Feds: Washington Farm Used H-2A Visa Program to Import Cheaper Foreign Workers
Executives at a farm in Sunnyside, Washington, allegedly used the H-2A visa program to import cheaper foreign workers and then subsequently paid them below-market wages, federal officials say.
Months ago, the Washington Attorney General’s Office reached a $3.4 million settlement with Ostrom Mushroom Farms for allegedly firing its mostly female farmworkers and replacing them with mostly male foreign workers who arrived on H-2A visas — the federal program that allows United States farms to import a limitless number of foreign workers.
According to the Los Angeles Times, “prosecutors and workers say the company was trying to replace local employees with foreign workers who could be paid less and were willing to work longer hours.”
The Times continued:
It wasn’t long before new workers, mostly men, were bused into the farm in vans, taking the place of the fired women. Some of the new pickers looked like they were no more than 15 years old, several current and former workers at the farm told The Times.
“Little by little, they’re getting rid of the local workers,” said Cabrera, who worried the job she had for more than two years was at risk. “They fired people without saying anything, just gone.”
In one particular case, a foreign H-2A visa worker imported by the farm told the Times that he was 17 years old when he started working at the farm and would work up to 15 hours a day. If foreign visa workers spoke out against their employment conditions, they would be retaliated against, prosecutors claimed.
Last week, the Department of Labor announced that it had secured nearly $60,000 in unpaid wages for foreign visa workers whom Ostrom Mushroom Farms allegedly took from as well as nearly $75,000 in civil penalties for violating the terms of the H-2A visa program.
That Labor Department settlement comes just a week after a New Jersey-based farm was made to pay more than half a million in back wages that the agency claims it stole from foreign H-2A visa workers.
As Breitbart News has chronicled for years, the program is often used to replace Americans and preserve the low cost of agricultural labor.
In 1997, a little more than 16,000 foreign H-2A visa workers were imported to take American agriculture jobs. The latest data shows that in the first half of fiscal year 2023, which runs from October 2022 through March 2023, U.S. farms imported nearly 200,000 foreign H-2A visa workers.
John Binder is a reporter for Breitbart News. Email him at jbinder@breitbart.com. Follow him on Twitter here.
JOE BIDEN is known as a serial liar, a "public
servant" who has somehow managed to
accrue tremendous wealth, a race-baiting
opportunist, a Catholic-in-name-only, and
a bought-and-paid-for politician in bed
with criminal cartels and foreign foes. In another
era, Joe Biden would have been run out of his
country much the same way Benedict Arnold was
two and a half centuries ago; in an era when
integrity, honor, fortitude, fidelity, and grit have
been jettisoned for immorality, unscrupulousness,
weakness, betrayal, and craven pliability, however,
he is elevated to king sleazeball in a city drowning
in sleaze. JB SHURK
Biden’s Spreading Illegal Immigration Crisis
Sanctuary cities feel the heat.
[Editor’s note: Make sure to read Joseph Klein’s masterpiece contributions in Jamie Glazov’s new book: Barack Obama’s True Legacy: How He Transformed America.]
Illegal immigrants continue to pour into the United States, adding to the millions whom the Biden administration has already allowed to enter the country and has released from custody in violation of U.S. immigration laws. Despite crisis conditions at the southern border with Mexico, the administration has repeatedly assured the American people that everything is under control.
Senior Biden administration officials claimed that they had an effective plan to prevent any further surge of illegal immigrant crossings following the expiration of the Title 42 health emergency order on May 11th, which had allowed expedited expulsions. But after a brief downtick in June, the number of illegal immigrants apprehended by border officials jumped more than 30 percent in July to exceed 130,000, according to preliminary figures cited by the Washington Post.
President Biden created the border crisis. The president and his incompetent Secretary of Homeland Security, Alejandro N. Mayorkas, have utterly failed to carry out the executive branch’s constitutional responsibility to faithfully execute the immigration laws. In addition to not securing the border adequately in the first place, the Biden administration has made catch and release its standard policy.
