RLL 132

You're listening to Radio Looks. Listen, I'm your host, Steve Matthews. Thanks for joining me for episode 132.

The title of this episode is MAGA's Big H -1B Visa Blow -up. So what on earth am

I talking about? Well, we'll get that in a minute. But before we do all that, I just wanted to say Merry Christmas to everybody. A belated

Merry Christmas. I'd wanted to get a Christmas podcast out, maybe a

Christmas Eve podcast or something earlier in the week. I was hoping maybe to do that on Christmas Eve or on Christmas Day, but things turned out that just didn't work out that way.

That's just the way that is. Sometimes that happens. It's funny. I actually had the opportunity to be off work this whole past week.

I think I've said this before, but sometimes when I have an opportunity to take time off, I've got this whole stack of stuff that I'm going to do.

And man, I'm going to just knock all this stuff out. It's going to be awesome. I'm going to get so much done. And I find

I usually get to maybe, if I'm doing well, maybe I get to about a quarter of it. Maybe.

Sometimes not even that. I did get some good stuff done this week. It's not like I just sat around and did nothing. Although I did a little bit of doing nothing.

But actually, I really did work during the week, but I had a little bit of fun too.

Anyway, as I said, I hope everybody had a good Christmas. Of course, we've got an upcoming New Year.

It's really weird having Christmas and New Years on a Wednesday. It just creates awkward situations.

For me, my company was closed. The whole company was closed,

Christmas Eve and Christmas Day. So I had those two days off, but I only had three days left to take, three

PTO days, I should say, in order to be able to be off. So I took

Monday and Thursday and Friday. So I had the whole week, but I ran out of bullets after that.

So I didn't have the opportunity to say, take Monday and Tuesday off, which would have been really nice.

And I had Wednesday off and then maybe go back to work on Thursday. It didn't quite work out that way. So anyway, yeah,

I got to go back in next week. It's really weird for me. I got to go and I work Monday and Tuesday. I'm off Wednesday.

Then I go back and work Thursday and Friday. So anyway. Oh, and then the other thing

I get a complaint about too, as far as work -wise goes, we're getting really close to the busy season for my job.

I work in, I've mentioned this before, I do retirement plan administration, mostly 401k plans.

And we're a little bit like accountants. I mean, the first quarter of the year is always the busiest quarter because what you're doing is you're crunching everybody's numbers and getting taxes prepared for the prior year.

So the first quarter of 2025, you're always working on taxes for 2024.

And it's the same kind of thing with us. Now, we don't do taxes for 401k plans, but there's all this testing that needs to be done on these plans and it has to get done in the first quarter for the most part.

And so there's always this big push in the first quarter of the year. And typically it starts around the middle of January.

That's when companies start giving us all the data that we need to be able to do the work.

And yeah, that can get a little bit out of hand. It's something you just get used to, you got to deal with it every year.

Thankfully, in my company, it's actually better than other places I've been at where you almost like disappear from the face of the earth for two months from the middle of January to the middle of March.

It's actually a little bit better where I currently am. But yeah, it gets exciting nonetheless.

But well, by God's grace, we'll get through it. And I've made it through 16 years so far, so I think

I could probably do a 17th. But it takes a little bit of prayer for patience when you're in the middle of that.

Sometimes it's like good grief. Is this ever going to end? So anyway, that's what I get to look forward to. I always love a

Christmas holiday and take time off and that and try to recharge. And well, got to get ready to hit it here in the new year.

And I hope, Lord willing, I plan on doing another podcast.

We'll see if it works out. I wanted to do Christmas Eve or Christmas Day. I'm going to either go for New Year's Eve or New Year's Day.

I tend to think I'm probably going to be doing something on New Year's Day would be more likely, just because I'm going to end up having to work on New Year's Eve.

I probably just don't want to do anything that evening. So anyway, that's kind of the plan right now. But we will see, and hopefully we'll have a

New Year's program. Maybe we can take a look ahead at the coming up in 2025. And there's going to be a lot of interesting things happen,

I really think. And if you follow some of the financial guys that I follow, who

I consider credible, I consider to be good analysts, a lot of them have talked, and there's kind of a little bit of a preview here for next week, but a lot of them have talked about the strong possibility of a recession coming up in 2025.

And there's some good reasons for that. And now I'll spare you the details from now. We'll talk about that next week when

I do the New Year's program. But yeah, that's something to certainly think about.

Of course, there's threats of war. The Biden regime seems to hellbent on ginning up as much war as possible.

So I mean, that's certainly a threat. And we're going to have to watch out for that. Of course, we got the inauguration of Donald Trump is coming up in just a few weeks.

What is that? I can't remember. I know I've read about that. Was it the 20th or the 21st of January?

Something like that. So that's only, you know, what, three, a little bit over three weeks away.

So that's coming up pretty fast as well. And that'll be a good thing for the most part.

Yeah, I mean, I support Donald Trump. I don't agree with him on everything. But I'm glad that he won.

It certainly is a better thing than the alternative. We could have had Kamala Harris. And I think that would have been a really been a disaster for the

United States of America. You know, and that reminds me too, you know, there was an article that I saw.

I wasn't actually even going to talk about this. But there was an article that I saw someplace.

And of course, I probably can't find it now. But anyway, this particular article, it was talking about Barack Obama, and how, of course, he apparently really hurt his reputation with a lot of Democrats by his backing of Kamala Harris.

And, you know, I mean, it was always, there's this, there's almost a sort of mystique about Barack Obama, you know, is this as almost he could do no wrong.

He was a very iconic president for the Democrats. And there are a lot of people now that are really kind of upset with Barack Obama and are sort of seeing him as the scapegoat for the defeat of Kamala Harris and for the

Democrats generally in the election in 2024, a couple months ago.

It's hard to believe it's been almost two months since then. But yeah, so, you know,

Barack Obama definitely hurt his reputation. Let me see if I can actually find that article. I know

I've got it here. I think I sent it to my folks here earlier today.

And let's take a look. Yeah, I don't see it there.

You know, it's always funny, if you don't save an article or, you know, do something to make sure that you can access an article, if you don't do that right away, what ends up happening is you end up never being able to go find it again, no matter how hard you look.

Well, anyway, it doesn't look like I've got it here handy. Let's try one more thing here.

Oh, here we go. Yeah, the magic is gone. I'm going to go ahead and resend this to myself here.

This is what happens when you don't prepare adequately for a live stream. I thought I had done preparation.

You know, it's kind of funny. Sometimes I always think, oh, I'm going to be able to sit down and just blow through this, you know, and get everything.

And then I start looking at my notes and articles that I've saved through the week, and I realize, oh, you know,

I forgot to do this, or I didn't save that, or whatever. I always think I do a better job than what

I actually do of keeping track of my stuff. So, let's take a look here and see what this article has to say about Barack Obama.

You know what? I get too many emails. You know, it's funny. A few years ago,

I got a Gmail account, and I did okay with not getting overwhelmed for a while, and then over time, you know, you get on various email lists, and then at some point, you find all of a sudden that you've got

I got like 5 ,000, over 5 ,000 emails just on that account just in the past month, which is kind of ridiculous.

Let's see here. All right. We got that, and now we're going to do a little bit of this, and that's not exactly what

I wanted to do. Okay. Well, we're just going to roll with this. So, let's take a look at it, and let's do a little screen share here.

I'm going to show you this article. There we go, and this is from the

Gateway Pundit, which I think usually runs some pretty interesting articles. It's an alternate website, but it's a conservative website, but the headline in this particular article, it's,

The Magic is Gone. Is the Era of Obama Finally Over? It's by, let's see,

Mike LaChance, it says here. So, if you read through the article here, it says,

Obama was one of the biggest losers of the 2024 election. Both he and his wife stuck their necks out politically for Kamala Harris, and she lost big time.

What does that say about the influencing power of the former president? Black voters in Pennsylvania did not respond well to being scolded by Obama for not showing up enough to support, showing enough support for Kamala Harris.

Some people are starting to say that the Obama era is over, and that the election proves it. And then it goes on to quote, for some reason here, this thing keeps adjusting my size of my screen.

