra voters by 2030, while ag-biz degrades farm
communities into 'company towns.' Americans lose wages, wealth &
communities, but media will treat the debate as 'civil rights' vs 'racism' http://bit.ly/33pN8sn
Chamber of
Commerce Backs Farmworker Amnesty but Wants More Migrants and Lower Wages
Illegal
Immigration Is the Reason California Is Burning
By Wayne Allyn Root
Newsmax.com
Newsmax.com
Illegal
Immigration Is the Reason California Is Burning
A firefighting helicopter makes a water drop over the Easy Fire on
October 30, 2019, near Simi Valley, California. (David McNew/Getty Images)
·
·
·
·
California
is collapsing in front of our eyes.
Everyone with the money and common sense
is running for their lives. The question is why
is this happening to such a rich and beautiful
state?
Let's start
with a comparison of the taxes in California with my state of Nevada (right
next door to California). While California was burying its citizens with among
the nation’s highest personal income taxes, highest corporate income taxes,
highest sales taxes, and highest gas taxes, Nevada’s citizens have enjoyed
among the lowest taxes in the country.
That could
be why millions of people have left California in the past decade — almost all
for the low tax states like Nevada, Texas, Florida, Utah, Colorado, Washington,
and Arizona. Those states lead the nation in population growth, while
California and other high tax, blue states lead the nation in population loss.
Keep in mind
this was all before the
nonstop blackouts and $6 per gallon gas in California.
Who can live
in a place where the electric utility company shuts off the power to homes and
businesses for days on end, multiple times per year? Because the wind is
blowing hard? California has truly become a Third World Nation.
Keep in
mind, this is what you got for all those high taxes.
So why is
this happening? I lived in California for 15 wonderful years. The winds howled
back then too. We had 80 MPH Santa Ana winds. And plenty of fires, floods,
mudslides, and earthquakes. I lived through all of them. My home almost burned
three times. My car was almost carried away by a massive mudslide.
Yet in my 15
years in California, no one shut off electricity because the wind was blowing.
No one shut off electricity because there was the threat of a fire.
I’m not a
California hater. I loved my time in California. It is the most beautiful state
in America, with the greatest weather. But something has dramatically changed since
I left. Today I wouldn’t live there if you gave me a $5 million oceanfront
mansion for free.
What’s
changed is disastrous liberal policy.
Lots of
liberal ideas ruined California: high taxes, stifling regulations, climate
change policy, permissive policies towards homeless encampments, the highest
welfare benefits in the nation, a $15 minimum wage. It’s impossible to run a
business in California. Restaurants are closing by the hundreds.
And did I
mention poop, pee, and drug needles in the streets? And homeless camps
everywhere.
Now add in blackouts that make
life
miserable and bankrupt
businesses.
California has become an unlivable
third-
world hellhole.
But despite
all those liberal policies that have contributed to the rot of California, one
issue is at the root of California’s current problems. One issue stands heads
and tails above all the rest.
First and
foremost, illegal immigration is the
problem. Since I left two decades ago,
California has collectively spent hundreds of
billions of dollars on illegal aliens and their
bills — public schools, free meals at school,
special bi-lingual teachers, healthcare,
housing allowances, low income energy
assistance, aid to families with dependent
children, prisons, cops, courts, public
defenders, welfare, food stamps, and a
hundred other government handouts. And
don’t forget special lower college tuition for
illegal immigrants.
Can you
imagine if all those billions of dollars were instead spent on new infrastructure,
moving power poles underground, upgraded electrical equipment, modernized
electrical systems, homeless vets, more cops, and better schools for children
born in California. Can you imagine what a better place California would be for
its own citizens?
Think about
it in personal terms. What if a husband and father has a drug problem. He's
addicted to cocaine or heroin. He spends $20,000 a year on his drug addiction
for 20 years. That's $400,000. But his life remains in control. Until one day
he finds out his child has cancer. The bill is $100,000 (after insurance pays).
But he doesn't have the $100,000. His child is dying. If only he had the
$400,000 back that he wasted on drugs.
That's
California and illegal immigration. The state has squandered hundreds of
billions on illegal immigration in the 20 years since I've been gone. They
could use that money today. They desperately need it back to pay for the
hundred billion dollar job of upgrading and modernizing their electric grid.
But they don't have the money. It's
all
been wasted on illegal aliens. And
it's
gone forever.
I guarantee
you one thing Californians: if you had all that money back, you wouldn’t be
sitting in the dark.
In my next
column, I’ll get to Part II of the disastrous mistakes of liberalism that have
destroyed California. Think idiotic environmental policies and climate change
fraud.
That's
another few hundred billion dollars wasted — and gone forever. Think about
that, as you sit in the dark, shivering or sizzling, with your food spoiling.
Think about
that as you fill up your gas tank with $5 our $6 per gallon gas, driving on
crumbling highways, in massive traffic jams.
All the money to fix your misery
was spent
on illegal aliens, not you. How
does that
make you feel?
Trust me, if
you impeach President Trump and elect Democrats to run the country, Democrats
will turn the whole America into one big crappy, miserable, unlivable
California.
Except you
won't even get the sunshine and perfect 75 degree days.
Wayne Allyn Root is the host
of "The Wayne Allyn Root Show" on Newsmax TV, nightly at 8 p.m. ET,
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Democrats turning California into a
third-world hellhole: Going without electricity edition
Democrats are turning California into
a third-world hellhole without electricity, water, and freedom.
Due to
Democrats' love for trees, at least 800,000 Californians will be without power for
several days. Instead of properly managing California forests to
reduce the chances of big fires, Democrats are saying Californians have to go
without lights, refrigerators, and air-conditioning. Democrats could
also avoid this by not making the power company financially liable for all
forest fire damages, but since PG&E is a company, not an illegal alien, the
Democrats couldn't care less about doing what's best for California.
While they try
to blame climate change and the infrastructure, the reality is that neither of
those has caused any significant changes in the last ten years — but now,
suddenly, due to Democrat policies, Californians have to start living in the 18th
century.
The Democrats
who run California also refuse to build more water storage capacity even though
the state's population has dramatically increased, ensuring that water has to
be rationed during droughts.
Democrats
are turning California into a third-world country economically. The
income inequality between the über-rich Silicon Valley workers and the rest of
Californians is huge, just like in third-world countries, while the elites live
in luxury and the rest live in squalor.
Democrats are
doing a great job manufacturing poverty and homelessness even as they fail to
instill hope in Californians.
California has
four times more
homeless per capita and three times more poor per capita than the rest of
America. Half the homeless in America are in California, even though
California has only 12% of the U.S. population. Also, blacks are six
times more prevalent in the
San Francisco homeless population than they are in California in general.
The homeless
explosion has brought the return of third-world diseases like typhus to
California — not to mention streets littered with human feces.
Democrats
are trying to keep people from having cars, just like the people of the Third
World. After all, a car gives people the freedom to move, and
freedom is a bad thing in the minds of Democrats since it limits the power the
government has over citizens.
Recently,
Gavin Newsom, the Democrat governor, transferred millions of dollars that the
voters had been ensured would go to improve the state's failing road
infrastructure to a fund designed to convince Californians to give up their
cars.
Democrats are
also working to make cars unaffordable for any but the richest Californians.
Californians pay $1.53
more for a gallon for gasoline than the rest of America. That's $21
more for a tank of gasoline. Facebook employees won't notice it, but
the poor in California who can't afford to live near their jobs are paying
through the teeth.
Like all
third-world tyrants, Democrats are doing everything they can to eliminate
democracy in California.
The jungle
primary, where the top two candidates in the primaries go against each other,
has resulted in many races where two Democrats are running against each other,
giving voters who don't agree with the Democrats' failed policies no one to
vote for.
California
is doing nothing to ensure that people who shouldn't vote don't
vote. Instead, the people running the state are doing everything
possible to let illegal aliens vote. When illegal aliens go pick up
their driver's licenses, they're automatically enrolled to vote unless they say
they're not citizens.
California is
also trying to end democracy by keeping the Republican presidential candidate
off the ballot. Democrats passed an unconstitutional law to keep any
candidate who didn't release his tax returns off the ballot solely to keep
Californians from voting for Trump.
Finally, the
Democrats are going after freedom of the press. An undercover
journalist revealed that Planned Parenthood was selling aborted baby
parts. Instead of investigating that illegal practice, Democrat
Kamala Harris decided to put the journalist on trial.
Democrats keep
telling us California is the future if they get elected. That means
that poverty, homelessness, the end of democracy, and a press that reports only
what Democrats want heard are what Democrats are promising us.
If you're an
immensely wealthy Google employee, California is Heaven. If you're
not, it's becoming more and more like Hell.
You can read more of Tom's rants at
his blog, Conversations about the
obvious, and feel free to follow him on Twitter.
OPEN BORDERS:
IT’S ALL ABOUT KEEPING WAGES DEPRESSED!
"In the
decade following the financial crisis of 2007-2008, the capitalist class has
delivered powerful blows to the social position of the working class. As a
result, the working class in the US, the world’s “richest country,” faces
levels of economic hardship not seen since the 1930s."
"Inequality
has reached unprecedented levels: the wealth of America’s three richest
people now equals the net worth of the poorest half of the US
population."
PELOSI,
FEINSTEIN, KAMALA HARRIS AND GAVIN NEWOMS’S MEXIFORNIA
Report:
California’s Middle-Class Wages Rise by 1 Percent in 40 Years
Justin Sullivan/Getty Images
NEIL
MUNRO
3 Sep 2019172
6:24
Middle-class wages in progressive California have risen by
1 percent in the last 40 years, says a study by the establishment California
Budget and Policy Center.
“Earnings
for California’s workers at the low end and middle of the wage scale have
generally declined or stagnated for decades,” says the report, titled “California’s
Workers Are Increasingly Locked Out of the State’s Prosperity.” The report
continued:
In 2018,
the median hourly earnings for workers ages 25 to 64 was $21.79, just 1% higher
than in 1979, after adjusting for inflation ($21.50, in 2018 dollars) (Figure
1). Inflation-adjusted hourly earnings for low-wage workers, those at the
10th percentile, increased only slightly more, by 4%, from $10.71 in 1979
to $11.12 in 2018.
The
report admits that the state’s progressive economy is delivering more to investors
and less to wage-earners. “Since 2001, the share of state private-sector
[annual new income] that has gone to worker compensation has fallen by 5.6
percentage points — from 52.9% to 47.3%.”
In 2016,
California’s Gross Domestic Product was $2.6 trillion, so the 5.6 percent drop
shifted $146 billion away from wages. That is roughly $3,625 per person in
2016.
The
report notes that wages finally exceeded 1979 levels around 2017, and it splits
the credit between the Democrats’ minimum-wage boosts and President Donald
Trump’s go-go economy.
The 40
years of flat wages are partly hidden by a wave of new products and services.
They include almost-free entertainment and information on the Internet, cheap
imported coffee in supermarkets, and reliable, low-pollution autos in garages.
But the
impact of California’s flat wages is made worse by California’s rising housing
costs, the report says, even though it also ignores the rent-spiking impact of
the establishment’s pro-immigration policies:
In
just the last decade alone, the increase in the typical household’s rent far
outpaced the rise in the typical full-time worker’s annual earnings, suggesting
that working families and individuals are finding it increasingly difficult to
make ends meet. In fact, the basic cost of living in many parts of the
state is more than many single individuals or families can expect to earn, even
if all adults are working full-time.