Prodded by the expiration of the Title 42 health emergency expulsion order, the administration scrambled to implement carrot and stick measures intended to redirect immigrants seeking to enter the country to do so through legally permissible channels. The hodgepodge of measures includes an app allowing migrants to make appointments beforehand for entry into the United States at a U.S. port of entry to apply for asylum. The app does not work consistently, and Mexican cartel smugglers have already hacked it. Many migrants have simply bypassed using the app altogether and have entered the country illegally without an appointment.
The Biden administration also added a requirement that migrants seeking asylum in the United States must first demonstrate that they tried but failed to obtain asylum in a safe country through which they traveled to reach the U.S. As the July surge of illegal immigrants entering the country demonstrates, they have found ways to bypass this requirement with the help of human smugglers.
The Biden administration tried to defend its new asylum measures after U.S. District Court Judge Jon S. Tigar in California ruled on July 25th that the restrictions were unlawful. In a filing seeking an emergency stay of Judge Tigar’s order from the 9th Circuit Court of Appeals, which was granted temporarily, administration lawyers delivered a somber warning. Without the new restrictions available for use, they wrote, there could be “a surge in border crossings that could match — or even exceed — the levels seen in the days leading up to the end of the Title 42’ order.”
This begs the question why at minimum the restrictions were not put into place and implemented at the outset of the Biden presidency. President Biden set the surge in border crossings in motion on his first day in office by opening the border wide to record numbers of illegal immigrants. He did away with the Trump administration’s deterrent policies that had limited the number of illegal immigrants crossing the border and brought back catch and release on a massive scale. Biden thought it was more important to cater to the Democratic Party’s left-wing progressive base with its pro-open border agenda rather than put the welfare and security of the American people first.
Now, as if a lightbulb suddenly went on in their heads, the Biden administration is finally seeking half-heartedly to restrict asylum seekers’ entry into the country – more than two years after enthusiastically pursuing precisely the opposite course.
Too little too late!
President Biden’s reckless immigration policies have placed an enormous strain on the resources of small communities and large cities alike, both near the southern border as well as thousands of miles away from the border. Instead of taking responsibility for detaining asylum-seekers while they are awaiting court hearings on their applications years from now, the Biden administration is releasing many asylum seekers and expecting the localities where they settle to bear the consequences.
Texas has installed its own barriers to limit the flow of illegal immigrants into the state but has met resistance from the Biden administration, which claims that immigration is exclusively a federal government responsibility. But the administration has not fulfilled its responsibility to stem the tide of illegal immigrants. It has released many asylum-seekers rather than detain them or at least take care of the cost of their shelter, food, clothes, health care, and other necessities while they remain in the country pending their asylum hearings. Texas has been forced to step into the breach and take action in order to save its border towns from continuing to be overwhelmed by the huge influx. Instead of working with Texas officials to enforce the law and alleviate the strain on border towns’ resources, the Biden administration has sued the state of Texas over the its Rio Grande buoy barrier installed to slow down the flow of more illegal immigrants into the state.
As Texas sent thousands of migrants to sanctuary cities, Democrat politicians up north have been getting a taste of what border states like Texas and Arizona have been putting up with because of President Biden’s open border policies. These Democrats are directing their anger at the president and leader of their own party. And they are demanding federal support to relieve the financial burdens their cities have been forced to incur as more migrants arrive at their doorsteps virtually every day.
Massachusetts Governor Maura Healey, for example, complained of “a federal crisis of inaction” and demanded that the Biden administration help defray the cost of housing more than 20,000 immigrants in her state’s shelters.
Democrat Chicago Alderman Raymond Lopez wrote in an open letter to President Biden complaining about the lack of help from the federal government to deal with the fallout from the immigration crisis. He stated that Chicago’s migrant camps and shelters “offering semi-permanent housing to the migrants and asylum seekers…are pushing our city to the brink unnecessarily because of the lax response from [Homeland Security] Secretary [Alejandro] Mayorkas and USCIS Director [Ur] Jaddou.”