I don't know why it's doing that. But anyway, it quotes Victor Davis Hanson here. This is just reading from Hanson's article.

This is, quote, Former President Barack Obama had long been rumored as a catalyst for the 2020 Joe Biden nomination, and thereafter played the whispering puppeteer behind the subsequent lost

Biden administration years. Yeah, there's a lot of people that thought that Barack Obama was sort of pulling the strings behind the scenes.

And I think there's some evidence for that. I suspect that that is true. Hanson continues, he says, quote,

Many Democrats believe that they might have done just as well had Biden stayed on the ticket, even in his vastly diminished state.

So yeah, that's one of the things that has kind of been a whisper campaign, it seems like, about that.

And it was very interesting. If you read some of the discussion of how

Biden was forced out, and this goes back to early July when he was forced out and endorsed

Kamala Harris. Apparently, and this is what has been reported by people that claim to be in the know, that I think it was on a telephone call that Nancy Pelosi was very much involved in forcing

Biden out. And she told him something along these lines, Joe, we can do this the easy way or the hard way.

And I guess the easy way was him voluntarily stepping down. And I guess the hard way was probably going after him in some sort of legal fashion.

I mean, of course, there's tons of dirt out there. So it's not like the, I don't think it would have been hard for the

Democrats to dig up dirt on Joe Biden. I think the man's about as dirty as dirty gets. But yeah,

Nancy Pelosi told him, well, we can do this the easy way or the hard way. And there, the relations between Joe Biden and Nancy Pelosi had visibly cooled to the point where it almost seems like he won't speak to her anymore.

And apparently, they've been longtime friends. But that came to an end back in the summer of 2024.

So Hansen continues, he says, the Obamas were further blasted for nullifying the wishes of 14 million primary voters by forcing

Biden off the ticket. Ironically, in the same backroom, anti -democratic manner that had cleared the way for him in 2020.

Yeah, now, that's one of the other things I think that's really interesting about some of the charges that they like to keep against Donald Trump.

They say, he's a threat to our democracy. Well, there's really nothing more anti -democratic than the

Democrat Party. They rigged it in. Well, I mean, they actually rigged

Hillary in, in 2016. I think if they had had a fair primary fight,

I think Bernie Sanders would have won. But they rigged Hillary in. And then they rigged

Joe Biden in in 2020. And then they rig Kamala Harris in in 2024.

And there's only so much rigging you can do. And Hillary Clinton was a terrible candidate.

Joe Biden was a terrible candidate. But they brought out the extra super heavy artillery to make sure he won.

That was a clearly fraudulent election, in my opinion. And then here in 2024, yeah, it really kind of seemed like they stood down.

It's like they really didn't do as much, do the kind of rigging that I thought that they were going to do in advance.

And I think that a lot of us thought they were going to do. It seems like they stood down. And you can debate why that is.

But yeah, you know, Kamala Harris, I mean, she got thumped pretty good. It seemed more like the

Democrats in 2024, like they were going after the congressional elections.

And I think they did do some monkey business in the congressional elections, particularly it seems like in the House elections. Let's see here.

So this is again, going back to Victor Davis -Hanson's comments. And he says, the 2024 anemic

Democratic campaign and the Trump Electoral College and popular vote victories, combined with record defections of Hispanic and African -American voters from the

Democratic Party to Trump, proved a resounding rejection of the Obama legacy and his surrogate's left -wing visions.

Yeah, it kind of did. And of course, you know, Barack Obama was right in there pushing for all of this.

So it doesn't really look all that good for Barack Obama. Now it seems like maybe he's out of touch. And I think that some of the

Democrats at least seem to be reaching that conclusion. And it says here, to move forward,

Democrats must oust Obama. And this is Hanson continuing. He writes this, he says, the historic political comeback of Donald Trump has left

Democrats largely unable and unwilling to process what they've done to themselves. Yes, they whine and cry and emote like wounded adolescent narcissists, because that's all they can do.

What if cold -eyed analysis might compel them to make difficult choices and save what remains of their party?

No, they're afraid. That is beyond them now. They're locked into their doom loop. And granting

Trump the White House through an Electoral College landslide and popular vote, American voters also made it clear that they were fed up with leftist ideology.

To win the future, the Democrats must tear down Obama just as Trump tore down the Bushes. Yeah, you know,

Trump really, yeah, he pretty well ended the Bush political dynasty in what he did to Jeb.

You know, that was one of the things that was interesting to me, too, about the 2016 campaign is,

I remember when it started off, you know, I was kind of excited about Rand Paul, and I thought that Rand Paul might be somebody who could win and bring a more constitutional view to the

White House. But he declared fairly early, and he was kind of one of the early frontrunners, but I remember when

Jeb got in the race. I mean, it was like the heavens opened up and there were, you know, heavenly choirs of angels singing glory to God in the highest or something like this.

I mean, it was really, I mean, that was the way the press treated Jeb Bush. I mean, it was the way they framed it in the press is that Jeb Bush, he was just gonna roll to primary victory, and he was essentially had all but already received his rightful nomination as the

Republican 2016 nominee. And it was gonna be Hillary Clinton versus Jeb Bush, and Hillary was probably gonna win, and Jeb Bush, you know, would play the gracious loser, and, you know, and maybe in eight years he would be able to run again, and, you know, who knows, you know, win the presidency or something.

I don't know. But anyway, Jeb Bush was certainly put forth as, you know, he was the golden boy.

You know, he was the guy that was gonna win it all. And he actually declared fairly early on in the process.

I think he declared before Donald Trump. I think. I'm kind of going by memory here, so maybe

I'm wrong about that. But, of course, you know, Donald Trump stole the show. And Donald Trump really embarrassed

Jeb Bush. Donald Trump was really on his game. And Jeb Bush, you know, he thought it was a coronation.

He didn't think it was a primary fight. And all of a sudden he found himself in the fight of his life.

It kind of reminded me a little bit of, if you remember the original Rocky. I'm going way back here. I'm dating myself.

This goes back to 1976 in the original Rocky. And if you remember the plot of that movie, you know,

Sylvester Stallone, he played the part of Rocky Balboa. And Rocky Balboa, he was kind of a two -bit, he was kind of a local neighborhood punk, kind of a thug, you know, kind of a leg -breaker, sort of worked for the seedy kind of mafioso type people.

You know, he'd go out and beat up people that, you know, didn't pay their debts or whatever. And he was also a sort of kind of wannabe amateur boxer, you know, who never really hit him out of the much.

And I don't remember how it is, but there was some kind of a, it was almost like a, like just a, oh,

I don't know. It was almost like a show fight that was arranged between Rocky Balboa and Apollo Creed.

You know, Apollo Creed, you know, he was the heavyweight champion, you know, and this was just some kind of, you know, almost like a demonstration, you know.

And he was supposed to fight Rocky and, you know, he'd kind of play around with Rocky for a few rounds, I guess that was the plan, and then knock

Rocky out. And, you know, Rocky could say, hey, I fought the heavyweight, I fought for the heavyweight title, and Apollo Creed would get an easy victory.

Well, it didn't quite work out that way. And it was kind of interesting when you watch the movie, because, you know, the movie kind of portrayed

Apollo Creed as sort of this guy that, yeah, he was a little bit too sure of himself, didn't take the fight seriously.

And like, there's a scene there that where there was a supposedly, you know, news reporter, they were following this local boy made good, you know,

Rocky Balboa, and it showed him training in like a meat locker, and he's punching these hanging sides of beef and slugging it, slugging it, and slugging it.

And he's like really super intense into this. And one of Apollo Creed's coaches is kind of like looking at this

TV report, and he's saying, you know, like, this guy thinks this is a real fight. Well, you know, in 2016, kind of an extended analogy, but in 2016,

Donald Trump was kind of played the part of Rocky Balboa. You know, he was the plucky underdog that really wasn't supposed to win or go anywhere.

And Jeb Bush, you know, he was the high flying heavyweight champion. And, you know, everybody knew that Jeb Bush was going to beat this punk, you know,

Donald Trump, he didn't know anything. Well, it turned out quite the opposite. You know, Donald Trump was on his game.