…
Specifically,
inflation-adjusted median household rent rose by 16% between 2006 and 2017,
while inflation-adjusted median annual earnings for individuals working at
least 35 hours per week and 50 weeks per year rose by just 2%, according to a
Budget Center analysis of US Census Bureau, American Community Survey data.
The wage
and housing problems are made worse — especially for families — by the loss of employment benefits as companies
and investors spike stock prices by cutting costs. The report says:
Many
workers are being paid little more today than workers were in 1979 even as
worker productivity has risen. Fewer employees have access to retirement plans
sponsored by their employers, leaving individual workers on their own to
stretch limited dollars and resources to plan how they’ll spend their later
years affording the high cost of living and health care in California. And as
union representation has declined, most workers today cannot negotiate
collectively for better working conditions, higher pay, and benefits, such as
retirement and health care, like their parents and grandparents did. On top of
all this, workers who take on contingent and independent work (often referred
to as “gig work”), which in many cases appears to be motivated by the need to
supplement their primary job or fill gaps in their employment, are rarely
granted the same rights and legal protections as traditional employees.
The
center’s report tries to blame the four-decade stretch of flat wages on the
declining clout of unions. But unions’ decline was impacted by the bipartisan
elites’ policy of mass-migration and imposed diversity.
In 2018,
Breitbart reported how Progressives for Immigration Reform interviewed Blaine
Taylor, a union carpenter, about the economic impact of migration:
TAYLOR:
If I hired a framer to do a small addition [in 1988], his wage would have
been $45 an hour. That was the minimum for a framing contractor, a good
carpenter. For a helper, it was about $25 an hour, for a master who could run a
complete job, it was about $45 an hour. That was the going wage for plumbers as
well. His helpers typically got $25 an hour.
…
Now, the
average wage in Los Angeles for construction workers is less than $11 an hour.
They can’t go lower than the minimum wage. And much of that, if they’re not
being paid by the hour at less than $11 an hour, they’re being paid per piece —
per piece of plywood that’s installed, per piece of drywall that’s installed.
Now, the subcontractor can circumvent paying them as an hourly wage and are now
being paid by 1099, which means that no taxes are being taken out. [Emphasis
added]
Diversity
also damaged the unions by shredding California’s civic solidarity. In 2007,
the progressive Southern Poverty Law Center posted a report with the title “Latino Gang Members in Southern
California are Terrorizing and Killing Blacks.” In the same year, an op-ed in
the Los Angeles Times described another murder by Latino gangs as “a manifestation of
an increasingly common trend: Latino ethnic cleansing of African Americans from
multiracial neighborhoods.”
The
center’s board members include the executive director of the state’s SEIU
union, a professor from the Goldman School of Public Policy at the University
of California, Berkeley, and the research director at the “Program for
Environmental and Regional Equity” at the University of Southern California,
Los Angeles.
Outside
California, President Donald Trump’s low-immigration policies are pressuring
employers to raise Americans’ wages in a hot economy. The Wall Street
Journal reportedAugust 29:
Overall,
median weekly earnings rose 5% from the fourth quarter of 2017 to the same
quarter in 2018, according to the Bureau of Labor Statistics. For workers
between the ages of 25 and 34, that increase was 7.6%.
The New York Times
laments that reduced immigration does force wages upwards and also does force
companies to buy labor-saving, wage-boosting machinery. Instead, NYT
prioritizes "ideas about America’s identity and culture.” http://bit.ly/2Zp2u2J
NYT Admits Fewer Immigrants Means Higher
Wages, More Labor-Saving Machines
.
Report:
Immigration Encourages Job Discrimination Against Americans
Dave Einsel/Getty
NEIL
MUNRO
29 Oct 2019118
9:50
Mass migration encourages mass discrimination
against Americans, especially black employees, according to federal data
unearthed by the Center for Immigration Studies.
“You really
have to be out of touch with reality to argue that there are no negative
effects of immigration on native workers,” said Jason Richwine, a statistician
who studied the issue for the Center for Immigration Studies.
“Forty
percent of the decline in labor participation rates among black workers over
three decades was attributable to competition from illegal immigration,” labor
lawyer Peter Kirsanow said at a CIS press event at
the press club. That “comes to nearly 1 million fewer jobs for black
Americans as a result of the competition from illegal immigrants … and it is
the wage levels also,” Kirsanow told the audience on October 25.
The huge impact
of this discrimination is mostly ignored by wealthy “woke” professionals, who
prefer to use discrimination claims as a political club against conservatives.
The documented discrimination is just “the tip of the iceberg,” but left-wing
critics have gone silent since Donald Trump was elected, said CIS director
Mark Krikorian,
Yet
white-collar workers are also losing salaries and jobs because of
discrimination, said Kevin Lynn, founder of Progressives for Immigration
Reform:
The gains
made by women and minorities in STEM fields over the past three decades have
really been reversed. For example, today on average 12 percent of women earn
degrees in computer science. In 1984 it was 37 percent. So you have to ask
yourself what’s going on. Well, when the opportunities become scant and the
workplaces become hostile to women, they typically choose other career
alternatives.
….
There is a
preference for hiring Indians over Americans in these [Indian-run] consulting
firms because, one, they will work longer hours. It’s a quiescent workforce,
largely because they’re here on H-1B visas. And a lot of what goes into this is
they are given the hope that their company will sponsor them for an – a green
card, and then they’ll eventually get citizenship here in the U.S. Unfortunately
for the American worker, that means that they’re competing with someone who is
willing to work for less, work for increasingly lower benefits and other
benefits that go along with their salaries, and it just ultimately makes things
a lot more difficult.
The press
club event was scheduled to spotlight Richwine’s study of discrimination
lawsuits by the Equal Employment Opportunity Commission. He summarized
several of the EEOC cases, often quoting directly from the commission’s
reports:
When a
warehouse in Memphis began using a new employment agency to fill its daily work
crew, the agency, quote from EEOC, “essentially replaced the African Americans
with Hispanics.” End quote. Potential workers would line up outside the
warehouse each day, but the agency would select Hispanics over blacks even when
black workers were farther ahead in line. Sometimes managers would send
potential black workers home by announcing in English that there were no more
positions. After the African Americans left, the Hispanics were allowed to come
into the warehouse and work. Again, systematic – neither subconscious nor
subtle.
Richwine
described cases where Hispanic managers discriminated against American blacks:
Perhaps the
most egregious example of this comes from Prestige Transportation Services. It
would discard or refuse to accept employment applications from non-Hispanic
blacks. Quote from EEOC: “On multiple occasions when a black person applied for
employment, Prestige managers Mr. Ramirez and Ms. Rodriguez would stand behind
the applicant and rub their hand on their skin to display their disdain for
black people.” End quote. Staff meetings were conducted in Spanish only.
The record
shows that some Indian immigrants also discriminates against blacks, he said.
At a Hampton
Inn in Colorado, three non-Hispanic white housekeepers were fired by the new
general manager and replaced by Hispanics. The owners, Falgun Patel and Mukund
Patel, told the general manager that they prefer that maids be Hispanic because
in their opinion Hispanics worked harder while American employees are lazy. The
general manager allegedly told a Hispanic employee to recruit friends for the
incoming vacancies because the owner preferred a Hispanic workforce. After
three months, all of the Hampton Inn’s non-Hispanic housekeepers were gone.
The pattern
of lawsuits by Hispanics is very different, said Richwine. Instead of losing
job opportunities because of discrimination, Latinos lose workplace protections
that were once normal for Americans, he said:
When Hispanics
file suits, they are not complaining that they are being replaced by some other
group in the workforce; instead, they’re complaining about working conditions,
they complain about low pay, they complain about dangerous situations on the
job site, and they complain about harassment. Harassment oftentimes is
ethnically based, ethnic slurs and so on directed at them. The saddest part is
that when we’re talking about Hispanic women, sexual harassment is a very
pervasive problem if you believe these EEOC lawsuits,
The examples
are merely the most egregious ad straightforward cases, he said, ensuring that
they are likely many other cases of discrimination that do not end up in court.
Deputies for
President Donald Trump have partly reversed some discrimination against blacks,
for forcing wages up to record levels.
But his
deputies done little to curb the white-collar discrimination, partly because
there is so much more money at stake for high-tech firms, hospitals, and
investors.
Another lawsuit alleging discrimination by Indian
managers in the US, this time at Intel Corp. One Indian manager rejects a US
graduate, says "It would be easier to hire a younger, unmarried Indian
man."
Lawsuit: Intel's
Indian Managers Discriminated Against American | Breitbart
For example,
the federal government rewards companies that discriminate in favor of Indian
“OPT” work-permit workers by rejecting American graduates, Lynn said.
American
companies which hire Indian graduates are not required to pay Social Security
taxes, he said, adding:
That’s about
a 15 percent premium that is added to hiring someone on the OPT program and,
again, these people compete directly with our new [American] graduates in the
workplace … [where] a [U.S.] student today might exit university with anywhere
from $35 [thousand] to $85,000 in debt. That’s a lot of money, and … they’re
having their legs broken as they leave the gate into the workplace.
Instead,
American victims of Indians’ discrimination are suing the Indians firms in court.
For example, in a 2016 lawsuit against a giant Indian software firm, Infosys,
American witnesses alleged:
Hiring
Manager Instructions: an Infosys hiring manager admitted “There does exist an
element of discrimination. We are advised to hire Indians … because they will
work off the clock without murmur and they can always be transferred across the
nation without hesitation unlike [a] local workforce.”
Talent
Acquisition Unit Observations: Recruiters in Talent Acquisition observed that
Indians were highly favored, and it was extremely difficult to move non-South
Asians ahead in the hiring process. Non-Indians were regularly rejected as
being “not a good fit,” – an Infosys euphemism for “non-Indian.” This
discrimination is on-going. In 2016 for example, an Infosys manager in
their Talent Acquisition Unit observed that of Infosys’ 2,900 hires in the
United States, 2,200 (76%) were Indian. She observed a similar hiring disparity
in prior years.
Applicant
Data Manipulation: Infosys manipulates applicant tracking data in such a way
that consideration of non-South Asians and non-Indians is minimized, and the
hiring of South Asians is maximized. For example, recruiters have observed that
non-South Asian applicants were repeatedly deleted from Infosys’ applicant
tracking system, forcing one recruiter to keep a separate spreadsheet of
applicants on his computer. Recruiters have also observed South Asian
applicants, located by Infosys’ “sourcers” in India, manually entered into the
applicant tracking system despite those individuals not having formally
applied, thus streamlining the hiring process. Individuals sourced in this way
were moved “to the front of the line” ahead of applicants in the U.S. A
recruiter also observed that applications for United States positions were
regularly not reviewed, and in 2016, approximately 11,000 to 12,000 were
rejected en masse.
Census data shows how huge numbers of American software
graduates have been replaced by Indian & Chinese visa-workers in N.J.,
California, N.C., Georgia, N.Y., Texas, Virginia, Florida, and other states.
Next: Healthcare professionals. @S386 http://bit.ly/2o0X4cp
Census: Indian
Visa Workers Drive Americans Out of Middle-Class Jobs
Immigration
Numbers:
Each year,
roughly four million young Americans join the workforce after graduating
from high school or a university. This total includes about 800,000
Americans who graduate with skilled degrees in business or health care,
engineering or science, software, or statistics.