New York City Mayor Eric Adams hardly lets a day go by without pointing out the urgent need for federal assistance. “We are past our breaking point,” Mayor Adams declared recently as he projected that the cost to the city of taking care of homeless immigrant arrivals could add up to at least $12 billion over the next three years.
Last April, Mayor Adams said that the flood of migrants into New York City was bringing about “one of the largest humanitarian crises this city has ever experienced.” He added: “It will impact every service in this city. Why isn’t every elected official in Washington, D.C. asking the national government, ‘Why are you doing this to New York?’ The national government has turned its back on New York City.”
New York City has an absurd Right to Shelter Law, which requires the city to provide shelter to anyone with no homes to call their own within the city’s five boroughs. This law has been applied to cover homeless migrants coming to New York from anywhere in the world. It is contributing to the outrageous financial burden being imposed on New Yorkers that will only get worse as more migrants are lured by the city’s freebies. But that is still no excuse for the federal government to shirk its responsibility to fully pay for the immigration crisis that President Biden himself created by giving a free pass to millions of immigrants crossing the border illegally.
To date, the Biden administration has offered New York City a token $142 million in federal funding. Adding insult to injury, the administration rejected Democrat New York Governor Kathy Hochul’s request to use the 1000-acre former military airfield, Floyd Bennett Field in Brooklyn, to house some of the migrants in New York City needing shelter.
The immigration crisis created by President Biden has reached its breaking point and the American people are fed up. This is yet another of many reasons why Joe Biden should be a one-term president.
Reader Interactions
Comments
Biden is Doing Everything Possible to Open Up the Border
The invasion is coming from inside the White House.
The Biden administration and its media allies keep acting as if the massive southern border invasion is something out of their control. In reality, the administration has done everything possible to keep the border open.
The Biden administration has fought any state efforts at securing the border. Its EPA sued Arizona to dismantle a wall of shipping containers being used to keep out some of the alien invaders. Its DOJ sued Texas over floating barriers on the Rio Grande.
The common theme was to not only open the border as wide as possible to accommodate the invaders, but to suppress any efforts by states to secure their borders on their own.
Now it’s actively selling off parts of the border wall so they can never be used again.
The Biden administration is quietly auctioning off millions of dollars’ worth of unused parts from former President Trump’s border wall for peanuts – in an apparent end-run around pending legislation in Congress.
Since April, GovPlanet, an online auction house specializing in military surplus, has sold 81 lots of steel “square structural tubes” — intended for use as vertical bollards in the border barrier’s 30-foot-tall panels — hauling in about $2 million.
On Tuesday, GovPlanet netted $154,200 for 729 of the 28-foot-tall hollow beams, sold in five separate lots for an average $212 apiece.
Thirteen more lots are set to be auctioned on Aug. 23 and Aug. 30.
Up to $300 million worth of taxpayer-funded wall components have been left to rust since Biden came to office, Republicans have said.
The Finish It Act will make the feds use those materials on new wall construction — or hand the remaining stock over to states like Texas for use in their own border defense projects.
Now, the Biden administration is rushing to get rid of the wall leftovers before the GOP-led House can pass a matching version of the bill and make it law, critics told The Post.
None of this is accidental. Not the invasion or the concerted effort to eliminate all forms of border security.
All of this is deliberate.
The invasion is coming from inside the White House.
Reader Interactions
Chuck Schumer has also been in government since the 1980s and helped create the economy of today that makes it virtually impossible for people my age to build wealth and start a family. The man has literally done nothing but preside over America’s decline. OLIVIA MURRAY
Chuck Schumer has also been in government since the 1980s and helped create the economy of today that makes it virtually impossible for people my age to build wealth and start a family. The man has literally done nothing but preside over America’s decline. OLIVIA MURRAY
Hochul: Sanctuary City NYC ‘Didn’t Invite’ All These Migrants, Didn’t Expect that Many to Cross Border or Come to NYC - no, they expected the invasion to stop at Ca and Texas' borders and make them pay for it!