I mean, he was focused, he was determined, and he flat knocked Jeb Bush out. And not just Jeb Bush alone, but I think he really put an end to the

Bush political dynasty, which in my opinion is a good thing. I'm glad that he did that.

You know, if Donald Trump did nothing else in his political life, I mean, the fact that he knocked Jeb Bush out and kind of really embarrassed him, that was a good thing, because I'm glad that we, you know, we would have just had another one of these out of touch entitled

Republican presidents who really almost seems in some ways to dislike the

American people. You know, and that's one of the things I think why so many people identify with Donald Trump, because Donald Trump, you say whatever you want about him, and he certainly is someone who has his flaws.

But I think one thing that attracts people to Donald Trump is that he seems to actually, he can talk to Americans.

He knows how to talk to Americans. And he actually genuinely seems to like the

American people. He actually likes the people that he wants to represent. And I think that's really important.

And so many times it seems like the people in positions of leadership in the

United States really have sometimes a very overt, maybe covert, but sometimes overt, actually dislike for the

American people. And you can almost feel it come, you feel like radiating out of them.

I mean, this fact that somehow they think they're better than you, and that you're somehow a bad person who needs to be punished.

And you get that out of political leaders, you get that out of people in the news media, you get that out of people in business.

And this actually gives me a, this is actually a way of sort of transitioning into something else that I wanted to talk about here today.

And let's see here, I want to get this here. And let's see what's going on with my, something weird's going on with my screen share here.

I'm gonna stop that screen share, try this again here. It really brings me to the title, title subject of my podcast here.

That is MAGA's big H -1B visa blow -up. And of course, when I use the term MAGA, you know,

M -A -G -A, that's just Make America Great Again. That's one of the best -known slogan of Donald Trump.

And over the Christmas holiday, in fact, it was on Christmas, on X, you know, formerly

Twitter, there is this great big blow -up between Elon Musk, principally Elon Musk, and other

Donald Trump supporters, because Elon Musk had come out defending the

H -1B visa. And so what on earth is the H -1B visa? Well, let's take a look. Here's an article from Newsweek that I think does a pretty good job laying this out.

The headline here says, Donald Trump shares view on H -1B visas amid MAGA civil war. This is dated

December 28th, so this is just here Saturday. Very recent article, hot off the presses.

President -elect Donald Trump told the New York Post on Saturday that he supports H -1B visas, weighing in on a key issue that has caused a significant rift within his

Make America Great Again, or MAGA, movement. Quote, I've always liked the visas.

I've always been in favor of the visas. That's why we have them. End quote. Trump told the Post in a phone interview on Saturday.

Quote, I have many H -1B visas on my properties. I've been a believer in H -1B. I've used it many times.

It's a great program. End quote, he said. Newsweek's reached out to Trump's transition team via email for comment on Saturday.

Why it matters. The affirmative answer from the MAGA base's leader could potentially quell the online civil war that has erupted between those in business who believe skilled legal migration boosts the

U .S. economy and those of his supporters who think it takes place at the expense of American workers.

Prominent MAGA influencers such as podcaster Steve Bannon and far -right commentator Laura Loomer have come out strongly against the visas.

And it continues here. It says, The feud over the H -1B visa program started this week after conservative activist

Laura Loomer criticized Trump's appointment of Indian -born entrepreneur Sriram Krishnan as the senior policy advisor on artificial intelligence.

Loomer noted Krishnan's previous support for making it easier for skilled foreigners to work in the U .S., which

Loomer claimed on X, formerly Twitter, was, quote, indirect opposition, end quote, to the

Trump agenda. Tech billionaire Elon Musk, a close Trump ally, has defended foreign -born workers as essential for meeting the needs of U .S.

companies, citing a dearth of homegrown talent. Musk is a South African -born, naturalized

U .S. citizen. At one point, the tech tycoon held an H -1B visa, and his company's Tesla and SpaceX employ

H -1B visa workers. And biotech entrepreneur Vivek Ramaswamy, who alongside

Musk is set to head the proposed Department of Government Efficiency, echoed Musk's sentiments, writing on X on Thursday, quote, our

American culture has venerated mediocrity over excellence for way too long, end quote. Okay, so let's talk a little bit about the

H -1B visa program. What on earth is an H -1B visa? Well, if you follow this program, you probably know, you know,

I've talked a lot about immigration over the years. I've written a lot about it on my blog as well. But the

H -1B visa, I have addressed it from time to time, but it hasn't been the main focus of what I've discussed. But I think this is something that is definitely worth pausing and discussing a little bit.

The H -1B visa, it's a non -immigrant visa that allows foreign workers of different types to come to the

United States and work. Now, one of the things that's very important to keep in mind about the

H -1B visa program is that the H -1B visa recipient, his visa is tied to his job.

To give you an example, suppose, well, we use Elon Musk, we use

Tesla, for example. Suppose Tesla, one of Musk's companies, or SpaceX, it doesn't matter, they want to bring over, say, some engineers, say, from India to work at the company.

What they do, they can bring these workers in on an H -1B visa.

And again, it's a non -immigrant visa, so they don't get citizenship by doing this. And one of the things that I mentioned about the

H -1B is that the worker is tied to his job. So when you come over here as an

H -1B visa employee, say, and you go to work for Tesla, you come over here from India, well,

I'll use India as an example since that's the focus of the discussion. When an Indian engineer comes over here, goes to work for Tesla, he can't quit his job and go somewhere else.

So he can't say, okay, I'm working here at Tesla, but hey, I heard

Google actually has a much better job, better working conditions, better pay, all this other stuff, I'm going to go over and work for Google.

No, he can't do that. He's stuck working for Tesla. If he doesn't work for Tesla on this

H -1B visa, he has to turn around and go back to India and lose his...

I'm sure he'd probably make more money working for Tesla than he would in India. So it'd be a big financial hit for him to do that.

So what these people will do is they'll come over here and they will work for these companies. And since their employment is tied to a specific company, it allows these companies that use

H -1B visa workers to pay these people less. And really what the

H -1B visa is, it's a giant subsidy for corporations to allow them to basically undercut

American workers. It's a form of, I think you would probably call it labor arbitrage where you can bring people in and you can pay them.

And I don't know exactly how much less you can pay an H -1B visa worker, but it's something less than what you would have to pay for an

American engineer if the free market were in effect. And see, a lot of times these companies will kind of say, well, this is just a free market.

Well, it actually isn't. It's a government subsidy. It's a carve -out that the government has created to allow these companies to import these employees and have really almost complete control of them because they can't just leave their job.

You or me, if you're an American and you work at a company, I work in the retirement plan industry.

If I don't like my company for some reason, I can go to another company that does the same sort of thing.

So I can change jobs. I can say, oh, well, there's a better offer at this other company.

I'm going to go over there. I can get better pay or I can get more promotions or maybe more vacation time or a better 401k plan or something like that.

If you're an H -1B visa engineer, say, from India or for some other country, it's not just India that sends

H -1B visa employees here, you can't quit your job. You can't do that.

Your presence in the United States of America is dependent on you keeping your job with that company. And I think where Musk has gone wrong and where supporters of the

H -1B visa program have gone wrong is that they don't see it as a subsidy, which, in fact, it is.

There's an interesting comment. In fact, I found this on X. Okay, here we go. I'm going to read this to you.

This is an older article. Let's see.

Let's get back to this. There's an interview with Milton Friedman.

Now, Milton Friedman, that may be a name that's familiar with you. If you're kind of like me and you follow economics and things like this, you'd know the name

Milton Friedman. He was a very famous Chicago School free market economist from back in the day.

He won a... I believe he... Yeah, he was a Nobel Prize winner. And he was also a very public intellectual. I mean, he wrote a lot for the popular press.

I know he did a show with his wife. It was called Free to Choose that basically supported free market economic principles.

And this is what Milton Friedman had to say. I'm just going to read this article to you. It says, this post here on X, it says,

Paul Donnelly in Computer World on July 22, 2002, quote,

Nobel economist Milton Friedman scoffs at the idea of the government stocking a farm system for the likes of Microsoft and Intel.

