The foreign money that’s funding the Democrats

Is any foreign money being used to fund the SEIU’s anti-Republican campaign efforts? According to the Wall Street Journal, “The Service Employees International Union, one of the nation’s fastest-growing labor unions, acknowledges that it can’t be certain that foreign nationals haven’t contributed to its $44 million political budget to support pro-labor Democrats.” The SEIU is not the only union that takes in money from foreign members. According to the Canadian Department of Human Resources and Skills Development, the United Steel, Paper and Forestry, Rubber, Manufacturing, Energy, Allied Industrial and Service Workers has 280,000 Canadian members; the United Food and Commercial Workers has more than 245,000; the Teamsters has more than 108,000; the Laborers’ International Union of North America has more than 68,000; and the International Brotherhood of Electrical Workers has more than 57,000. How much do these foreign union members send to the United States? If the constitutions of their unions are anything like SEIU’s, it could be tens of millions of dollars. Is any of that money being used to help elect Democrats this November?

Unions have another source of foreign cash: dues from illegal immigrants. In an April 2007 speech, uncovered by the conservative Web site RedState, SEIU Executive Vice President Eliseo Medina boasts how his union’s rolls are loaded with illegal immigrants. Medina declares proudly: “SEIU is the largest union of immigrant workers in the country, and a number of them are undocumented. But let me hasten to add, these are not just Latinos. In our membership are Eastern Europeans, Irish, Polish, Indians, Chinese — the whole world is represented among the undocumented and also in our membership. We also represent American-born workers, legal residents.”