Puzder: Automatic Disqualification

Say it ain't so! Another Trump cabinet nominee is a raging hypocrite!

Andrew F. Puzder, who as President Trump’s pick to head the Labor Department has come under fire for criticizing worker protections, acknowledged on Monday that he had employed an undocumented immigrant to clean his house.

Trump ran on a platform of kicking illegal immigrants out of the country, and with his Muslim ban has tried to kick out legal ones as well.

Puzder's crime is completely inexcusable: everyone knows when they hire illegals. And it's not the lack of English language skills, or the failure to adopt American customs: it's because they work for so little. Real Americans won't accept the slave wages that rich folks like Puzder want to pay their household employees.

It's preposterous to think that Puzder, the multi-million dollar CEO of a giant corporation, was fooled by an undocumented worker's fake Social Security card. A little research and a query against the Social Security Administration's database will quickly tell you whether they're legit.

And it's even crazier than that: to save a few bucks, Puzder gave an undocumented foreigner free run of his house. They could have ripped off his TV and his wife's jewelry, planted surveillance devices for corporate espionage, accessed his computer and got passwords for all his accounts, or used the access to kidnap family for ransom -- that's a thing in Mexico, Republicans keeps telling us, be afraid!

Am I to believe that, given all the dangers wealthy Americans face from undocumented workers, he didn't vet this person at all? Is Puzder really that naive and trusting? It's far more likely that he did vet this person, knew they were undocumented, and got references from a former employer who also knew the worker was undocumented.

The only reason that there is an illegal immigration problem is that people like Puzder hire undocumented workers because they'll work for less. Without people like Puzder who flagrantly violate employment laws by hiring undocumented workers, the influx of undocumented workers would be tiny.

Several other Trump nominees have hired illegals or haven't paid taxes on household employees:

Mr. Trump’s choice to lead the Commerce Department, Wilbur Ross, said last month that he had employed an undocumented household worker for several years. And Representative Mick Mulvaney, Republican of South Carolina and the nominee for White House budget director, said that he failed to pay taxes on a nanny that he and his wife employed after their children were born. They had to pay more than $15,000 in taxes and penalties to the I.R.S.

Bill Clinton had similar troubles: two of his attorney general nominees were forced to step aside for the nanny problems. The senate should give Puzder the same treatment: his appointment should be automatically denied.

Of course, Puzder should be rejected for paying employees who work at fast food joints like his Carl Jrs. and Hardee's restaurants so little that they qualify for $7 billion in public assistance.

Republicans constantly bitch about welfare, but when a company pays their workers so little that they can get public assistance, it's really the company that's on the dole.