Quote, there's no doubt, he says, that the H -1B program is a benefit to their employers, enabling them to get workers at a lower wage.

And to that extent, it is a subsidy. So yeah, the...

These companies like Tesla, for example, or Microsoft or Facebook or Amazon or any of these other tech companies, when they bring these

H -1B visa holders in, what they're doing is they're getting labor at sub -market rates.

You know, if they had to pay a market price for those engineers, they would have to pay more for them.

But yet when you listen to these tech entrepreneurs talk, and Elon Musk falls into this somewhat too, you know, he makes it sound like there's this shortage of engineers, and by golly, if we don't bring these people in, you know,

America is going to collapse. Well, no, no, it really won't. And really what these

H -1B visas do is they undercut the American labor market, and they actually discourage

Americans from going into those fields. They lower wages for the

Americans that already are in those fields. They end up actually replacing Americans in these jobs.

I mean, part of this, it's a form of replacement migration via government subsidy.

And it's a real problem. Anyway, there's a big war that blew up over this thing.

They say, oh, it started on Christmas and it's continued the last few days on X.

And it's really pitted these tech entrepreneurs, Silicon Valley -type guys like Musk and Vivek Ramaswamy as well, for example, against people who are more focused on really having a country that actually works for Americans.

And, you know, what these people will say is, well, you know, America first means Americans first. And I agree with that.

I mean, you know, this is our country, and we shouldn't be handing out immigration work visas that have the effect of displacing the

American workers. And a lot of these, you know, and again,

Musk and some of these other guys, they'll make these arguments and say, well, we're just bringing over the absolute best and brightest mega super geniuses.

But if you look into the H -1B visa program, that's not what they're doing. I mean, they're bringing in people who really are no better than, in some cases, not as good as available

Americans. It's just they can pay them less and they can have more control over them. And I think at bottom line, that's what it is.

You know, it is a subsidy, as Milton Friedman said, for these big tech firms. And, you know, the

American people do not owe Tesla or SpaceX or Amazon or Facebook or Google or any of these other companies.

They do not owe them a subsidy. It's essentially corporate welfare. And I think that these things should be ended, that entire program.

I think it's greatly abused. So anyway, that's kind of in a nutshell what's been going on.

It's been interesting to follow some of the back and forth on it. Moving on here.

So let's see here. Oh, I wanted to get to an article.

This is actually an article and this kind of leads into, I had some comments about our friends in the

Roman Catholic Church here and Pope Francis, but this kind of is a lead into that.

Here's a story that my friend Carolyn sent to me. She's sort of been a listener and supporter for the show for a long time.

And she always sends me some good stuff. And here's an article that I had not seen before.

And it's got a...it's an Associated Press, an AP article. It's got a headline.

It says, Rome's iconic Trevi Fountain reopens after renovation work in time for the jubilee holy year.

So in case you hadn't heard in 2025, Rome has declared this jubilee year and it's where I...yeah,

I actually need to study a little bit more about what that exactly means. But jubilee is taken from the Old Testament.

That was a time where forgiveness of debt and all sorts of things. And one of the things that Rome does, excuse me, is they encourage mass pilgrimages to Rome.

So they expect this huge influx of visitors into Rome next year. And apparently the

Trevi Fountain was renovated in advance of the 2025 jubilee year.

Now, of course, the Trevi Fountain, that's a very famous landmark in Rome. I've not seen it in person.

I myself have not been to Rome. But here's a little caption under this picture of the

Trevi Fountain. It says, a view of the 18th century Trevi Fountain, one of Rome's most iconic landmarks, as it reopens to the public after undergoing maintenance, just in time for the start of the jubilee year.

And then expected to draw millions of visitors to the eternal city in Rome. And if we read through the article here, it just says,

Rome's iconic Trevi Fountain reopens Sunday after three months of renovations. The renovation work in the 18th century monument, that's one of the

Italian capital's main attractions, cost 327 ,000 euros. To avoid overcrowding, the monument will be limited to 400 visitors at a time.

Quote, this way visitors will have ample opportunity to observe it and understand the values it embodies.

End quote. Said Claudio Parisi Pressi, Rome's superintendent of cultural heritage.

You have to forgive me if I don't pronounce the Italian names quite correctly. The article continues, to manage the overwhelming number of visitors and the huge crowd expected for the jubilee,

Roman city officials have been devising a plan to block off the area around the fountain. Visitors will be required to book online and pay two euros to enter.

Once inside, they will have 30 minutes to enjoy the fountain. So I guess they're going to get a windfall over this whole thing.

And the article continues, it says this, during the renovation work, visitors could make the traditional coin toss into a makeshift pool.

City lore has it that tossing a coin into the Baroque fountain will ensure a return trip to Rome. So I guess apparently they don't get to toss it into the fountain itself, they get to toss it into a makeshift pool.

So I don't know if that has quite the so -called magical effect, I don't know. But it continues here, and this is the kicker, and this is what

I want you to hear, this is the last line of the article, it says this, the tradition of throwing these coins into the fountain generates an estimated 1 .5

million euros, that's 1 .6 million dollars annually, which has been donated to the

Catholic charity Caritas for the past 15 years. I did not know that, and that's the reason that Carolyn sent this to me, was that article saying, you know, so if you go to Rome and you toss a coin into the

Trevi Fountain, well, that ends up going into the Pope's coffers. Very interesting.

I was not aware of that. I guess it's not surprising, but I had never heard that before.

So very interesting. So anyway, that's just one article I wanted to share on some of the goings on in Rome.

I think we're going to have some time in 2025 to actually kind of dig into the whole idea of the

Jubilee and talk some about that. But I'll leave those details for a future podcast.

But anyway, that kind of leads me into something having to do with the

Pope. And earlier this week, this was just before Christmas, this article was dated

December 23rd, so it was on Monday, it's got a headline that says, Biden commutes sentences of dozens on death rows to some zero hedge.

President Joe Biden on Monday announced that he's commuting the sentences of 37 out of 40 prisoners currently sitting on the federal government's death row, which will reclassify the sentences to life without the possibility of parole.

Three of the men who were not spared for terrorism and hate -motivated mass murder are Robert D. Bowers, 52, who in 2018 gunned down 11 worshippers at the

Tree of Life Synagogue in Pittsburgh, Dylann Roof, 30, who opened fire on black parishioners in 2015 at a church in Charleston, South Carolina, killing nine people, and Boston Marathon bomber

Dzokhar Tsarnaev, 31. The decision comes weeks before Biden is set to leave office.

And it quotes Biden here a little bit about some things. One of the people whose sentence he commuted was someone who murdered an

Ohio State patrol officer, someone with the Ohio State Highway Patrol. And there's some articles that talk to the family and how the family and the people that knew that state troop were just distraught and upset by that, as well they should be.

But what's really upsetting about this is how the decision made or what was driving it.

I was actually impressed with this article from Zero Hedge because it goes into the

Roman Catholic connection. Let's see, scrolling down here to the bottom, at least the original one did.

I don't know if I see that here, bear with me just a moment. Okay, yeah, here we go.

Let's see, it says, in recent weeks, the president faced increasing pressure from civil rights groups to commute federal death sentences, a campaign promise he made in 2020 before Trump takes office.

The announcement made just before Christmas is also significant for Pope Francis, who recently urged

Biden to commute the sentences of death row inmates. And this is quoting from the

Pope, quote, today I feel compelled to ask all of you to pray for the inmates on death row in the

United States. End quote. The Pope said in his weekly address in early

December, quote, let us pray for their sentences, their sentences may be commuted or changed. Let us think of these brothers and sisters of ours and ask the

Lord for the grace to save them from death. End quote. Biden spoke with the Pope on December 19th and scheduled to meet with him during his trip to Italy from January 9th to January 12th, according to the

White House. All right, so the Pope was out there praying that Joe Biden would commit these or commute these sentences of these people on death row.

And he had a telephone meeting on December the 19th with Joe Biden.