REALTY: BIDEN AND MAYORKAS HAVE BEEN BUSING ILLEGALS ALL OVER THE 48 CONTIGUOUS STATES
AS AMERICAN'S WITHOUT HOUSING SLEEP ON SIDEWALKS
New York City is paying hotels up to $300 a day to house migrants who are not even legally in the United States.
New York City's Self-Made Migrant Crisis
New York City is paying hotels up to $300 a day to house migrants who are not even legally in the United States.
The city is diverting city resources from essential services for which the city's residents have paid taxes to people who are not in any way entitled to them. "Some of New York City's struggling hotels are charging the city premium rates to provide emergency housing for migrants—even as the city slashes services to pay the bills" (emphasis is mine). In other words, illegal migrants are being permitted to steal from New York's taxpayers, and with the city's government as willful accomplices. At what point do New York City's workers and taxpayers push back by refusing to pay these costs?
Refugees, Immigrants, and Migrants
The Left will doubtlessly bleat that "racists" are against migrants and asylum seekers, and also cite the New Testament parable of no room at the inn. One who has the means to do so should extend hospitality to struggling strangers, but not if one lacks the means to provide for one's own family and guests (i.e. citizens and lawful immigrants). We have veterans with post-traumatic stress disorder (PTSD) and high suicide rates who are not getting the help they need even though they served our country. We have homeless citizens, and Code Blue alerts in winter to get them into some kind of temporary shelter which does not cost anywhere near $300 a day; the communal housing plus a hot meal is probably closer to $20 or $30. We have children in failing schools, most of which are in failed Deep Blue-governed cities, and money squandered on illegal migrants is money stolen from these people to whom our society has an obligation. Do these homeless Americans in New York City look like they are being lodged in $300 hotel rooms?
There are meanwhile three classes of people who enter the United States; two are desirable and one is undesirable.
- A refugee is fleeing an oppressive regime, like the Jews whom Franklin Delano Roosevelt, God the Father in the Democrat Trinity (with Obama as the Son and Lyndon Johnson the Holy Ghost) sent back to Nazi Germany to be murdered. Vietnamese "boat people" who fled the Communists, Afghan women who don't want the Taliban to throw acid in their faces for going to school, and Iranian woman who don't want to be raped in Evin Prison for refusing to wear burqas are all refugees. The same goes for Hong Kong Chinese who don't want to live in Xinnie the Pooh's surveillance society, and Ukrainians who don't want to be ruled by Vladimir Putin.
- Refugees whom Franklin Roosevelt didn't manage to send back to Nazi Germany to be murdered included Albert Einstein, Hans Bethe, John von Neumann, Leo Szilard, James Franck, Edward Teller, Rudolf Peierls, and Klaus Fuchs. Enrico Fermi was meanwhile a refugee from Fascist Italy. This is why the civilized world got the atomic bomb and the Axis didn't. When a country turns into an outhouse (the family-friendly version of the word Donald Trump used), as Germany did in 1933, the best people are usually the first to leave.
- An immigrant is somebody with job skills who is willing to learn English if he or she doesn't already know it, and wants to Americanize by adopting our national values and culture. Unless we're Native Americans, we are immigrants or descendants of immigrants. Canada, our liberal neighbor next door, requires immigrants to know English or French, and may give bonus points for both, and also to have money or job skills. Canada does not allow migrants who lack these things to leech off its generous social welfare programs, although it does welcome refugees, Ukrainians, and Hong Kong Chinese.
- A migrant is somebody who just walks across the border the same way a burglar walks into your house, and acts as if he owns the place. Here is a video of adult migrants in Hungary throwing away food that is given to them by the police, although the children do appear grateful for the aid. Citizens and legal immigrants in Texas feel unsafe in their own neighborhoods because of swarms of illegal migrants. The bottom line is that these migrants would not come if they did not expect to be given more than emergency food, shelter, and medical care. We don't let people starve or freeze on our streets, nor do the Hungarians allow people to starve or freeze on theirs either, but taxpayers have no duty to give them more than basic subsistence until they can be returned to their countries of origin. The fact that New York City taxpayers are being forced to carry them shows meanwhile that they are either not working or, if they are, are not earning enough to live in a pay-more-get-less venue like New York.