But the
federal government then imports about 1.1 million legal immigrants. It also
adds replacement workers to a resident population of more than 1.5 million
white-collar visa workers — including approximately one million H-1B workers
and about 500,000 blue-collar H-2B, H-2A, and J-1 visa workers. The
government also prints more than one million work permits for new foreigners, and
it rarely punishes companies for employing illegal migrants.
This policy
of inflating the labor supply boosts economic growth and stock
values for investors. The stimulus happens because the
extra labor ensures that employers do not have to compete for American workers
by offering higher wages and better working conditions.
The federal
policy of flooding the market with cheap, foreign
white-collar graduates and blue-collar labor shifts wealth from young employees toward older
investors. It also widens wealth gaps, reduces high-tech investment, increases state and local tax burdens,
reduces marriage rates, and hurts children’s
schools and college educations.
The
cheap-labor economic strategy also pushes Americans away from high-tech
careers, and it sidelines millions of marginalized Americans, including
many who are now struggling with drug addictions.
The labor
policy also moves business investment and wealth
from the Heartland to the coastal cities, explodes rents and housing costs, undermines suburbia, shrivels real estate values in the
Midwest, and rewards investors for creating low-tech, labor-intensive workplaces.
But
President Donald Trump’s “Hire American” policy is boosting wages by capping
immigration within a growing economy.
The Census
Bureau said September 10 that men who work
full-time and year-round got an average earnings boost of 3.4 percent in 2018,
pushing their median salaries up to $55,291. Women gained 3.3 percent in wages,
bringing their median salaries to $45,097 for full-time, year-round work.
"Chuck
Schumer and Nancy Pelosi, the twin nutters of Congress, were certain they could
beat Trump at his own game, but have made fools of themselves, as
usual. The stand-off is not over but with each passing day, the
Democrats reveal more of their anti-American, pro-illegal immigration
agenda. Conservatives have been sounding the alarm for
years: Democrats do not care about American citizens!" PATRICIA
McCARTHY
In the next two decades, should the
country’s legal immigration policy go unchanged, the U.S. is set to import about
15 million new foreign-born voters. About eight million of these new
foreign-born voters will have arrived through the process known as “chain migration,”
whereby newly naturalized citizens are allowed to bring an unlimited number of
foreign relatives to the country. JOHN BINDER
This policy of flooding the market with cheap, foreign, white-collar graduates and blue-collar labor also shifts enormous wealth from young employees towards older investors, even as it also widens wealth gaps, reduces high-tech investment, increases state and local tax burdens, and hurts children’s schools
and college educations. It also pushes Americans away from high-tech careers and sidelines millions
of marginalized Americans, including many who are now struggling with fentanyl addictions. The labor policy also moves
business investment and wealth from the heartland to the coastal cities, explodes rents and housing costs, shrivels real estate values in the Midwest, and rewards investors for
creating low-tech, labor-intensive workplaces. JOHN BINDER
“Liberal
governing has transformed beautiful California into the poverty
capital of America with the worst quality of life. Crazy
taxes, crazy high cost of living, and
crazy overreaching regulations have
crushed the middle class, forcing the middle class to exit the Sunshine
State. All that is left in California are illegals feeding at the
breast of the state, rapidly growing massive
homeless tent cities, and the mega-rich.” LLOYD MARCUS
The Democrats' Alien Voting Strategy
By Cliff Spectre
American Thinker
https://www.americanthinker.com/articles/2019/05/the_democratsalien_voting_strategy.html
2020 Democrats All Have the Same Immigration
Position: Open Borders
By Eddie Scarry
Washington Examiner, May 23, 2019
https://www.washingtonexaminer.com/opinion/2020-democrats-all-have-the-same-immigration-position-open-borders
2020 Democrats all have the same immigration
position: Open borders
Other than
offering some vague nods to “border security,” Democrats never put forth any
policy that would prevent the hundreds of thousands of unknown people streaming
into the U.S. Yet if you point out that the party doesn't care about securing
the border, a confounded news anchor will insist, “Silly fool! Why, everyone
supports border security!”
It’s a
cover-up for what Democrats truly believe in: An open border that discriminates
against no one from anywhere.
Look at any
one of the Democrats running for the party’s presidential nomination, and you
will not find a single policy proposal that would stop a single illegal
entrant. Or even just the top five of them in the RealClearPolitics national
average.
Former Vice
President Joe Biden’s plan on his website: “We have
got to address the root causes of migration that push people to leave behind
their homes and everything they know to undertake a dangerous journey for the
chance at a better life." It says nothing about halting the obscene
numbers of migrants showing up at the border with bogus claims for asylum or
the illegal border crossers with histories of child sex abuse and
violent gang affiliations caught daily. Ah, but it does check the
empty “secure our border and enforce our laws” banality.
Vermont Sen.
Bernie Sanders calls for expanding protections for illegal immigrants already
in the U.S., “developing a humane policy for those seeking asylum," and
virtually eliminating the deportation and detention of illegal aliens
altogether. Sanders’ website doesn’t even bother nodding to the “border
security” cliché.
Massachusetts
Sen. Elizabeth Warren doesn’t mention immigration at all on her website. But in
interviews, she says the same nothing that every Democrat says. “We need an
immigration system that is effective, that focuses on where problems are,” she
said Wednesday on CNN, though
Democrats never seem to find “where the problems are” when talking about the
topic. They deny that even one illegal immigrant might be a rapist or drug
dealer, even though there are scores of them. They deny that there’s a “crisis”
at the border, where five children have died in recent weeks. They deny that
illegal immigrants soak up welfare benefits (even though they do). So where
exactly are the “problems”? Warren said in the interview that “we need
immigration laws that focus on people who pose a real threat,” but how exactly
do Democrats define “real threat”? They apparently see no threat, otherwise
they wouldn’t oppose the construction of a border wall with the fury of a
volcano god.
California
Sen. Kamala Harris has compared Immigration and Customs Enforcement to the Ku
Klux Klan, called on Senate Democrats to resist funding any measure or resource
on the border that functions to apprehend and detain illegal border crossers,
and made protections for Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals recipients
among her top issues. I think we know where she stands on
“border security.”
South Bend,
Ind., Mayor Pete Buttigieg finally got some policy positions on his website and
he proposes “immigration laws to reflect today’s humanitarian and economic
needs” as well as “reasonable security measures at the border.” Well, I feel
better now, how about you? Last month, Buttigieg said he would be happy to welcome an
infinite number of immigrants, legal or not, to his city, where he thought they
would contribute to the snowplowing and need for more firefighters. Aw, shucks!
Is that what the tiny Guatemalan woman who arrived at the Texas border with
seven children wanted to do all along? Why didn’t they say so? Hand them each a
helmet and hose!
The 2020
Democrats, with the media’s help, will either avoid the immigration issue as
long as possible, or keep repeating “border security, border security, border
security” in hopes that no one notices what they’re really after: Open borders
and unabated immigration.
The murder
of legal immigrant and Newman Police Corporal
Ronil Singh on Christmas night by an illegal alien in the sanctuary
state of California shows not only that the claims by Chuck Schumer
and the “bride of Chucky” Nancy Pelosi that
the Democrats
support border security is a deadly and bald-faced lie.
California
became a Democratic stronghold not because Californians became socialists,
but because millions of socialists
moved there. Immigration turned California blue,
and immigration is ultimately to blame for California's high poverty
level.
Potential
Speaker Candidate Marcia Fudge: Nancy Pelosi an ‘Elitist,’ ‘Very Wealthy
Person’
Pelosi’s Pacific Heights needs
refugees
Pacific Heights is one of San
Francisco’s most expensive neighborhoods. It boasts dramatic views of the
Golden Gate Bridge, the Marin Headlands, and the blue waters of San Francisco
Bay.
Oracle founder Larry Ellison is one of
its more prominent and distinguished residents, as is House Speaker Nancy
Pelosi.
For all its attractiveness as a
neighborhood with its boutique shops and upscale restaurants, Pacific Heights
lacks two vital ingredients to make it a truly great American neighborhood --
economic and cultural diversity.
That’s why President Donald Trump’s plan
to resettle “refugees” in sanctuary cities should be embraced by Pacific Heights’
residents.
By inviting the refugees now stranded at
the border, Pacific Heights would not only strengthen the sinew of its
community but also contribute to alleviating the humanitarian crisis at the
border.
Our strength is our diversity, and Pacific
Heights lacks that strength. It is culturally homogenous in a city that is
diverse.
In San Francisco, earning $117,000
a year or less makes you a low-income earner. Placing refugees in Pacific Heights where housing and other
costs are truly astronomical would require the compassion and economic
assistance of its residents. The former they have long signaled, and the latter
they are more than able to do.
Nancy Pelosi lives in a walled mansion on a large expanse of land with majestic views. Her
mansion could easily house thirty or forty refugee families, and she is hardly
there. The expansive grounds could house dozens of refugee families in tents.
Imagine refugee children who survived
the arduous and life-threatening journey from Central America playing on
Pelosi’s lawn while breathing the clean and invigorating air from off the San
Francisco coastline. Imagine alleviating the humanitarian crisis by creating
additional tent cities in Pacific Heights’ splendid parks.
Pelosi, through her holdings in local
restaurants and vineyards, is reputed to be one of the largest employers of illegal labor in Northern California.
Consequently, the people she would compassionately house might be able to find
work in her network of businesses, especially her fabled vineyard on the banks of the Napa River.
Pelosi also owns a second mansion in the
Wine Country north of San Francisco. This too is walled and could hold dozens
of refugee families.
Neither Pelosi herself nor the community
of Pacific Heights can solve the refugee problem, but they could set a standard
that other wealthy and pro-sanctuary communities could easily emulate.
Just a few miles away from Pacific
Heights, my liberal acquaintances “Ann” and “Christopher” live in a complex
that is more difficult to enter than the Central Intelligence Agency. They both
support the sanctuary status of San Francisco and think the border wall, but
not their complex’s barrier, is immoral. Ann is a big DACA supporter although
she has been seen adroitly ignoring and bypassing the homeless that proliferate
in her neighborhood and sleep on her streets. Her compassion obviously has its
limits.
Their complex boasts extensive patios
between the stacks of apartments. These could host a dozen or more tents and
port-a-potties that could alleviate the cagelike situations at the border that
they lament as deplorable. Although these facilities would constitute an eyesore
and block the light and view Ann and Christopher currently enjoy, creating a
tent community for refugees would demonstrate the concern and compassion that
people like Ann and Christopher love to remind the rest of us that they
possess.
Real compassion in Western Civilization
derives from the Biblical sense of the term and means to share in the suffering
and emotions of others. When Jesus saw his friends weeping at the grave of
Lazarus, He wept with them and acted. Compassion means to suffer with and to be
motivated to take immediate action to alleviate the suffering of others.
So, let the virtue-signaling liberals in
sanctuary cities who incessantly lecture us on their commitment to taking in
everyone, liberals who find the rest of us insensitive and heartless, let them
manifest in deed the compassion they so relentlessly embrace in word. Let them
fulfill the Biblical imperative to suffer with and take immediate action.
