Craig Becker supports illegal alien workers

Over the weekend, President Obama announced 15 recess appointments. The most controversial of these is Craig Becker, a former SEIU lawyer. Becker was already in hot water because of his radical legal writings, including a 1993 piece arguing that workers should be forced to unionize. Now Naked Emperor News has dug up audio of Becker from a radio interview in 2001 voicing strong support for illegal alien workers.

BECKER: "SEIU, the largest union, and many of the other large unions now have a very, very progressive position on immigration and immigration reform, which, of course, unfortunately they didn't have 100 years ago. So it has a very great effect who we represent and who we're trying to represent on the politics of the labor movement."

HOST: "Can you be a little more specific about immigration? What do you mean a progressive policy on immigration"

BECKER "Well I think there's been a recognition that employer sanctions and the effort through punitive sanctions to prevent the hiring of aliens who do not have proper work papers has had a very deleterious effect. It's had a discriminatory effect. It's had a very harsh effect on a class of people who are here, who are going to remain here, who are going to keep coming here because of conditions which simply can't be affected through those kind of punitive sanctions. And then we have to have a different approach."

Becker's position seems to confirm what many have suspected for a long time: Unions are less representative of workers than progressive activists. Illegal aliens are horrible for American labor because they take blue-collar jobs and work for less. But instead of fighting for their members, unions are taking the standard progressive position. Obama has indicated that immigration reform will be his next project. It will be interesting to see which side the labor unions come down on.

Also interesting was Becker's contention that illegal immigration has changed who the unions are "trying to represent". Just how many criminal aliens are in the SEIU and AFL-CIO?

Becker's recess appointment places him on the National Labor Relations Board without a proper Senate vote. There he'll be one of five members who will shape labor relations for years to come.

Did this man just kill ObamaCare?

It's always hard to tell given how dense and arcane congressional procedure is, but right now it looks like ObamaCare is officially dead.

The Senate Parliamentarian has ruled that President Barack Obama must sign Congress’ original health care reform bill before the Senate can act on a companion reconciliation package, senior GOP sources said Thursday.

The Senate Parliamentarian’s Office was responding to questions posed by the Republican leadership. The answers were provided verbally, sources said.

House Democratic leaders have been searching for a way to ensure that any move they make to approve the Senate-passed $871 billion health care reform bill is followed by Senate action on a reconciliation package of adjustments to the original bill. One idea is to have the House and Senate act on reconciliation prior to House action on the Senate’s original health care bill.

The House doesn't have enough votes to pass the Senate bill for a number of reasons. The Senate bill covers abortions, which has pro-life Democrats united behind Bart Stupak pledging to vote no. The Senate bill bars illegal immigrants from health care coverage, which has members of the House Hispanic Caucus threatening no votes as of this morning. The Senate bill doesn't include a public option, which has turned off a few progressives. And most damaging of all, the Senate bill is loaded with special deals for senators like the Cornhusker Kickback that spell political suicide for Blue Dog congressmen from fiscally conservative states.

The House and the Senate need to approve the same bill, since the Senate legislation differs from the House's. The idea was to use what's called a "reconciliation sidecar" -- a package of changes to the Senate bill passed with a simple majority vote -- to make the bill agreeable for House members. The sidecar was written by the White House and would have made several changes, most notably the elimination of the Cornhusker Kickback.

The parliamentarian's ruling means that the House can't pass the sidecar. Both houses must pass the Senate bill and the president must sign it before any changes can be made. Pelosi already doesn't have the votes to do that and is losing more every day.

The Senate parliamentarian's name is Alan Frumin. He was appointed in 2002 after Republicans fired the previous parliamentarian...for forbidding them from using reconciliation on a bill. Barring something completely unforeseen, another Saturday Night Massacre in which Frumin gets shown the door might be Obama's only remaining move.

Illegal alien extremists dancing in the streets thanks to Obama

Yes, La Raza is clicking its heels today. Barack Obama has always been an extremist on the issue of illegal immigration, whether he tries to hide it or not. Now comes word that, at a time when our southern border is still plagued by illegal aliens and drug violence, Obama's budget cuts funding to the Border Patrol.

It's our largest federal budget in history at over $3 trillion, but one thing Obama doesn't have money for is border security. His budget will reduce the number of Border Patrol agents, even though the entire 2,000 mile expanse is guarded by only 20,000 agents. The president is also pulling $226 million from the virtual fence being built along the border, even though the fence has had great success at keeping illegal aliens out.

So what are Obama's real priorities? His stimulus gave millions of dollars to La Raza and the League of United Latin American Citizens, two extremist groups sympathetic to illegal aliens. A bill introduced by Rep. Luis Gutierrez is winding through Congress that would give amnesty to illegals already in the United States. And the Justice Department is currently at war with Sheriff Joe Arpaio of Maricopa County, Arizona, whose aggressive tactics have gone a long way towards battling illegal immigration.

Hat tip to Jim Gilchrist of the Minuteman Project.

Eric Holder's illegal immigration hypocrisy

Barack Obama's attorney general, Eric Holder, gave a speech at the National Sheriffs' Association 2010 Winter Conference today. In the midst of his speech, Holder made an outrageously hypocritical statement.

"Some of you work along our southwest border. You know, as surely as I do, that we simply cannot afford to ignore the problem of illegal immigration. Several of you have reached out to us and to our colleagues across the Administration. You’ve warned that tension is building."

There's one sheriff in the southwest who has been extremely effective: Joe Arpaio. Fed up with illegal immigration in Maricopa County, Arpaio began jailing illegal immigrants in tent cities surrounding by barbed wire. He also forced them to wear chains and bright pink jumpsuits. His techniques worked well. But Arpaio has been under attack since the Obama administration since literally day one: last year, Homeland Security Secretary Janet Napolitano actually stripped him of his authority. Holder cannot be serious about battling illegal immigration in the southwest as long as he keeps going after Joe Arpaio.