If people are really seeking asylum, however, resources should be provided for them to do so—possibly through offices right on the border. Although consulates cannot offer asylum, they can offer other forms of protection to people who are really fleeing oppression. We would be ashamed to repeat Franklin Roosevelt's behavior by sending refugees back to countries where they will be oppressed or killed, or by putting American citizens into concentration camps as Roosevelt did with people of Japanese ancestry. Refugees, yes; immigrants, yes; migrants, no.
This Needs to be an Issue in 2024
It is no surprise that the Democrat Left wants to reinstate the state and local tax (SALT) deduction. This will force working Americans to help carry wealthy elitists in pay-more-get-less cities like New York and Los Angeles, as the elitists in question pay far more than the standard deduction in state, local, and property taxes. If you want to live in a $2.4 million trailer in California on your own money, that's up to you but don't ask me or others to help carry your income and property taxes. If you want to vote for left-wing Democrats in New York City who need to raise taxes to carry illegal migrants, you go ahead and do that but don't try to get me or any other taxpayers to carry your bad decisions. This is a strong argument to "use your head and vote Red" in November 2024.
People who buy goods and services need to realize, meanwhile, that the cost of squandering billions of dollars on illegal migrants, as well as New York's astronomical rents, prices in general, and property taxes, is built into the price of everything that originates there. Do New York lawyers charge up to $1000 an hour because they're really better lawyers, or is it because they have to cover sky-high office rental costs and living costs in general?
Are you planning a conference? The fact that NYC has stuffed its hotels full of illegal migrants means hotel space will command premium prices if you can find it at all, and intelligent employers will be unwilling to cover these costs for business travel. Schedule your conference somewhere else, maybe in a flyover country small town with hotel shuttles to the nearest airport. Online conferences eliminate travel and lodging costs completely.
Civis Americanus is the pen name of a contributor who remembers the lessons of history, and wants to ensure that our country never needs to learn those lessons again the hard way. He or she is remaining anonymous due to the likely prospect of being subjected to "cancel culture" for exposing the Big Lie behind Black Lives Matter.
Image: Screen shot from video, via YouTube
Schumer: GOP’s Investigations into Biden Family ‘Don’t Matter to the Average American’
Senate Majority Leader Chuck Schumer (D-NY) said Wednesday on MSNBC’s “Morning Joe” that the American people did not care about Republican lawmakers’ investigations into President Joe Biden’s son Hunter.
Schumer said, “Let’s compare it to the Republicans. We’re investing, there are investigating. All they seem to do is want to investigate this, that and the other thing. That doesn’t help the American people. The contrast of yesterday, a former president being indicted for trying to deny an election, and this president today talking about investing in America, that’s going to sink in. It’s our job to make sure it sinks in.”
Co-host Joe Scarborough said, “I mean, their investigations are so stupid I am embarrassed for them. They are talking to arms dealers and people that illegally smuggle oil to the Communist Chinese Party. They talk about tapes and the FBI Grassley gives up the game and says we don’t care if he’s guilty or not. I could go down the list.”
Schumer said, “These investigations don’t matter to the average American people. This is the right-wing, the hard right-wing talking to each other. Let them keep talking to each other. We’re talking to the American people.”
Scarborough said, “Yeah, talking to themselves.”
Follow Pam Key on Twitter @pamkeyNEN
Report: NYC Considers Housing Migrants in Old Jail Where Jeffrey Epstein Died
New York City officials are considering housing border crossers and illegal aliens in the former jail where convicted sex offender Jeffrey Epstein died.
Since the spring of last year, about 100,000 border crossers and illegal aliens have arrived in New York City, spurring Mayor Eric Adams (D) to urge those at the United States-Mexico border not to travel to the sanctuary city.