And they will be rewarded for this in
knowing that their upscale white communities can find new strength in the
economic and cultural diversity that the refugees will provide. I am looking
forward to the sprouting of tent cities in Pacific Heights and elsewhere in the
upscale parts of San Francisco. Diversity is truly a community’s strength.
Abraham H. Miller is an emeritus professor of political science,
University of Cincinnati and a distinguished fellow with the Hyam Salomon
Center
Pelosi - Illegals - Sunkist - Her investments!
Pelosi's corrupt insider passing of bills
that make her rich.
Check for yourself
Speaker of the House Nancy Pelosi's home House District
includes San Francisco.
Star-Kist Tuna's headquarters are in San Francisco,
Pelosi's home district.
Star-Kist is owned by Del Monte Foods and is a major
contributor to Pelosi.
Star-Kist is the major employer in American Samoa employing
75% of the Samoan workforce.
Paul Pelosi, Nancy's husband, owns $17 million dollars of
Star-Kist stock.
In January, 2007 when the minimum wage was increased from
$5.15 to $7.25, Pelosi had American Samoa exempted from the increase so Del
Monte would not have to pay the higher wage. This would make Del Monte products
less expensive than their competition's.
Last week when the huge bailout bill was passed, Pelosi
added an earmark to the final bill adding $33 million dollars for an
"economic development credit in American Samoa".
Pelosi has called the Bush Administration
"corrupt".
Check some more for yourself
Conservative Activist Jumps Pelosi's
Fence With Illegal Aliens to Prove a Vital Point
Conservative
activist Laura Loomer, who is known for going undercover with James O'Keefe,
took alleged illegal aliens from Mexico and Guatemala to Speaker Nancy Pelosi's
home in California. There, the group jumped the fence and Loomer demanded the
group be let into the home. The group set up a pop up tent with the word
"morality" on it and hung the pictures of those who were killed by
illegal aliens, The Daily
Caller reported.
Illegals and the American Dream
When talking
about immigration, Democrats like to conflate illegal and legal immigration,
dropping the word “illegal” and spouting meaningless babble about no human
being illegal. They like to preach that illegal immigrants commit crimes
at a lower rate than American citizens, a factoid that has been
exposed as a lie.
The murder of
legal immigrant and Newman Police Corporal
Ronil Singh on Christmas night by an illegal alien in the sanctuary
state of California shows not only that the claims by Chuck Schumer and the
“bride of Chucky” Nancy Pelosi that the Democrats support border security is a
deadly and bald-faced lie. It highlights the difference between
legal and illegal immigrants, between those who love America and want to be
Americans and those who murder them.
Ronil Singh
came to the U.S. from his native Fiji to fulfill a lifelong dream of becoming
an officer, joining a small-town police force in California and working to
improve his English. The day after Christmas, he stopped another immigrant,
this one in the country illegally, who shot and killed the corporal,
authorities said Thursday…
"This
suspect is in our country illegally. He doesn't belong here. He is a
criminal," Stanislaus County Sheriff Adam Christianson, whose agency is
leading the investigation, told reporters.
Newman Police
Chief Randy Richardson fought back tears as he described Singh, a 33-year-old
with a newborn son, as an "American patriot."
"He came
to America with one purpose, and that was to serve this country,"
Richardson said…
"He was
living the American dream," said Stanislaus County Sheriff's Deputy
Royjinder Singh, who is not related to the slain officer but knew him. "He
loved camping, loved hunting, loved fishing, loved his family."
And now he is
dead. The blood of Kate Steinle, Mollie
Tibbetts, and now Ronil Singh and others is on the hands of open border
advocates and the sanctuary city loons who provide no sanctuary for the
American citizen victims of illegal alien criminals.
Even if it
were true that illegal aliens commit crimes, including murder, at rates lower
than American citizens, that would be irrelevant. The murder rate for illegal
aliens should be zero because none of them should be here and the indisputable
fact is that Jamiel Shaw Jr., Kate Steinle, and Mollie Tibbetts would be alive
today if the illegal aliens who slew them were still staring at the other side
of a border wall liberals refuse to build.
Pelosi has
said that a border wall would be “immoral, ineffective,
and expensive” when it has been documented when it has been
demonstrated that none of that is true. The fact is that walls are so
effective they have been built in
scores of countries around the world and in the U.S. places like San
Diego and Yuma have demonstrated their effectiveness as Pelosi and Schumer
worry more about Syria’s borders than our own:
According to
Quebec University expert Elisabeth Vallet. there are65 completed or under
construction border walls in the world today.
One-third of
the world’s nations have border walls or barriers with their neighbors.
Pelosi believes this is immoral.
Tell that to
Israel, Hungary, Mexico, Saudi Arabia, India, Pakistan, Spain, Greece, Cyprus,
Ireland, etc.
And Nancy
Pelosi has a wall around the backyard at her home in San Francisco.
What is
immoral is a policy endorsed by Pelosi and Schumer of sanctuary cities and even
states that allows such criminal aliens in our country to murder Americans and
a Democratic caucus that would abolish I.C.E. and those who risk their lives
daily to provide some semblance of border security. What
is immoral is politicians such as Oakland Mayor Libby Schaaf not
only refusing to cooperate with I.C.E. butgiving illegal aliens a
heads-up when I.C.E. raids are imminent.
In the wake of
the Singh murder, Schaaf still insists that warning illegal aliens about I.C.E.
raids was and is the right thing to do, the lives of American citizens she is
sworn to protect be damned:
Oakland Mayor
Libby Schaaf -- who once warned Northern California residents about an
impending ICE raid -- said she has “no regrets” for her actions and said the
federal immigration agency “has gone astray.”
“I have no
regrets, none. The more time goes by, the more certain I feel that I did the
right thing in standing up for our community and pointing out our values are
not aligned with our laws,” Schaff toldBuzzFeed in an
interview. “That’s hopefully the message that is sent out.”
The message
Schaaf, Pelosi, and Schumer are sending out is one of callous disregard for the
lives of American citizens. Democrats are endangering their lives and the lives
of migrant children by enticing caravans to
drag young children a thousand miles with lies about easy entry and waiting
jobs:
The father of
an 8-year-old Guatemalan boy who died in U.S. custody took his son to the
border after hearing rumors that parents and their children would be allowed to
migrate to the United States and escape the poverty in their homeland, the
boy's stepsister told the Associated Press.
Felipe Gomez
Alonzo died Monday at a New Mexico hospital after suffering coughing, vomiting
and fever, authorities said. It was the second such death this month. Another
Guatemalan child, 7-year-old Jakelin Caal, died in U.S. custody on Dec. 8.
The fact is
that if we had a wall, or whatever the hair-splitters want to call it, both
these children would be alive today. And it is American kids are dying too,
killed and murdered by illegal aliens who have no right to be here. Just ask
the parents of Justin Lee, 14, who was killed in a
hit-and-run accident by an illegal alien:
An illegal
immigrant has pleaded guilty to a hit and run that killed a Wixom teen in June.
Miguel
Ibarra-Cerda, 22, entered his plea Thursday, the day his trial was set to begin
before Judge Cheryl Matthews in Oakland County Circuit Court.
Ibarra-Cerda
is charged with failing to stop at the scene of an accident when at fault,
resulting in death, and reckless driving causing death for the collision which
killed Justin Lee, 14. Ibarra-Cerda faces up to 15 years in prison and a
$10,000 fine for the first charge and 15 years in prison and a $2,500-$10,000
fine on the second charge. Matthews will sentence him Dec. 20.
Or ask the
parents of 12-year-old Clinton Howell, shot and killed
shortly before Christmas by an illegal alien from Jamaica:
Police in
Connecticut have arrested an 18-year-old undocumented immigrant from Jamaica on
murder charges related to the shooting death of an innocent 12-year-old boy a
week before Christmas.
Bridgeport
Police Chief Armando Perez on Monday announced the charges against Tajay
Chambers stemming from the December 18 death of Clinton Howell outside his
family's home on Willow Street.
Chambers has
been charged with murder; murder with special circumstances; use of a firearm
during the commission of a felony; illegal possession of a firearm without a
permit; risk of injury to a child; reckless endangerment, and larceny….
CTpost.com reported,
citing police sources, that earlier that evening, Chambers and his alleged
co-conspirators were driving in a stolen car when they got into an argument
with some people walking along Willow Street, among them Howell’s relative.
There have
been many suggestions as to how to pay for the wall, such as Sen. Ted Cruz’s idea to
apply drug asset forfeitures to wall construction or
to tax the billions of
dollars aliens return to their home countries.. Pelosi certainly found no
problem locating $3 billion for the ineffective and absurd “Cash for Clunkers”
program under Obama, didn’t she?
The wall would
in fact pay for itself, if only in the reduced cost of crimes that would be
eliminated, saving both dollars from overburdened social services and the cost
of illegal alien crimes, particularly the cost in human lives such as that of
Ronil Singh, who is survived by his wife and young son.
His death, the
death of a legal immigrant pursuing the American dream, and countless other
American citizens, including children, is on the hands of Nancy Pelosi and
Chuck Schumer. Perhaps Pelosi can attend Singh’s funeral and explain how his
death and the deaths of others in the absence of a wall is all President
Trump’s fault and that not building the wall is the moral thing to do.
Daniel John Sobieski is a
freelance writer whose pieces have appeared inInvestor’s
Business Daily, Human
Events, Reason Magazine and the ChicagoSun-Times among other
publications.
CALIFORNIA
and the RISE OF THE LA RAZA MEXICAN FASCIST WELFARE STATE
http://mexicanoccupation.blogspot.com/2018/08/they-invading-horde-waving-their.html
"The costs of illegal immigration are being carefully
hidden by Democrats."
Accounting for
these differences reveals that California's real
poverty rate is 20.6 percent – the highest in America, and
nearly twice the national average of 12.7 percent.
"The
public schools indoctrinate their young charges to hate this country and
the rule of law. Illegal aliens continue overwhelming the state, draining
California’s already depleted public services while endangering our lives,
the rule of law, and public safety for all citizens."
"America’s
elites, now overwhelmingly represented by the Democratic Party, have a
single overriding interest: their self-indulgent lifestyle."
Class Conflict within the Democratic Party
Over many
decades, the American Left, the Democratic Party and their mutual propaganda
arm, the self-styled “mainstream media,” have successfully portrayed
conservatives and the Republican Party as a coalition of the wealthy and
intolerant. Further, the Democrats and the left have claimed that they
are the true champions of the working or middle class as they unceasingly fight
to defeat and marginalize this evil menace.
The reality,
however, is that this cabal has virtually no interest in defending or aiding
the working class as they are, in fact, the party of a bifurcated constituency:
the wealthy and those dependent on the largess of the government.
Of the fifty
wealthiest congressional districts throughout the country, the Democrats
now represent forty-one. Of the
remaining nine represented by Republicans, three are in Texas, the only red
state on the list of fifty districts. Not coincidentally the residents of these
same fifty districts are supposedly among the most well-educated and sophisticated.
This transformative process is not a recent phenomenon as the trend began
in the 1980’s and accelerated rapidly in the early 2000’s.
America’s
elites, now overwhelmingly represented by the Democratic Party, have a single
overriding interest: their self-indulgent lifestyle. This is
manifested in their mistaken belief that conservatives (i.e. the “right”) are
hell bent on enforcing their version of morality on the nation, thus
potentially calling into question the lifestyles of the rich and solipsistic.
