RIGHT SPEAK: Trump’s Labor Department Pick: Put Americans Last

Trump's Labor pick Andrew Puzder has been a big

pro-immigration advocate

MUST READ: At the end of this article is a link to Trump's New Labor Secretary's op-ed from 2013, THAT SHOULD BE A DISQUALIFIER.

Trump had three cabinet slots to fill that are most important for immigration policy (several others have important, but secondary, roles, such as HHS, which handles refugees once they arrive).

The first pick was Sen. Jeff Sessions, Congress’s leading and most knowledgeable immigration skeptic, as Attorney General. Although INS was removed from the Justice Department when Homeland Security was created, DoJ is still intimately involved in the issue – it houses the immigration courts and will take the lead role in trying to rein in the renegade cities and states that are planning massive resistance to protect their segregation sanctuary laws.

Next, Trump named retired Marine Gen. John Kelly for Homeland Security. This is obviously the lead agency for immigration and Kelly, former head of the Pentagon’s Southern Command, which oversees military activity in Latin America, is a strong advocate for border security. It remains to be seen if he will devote equal focus to the non-security aspects of immigration, such as interior enforcement, visa overstays, green cards and the like. There’s no reason to think he won’t, but it’s still an open question.

Finally, there’s the Labor Department. Labor is central to the process of certifying and importing all the various categories of guestworkers that undermine the bargaining power of American workers – H1-Bs for the tech industry, H-2As for agriculture, H-2Bs for non-ag cheap-labor employers, and more. In addition, prior to the Obama administration, Labor Department inspectors were a force multiplier for immigration regarding worksite enforcement – coordinating with ICE (and before that, INS) on worksite problems the immigration people weren’t aware of.