While Adams struggles to keep border crossers and illegal aliens off the streets, the Associated Press (AP) reported that city officials are now considering putting new arrivals in the Metropolitan Correctional Center in Lower Manhattan — the federally operated jail that closed in 2021 after Epstein, accused of operating a global sex trafficking ring, was found dead in his jail cell.
RELATED VIDEO — Migrants Waiting for Entry to Roosevelt Hotel:
emorrisThe AP reported:
The letter, written by a senior counsel for the city’s law department, identifies several other sites in which migrants could potentially be housed, including the defunct Metropolitan Correctional Center, which closed in 2021.
That shutdown came after the detention center, whose prisoners have included Mafia don John Gotti, associates of Osama bin Laden and the Mexican drug lord Joaquin “El Chapo” Guzman, came under new scrutiny because of squalid conditions and security lapses exposed following Epstein’s death.
Such a move would come as Adams has already been housing adult male border crossers and illegal aliens in a former jail in Harlem.
Meanwhile, Republicans and New Yorkers are blasting Adams and New York City for attempts to pawn off border crossers and illegal aliens to their communities and neighborhoods. At the Creedmoor Psychiatric Facility in Queens Village, Queens, this week, residents protested Adams putting migrants in tents on the property.
Most recently, for instance, Nassau County Executive Bruce Blakeman (R) warned Adams not to send migrants to Long Island.
“Let me make it clear one more time — Nassau County is not a sanctuary county,” Blakeman said during a press conference Thursday. “We are not inviting immigrants and migrants into the county that are here from south of the border and not using proper and normal channels that have been used in the past.”
Likewise, Staten Island Borough President Vito Fossella (R) is lobbying New York’s congressional delegation to pass legislation in the House and Senate that would require border crossers and illegal aliens to be sent to the National Mall in Washington, DC.
“Immigration is a federal responsibility … Staten Island didn’t cause this problem,” Fossella told the New York Post. “Why is Staten Island being asked to solve the migrant crisis.”
Every day, illegal immigration costs New Yorkers nearly $8 million, and by 2025, Adams’ office projects it will have cost city taxpayers about $12 billion.
John Binder is a reporter for Breitbart News. Email him at jbinder@breitbart.com. Follow him on Twitter here.
New York City is paying hotels up to $300 a day to house migrants who are not even legally in the United States.
The city is diverting city resources from essential services for which the city's residents have paid taxes to people who are not in any way entitled to them. "Some of New York City's struggling hotels are charging the city premium rates to provide emergency housing for migrants—even as the city slashes services to pay the bills" (emphasis is mine). In other words, illegal migrants are being permitted to steal from New York's taxpayers, and with the city's government as willful accomplices. At what point do New York City's workers and taxpayers push back by refusing to pay these costs?
Refugees, Immigrants, and Migrants
The Left will doubtlessly bleat that "racists" are against migrants and asylum seekers, and also cite the New Testament parable of no room at the inn. One who has the means to do so should extend hospitality to struggling strangers, but not if one lacks the means to provide for one's own family and guests (i.e. citizens and lawful immigrants). We have veterans with post-traumatic stress disorder (PTSD) and high suicide rates who are not getting the help they need even though they served our country. We have homeless citizens, and Code Blue alerts in winter to get them into some kind of temporary shelter which does not cost anywhere near $300 a day; the communal housing plus a hot meal is probably closer to $20 or $30. We have children in failing schools, most of which are in failed Deep Blue-governed cities, and money squandered on illegal migrants is money stolen from these people to whom our society has an obligation. Do these homeless Americans in New York City look like they are being lodged in $300 hotel rooms?
There are meanwhile three classes of people who enter the United States; two are desirable and one is undesirable.
- A refugee is fleeing an oppressive regime, like the Jews whom Franklin Delano Roosevelt, God the Father in the Democrat Trinity (with Obama as the Son and Lyndon Johnson the Holy Ghost) sent back to Nazi Germany to be murdered. Vietnamese "boat people" who fled the Communists, Afghan women who don't want the Taliban to throw acid in their faces for going to school, and Iranian woman who don't want to be raped in Evin Prison for refusing to wear burqas are all refugees. The same goes for Hong Kong Chinese who don't want to live in Xinnie the Pooh's surveillance society, and Ukrainians who don't want to be ruled by Vladimir Putin.
