A push by Democrats on the Federal Election Commission to ban corporate political donations has revealed a new unlawful cash flow benefiting Democratic candidates: contributions by illegal immigrants through major labor unions.
An analysis of a Democratic plan expected to be presented at the Thursday FEC meeting that targets corporate contributions said unions use dues from illegal immigrants to fund their political operations in violation of election laws. Unions overwhelmingly favor Democratic candidates.
“There is plenty of evidence to show illegal immigrants are members of American unions and that their dues are used to pay for political speech,” said the authoritative Pillar of Law Institute.
What’s more, Institute researcher Stephen Klein noted that unions are “targeting 22 million immigrant workers in the country, regardless of legal status, to join their ranks.”
The charge has the potential to unravel efforts by Democratic FEC Commissioners Ellen Weintraub and Steven T. Walther to ignore illegal foreign contributions via unions in their bid Thursday to block corporations with foreign stockholders from making contributions.
Weintraub is leading that effort. She wants the FEC to consider a new rule that could have the effect of killing most corporate political donations in a back door move to essentially overturn the controversial Citizens United case. The reason: Most corporations have foreign stockholders.
“I move that the commission open a rulemaking and direct the Office of General Counsel to draft for commission consideration an appropriate rulemaking document that would require every entity accepting political contributions from corporations to verify that those corporations are associations of United States citizens who are eligible to contribute,” her proposal reads.
In the New York Times, she explained, “For a corporation to make political contributions or expenditures legally, it may not have any shareholders who are foreigners or federal contractors. Corporations with easily identifiable shareholders could meet this standard, but most publicly traded corporations probably could not.”
Her goal is to reinforce the laws barring foreigners from making political contributions, but her proposal only targets corporations, not unions. Ever since the Citizens United case, Democrats on the FEC have been on the warpath against corporate contributions.
Paul Bedard, the Washington Examiner’s “Washington Secrets” columnist, can be contacted at [email protected]