The veracity
of this claim is immaterial as it would require an element of deliberation not
emotion -- a trait in extremely short supply among the nation’s
privileged class, nearly all of whom have difficulty in generating an original
thought due to the ill-education rampant in America’s universities. Thus,
the mindless accusations of racism, misogyny and Fascism directed at the
conservative rubes in middle America are acceptable, and in far too many
instances believed, particularly as many had the temerity to vote for Donald
Trump – who, although wealthy and Ivy League educated, is considered the
ultimate unsophisticated rube.
As
conservatives are the dominant force in the Republican Party and this nation
cannot function politically with more than two major political parties, the
alternative is the Democratic Party. An entity dominated by the American
Left, an assemblage whose core philosophy is antithetical to the interests of
the wealthy and privileged. Yet, determined to protect their lifestyles
and vilify conservatives, they willingly ally with the left and overwhelmingly
support virtually any Democratic candidate. In the recent 2018 mid-terms,
Democratic House candidates outspent their Republican opponents by a two to one
margin thanks primarily to this wealthy but myopic assemblage.
Their
colleagues in the Democratic Party, and the preponderance of the membership,
are those dependent on the largess of the federal and state governments.
On the other hand, the growing segment of the citizenry who are working and
self-sufficient are increasingly joining those who believe in limited
government in migrating to the Republican Party-- a process that is
accelerating with the policies and tactics of Donald Trump in combating the
entrenched left and their determination to culturally and economically
transform the nation. The Republican Party will inevitably become the
party of the working or middle class. As such, they could potentially
dominate the political agenda for the foreseeable future.
The left and
the Democratic Party, in order to offset this possibility, must aggressively
seek to increase the number of dependents by promoting the legalization and
ultimate citizenship for untold millions of illegal immigrants and promising
all Americans cradle to grave economic security. In order to enact this
strategy to defeat the Republicans, the left must have the active participation
and financial support of the nation’s wealthy-- which they have.
The Democratic
Party has evolved into essentially an incompatible two-tier class-driven entity
encompassing the nation’s wealthiest and the nation’s poorest. Nonetheless,
it is at present a convenient home for the elites to hold off the imaginary
horde of conservatives outside their gilded doors.
However, the
voting numbers within the party are overwhelmingly with those who generally
support the leftist philosophies of redistribution (e.g. socialized medicine
and guaranteed incomes) and curtailing of freedom (e.g. speech, assembly and
religion). While it may not manifest itself to the affluent who have cast
their lot with the Democrats, the redistribution of wealth must, by necessity,
come from the wealthy, as that is where the bulk of the nation’s wealth
resides. It is also this same small-in-numbers group that benefits
the most from freedom of speech and assembly.
Once fully
embroiled in this marriage of convenience, a divorce will be impossible as the
co-inhabitant of the Democratic Party, the dependent class, must continue grow
in order to electorally defeat the Republicans and protect the left’s
agenda. Further, the oversold expectations promulgated by the left will
never be satisfied regardless of how many promises are made or token
redistributive programs are enacted by the current ruling class. Only a
complete transformation of this nation into a failed socialist state will
satiate the left, their acolytes and their attendant army of dependency.
A goal more in reach than ever thanks to the inability of the nation’s elites
to give a damn about the future of the country.
There is not a
more short-sighted and self-absorbed group of citizens in this nation than the
white, wealthy well-educated urban and suburban voters. They are
willing to rend the fabric of this nation in order to protect their privilege
and lifestyle. While the vast majority of Americans will ultimately pay
the price, the current ruling class and their progeny will have far more to
lose.
This figure
includes 2.4 million illegal aliens, although a recent study from Yale
University suggests that the true number of aliens is at least double
that. Modifying the initial figure implies that
nearly one in three
Californians is an immigrant. This is not to disparage
California's immigrant population, but it is madness to deny that such a large
influx of people has changed California's society and economy.
Importantly,
immigrants vote Democrat by a ratio higher than 2:1, according to a report
from the Center for Immigration
Studies. In California, immigration has increased the pool of
likely Democrat voters by nearly 5 million people, compared to just 2.4 million
additional likely Republican voters. Not only does this almost
guarantee Democratic victories, but it also shifts California's political
midpoint to the left. This means that to remain competitive in
elections, the Republicans must abandon
or soften many conservative positions so as to cater to the center.
California
became a Democratic stronghold not because Californians became socialists,
but because millions of socialists
moved there. Immigration turned California blue,
and immigration is ultimately to blame for California's high poverty
level.
It Pays to be Illegal in California
It
certainly is a good time to be an illegal alien in California. Democratic State
Sen. Ricardo Lara last week pitched a bill to permit illegal immigrants to
serve on all state and local boards and commissions. This week, lawmakers
unveiled a $1
billion health care plan that would include spending $250 million
to extend health care coverage to all illegal alien adults.
“Currently,
undocumented adults are explicitly and unjustly locked out of healthcare due to
their immigration status. In a matter of weeks, California legislators will
have a decisive opportunity to reverse that cruel and counterproductive fact,”
Assemblyman Joaquin Arambula said in Monday’s Sacramento
Bee.
His
legislation, Assembly
Bill 2965, would give as many as 114,000 uninsured illegal aliens access
to Medi-Cal programs. A companion bill has been sponsored by State Sen. Richard
Lara.
But
that could just be a drop in the bucket. The Democrats’ plan covers more than
100,000 illegal aliens with annual incomes bless than $25,000, however an
estimated 1.3 million might be eligible based on their earnings.
In
addition, it is estimated that 20 percent of those living in California
illegally are uninsured – the $250 million covers just 11 percent.
So,
will politicians soon be asking California taxpayers once again to dip into
their pockets to pay for the remaining 9 percent?
Before
they ask for more, Democrats have to win the approval of Gov. Jerry Brown, who
cautioned against spending away the state’s surplus when he introduced his
$190 billion budget proposal in January.
Given
Brown’s openness to expanding Medi-Cal expansions in recent years, not to
mention his proclivity for blindly supporting any measure benefitting
lawbreaking immigrants, the latest fiscal irresponsibility may win approval.
And
if he takes a pass, the two Democrats most likely to succeed Brown – Lt. Gov.
Gavin Newsom and former Los Angeles Mayor Antonio Villaraigosa – favor excessive
social spending and are actively courting illegal immigrant support.
COST to
AMERICANS of the LA RAZA MEXICAN OCCUPATION in CALIFORNIA
ALONE: $2,370 per legal.
All that
“cheap” labor is staggeringly expensive!
"Most
Californians, who have seen their taxes increase while public services
deteriorate, already know the impact that mass illegal immigration is having on
their communities, but even they may be shocked when they learn just how much
of a drain illegal immigration has become." FAIR President Dan Stein.
Californians bear an enormous fiscal burden as a result of an illegal alien
population estimated at almost 3 million residents. The annual expenditure of
state and local tax dollars on services for that population is $25.3 billion.
That total amounts to a yearly burden of about $2,370 for a household headed by
a U.S. citizen.
The Gospel According to Nancy: No
Borders, Kill Babies (UNLESS THEY'RE LA RAZA ANCHOR BABIES!)
Tucker Carlson
pointed out a few days ago how the
already insufferable leader of the Congressional Democrats has recently been
"ordained….an archbishop in the church of progressive
sanctimony." For a while now, Nancy Pelosi's been the country's
expert on morality (e.g., border wall: immoral; abortion on demand:
moral). She's now taken to telling the country how much she prays,
and she's urging others to do it, too – at least that old sinner, Donald
Trump. After last Thursday's televised squabble in the Oval Office,
Pelosi shared with reporters how she told Trump she was praying for him and
urged the president (whom she also called a "skunk" while
ridiculing his manhood) to accept the Democrats' budget proposal with no
funding for a border wall. "In fact," she said with
stomach-turning piety, "I asked him to pray over it."
When a smug
person ends an argument by telling you to "pray over it," she's
really saying, "Ask God. He knows
I'm right!"
Summarizing
her and Chuck Schumer's meeting with Trump, she told the media, "I myself
thought we should open the meeting with a prayer, which I did. I
told him about King Solomon, when he was to become king of the Jews, he prayed
to God, he said: 'I need you to give me great understanding and wisdom,
Lord.'"
King Solomon
is Pelosi's favorite Bible character, especially because he proposed solving a
problem by cutting a baby in half.
Now Sister
Nancy's praying for Trump to keep
the government open so federal employees can finish their Christmas shopping.
It's an axiom
that if a conservative says his faith informs his political decisions, he'll be
condemned for establishing a state religion, while liberals get to veer back
and forth over the church-state centerline as freely as those motorists who
love to text while driving. Right now the liberal media are
applauding the way Pelosi "schooled President
Donald Trump about the Bible," but it's not clear why. It's not
as if they're suddenly in favor of anyone being schooled in the Bible,
especially anyone in a public classroom.
Pelosi never
bats an eye without a political motive. This Saint Nancy act might
be her attempt to occupy the spiritual high ground that, obviously, Donald
Trump has shown no interest in occupying himself. Pelosi wouldn't
dare try this with a president like George W. Bush, who, while he didn't boast
about his piety on TV, was recognized as genuine in his Christian faith –
prompting the left's usual reaction: Ross Douthat wrote in
2006 that "the fear of theocracy has become a defining panic of the Bush
era."
Theology was
less of an issue for liberals during the Obama years; he was their messiah, and
they just worshiped him. Meantime, Obama conspicuously dissed
orthodox Christians with everything from calculated snubs and criticism to
gratuitously tormenting the Little Sisters of the
Poor, all the while devotedly celebrating the unblemished virtues of Islam. In
2015, Hillary bluntly stated that
"[d]eep-seated ... religious beliefs ... have to be changed" to
accommodate the unlimited abortion license. Then, last year, Democratic
National Committee chairman Tom Perez said it is "not negotiable" that
"[e]very Democrat" support abortion. Pelosi tried to mitigate
Perez's remarks by saying "of course" there's
room for pro-lifers in the Democratic Party, but try to find one who's not
actually voting Perez-style.
This year,
Pelosi watched the Democrats lurch wildly to the extreme left. For
decades before that, they were trusted allies in the left's war on conventional
morality and religion (except Islam!) for being repressive, patriarchal, and
counterrevolutionary. It may be that, alarmed that the Democrat
brand has become too materialistic, amoral, and atheist, she thinks she can
give it religion. Maybe she can draw an unfavorable comparison
between the reprobate and undisciplined Donald Trump and herself: the
"ardent, practicing Catholic," who exhorts the President to beg for
"the great understanding and wisdom" that she (and Chuck Schumer?)
have already been granted by God. Haven't Republicans marched under
the banner of morality and Christian values long enough? Now that
they've elected the unholy Trump, why can't the Democrats seize that banner for
themselves?
For one thing,
because no evangelical or conservative Catholic would ever buy
it. Sure, the Democratic Party is crowded with Catholics, but the
serious ones left years ago. The leading unserious Catholic is
Pelosi herself, who professes her devotion to the faith but does it while
living in open, willful defiance of the Church's crystal-clear teaching against
abortion: "It is the teaching of the
Catholic Church from the very beginning that the killing of an unborn child is always
intrinsically evil and can never be justified."