- Refugees whom Franklin Roosevelt didn't manage to send back to Nazi Germany to be murdered included Albert Einstein, Hans Bethe, John von Neumann, Leo Szilard, James Franck, Edward Teller, Rudolf Peierls, and Klaus Fuchs. Enrico Fermi was meanwhile a refugee from Fascist Italy. This is why the civilized world got the atomic bomb and the Axis didn't. When a country turns into an outhouse (the family-friendly version of the word Donald Trump used), as Germany did in 1933, the best people are usually the first to leave.
- An immigrant is somebody with job skills who is willing to learn English if he or she doesn't already know it, and wants to Americanize by adopting our national values and culture. Unless we're Native Americans, we are immigrants or descendants of immigrants. Canada, our liberal neighbor next door, requires immigrants to know English or French, and may give bonus points for both, and also to have money or job skills. Canada does not allow migrants who lack these things to leech off its generous social welfare programs, although it does welcome refugees, Ukrainians, and Hong Kong Chinese.
- A migrant is somebody who just walks across the border the same way a burglar walks into your house, and acts as if he owns the place. Here is a video of adult migrants in Hungary throwing away food that is given to them by the police, although the children do appear grateful for the aid. Citizens and legal immigrants in Texas feel unsafe in their own neighborhoods because of swarms of illegal migrants. The bottom line is that these migrants would not come if they did not expect to be given more than emergency food, shelter, and medical care. We don't let people starve or freeze on our streets, nor do the Hungarians allow people to starve or freeze on theirs either, but taxpayers have no duty to give them more than basic subsistence until they can be returned to their countries of origin. The fact that New York City taxpayers are being forced to carry them shows meanwhile that they are either not working or, if they are, are not earning enough to live in a pay-more-get-less venue like New York.
If people are really seeking asylum, however, resources should be provided for them to do so—possibly through offices right on the border. Although consulates cannot offer asylum, they can offer other forms of protection to people who are really fleeing oppression. We would be ashamed to repeat Franklin Roosevelt's behavior by sending refugees back to countries where they will be oppressed or killed, or by putting American citizens into concentration camps as Roosevelt did with people of Japanese ancestry. Refugees, yes; immigrants, yes; migrants, no.
This Needs to be an Issue in 2024
It is no surprise that the Democrat Left wants to reinstate the state and local tax (SALT) deduction. This will force working Americans to help carry wealthy elitists in pay-more-get-less cities like New York and Los Angeles, as the elitists in question pay far more than the standard deduction in state, local, and property taxes. If you want to live in a $2.4 million trailer in California on your own money, that's up to you but don't ask me or others to help carry your income and property taxes. If you want to vote for left-wing Democrats in New York City who need to raise taxes to carry illegal migrants, you go ahead and do that but don't try to get me or any other taxpayers to carry your bad decisions. This is a strong argument to "use your head and vote Red" in November 2024.
People who buy goods and services need to realize, meanwhile, that the cost of squandering billions of dollars on illegal migrants, as well as New York's astronomical rents, prices in general, and property taxes, is built into the price of everything that originates there. Do New York lawyers charge up to $1000 an hour because they're really better lawyers, or is it because they have to cover sky-high office rental costs and living costs in general?
Are you planning a conference? The fact that NYC has stuffed its hotels full of illegal migrants means hotel space will command premium prices if you can find it at all, and intelligent employers will be unwilling to cover these costs for business travel. Schedule your conference somewhere else, maybe in a flyover country small town with hotel shuttles to the nearest airport. Online conferences eliminate travel and lodging costs completely.
Civis Americanus is the pen name of a contributor who remembers the lessons of history, and wants to ensure that our country never needs to learn those lessons again the hard way. He or she is remaining anonymous due to the likely prospect of being subjected to "cancel culture" for exposing the Big Lie behind Black Lives Matter.