And lo and behold, just a few days later, Joe Biden comes out and says, well, by golly, I'm going to commute the sentences of these people.

Now, I think any reasonable person can look at this and conclude that, you know, what you had is you had the

Pope leaning on Joe Biden, and Joe Biden did the will of his boss in the Vatican. You know,

I sometimes call Joe Biden, I call him Jesuit Joe Biden because of all the Jesuit influences in his life.

I mean, for instance, when he was inaugurated, he had a Jesuit priest speak at his inauguration.

And when he was sworn into office, of course, it's the tradition for presidents to put their right hand on the

Bible. Well, the Bible that Joe Biden used was the Dewey Reams translation, which is a

Jesuit translation of the Bible. And of course, Pope Francis himself was a Jesuit. And Joe Biden attends a church in Washington, D .C.

when he's there. I think it's Holy Trinity, I think is the name of it. That is a Jesuit -run congregation.

So there's lots of tie -ins between Joe Biden and the Jesuits. And so he's taking orders from his

Antichrist Jesuit boss, Pope Francis there in the Vatican, to subvert justice in the

United States of America. I mean, that's what you see going on here.

And I think that's an extraordinary thing. And yet, there's not much commentary in news media about this, about the fact that it was the

Pope in his request. He asked Joe to do this.

I mean, I think, is that more of an order? I mean, when the

Vicar of Christ, the Father of Kings and Governor of the World, those are the titles that the

Roman Catholic Church gives the Pope. When he asks you to do something, that's sort of a polite way of ordering somebody to do something.

I think that's what, I think that's really the dynamic that was going on here. And Joe Biden went along with it.

Joe Biden is a good son of Rome, was quite happy to do it. And this really does underscore why people, when

John F. Kennedy was running for president in 1960, there were a lot of Americans who were very concerned about papal influence on Kennedy if he were elected president.

And he denied that there would be any influence. And those people today, people look back and say, oh, well, they were just a bunch of religious bigots.

And they shouldn't have said those things. They shouldn't have thought that way. Why would the

Pope try to influence a Catholic president? Well, come on. That's what

Popes have always done. John Robbins used to call the, call

Rome, he called it the Roman church state. And that's properly, that's the correct term for that.

It's not just a church, but it is also a government. It is a state. It is a nation state.

For instance, and I know I was talking to Mom about this recently, but she said, well, you know, did you see where Donald Trump named an ambassador to the

Vatican? And I said, yeah, you know, and we've had ambassadors to the Vatican since 1984. And a lot of people are unaware of that.

A lot of people don't know. And this started under Ronald Reagan. The US started sending ambassadors to the

Holy See. Well, I mean, you don't send ambassadors to a church.

I mean, you don't send ambassadors to the Southern Baptist Convention. You don't send ambassadors to the

Presbyterian Church in America or other types of, or other denominations, but you do send ambassadors to nation states.

You know, the fact that the United States, and the United States is not alone. I mean, the Vatican has formal diplomatic relations with many, many nations.

I don't know offhand how many, but the United States is certainly not alone in having a formal diplomatic relations with the

Vatican. Well, they are behaving like a nation, you know, and the

Pope is a foreign head of state, and he is subverting justice in the United States of America by effectively ordering our president to commute the sentences of some really very terrible people who should be on death row and should long ago actually have been executed.

In fact, the case here of the man whose sentences was commuted here in Ohio, he had been, he committed that murder, and I think it was in 2006.

And that's one of the reasons why, you know,

I mean, we have a death penalty on the books here, but it's just, it's not enforced. And I mean, it's something that needs to be enforced.

And of course, the Pope is very much opposed to the death penalty, but, you know, he is subverting justice because the

Bible requires the death penalty for murderers. What's that in,

I think it's Genesis chapter 9, you know, he who sheds man's blood, by man shall his blood be shed.

So, that is a requirement of the Bible, but yet the

Antichrist Pope will not acknowledge that and in fact opposes that.

Big surprise, right? Yeah, he's undermining justice. Well, yeah, that's not surprising. So, anyway, and if you notice there in that article in Zero Hedge, of course,

Joe Biden is going to have another meeting with the Pope. He met with him once already in October of 2021.

This is an article here from the U .S. Conference of Catholic Bishops. Pope will receive outgoing U .S.

President Biden at Vatican on January 10th. So, you know, a couple weeks from now, he's going to go pay a visit in person to his boss over there.

Let's see, let's read through here. It's talking about, because Biden had a phone call with the

Pope on December the 19th, and it takes, it's quoting a Vatican News article, and it says this,

Vatican News also reported the White House statement about the Pope's phone call with Biden. While it did not provide additional details, the

Vatican News report did give a lengthy overview of Pope Francis' recent appeal in light of the coming Holy Year, that's that year of Jubilee, for the global abolition of the death penalty, which he says is a provision at odds with Christian faith and one that eliminates all hope of forgiveness and rehabilitation.

Well, I mean, that's simply untrue. It's not at odds with the

Christian faith. You know, one can be forgiven. You know, ultimately, I mean, you know, somebody on death row can come to faith in Christ.

I'm sure some people have. But that doesn't mean that they get out of paying the penalty, the civil penalty, for their crimes, if in fact they have been found guilty, been given due process, and found guilty in a court of law.

I mean, those people, I mean, if somebody has committed murders, well, that person, or any murder, you know, that person deserves to be put to death.

That's what the Bible requires. Not only is that not at odds with, not only is the death penalty not at odds with the

Christian faith, the Christian faith in some cases requires it. But Antichrist doesn't see it that way, because he doesn't use the

Scriptures as his sole source of authority. And it's kind of interesting too, of course, that the

Pope would be opposed to the death penalty, given the fact that it's the Popes of Rome that have killed so many people over the centuries.

I was talking to a friend of mine, and he provided me with an article a few weeks ago. We were talking a little bit about this.

And there are some people, some historians estimate that Rome has killed up to 50 million people in various ways over the centuries.

So, I mean, you know, Rome's got a lot of blood on its hands. And then for this Pope to come out and lecture the

American president, and by extension the American people, that somehow the death penalty is wrong, is, well, it's a bit rich, to say the least.

And interesting here too, in this U .S. Conference of Catholic Bishops article, it says, Biden, a

Catholic, had promised in 2020 to end the federal death penalty during his administration. His term's on January 20th.

Well, he's not going to end the death penalty, but he's going to make sure that almost all the people on the federal death row have their sentences commuted.

Let's see, and it closes, it says, Biden said he will continue working after his term ends on domestic and foreign policy matters.

Oh, well, that's wonderful. This will include, he has said, at the

University of Delaware's Biden Institute in Newark and the Penn -Biden Center for Diplomacy and Global Engagement in Washington, D .C.

I'm trying to think now, I think that Penn -Global Center or Penn -Biden Center, I think that's where they had a bunch of classified documents they found there.

I think that was one of the places. Of course, you know, he famously had a whole bunch of classified documents and kind of in boxes, you know, kind of spilling out in his garage.

Yeah, this was the same guy that had ordered the FBI to go raid Donald Trump for having classified documents that he shouldn't have had.

But yeah, Biden slings those classified documents around as if they're nothing. But apparently, yeah, there were a bunch of them there at this

Penn -Biden Center, if memory serves me correctly. Oh, here's an article, and this is the original article from Vatican News, and it says here,

Pope Francis may sentences of U .S. federal death row inmates be commuted. And he says, let us pray that their sentences may be commuted or changed.

Let us think of these brothers and sisters of ours and ask the Lord for the grace to save them from death. Well, you know,

I mean, I use a brother or sister, I mean, you use that term in context of someone who's a fellow believer for a

Christian, but, you know, I don't know that these people are, and in fact, they probably are not. But of course,

Rome has this idea, they call it the fatherhood of God and brotherhood of man, you know, whereas God is the father of all and we're all, you know, we're all brothers in the

Lord. Well, that's not the case. You know, that is, again, that's not what the scriptures teach. You know, God is not the father of unbelievers.

And those people who are unbelievers are not the brothers and sisters, spiritually speaking, of Christians.