When her
duplicity threatened to become an issue in 2004, Pelosi pretended that, moved
by her "ardent" devotion to the Church, she had been studying the
Church's teaching on the beginning of life "a long time," and she
stated falsely to Tom Brokaw on Meet
the Press that the Church has never defined it. Asked
when human life begins, she replied, "We don't know," and that
"[t]he point is, that it shouldn't have an impact on the woman's right to
choose" – the "it" being when a human life begins, which shouldn't have an impact on
the decision to get an abortion. Easy mistake to make when your
catechism is Roe v. Wade.
Later, when a
reporter mentioned the Gosnell infanticides and challenged her own support for
partial-birth abortion, an agitated Pelosi snarled back that "[a]s a
practicing and respectful Catholic, this is sacred ground to me
when we talk about this[.] ... This shouldn't have anything to do with
politics." But as a politician, she never stops talking about
it, and the sacred ground she was talking about wasn't human life, but the
exercise of a mother's "free will" to terminate her
child. In response, New York's Cardinal Egan said, "Anyone
who dares to defend that
[the unborn] may be legitimately killed because another human being 'chooses'
to do so or for any other equally ridiculous reason should not be providing
leadership in a civilized democracy worthy of the name." Her
own bishop reluctantly corrected her misstatements in a public letter, necessitated
by "the widespread consternation among Catholics" of her deliberate
distortions of Catholic doctrine. Pope Benedict counseled
her, in person,
on the Church's express teaching, "which enjoins all Catholics, and
especially legislators," to protect "human life at all stages of its
development." Pelosi, " the respectful Catholic" who
presumed to tell Trump to pray for wisdom, emerged from thatmeeting no wiser
for it, obtusely extolling the "Church's leadership in fighting poverty,
hunger and global warming."
Jesus warned
against hypocrites who make a public display of praying "that they may be
seen by men." The way Pelosi pretends to exemplify
"prayerful" politics, and the way she told Trump "in
private" that she's praying for him – and immediately announced it in a
televised press conference – is pure Pelosi: cynical, addlebrained,
phony. If it might hurt Trump, she'll pontificate how every MS-13
killer retains a "spark of divinity," then
goes right back to her life's work snuffing out that spark from 60 million
innocents and counting. The Bible never says it's intrinsically evil
to build a wall or protect a border, but it's still got that commandment
against murder.
Let the
Democrats canonize this Pharisee if they need a patron saint. Her
feast day can fall on January 22.
T.R. Clancy looks at the world from
Dearborn, Michigan. You can email him at trclancy@yahoo.com.
The Schumer & Pelosi show
Chuck Schumer
and Nancy Pelosi, the twin nutters of Congress, were certain they could beat
Trump at his own game, but have made fools of themselves, as
usual. The stand-off is not over but with each passing day, the
Democrats reveal more of their anti-American, pro-illegal immigration
agenda. Conservatives have been sounding the alarm for
years: Democrats do not care about American citizens!
We are an
annoying inconvenience, especially those of us who do not buy what they are
selling. We vote against them, which makes them
angry. They lash out at us, call us names, impugn our intelligence
with fervor. All of the late-night comics, the Bill Mahers of the
comedy branch of the entertainment industry, are especially venal. Jimmy
Kimmel has decried those who have contributed to the GoFundMe page to fund the border wall
as meth addicts. It was begun by a Vet, Brad Kolfage, who lost
three limbs and it's raised nearly $15m.
It appears
that Democratic members of Congress are as snowflakey as millennials on our
university campuses. They assume that anyone who opposes their
ridiculous socialist, genderless, climate-alarmist, virtue-signaling
directives is a Neanderthal, unfit to have an opinion. It is then
thoroughly acceptable to malign such people, those of us who oppose every
aspect of their anti-America-as-founded agenda, in any and every disgusting
manner they can devise.
The left is
all about identity politics. They assign all of us to a group --
racial, class, and/or all of their fabricated gender categories. The
right is all about individuals, their character, their talent, their
contributions to society. We do not care about skin color, economic
class or sexual orientation. We do care about good vs.
evil, right vs. wrong. This makes us quite villainous in the
eyes of the left for whom everything is relative. For example, we do not think
poverty causes crime, unlearned values of Western Civilization
do. Try to steal an election? It is moral if it takes out an
opponent. We are, it appears, the left vs. the right, very different
on a neurological level.
Schumer and
Pelosi have armed guards whenever they are amongst the public. But
they are both fervent in their quest to deny us the right to bear arms and to
prevent a wall on the southern border to protect us from the flood of lethal
drugs that flow into the US. They are impervious to the crimes of
the barbaric gangs like MS13, no matter how many innocent Americans they
kill. They do not give a thought to the many illegals from terrorist
nations that also seek to enter the country on a daily
basis. Schumer, Pelosi and their willing subjects in Congress ignore
completely the horrific hazards that cross the border every
day. They want cheap labor, no matter how many Americans are left
jobless, and they want, more than anything, a dependent underclass whom they
mean to give the right to vote. They already vote anyway, thanks to
the Left's rejection of Common-sense voter ID.
If there were
a television program based on Schumer and Pelosi, it would have to be a comedy;
the two of them are so inept, so childish. They would be Dumb and Dumber redux. Each
of them seems to believe they run the country and can dictate to the president
how he will govern. They demand that Trump abandon the wall. They
have no intention of compromising; they only want to deny Trump and his
supporters what they want -- border security that works. So enraged,
so benighted, by Trump's presidency, they would rather see us overrun by
migrants from third-world nations, like those who have destroyed the UK,
Germany, Sweden, and the rest of Europe, than protect America as a sovereign
nation.
The
"government shutdown" is just a ploy, many times overused by now,
relatively meaningless to the lives of most Americans. The Schumer & Pelosi
show will do everything they can to hype it as a disaster, but we all know it
is nothing of the kind. Trump must hold out for funding of the
wall.
While there
have been some bad actors in our government in the past, Schumer and Pelosi are
the worst of the worst. They are equally arrogant, each thoroughly
ignorant of reality beyond the bubble of wealth and privilege they
inhabit. They both believe themselves to be smarter than the rest of
us, when in fact they are both really dim bulbs, long past their sell-by
date. Yes, Pelosi is good at raising money; how and why is a
mystery. That each of them is repeatedly re-elected does not
say much for their constituents' familiarity with the Constitution, the law,
American history or the facts in their own communities.
San Francisco,
Pelosi's district is now a hell-hole but for her walled compound. New York
too, like California, is a state that residents are fleeing as fast as they
can. Both states have been destroyed by moonbatty leftists; high
taxes, dumbing down of education for political purposes, and the sacrifice of
common sense to global warming alarmists. Schumer and Pelosi have
for years been on board with every silly attempt to restructure, to transform,
American society. They both jumped on the Obama bandwagon the moment
he was elected. Along with Obama, they are responsible for
incalculable damage done to this country over the eight years of that
administration. While their constant appearances on television are
so often humorous (Pelosi's silly, practiced hand gestures and
Schumer's relentless badgering of Trump), they are not one bit
funny. They are just loathsome.
Pelosi's Stake in Illegal Immigration
The Minuteman
Project, founded by Jim Gilchrist (who is also the co-author of the book
Minutemen: The Battle to Secure America’s Borders), is made up of citizen
volunteers who watch our border with Mexico and report illegal entry to the
border patrol. For performing that thankless task in full compliance with the
law, Gilchrist and his colleagues have been falsely maligned as fascists,
racists, and even murderers. They have been driven off the speaker’s platform
at Columbia University and vilified by Leftist politicians and their
handmaidens in the liberal press.
So it was no
surprise that the mainstream media chose to ignore a recent press release,
issued by his publisher, in which Gilchrist asked the question about Nancy
Pelosi’s ethics that should be on the minds of every law-abiding American –
including those immigrants who are following the law to become citizens here
the proper way: “Do we really need a House Speaker whose every action is
calculated to enhance her own financial interests, instead of focusing on how
porous borders will affect the security of everyday American citizens?”
Gilchrist did
not stop there. He demanded an investigation into Pelosi’s “economic stake in
just the kind of illegal alien exploitation that we deplore in Minutemen.” But
you would never know it from the liberal media, who - while ignoring this
demand - have had no compunctions in calling for Speaker Hastert’s head in the
wake of the Foley page controversy.
Gilchrist was
reacting to my report several weeks ago in FrontPage Magazine that Pelosi – who
owns non-union vineyards in Napa Valley where grape-picking depends chiefly on
the availability of cheap foreign labor – is doing everything she can to help
open the floodgates to more illegal immigration. And she wants the American
taxpayers to pay their way. As even more proof of this than I previously
reported, Pelosi does not want employers like her to be required to pay the
cost of illegal aliens’ hospital care. She voted against a bill that would make
employers liable for the reimbursements if an undocumented employee seeks
medical attention. And she voted in favor of rewarding illegal aliens
from Mexico with Social Security benefits.
At the same
time, Pelosi has led the Democratic opposition to any effective border controls
or documentation requirements. She opposed the Secure Fence Act of 2006, signed
into law by President Bush, and voted against final passage of a border
security and enforcement bill in 2005 which required that all businesses must
use an electronic system to check if all new hires have the legal right to work
in this country. She voted against a bill to bar drivers' licenses for illegal
aliens in 2005. This year she opposed legislation requiring presentation of a
legitimate government-issued photo ID to prove eligibility to vote, claiming
that “there is little evidence anywhere in the country of a significant problem
with non-citizen voters.” She is dead wrong. For example, an accused terrorist
by the name of Nuradin Abdi was just recently reported to have illegally
registered to vote at the Ohio Bureau of Motor Vehicles. Nuradin Abdi was
indicted earlier this year as part of a conspiracy to blow up the Columbus
Mall.
How many other
terrorist suspects may have slipped through the system because Leftists like
Pelosi oppose any meaningful screens? Instead she continues to advocate our
recognition of the flimsy, non-validated ID card that the Mexican consulates
provide to illegal aliens before they cross over our border, called the
“matricula consular”, which gives them phony documentation to set up bank
accounts, apply for jobs, obtain social benefits, board airplanes, identify
themselves to police, enter buildings that require IDs, obtain drivers’
licenses and then perhaps use those drivers’ licenses to try to illegally
register to vote in our elections.
Pelosi also
believes in giving sanctuary to illegal aliens. She opposed legislation to deny
federal homeland security funding to state and local governments who refuse to
share information they learn about an individual's immigration status with
Federal immigration authorities. Pelosi’s hometown of San Francisco is one of
the sanctuary cities she voted to protect for the benefit of illegal aliens.
Pelosi even voted against strengthening our immigration law with regard to the
deportability of alien terrorists.
Jim Gilchrist
cut to the chase with this devastating observation that the mainstream media
does not want you to read:
"As we’ve
shown again and again in ‘Minutemen,’ the Democrats aren’t just hypocrites, but
are working actively to subvert our legislative system to their own ends. Their
only goal is votes, votes and more votes, no matter where they come from, no
matter if they’re cast legally, no matter whether the person casting them is
dead, alive, a citizen or an illegal alien."
Pelosi sees
Jim Gilchrist’s Minutemen Project as a threat to her pro-illegal alien agenda.