Image: Screen shot from video, via YouTube
Schumer: GOP’s Investigations into Biden Family ‘Don’t Matter to the Average American’
Senate Majority Leader Chuck Schumer (D-NY) said Wednesday on MSNBC’s “Morning Joe” that the American people did not care about Republican lawmakers’ investigations into President Joe Biden’s son Hunter.
Schumer said, “Let’s compare it to the Republicans. We’re investing, there are investigating. All they seem to do is want to investigate this, that and the other thing. That doesn’t help the American people. The contrast of yesterday, a former president being indicted for trying to deny an election, and this president today talking about investing in America, that’s going to sink in. It’s our job to make sure it sinks in.”
Co-host Joe Scarborough said, “I mean, their investigations are so stupid I am embarrassed for them. They are talking to arms dealers and people that illegally smuggle oil to the Communist Chinese Party. They talk about tapes and the FBI Grassley gives up the game and says we don’t care if he’s guilty or not. I could go down the list.”
Schumer said, “These investigations don’t matter to the average American people. This is the right-wing, the hard right-wing talking to each other. Let them keep talking to each other. We’re talking to the American people.”
Scarborough said, “Yeah, talking to themselves.”
Follow Pam Key on Twitter @pamkeyNEN
Report: NYC Considers Housing Migrants in Old Jail Where Jeffrey Epstein Died
New York City officials are considering housing border crossers and illegal aliens in the former jail where convicted sex offender Jeffrey Epstein died.
Since the spring of last year, about 100,000 border crossers and illegal aliens have arrived in New York City, spurring Mayor Eric Adams (D) to urge those at the United States-Mexico border not to travel to the sanctuary city.
While Adams struggles to keep border crossers and illegal aliens off the streets, the Associated Press (AP) reported that city officials are now considering putting new arrivals in the Metropolitan Correctional Center in Lower Manhattan — the federally operated jail that closed in 2021 after Epstein, accused of operating a global sex trafficking ring, was found dead in his jail cell.
RELATED VIDEO — Migrants Waiting for Entry to Roosevelt Hotel:
emorrisThe AP reported:
The letter, written by a senior counsel for the city’s law department, identifies several other sites in which migrants could potentially be housed, including the defunct Metropolitan Correctional Center, which closed in 2021.
That shutdown came after the detention center, whose prisoners have included Mafia don John Gotti, associates of Osama bin Laden and the Mexican drug lord Joaquin “El Chapo” Guzman, came under new scrutiny because of squalid conditions and security lapses exposed following Epstein’s death.
Such a move would come as Adams has already been housing adult male border crossers and illegal aliens in a former jail in Harlem.
Meanwhile, Republicans and New Yorkers are blasting Adams and New York City for attempts to pawn off border crossers and illegal aliens to their communities and neighborhoods. At the Creedmoor Psychiatric Facility in Queens Village, Queens, this week, residents protested Adams putting migrants in tents on the property.
Most recently, for instance, Nassau County Executive Bruce Blakeman (R) warned Adams not to send migrants to Long Island.
“Let me make it clear one more time — Nassau County is not a sanctuary county,” Blakeman said during a press conference Thursday. “We are not inviting immigrants and migrants into the county that are here from south of the border and not using proper and normal channels that have been used in the past.”
Likewise, Staten Island Borough President Vito Fossella (R) is lobbying New York’s congressional delegation to pass legislation in the House and Senate that would require border crossers and illegal aliens to be sent to the National Mall in Washington, DC.
“Immigration is a federal responsibility … Staten Island didn’t cause this problem,” Fossella told the New York Post. “Why is Staten Island being asked to solve the migrant crisis.”
Every day, illegal immigration costs New Yorkers nearly $8 million, and by 2025, Adams’ office projects it will have cost city taxpayers about $12 billion.
John Binder is a reporter for Breitbart News. Email him at jbinder@breitbart.com. Follow him on Twitter here.
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