So anyway, so yeah, this is another way that the Vatican uses its influence.

The sword has been taken out of the hand of Rome. So, you know, the civil governments of the world are not directly under the control of the

Pope any longer the way they were in the Middle Ages before the Reformation and before the Thirty Years' War. But the

Pope still wields considerable influence, and he can bend a lot of world leaders to his will, especially if those world leaders are

Roman Catholics. Let's see here.

Oh, here's something that's interesting too, and I wanted, one of the reasons I wanted to do a podcast before Christmas is

I wanted to talk a little bit about the Rome's use of Christmas as an excuse for pushing its irredentist mass illegal alien invasions of the

United States and other countries. Now, this is an article from BorderHawk News. BorderHawk News, that's an immigration aggregator website.

What they do is they pull all these stories in about immigration from all these different sources. It's a very useful website.

There's a lot of good stuff on there. And this article is by Alan Wall, who's somebody I've always really appreciated his work.

He is a Christian, so he is a brother in Christ and someone who has for years talked about immigration, and I think done so from a very sound and biblical perspective.

And here he's got a headline that says, Activist Pumping Anti -Deportation Propaganda During the Christmas Season. And boy, are they ever.

Let me tell you, I mean, the Roman Catholic Church has just gone into overdrive on these anti -deportation propaganda pieces.

And now let's see a little bit what Alan Wall has to say here. He says, It's Christmas time and amidst the joys of the

Yuletide celebration, open borders activists try to guilt trip Americans who support reasonable border policies.

After all, these people say, weren't the baby Jesus, Mary and Joseph refugees or illegal immigrants?

So, American Christian, if you don't support open borders, you're evil. You better repent and get on the open borders bandwagon.

Your faith requires it. Well, that's exactly right. That's a really good summary of the message of the

Roman Church state, the Antichrist Roman Church state. And it's not just Rome.

There are liberal Protestant denominations that teach the same thing. And Alan Wall continues, he says,

As we reported two years ago, Christmas Nativity set up on the border to promote invasion agenda.

Similar agitprop is circulating this Christmas as well. Last week, Axios reported, Churches turn to Christmas migrant story amid deportation fears.

The article is written by Russell Contreras, the outlet's justice and race reporter. Here's what

Contreras tells us in the first paragraph. Some Catholic and Evangelical leaders say they will unpack the

Holy Family's immigration plight during Christmas services to offer hope for immigrants worried about what's coming under President -elect

Trump. And Wall continues, Yeah, I bet they will.

It's 2024 and with all the return of Trump and mass deportation talk, there's plenty of grist for the mill.

Trump and his incoming administration are promising immigration raids, even inside churches, as part of their mass deportation plan.

And church leaders say that's already prompting some immigrants to go into hiding. By immigrants,

Contreras generally means illegal aliens. In the next paragraph, he calls them undocumented migrants. Contreras quotes

Gabriel Salguero, president and co -founder of the National Latino Evangelical Coalition. What I'm telling people in this advent of Christmas is,

Jesus understands you because he lived your reality. So yeah, this guy, this Gabriel Salguero, claims to be an

Evangelical, but the words that he uses, his basic stance, is no different from that of the

Roman church state. Justice and race reporter Contreras refers to the biblical account of the

Holy Family's escape from King Herod and temporary sojourn in Egypt. Quote, Latino Evangelical churches will be telling attendees of Christmas services to remember

Jesus and his family were forced to migrate from Egypt for reasons that they could not control. End quote.

Salguero says, in other words, they are taking the biblical story about Jesus, Mary, and Joseph and applying it to today's mass migration, as they plan to do so at Christmas services.

They plan to indoctrinate church members with this propaganda at Christmas services. So I don't know, if you went to a Christmas Eve service, did you hear that kind of a sermon?

I mean, if you went to a Bible -believing church, probably not. But certainly, if you attend a liberal church, if you hear that kind of stuff coming from the pulpit of your church, you really need to think about finding another church.

Now, here's something that Alan Wald does. This is very astute of him, what he says, and really props to him for pointing this out.

He goes on, he writes this, linking the Holy Family's flight with mass migration has been going on in the

Catholic Church at least since 1952. That's when Pope Pius XII issued

Exsul Familia Nazaretana, a papal encyclical, a pastoral letter from the

Pope. In Exsul Familia Nazaretana, Pope Pius XII declared, quote, The emigre

Holy Family of Nazareth fleeing into Egypt is the archetype of every refugee family. Jesus, Mary, and Joseph living in exile in Egypt to escape the fury of an evil king are, for all times and all places, the models and protectors of every migrant, alien, and refugee of whatever kind, who, whether compelled by fear or persecution or by want, is forced to leave his native land, his beloved parents and relatives, his close friends, and to seek foreign soil.

End quote. And then Alan Wald continues, he says, The Pope was painted with a very broad brush. Note that the document equates fear and persecution with want, which refers to lack of money or poverty, in other words.

So, anyway, the reason, one of the reasons I give props to Alan Wald for pointing this out is he goes back to really the source that Rome uses for this idea, for this argument that they say, well, you know, when

Joseph took his family and fled to Egypt, it's the same thing as all of these illegal aliens pouring up across the southern border.

So don't you feel bad, you American Christian, for saying these people need to be deported. Why? They're the exact same as Jesus.

And, of course, the Pope loves to lay this argument on as well, and he talks about, you know, every encounter with a migrant is an encounter with Christ.

Well, you know, then, of course, that raises the question, you know, there was that horrific crime, was that last weekend, where that illegal alien who had been deported and then allowed back into Joe Biden, I think the guy's name, what is it,

Sebastian Zepeda, he lit this woman on fire in a New York subway and she burned to death.

It's horrifying stuff. I don't know, was that an encounter with Christ? You know, or that story about Lake and Riley, you know, she was raped and murdered last year by an illegal alien.

I mean, I don't know, was her encounter with the illegal alien, was that an encounter with Christ? I mean, you know, see these

Popes and bishops and cardinals, they just talk utter nonsense, and you're supposed to accept this stuff without questioning.

You know, I mean, when His Holiness, you know, when the Pope says jump, you know, your only proper response is how high your holiness.

Now, of course, that's complete nonsense. That's not the only legitimate response.

I think more like, get thee behind me, Satan, might be more appropriate. But, of course, that's what the

Popes think anyway. But yeah, this Exil Familia Nazaretana, that is a really key piece of, a really key document in the

Roman Catholic Church for promoting mass illegal immigration into the

United States. And in fact, here, if you want to just see how hard the

U .S. Conference of Catholic Bishops is coming out against deportations, you can just go to one of their feeds out there on X.

This is a Justice for Immigrants feed, and the Justice for Immigrants is a wing of the

U .S. Conference of Catholic Bishops. In fact, you can even see that from their Twitter handle. It's at USCCBJFI.

So that's the United States Conference of Catholic Bishops Justice for Immigrants. So this is just a wing of the U .S. Conference of Catholic Bishops.

And if you just scroll through here, you can just look at the headlines of these articles. In case you missed it, Mahoney, I guess this is,

I believe he's a cardinal or bishop. Mahoney calls on U .S. bishops to denounce chilling Trump plan for mass deportations.

Here's another one. The Holy Family was a family of refugees. Okay, so that's just what Alan Wall was talking about, right?

This whole idea that Rome puts forth that says, well, when Joseph took the family and fled to Egypt, it was exactly the same thing as all these millions of illegal aliens pouring across their southern border and going on welfare, and in some cases, raping, murdering, robbing

Americans on top of that. Now, here's another one. New Mexico's three Catholic bishops are calling on President -elect

Donald Trump to reconsider his plan to carry out the largest deportation in U .S. history and instead focus on immigration reform.

Well, yeah, I think he needs to carry out the largest deportation. This needs to happen.

It needs to happen. I mean, this can't not happen. This is an existential issue, and this absolutely needs to happen.

But these bishops, of course, are fighting against it. Let's see, what else do we have?

Anything else here? Yeah, here's one.

Churches turn to Christmas migrant story amid deportation fears. Yeah, that's the name of it.