More illegal aliens mean more votes for the Democrats and more grape-pickers
for Napa Valley vineyards like hers. So she even voted against a measure that
would have cut off the use of U.S. taxpayers’ funds to tip off illegal aliens
as to where the Minutemen citizen patrols may be located! She obviously wants
to see the Minutemen put out of business – permanently. She can count on the
liberal press to distort the work of the Minutemen and to keep out of the
public eye Gilchrist’s pointed questions about her motivations for helping
illegal aliens during the run-up to the mid-term elections that may make her
the next Speaker of the House.
Gilchrist, of
course, is accustomed to being vilified and prevented by the Left from getting
his message out. In early October, he was prevented from finishing his speech
at the "Minutemen Forum" sponsored by the Columbia College
Republicans. Gilchrist had spoken for just a few minutes and managed to utter
the words “I love the First Amendment” when a group of radical protestors took
the stage and interrupted him, displaying a big banner saying "There are
no illegals." More protestors then stormed the stage. Chaos erupted and
the audience members who had come to hear Gilchrist speak never got the chance,
which was precisely the protestors’ objective. As reported online by the staff
of Columbia’s undergraduate newspaper, “a mosh pit of triumphal students and
community members danced and chanted outside, "Asian, Black, Brown and
White, we smashed the Minutemen tonight!" They also put out a statement
declaring:
“The Minutemen
are not a legitimate voice in the debate on immigration. They are a racist,
armed militia who have declared open hunting season on immigrants, causing
countless hate crimes and over 3000 deaths on the border. Why should
exploitative corporations have free passes between nations, but individual
people not? No human being is illegal.” (Emphasis added)
We have come
to the point in this country where a bunch of radical protestors get to decide
who is and who is not a legitimate voice in the debate on as critical a public
policy issue as immigration. Such Leftists think that migration in a borderless
world is a basic human right. They want no barriers, no guards, and no proof of
lawful residency. They certainly do not want the Minutemen watching the border
and reporting illegal entry to the authorities.
Leftist
slogans like “no human being is illegal” are red herrings. It is not the human
being who is illegal; it is what the human being does that may be illegal.
One’s conduct is the test, not simply who one is. Immigrants who follow our
rules are welcome here. Those who do not abide by our laws have no right to be
here. A person who breaks into your house without your permission does not
deserve room, board and a job as a reward, even if the intruder may be much
poorer than you. He has broken the law and deserves to be punished for what he
has done. Our country’s boundaries and rules for entry and residency similarly
define who is permitted to be here and how we choose to protect ourselves. We
are a land of immigrants, but we are also a land of laws with certain core
values. Those seeking to enter our country and remain here must learn to
accommodate to our laws and values, not the other way around. That is the way
prior generations of immigrants did it, including those who passed through
Ellis Island. Why should the law be thrown aside now?
What we are
witnessing is a frontal challenge to our nation’s sovereignty. Mexico’s Foreign
Secretary wants to drag us before the United Nations for intending to build a
fence on our side of the border with our money to keep out aliens who seek to
enter our country illegally. They will probably get a sympathetic ear as some
UN bureaucrats believe there should be no such thing as “illegal” immigrants in
the first place. For the first time in our history, Americans are being asked
to cede the right to decide how we define ourselves as a nation and protect our
own borders to a globalist governance body. Will Pelosi lead her liberal
loyalists as House Speaker to support the UN against America’s right to control
its own borders? Do we really want to risk finding out?
It is high
time, as Jim Gilchrist demanded in the press release ignored by the mainstream
media, that Pelosi come clean under oath as to her personal stake in the
illegal immigration issue before she can do even more damage as House Speaker.
Chamber
of Commerce Backs Farmworker Amnesty but Wants More Migrants and Lower Wages
The U.S.
Chamber of Commerce wants Congress to loosen the wages for the migrants who
will provide the nation’s agricultural workforce under the Democrats’ pending
farmworker amnesty bill.
GOP Politicians Draft Farm Sector Amnesty with Democrats
House Pushes Amnesty, Subsidy for Lower-Tech, Cheap Labor
Farms
Vox
Shock: Donald Trump Rejects State Department Advice on Migration
Evan Vucci/AP Photo
President
Donald Trump spurned the advice of establishment diplomats as he fought to
implement his campaign promises, according to a report by Vox.
Chamber of Commerce Backs Farmworker Amnesty but Wants
More Migrants and Lower Wages
ONE THIRD OF ALL FARM
WORKERS END UP ON WELFARE IMMEDIATELY. NONE RETURN TO MEXICO, NONE BECOM
EDUCATED, ALL VOTE DEMOCRAT FOR MORE!
House
ag-worker amnesty bill is progressive cronyism; Dems get 500K extra voters by
2030, while ag-biz degrades farm communities into 'company towns.' Americans
lose wages, wealth & communities, but media will treat the debate as 'civil
rights' vs 'racism'
Chamber
of Commerce Backs Farmworker Amnesty but Wants More Migrants and Lower Wages
5 Nov 2019276
7:33
The U.S.
Chamber of Commerce wants Congress to loosen the wages for the migrants who
will provide the nation’s agricultural workforce under the Democrats’ pending
farmworker amnesty bill.
“The proposed
prevailing wage levels for temporary agricultural workers … should be more
responsive to market needs,” the business group said in an October 30
letter.
The U.S. Chamber of Commerce supports the Farm Workforce
Modernization Act, which would take important steps to address the growing
struggle of agricultural employers to meet their workforce needs.
…
We are committed to working with members of both parties to address
these and other issues to improve the bill as it proceeds through the
legislative process.
The pending
legislation provides a gradual amnesty for
the resident population of 500,000-plus illegal migrants who accept low-wage
jobs at farms, meat-processing slaughterhouses, and food canneries. Democrats
want the amnesty to spur their political support, but any amnesty would allow
the industry’s labor force to take up their green cards and get jobs in urban
areas.
So the
bill creates a replacement workforce
by streamlining the unlimited inflow of H-2A visa workers and by capping the
wages paid to those imported visa workers.
The migrants’ wages are to be capped at state or federal minimum
wages — unless unions can bargain for a better deal — or by agency officials.
This arrangement between Congress and employers effectively federalizes the
future agricultural workforce, and so it denies American farmworkers — and
their children — the chance to win higher wages amid normal labor shortages.
The resulting flood of low-wage H-2A migrants is likely
to displace the roughly half-million American employees who work in the
agriculture sector, so further shriveling the economic health of the nation’s
agricultural districts.
The bill acknowledges the likely damaging
impact of unlimited H-2A visa workers on Americans, saying on page 64 that
government officials should study the economic impact and report back to
Congress:
Beginning in fiscal year 2026, the Secretary of Agriculture and
Secretary of Labor shall jointly conduct a study that addresses— ‘‘(i)
whether the employment of H–2A workers has depressed the wages of United States
farm workers; ‘‘(ii) whether an adverse effect wage rate is necessary to
protect the wages of United States farm workers in occupations in which H–2A
workers are employed; ‘‘(iii) whether alternative wage standards would be
sufficient to prevent wages in occupations in which H–2A workers are employed
from falling below the wage level that would have prevailed in the absence of
H–2A employment;
But the bill does not mandate a fix for the likely damage to
wages and careers of Americans, even though it is sponsored by 20 GOP
legislators and 24 Democrats.
That is bad
news for agriculture regions of the United States, most of which have been
falling behind as Democratic-run urban districts gain in wages and wealth. In
December 2018, Breitbart News reported:
Elite zip codes added more business establishments during
[President Barack] Obama’s economic recovery, between 2012 and 2016, than the
entire bottom 80 percent of zip codes combined. For instance, while more than
180,000 businesses have been added to rich zip codes, the country’s bottom tier
has lost more than 13,000 businesses even after the economic recovery.
House GOP & Democrats are quietly
drafting an amnesty for 1M farmworkers amid media noise on impeachment. Dems
get future voters & farm companies get cheaper workers, but Americans get
lower wages & fewer robots, and Trump loses leverage for 2021 reforms. http://bit.ly/2B1W3Uk
GOP Politicians Draft Farm Sector Amnesty with Democrats
Advocates for the bill say they negotiated the text with
employers and with a labor union that wants to legalize roughly 500,000 illegal
workers and also to import more migrants. The press release said:
“When I speak to farmers and ranchers across the country, labor
is often their number one concern. Our nation’s agriculture industry is diverse
and flourishing, but producers are in desperate need of a legal and reliable
workforce,” said [Washington GOP] Rep. [Dan] Newhouse. “As a
third-generation farmer, I understand the invaluable contributions made by
farmworkers to American agriculture, and we must modernize our guestworker
program to work for farmers, ranchers, and farmworkers in the 21st Century.”
…
“The success of our farmers, growers, and producers is essential
not only for our economy but for our national security. For far too long, we’ve
suffered from a broken H2A system—making it difficult for farmers to hire the
workforce necessary to provide to the American people,” said [Florida GOP]
Rep. Diaz-Balart.
“After months of negotiations, the UFW and UFW Foundation are
enthusiastic about passing legislation that honors all farm workers who feed
America by creating a way for undocumented workers to apply for legal status
and a roadmap to earn citizenship in the future without compromising farm
workers’ existing wages and legal protections,” said … Arturo S. Rodriguez,
President Emeritus of United Farmworkers & Spokesperson of UFW Foundation.
The 20 GOP sponsors include several of the most
business-friendly GOP leaders and several former GOP leaders in the House:
Rep. Mark Amodei (R-NV-02); Rep. James Baird (R-IN- 04); Rep.
Susan W. Brooks (R-IN-05); Rep. Tom Cole (R-OK-04); Rep. John Curtis
(R-UT-03); Rep. Rodney Davis (R-IL-13); Rep. Mario Diaz-Balart (R-FL-25); Rep.
Bob Gibbs (R-OH-07); Rep. Doug LaMalfa (R-CA-01); Rep. Cathy McMorris Rodgers
(R-WA-05); Rep. Paul Mitchell (R-MI-10); Rep. Dan Newhouse (R-WA-04);
Rep. Devin Nunes (R-CA-22); Rep. Tom Reed (R-NY-23); Rep. Mike Simpson
(R-ID-02); Rep. Elise Stefanik (R-NY-21); Rep. Steve Stivers (R-OH-15); Rep.
Fred Upton (R-MI-06); Rep. Greg Walden (R-OR-02), and Rep. Don Young (R-AK- At
Large).
In contrast, the population of roughly 500,000 American
agriculture workers — including many ex-immigrants — are likely to gain if the
amnesty bill crashes.
They will
gain because agriculture companies will be pressured to raise their wages and
to equip them with expensive, high-productivity, labor-saving machinery — just
as non-farm workers are now gaining from company investment in technology. This
automation trend is now accelerating as farms buy machines
and companies develop new technologies to offset the farmers’ rising payroll
costs.
For example, a tweet from the United Farm Workers union shows
farmworkers in New York picking up cabbages and throwing them into a container
at the front of a tractor:
Farm workers harvesting cabbage as it rains
today in upstate New York. #WeFeedYou / Trabajadores agrÃcolas que cosechan col mientras llueve hoy en el estado
de Nueva York.