That's the article. It says, you know, undocumented immigrants appear to be taking Trump at his word. Some have left the country.

Well, good. Stopped coming to work or disappeared. Good. Alan Sanchez, New Mexico's Catholic bishops and executive director tells

Axios, well, it's good that they've deported themselves. That's the best thing that can happen is for these people to self -deport.

They need to go. And if they self -deport, fine, you know, just pick yourself up, take your family, take whatever you want, and get out of the country.

You know, go back whence you came. You should not be here.

And sometimes you see these stories, oh, well, there's fear in the migrant community.

Well, that's the term that Rome likes to use. When they talk about migrants, they're really talking about principally illegal aliens.

Well, when you break the law, you should be afraid of the authority. That's what the Apostle Paul says in Romans chapter 13.

But anyway, you can go on here, go on through this. Here's another one.

Christina Salazar and her four kids were taken into custody on December 11th, just three months after she birthed twins in Texas.

Salazar, 23, and her kids were put on a plane from Mexico. By birthright citizenship under U .S. law, the twins are

U .S. citizens because they were born here. Well, they shouldn't be, and that's something else that Donald Trump has talked about changing.

In fact, I think he said he's promised on day one of his administration, he's going to sign an executive order getting rid of this idea of birthright citizenship for the children of illegal aliens.

They should not be citizens. It makes a mockery out of U .S.

citizenship, and that needs to stop. But of course, Rome is going to fight that every step of the way too, you can be sure of it.

But anyway, yeah, as I said, just kind of going through, just scrolling through this particular feed, you can see all of this nonsense.

In fact, here's a couple dressed up as Joseph and Mary. Yeah, you can see all this stuff about the, you know, oh, oh, we can't deport the poor illegal aliens.

Yes, we can. You know, and I know the bishops aren't going to like it, but you know what, that's just tough. Yeah, I think maybe they ought to deport those guys to their papa in Rome.

They seem to like him so much, just go to Rome, deport them to Rome, put them on a big old jet plane and fly them over there.

I think we would all be better off if that were done. So anyway, that's a few things there.

I don't know, do I have anything else? Oh, yeah, here's a story here too. And I wanted to mention this.

I found this, this was in the New York Times. Let's see, this was fairly recent.

It was December 21st, but it has a headline, Death on the Night Shift at Frozen Pizza Factories in Chicago.

Undocumented workers help feed America's hunger for prepared foods, but some take jobs with staffing agencies that expose them to hazardous conditions.

Now, see, this is one of the problems with, with, when people are persuaded by Rome and by other unscrupulous organizations and people to engage in illegal immigration, what they do is essentially they set them, they take themselves outside the protection of the law.

And when you do that, bad things tend to happen to you. And it is not an act of mercy to encourage people and to aid them in illegal immigration the way the

Roman Catholic Church does, the way Catholic Charities does. They're not performing an act of mercy.

This is not an act of mercy. You know, what Rome does is they actively help people to break the law.

They encourage these people to put themselves into dangerous positions. They get them into the country, and then they get these jobs that, surprise, surprise, they end up working under abusive conditions and some of them die.

Now, and one of the things you read about this guy, his name was Adewale Ezekiel Ogunyemi.

He's a Nigerian. And it talks here, it says, in Nigeria, this fellow, he did not earn enough work in the bank to support his mother, wife, and two daughters.

So in 2019, he flew to the United States on a tourist visa and obtained fake identity documents.

He then signed on for temporary work at several staffing agencies in the Chicago area. So, you know, this is also one of the ways, by the way, that a lot of illegal immigration takes place is by tourist visas.

So these people, they get a visa, they can come to the country for, I don't know, was it 30 days or I'm not sure exactly how long the tourist visas allow, but they come over here and then they just don't leave.

And nobody follows up on this stuff. So this guy, you know, he came here, you know, overstayed his visa.

He committed, you know, document fraud. It says, you know, he obtained fake identity documents. And they signed up for temporary work,

I guess, you know, using those fake documents. He probably had a fake social security number.

I could tell you a little bit of story about this because when working in the retirement plan business the way that I do, one of the things, and this was a number of years ago at a former employer, but sometimes

I would receive one of the things I had to do from time to time, I'd be given a request to verify a social security number.

And what prompted this is they would do an audit of our system and they would find multiple individuals with the same social security number.

So then it's like, okay, well, you've got five, you know, four or five individuals linked to a single social security number.

Who's the real owner of this social security number? Obviously, all five people can't have the same social security number.

So my job was to, you know, play Sherlock Holmes and figure out who the social actually belonged to.

And one of the things that was pretty consistent when I would get these kinds of cases is you would have, you'd get a list, like I say, four or five people that had the same social.

And then you would read through the names and, you know, you'd have, you know, Maria Martinez or, you know,

Hector Hernandez or Freddy Fernandez. They'd be on the list. Then you have

Bob Smith. So, you know, and then you say to yourself, hmm, you know, I wonder who the real owner of this social security number is.

I wonder who this really belongs to. You know, Sherlock Holmes. Because generally speaking, you know, when you would see these cases where you would have numerous people with the same social, they would almost always be

Hispanic names, almost always. You know, I had this at another employer

I had. There was a restaurant, and this restaurant apparently employed a large number of illegal aliens, because there are always issues with socials, people having duplicate socials or people changing their social.

I mean, who changes their social security number? You know, I've had my same social security number since I opened my savings account at a bank when

I was, I don't know what, nine years old, so almost 50 years. I mean, you don't change your social security number, but these people at this company were always changing their social security numbers.

And they, again, you know, they all had, you know, Hispanic surnames. And I would venture to say probably all these people that were having these social security issues, and it was a number of issues, and it was very common with this employer, they were probably all illegal aliens.

I'm quite sure that that was the case. So there are a lot of American employers that will do this stuff, and they know what's going on.

I mean, they know full well what's going on, but they do it anyway. You know, and sometimes it costs people their lives.

And in this particular gentleman, it's Mr. Ogunyemi. He signed up for temporary work, and it says, shy and laid back, he was often assigned to do night jobs.

One agency, Snyder Blake Personnel, sent him to scrub machines at Rich Products Corporation, which makes food products that have been sold at stores like Walmart, distributed by suppliers like Cisco.

One night in July 2021, workers at Rich heard a scream rushing to an area of the plant where the dough for frozen pizza rises.

They found Mr. Ogunyemi, who is 42, tangled in a machine that helps the dough ferment. His right arm had been pulled through the conveyor and wrapped around his head.

His chest was crushed. The fire department had to free him from the machine, and he was pronounced dead at the hospital.

So that's a really horrific industry. Here's a picture of the, apparently of the facility in the

Chicago area. Staffing agencies like the ones Mr. Ogunyemi worked for have become ubiquitous in America's on -demand economy.

Companies turn to the firms to find workers for factories, warehouses, and distribution centers where jobs are often difficult to fill.

Well, one of the reasons they're often difficult to fill is they won't pay a market wage, and they can get away with not paying a market wage because they can always bring in illegal aliens.

I mean, if you can't get enough workers, you need to pay more.

And this has been one of the consistent problems in the United States for the last 50 years. Now, this is something that, and I don't have the chart here handy with me.

I wish I did have it, but it's very interesting, and I've seen this several times where there are some graphs, and it shows worker productivity from, say, like 1970 up to the present, and that worker productivity goes, excuse me, that worker productivity goes up and up and up.

You know, people become more productive over time, not because we're necessarily better or smarter than people 50 years ago, but just because we have better technology.

You know, we have all the computers and automation things that have been developed over the last 50 years.

That makes a big difference. It makes an individual worker much more productive than his counterpart in the past.

Sorry about that. My throat's getting a little bit scratchy. I guess I've talked too much here tonight. But much more productive than in the past.

But at the same time, the wages for American workers adjusted for inflation have not gone anywhere.

So workers have been more and more productive, but their wages aren't going up. Now, you know, who's making the money?

Well, all of the people at the very top of society, you know, whether you're, you know, the top of the, whether the socioeconomic pyramid, you know, all of those gains from all that increased production are going up to the owners, they're going up to the investors, they're going up to Wall Street, this type of thing.