In contrast, Youtube provides multiple videos of farms using
European-developed machines to accomplish the same task in much less time, For
example, a farm in California’s Salinas Valley is using a Danish-built machine
to accelerate the cabbage harvest:
In fact, on
October 21, the Chamber touted the value of
American-made, labor-saving machinery for African farmworkers:
The U.S. Chamber of Commerce, with support from members such as
Bayer, John Deere, and IBM, showcased the impact of technology on agriculture
supply chains in Africa. To highlight developments with precision agriculture
technology, representatives from John Deere discussed how their company is
finding innovative ways to help farmers manage their equipment and crop data to
improve profitability.
…
The relevance of emerging technologies cannot be emphasized
enough when it comes to agriculture in 21st century Africa.
New technologies are changing the face of Africa’s agriculture
value chains. For example, developments in seed technology, precision
agriculture, and mobile financing apps are expanding opportunities for
countless families and farmers across the 54 countries that make up Africa.
Technology such as John Deere’s ExactApply solutions allows for
better weed and pest control, promoting crop growth.
The chamber’s letter also said it also has concerns about the
bill’s requirement that agriculture companies use the free E-Verify service to
ensure the legality of job applicants: “The transition period for agricultural
employers to utilize the E-Verify system should be extended in order for
employers to better adjust to the new compliance burdens being foisted upon
them.”
The E-verify rule was added to the bill to give a talking point
for House legislators who face opposition to the amnesty.
But the E-verify rule makes little difference because it only
covers hiring in the agriculture sector, not hiring by the urban restaurants,
warehouses, and retail stores that employ most of the nation’s population of
illegal aliens.
Democrats draft crony amnesty bill to give
the farm industry cheaper labor now in a swap for 1 million+ illegal-migrant
voters after 2030. But it offers nothing to Americans who lose wages, nor $$ to
hasten labor-saving automation. A giveaway like #S386 http://bit.ly/34eqqnk
House Pushes Amnesty, Subsidy for Lower-Tech, Cheap Labor
Farms
America's Farmers Don't Depend on
Illegal Immigration
Liberals frame the debate over
illegal immigration as a dilemma: either America grants amnesty to aliens or
the economy will collapse. Some even imply that Americans will starve to
death because of higher food prices – who will pick America's fruits and veggies
if not illegals? Bruce Goldstein, president of a nonprofit called Farmworker Justice, boldly claims that if we were to
deport all illegal aliens, "our agricultural system would collapse."
Collapse.
This is nonsense. American agriculture will not
collapse without illegal labor. Why? Because there are plenty of
technological solutions and American workers available to pick up the slack.
It is time to put this myth to bed.
Agriculture is not a labor-intensive
industry, and it has not been for decades. Less than 2 percent of Americans work in
agriculture, according to the World Bank. This figure has declined since
1960, when roughly 6 percent of Americans worked on farms. If trends
continue, we can expect the number to continue to fall. This is because
of the wonders of mechanization: machines now do everything from threshing
wheat to milking cows. The bottom line: Most farmers do not "benefit"
from cheap illegal labor, since their labor costs are minimal to begin
with.
The "exceptions" to this
rule are fruit and nut farms, located primarily in California. Crops like
raspberries and almonds are notoriously difficult for machines to pick.
There are many reasons for this, including the fact that berries require
a "soft touch" – they ripen at different times, and bushes are tough
for machinery to navigate. These labor-intensive farms are the main agricultural
culprits when it comes to hiring illegal workers. After all, they have
the most to gain.
But realistically, even
labor-intensive agriculture does not depend upon illegal labor. Orchards
could get by without illegal workers since only four percent of American
agricultural workers are illegal aliens, according to a report in National Review. Likewise, only one in six workers in California's nut orchards is an illegal alien.
Removing illegals from the system would be inconvenient for them, but it
would not drive them out of business – the remaining employees would simply
have to work a few hours of overtime per day.
Without Aliens, Who Will Pick the
Crops?
There are two ways for the
agriculture industry to replace illegal workers: they can either hire Americans
or invest in better technology.
At this moment, there are roughly 23 million unemployed Americans, some of whom have experience in agriculture. On top
of this, America has a massive problem with seasonal unemployment for its college students. Either
way, there are more than enough Americans to fill the potential labor shortage.
The only reason Americans are not working in agriculture is because they
are out-competed by cheap illegal workers. Data from the Bureau of Labor Statistics reveals that millions of Americans –
of all races – currently work as janitors, laborers, and agricultural workers.
If
farmers were required to pay market wages, they would not have a problem
finding employees.
The counterpoint: If farmers hire
Americans, the price of food will go up! Yes – but not by much.
Higher labor costs can result in higher prices only to the degree that
labor impacts the product's cost. For example, higher wages for train
conductors does not appreciably impact rail shipping costs because there are so
few conductors per unit of freight – rail is capital-intensive. Contrast
this with some retail outlets that spend 70 percent of their revenue on labor
costs.
Agriculture – even fruit and nut
orchards – is relatively capital-intensive – i.e., the
labor costs aren't all that significant per unit of produce. Proof is in
the numbers. A 2011 report published by the Federation for American Immigration Reform found that the agriculture industry was one of
America's most profitable sectors and could easily afford to pay its workers
20-30 percent more without significantly impacting profits.
Furthermore, research conducted
by Philip
Martin, a leading
expert on farm labor and migration issues, found that labor costs are
negligible compared to the retail cost of produce. In 2006, Martin found
that only 5-6 cents of every dollar spent on produce is due to labor costs.
Therefore, if illegal aliens were removed from the labor force entirely,
and labor costs rose by up to 40 percent to attract American workers, labor
would still only account for 7-9 cents. Over the course of a year, this
works out to just $9.00 extra for the average household. This is
nothing, especially when you remember that illegal immigration costs America between $115 billion and
$140 billion annually.
The second option, improving
technology and embracing mechanization, is the strategy employed by America's
wheat, corn, and dairy industries. Ever had trouble affording flour or
milk? Probably not. Thank mechanization for this fact, not illegal
aliens.
Although adopting new technology can
be expensive, it brings costs down in the long run. And as it turns out,
there is a good argument to be made that the American fruit and nut industry's
addiction to cheap illegal labor has stifled technological development and kept
prices artificially high. Farmers should and could mechanize – today.
The technology exists. If only America's fruit farms would embrace
it. For example, an American company called "Abundant Robotics" has developed a fruit-picking
robot that can harvest apples and peaches. Other companies have developed machines that are able to pick much
smaller, more delicate fruit, like grapes and strawberries.
America's farmers do not
rely on illegal alien labor. This is a myth cooked up by the pro-illegal
immigration lobby to further its agenda. Nothing more. Meanwhile, America pays the price.
Vox
Shock: Donald Trump Rejects State Department Advice on Migration
7 Nov 20191,148
5:30
President
Donald Trump spurned the advice of establishment diplomats as he fought to
implement his campaign promises, according to a report by Vox.
The November
7 article described the elected president’s
decision to ignore the self-serving view of agency officials:
Senior State
Department officials and career diplomats repeatedly warned the Trump
administration that taking away legal protections for [400,000 migrants] from
El Salvador, Honduras, and Haiti would put
national security, foreign relations, and the immigrants’ American-born
children at risk, according to internal State Department documents.
But Trump did it anyway — and concerns about the 2020 election
appear to have helped determine the timeline for requiring immigrants to leave,
according to the documents, which will be released in a report by the Senate
Foreign Relations Committee [and Sen. Bob Menendez (D-NJ)] on Thursday.
Trump was elected president on an America First platform, and he
has had to fight the establishment every day to implement his platform.
Vox is part of the establishment, so Vox’s shocked report about
politicians overruling experts provides a useful Civics 101 lesson for American
K-12 students: Presidents with change agendas will face strenuous opposition
from the establishment.
Other reports
show how Trump has had to fight the establishment. The New York Times, for
example, described a showdown in the Oval
Office where Trump demanded more effort to block migrants:
In the Oval Office that March [2019] afternoon, a 30-minute
meeting extended to more than two hours as Mr. Trump’s team tried desperately
to placate him.
“You are making me look like an idiot!” Mr. Trump shouted,
adding in a profanity, as multiple officials in the room described it. “I ran
on this. It’s my issue.”
…
The president’s advisers left the meeting in a near panic.
In the following months, Trump revamped his staff, fired top
aides, fended off appeals from business lobbies, and then achieved a huge
strategic success by threatening to impose tariffs on Mexico.
The Vox article also showed how the State Department is focused
on its own priorities and rarely is willing to help fix other national problems
if those fixes create problems for the diplomats. That self-serving attitude
was spotlighted by the diplomats’ arguments against Trump’s plan to end the
migrants’ Temporary Protective Status (TPS), as described in Vox:
Thomas Shannon, the most senior foreign service official in the
State Department at the time, appealed to [then Secretary of State Rex]
Tillerson to renew protections for immigrants from the three countries.
“It is rare for the State Department to be asked to comment on
an issue with such immediate domestic political ramifications,” he wrote in a
previously undisclosed memo in October 2017. “I understand the delicate nature
of the decision. However, it is our purpose to provide the best possible
foreign policy and diplomatic advice. From my point of view, that advice is
obvious: extend TPS for the countries indicated.”
…
Given that most Hondurans who migrate do so for economic
reasons, adding tens of thousands of deportees to an economy that is not
prepared to integrate them will only exacerbate the principal cause of
irregular migration,” Heide Fulton, then-interim head of the US Embassy in
Honduras, wrote in a June 29, 2017, diplomatic cable. “This would impose severe
burdens on a cooperative but underresourced [Honduran government] and be
counterproductive to US interests.”
In October, Trump won a migrant-reduction deal with El Salvador
by offering to partially extend TPS for El Salvadorean migrants now living in
the United States. That diplomatic trade would not have been possible if the
State Department’s do-nothing advice had been accepted by Trump.
Democrats expressed shock that politics played a role in Trump’s
political decision:
The almost 80 pages of
internal State Department memos and diplomatic cables — obtained by the Senate
Foreign Relations Committee as part of an investigation commissioned by Sen.
Bob Menendez, the top Democrat on the committee.
…
“Trump administration political appointees thus injected
electoral considerations not contemplated under the TPS statute, raising the
likely prospect that the Trump administration elevated electoral concerns over
US national security and the personal safety of nearly 400,000 TPS recipients
and an estimated 273,000 American children,” Menendez writes in the report.
But Vox also revealed the Democrats’ political strategy behind
Menendez’s rehearsed shock about politics playing a role in politics:
The Ninth Circuit could rule any day now in one of the cases
over the Trump administration’s decision to end TPS. No matter the decision, it
will likely set up a high-profile showdown over TPS at the Supreme Court. If
the administration prevails, it had previously agreed to establish a minimum
120-day wind-down period for TPS protections.
Tom Jawetz, vice president of immigration policy at the Center
for American Progress think tank, said that the new evidence in the report
suggesting the Trump administration was swayed by political motivations over
the dangers to American children in deciding to end TPS could be helpful to
legal challenges.
“This strongly supports the argument that the decision to
terminate [TPS] for these three countries at least was arbitrary and
capricious,” he said.
Even if a judge blocks Trump’s TPS termination by declaring it
to be “arbitrary and capricious,” Trump’s deputies will appeal the decision up
to the Supreme Court.
House ag-worker
amnesty bill is progressive cronyism; Dems get 500K extra voters by 2030, while
ag-biz degrades farm communities into 'company towns.' Americans lose wages,
wealth & communities, but media will treat the debate as 'civil rights' vs
'racism' http://bit.ly/33pN8sn
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