Now, you know, here's, don't get me wrong, you know, I'm a, you know, someone who believes in capitalism, believes in private property, believes in economic freedom, limited government.

But there's something that's seriously wrong. I mean, if you've got a system where workers are becoming more and more productive, and yet they don't get a pay raise to reflect that increased productivity, there's something seriously wrong.

There's something wrong with that system. And one of the reasons that blue -collar American workers have not received a wage is because this country is being constantly flooded, not only with illegal aliens, but with mass legal immigration as well, sort of like the

H -1B visas, for example, that Elon Musk wants to push. And this has been crushing the

American middle class, particularly those people who are blue -collar workers. They have not had a pay raise in over 50 years.

And one of the ways that this goes on is because, you know, you have these companies out there that are hiring illegal aliens.

And again, they know full well, I think they know full well what they're doing, and they look the other way because they can do it on the cheap.

It saves them money. So anyway, this guy had this horrific accident in this factory.

And it's kind of a longish article here. This is like one recent study in Washington State, which mirrored findings in Illinois and Ohio, found that the injury rate among temporary workers there adjusted for the distribution of workers across industries was about 67 % higher, according to an analysis by Michael Foley, an occupational health research economist at the state's

Department of Labor and Industries. So yeah, so all these illegal aliens are getting into dangerous jobs, they're being placed in dangerous situations, and then bad things are happening to them.

This is one of the reasons. Do not violate the law. Do not break the law. You know, not only it's wrong for somebody to do that, but there's a good chance, there's a good percent chance that it's going to lead to a bad outcome for you.

And this is one of the ways you can have bad things happen to you. You know, you end up going to work kind of in the underground economy, and, you know, nobody cares whether you live or die.

And these people get put into these jobs, and they get sometimes are seriously injured, sometimes are killed.

This is a very good reason not to break the law. The investigation found that many people employed by the staffing industry, including unauthorized workers, have been placed in dangerous situations where they suffered serious physical harms, fractures, amputations, miscarriages, or death.

When it comes to redress, the Times found it's been hard for some of the workers or the families to hold the manufacturers to account because the staffing agency is their actual employer acted as a legal shield.

So yeah, so these staffing agencies will bring these people on, and, you know, it gives the company a little bit of separation from the employee, because they're not actually an employee, they're working for the staffing agency, you know, and it acts,

I guess, apparently as a bit of a legal shield for any kind of liability. And as I said here, this is a bit of a longish article, and I'm not going to read through all of it.

I'm going to go ahead and put this in the show notes. I think it's actually kind of an interesting article. Yeah, I know it's the New York Times, but you know, the

New York Times actually can do some good reporting when they want to, and I think this is a pretty interesting article.

Just kind of skimming through it, I don't think that, you know, and of course, I'm sure that they don't reach the conclusion that I do.

I mean, the proper conclusion of this is, this is an example of what happens when you break the law, and is another in a very long line of good reasons not to break

American immigration law. You know, for those people who are thinking about coming here illegally, don't do it.

You know, it's not only you're breaking the law, but you're also sinning in the sight of God, and you're putting your life in danger, and not just from irresponsible employees, but there are lots of terrible things that can happen.

You know, I've read numerous articles, and this is particularly true of women who, you know, come up with these caravans and things.

They're constantly sexually assaulted. You know, there's all kinds of horrible things that are done to them in these caravans.

But again, you know, they've taken themselves outside the protection of the law, and so it's not surprising that terrible things happen to them.

You know, and the compassionate thing, the Christian thing, is to tell people, do not break American immigration law.

Do not come to the United States illegally. But the Antichrist Roman Catholic Church, they keep encouraging this stuff.

And as far as I'm concerned, the blood of these people who are injured or killed coming to the

United States illegally, or injured or killed once they come to the United States, the blood of that is on the hands of the

U .S. Catholic bishops because they encourage this kind of stuff, and they are the biggest encouragers of this kind of stuff.

But yeah, I mean, the New York Times isn't going to reach that conclusion, but that's the conclusion that they should reach.

So there's that. Yeah, here's an article.

This is from the Gateway Pundits talking about a horror woman set ablaze by illegal alien on NYC subway.

Still hasn't been identified because she was so severely burned. And this is just awful. And, you know, the woman killed after being set ablaze by an illegal alien on a

New York City subway has still not been identified because her burns are so severe. Now this article, she hasn't really since been identified, but this is from December 24th, a few days ago.

And it says she was torched by an illegal migrant on a

Brooklyn F train Sunday, was so badly burned, authorities are struggling to identify her.

According to sources, victim was asleep, but alive when she was set ablaze at the Coney Island station, allegedly by a

Guatemalan migrant, Sebastian Zepeda Collie, and had a walker and some bags with her at the time, but cops struggled to pull the fingerprints because of her scorched skin.

Brooklyn prosecutors said at Zepeda Collie's arraignment on murder and arson charges Tuesday that the very badly burned victim remains

Jane Doe. Assistant District Attorney Ari Rosenberg said a medical examiner ruled the cause of death as smoke inhalation and thermal injuries.

The Guatemalan who burned the woman to death on the New York City subway is an illegal alien who was previously deported by the

Trump administration in June, 2018. The Guatemalan illegal Sebastian Zepeda crossed into the

U .S. and Arizona on June 1st, 2018 and was deported a few days later on June 7th, 2018.

Zepeda then re -entered the U .S. illegally as a gotaway at an unknown time and location and roamed around freely thanks to Joe Biden.

That's actually was reported by Fox News, not Fox News, it's Bill Malugin, who's done a lot of good work on the immigration beat.

The Gateway Pundit reported Sunday that a woman was fatally lit on fire aboard the stationary F train in Brooklyn's Coney Island -Stillwell

Avenue subway station. The attack occurred around 7 .30

a .m. when the suspect, without any prior interaction, approached the woman who appeared to be sleeping, agonizing for clothing, and using a lighter.

I mean, what kind of satanic level evil does it take for somebody to do something like that?

You know, and some people have said, you know, there are people that say, well, what should we do with this guy? You know, and my thought is, well, maybe he needs to be treated the way he did as, the way he treated his victim.

I mean, you know, this is a clear case for the death penalty. But this is just horrific stuff.

And it says, adding the outrage, a transit police officer seen walking past the burning woman, appearing to speak on a radio, but continuing down the platform without rendering immediate assistance or attempting to apprehend the perpetrator.

Yeah, yeah, there was that too. Nobody came to her aid. You know, and some people have pointed out, and of course,

I think that there's, I think there's truth to this. I mean, that, you know, this is a so -called the Daniel Penny effect, right?

You know, if you followed anything in the news here the last few weeks, you know, there was that trial of Daniel Penny, who was that subway rider last year who defended some of his fellow passengers,

I guess, from this kind of psychotic guy on a subway, who ended up dying,

I guess, as a result of Penny's actions and the actions of some others. You know, and so, you know, the man intervened to protect his fellow riders.

He gets dragged over the coals. Well, I mean, that's going to have a chilling effect. Logically, that's going to have a chilling effect on anybody wanting to come to anybody's aid.

And of course, I think that's part of the idea, that that's the kind of society, these evil people who, in so many cases, are in positions of power in our country.

That's what they want. You know, they want us wholly dependent upon them. They don't want us taking action into our own hands.

You know, we can't have that going on because people are taking action in their own hands. Well, you know, then

I guess they don't need us. So we have to put a stop to that. And there are certainly authorities in certain places that are trying their best to do that.

So let us hope that this Zapata fellow, he needs to get a fair trial.

And if he's found guilty, he needs to be convicted and he needs to be executed. I don't think it's probably going to happen since it's in New York, but that's what should happen.

Anyway, so I think that's probably about enough here for tonight. I've got a few other stories, but you know,

I've been yakking for almost an hour and a half. Good grief. I hope I didn't talk your ear off. Anyway, thanks very much for listening.

It was great having you here. I appreciate that. And again, Lord willing, we'll be back next week, either on Tuesday or more likely on Wednesday, and have a