U.S. Civil Rights Commissioner Peter Kirsanow issued high praise for Donald Trump’s “inspired” decision to tap Alabama Senator Jeff Sessions as his Attorney General.
“Senator Sessions is a good man and a great man. He has done more to protect the jobs and enhance the wages of black workers than anyone in either house of Congress over the last 10 years,” Kirsanow told Breitbart.
Indeed, arguably no U.S. lawmaker has worked more tirelessly than Jeff Sessions to uphold the legacy of Civil Rights leader and late-Democratic Congresswoman Barbara Jordan–who, in arguing for immigration reductions, famously declared that immigration policy “ought to be a place where the national interest comes first, last, and always.”
“Of all the Senators and public officials that I’ve dealt with, I cannot think of anyone who has been more devoted to issues related to wages and employment levels of all Americans, but particularly black American workers,” Kirsanow said of Sessions.
It’s a matter that we have discussed in several Congressional hearings— the most recent of which was in March of this year. He has chaired the [Senate] subcommittee dealing with the impact of… immigration on the employment levels of black Americans.
“He is a man of tremendous integrity. I think it was an inspired pick,” Kirsanow added. “He’s going to be a marvelous Attorney General.”
“Senator Sessions has been a leader in the fight for preserving American jobs and ensuring opportunities for African American workers,” civil rights attorney and founder of the Black American Leadership Alliance, Leah Durant, told Breitbart News.
William Smith, the first Republican African American to serve as Chief Counsel on the Senate Judiciary committee, similarly applauded the announcement:
I had the opportunity to work with Senators Sessions for close to 10 years. Throughout that time, he was more a friend and confidant than the boss. I believe he hired me as the first ever Republican African American Chief Counsel on the Senate Judiciary Committee and I’m not sure there has been another one since me. After I moved to Alabama to practice law and then returned to Washington, Senator Sessions offered me the position of Chief Counsel on the full Judiciary Committee and then basically created a position for me on his Senate Budget Committee, where I continued as his Chief.
“Jeff Sessions is a man of high character and great integrity. He would make an outstanding Attorney General and I’m excited to support him 100 percent,” Smith continued:
[N]ot once did Senator Sessions ever say anything to offend me. Instead, time after time, he stood by me and the conservative causes I was out to support. I remember spending several late nights in the office, not talking about working, but talking about life and family. Senator Sessions was always concerned for my well being. Because he is such a great man, one of the most difficult decisions I have ever made was leaving his employment. In his kindness, he told me if I wanted to come back, I could. He, Mary and his children have treated me like family and I’ll always be grateful for that.
Both Kirsanow and Durant flatly rejected corporate media’s efforts to cast Sessions as anything less than a true champion of black working Americans. “It’s scandalous that they’re trying to say he’s a racist,” Kirsanow told Breitbart:
They are trying to demonize the Alabama of 2016 as somehow being the Alabama of 1946. And they are trying to similarly falsely caricature Sen. Sessions. But that is not the case. I’ve gotten the opportunity to deal with him on a regular basis and he is a wonderful human being.
While corporate media is now recycling smears used 30 years ago to deny Sessions a federal judgeship in the 1980s, even individuals who voted against Sessions’ confirmation at the time ultimately came to regret their decision.
“My vote against candidate Sessions for the federal court was a mistake because I have since found that Sen. Sessions is egalitarian,” said the now-deceased Democratic and Republican Senator from Pennsylvania, Arlen Specter.
As the Weekly Standard‘s Mark Hemingway reports, the smear campaign against Sessions collapses upon even a cursory review of Sessions’ actual record, which includes desegregating schools and taking on the Klan in Alabama.
For instance, Sessions “was one of the only Republican senators to support Eric Holder’s nomination for attorney general,” Hemingway notes:
As a U.S. Attorney he filed several cases to desegregate schools in Alabama. And he also prosecuted the head of the state Klan, Henry Francis Hays, for abducting and killing Michael Donald, a black teenager selected at random. Sessions insisted on the death penalty for Hays. When he was later elected the state Attorney General, Sessions followed through and made sure Hays was executed. The successful prosecution of Hays also led to a $7 million civil judgment against the Klan, effectively breaking the back of the KKK in Alabama.
Similarly, as a U.S. Senator, Sessions has led the fight to defend the jobs and wages of American workers—in particular, those of black American workers.
A full two years before Trump eventually heeded Sessions’ call and proclaimed that under his leadership the GOP would become a “worker’s party,” Sessions urged the Republicans to “becom[e] the Party of Work” by advancing America first policies—particularly on the issues of immigration and trade— that would prioritize and advance the interests of the working American men and women of all backgrounds and legal immigrants already here.
Sessions led the fight against the Paul Ryan-backed controversial expansion to the H-2B visa program, which a 2015 Buzzfeed exposé revealed is being used to disproportionately lay off and replace black American workers.
Perhaps more than any other lawmaker on Capitol Hill, Sessions’ office sought to give sunlight to the discriminatory hiring practices exposed by the Buzzfeed investigation.
According to the report, a supervisor at Hamilton Growers told workers amid mass layoffs: “All you black American people, f**k you all … just go to the office and pick up your check.” The report noted:
According to a lawsuit filed by the Equal Employment Opportunity Commission, about 80 workers, many of them black, were simply told: ‘All you Americans are fired.” […] Time after time, the grower filled the jobs with foreign guest workers instead [of American workers]… many businesses go to extraordinary lengths to skirt the law, deliberately denying jobs to American workers so they can hire foreign workers on H-2 visas instead.
Sessions also used his position as Chairman of the Senate Immigration Subcommittee to expose the plight of American workers suffering from other visa policies favored by corporate special interests— such as the H-1B visa and the J-1 visa program. Bernie Sanders has described the J-1 visa program as a “low-wage jobs program [that] allow[s] corporations to hire cheaper foreign labor” over American workers. Sanders explained that this visa program is helping to create “a permanent underclass” of disadvantaged American youths, particularly Americans youths in the inner cities.
The J-1 visa program allows corporations to replace young American workers with cheaper labor from abroad. http://t.co/tSCEuFkTeX
— Bernie Sanders (@SenSanders) June 20, 2013
On the issue of white-collar immigration, “Senator Sessions has been the leader in pushing for H-1B reform,” said Professor Ron Hira, who teaches at Howard University, the prominent historically black college located in the heart of Washington D.C.
“[Sessions’] H-1B reforms would help create jobs and raise wages for Americans, and would especially help workers from underrepresented groups [in the technology industry] such as Hispanic-Americans and African-Americans,” Hira told Breitbart.
Sessions was also near single-handedly responsible for leading the conservative movement’s opposition to globalist trade pacts, such as the Trans Pacific Partnership, which the AFL-CIO suggested would turn black Americans in the inner cities into “American refugee[s]” in their own communities.
Indeed, although it tends to go unreported by corporate media, Sessions has done–and has risked more professionally–than perhaps any lawmaker in Washington to advance the interests of American workers.
For instance, while corporate media celebrates far-left Senator Elizabeth Warren and tries to paint her as an advocate for working families, corporate media almost never reports on Warren’s decision to join a coalition of special interests and billionaires. That coalition included the Koch Brothers, Mark Zuckerberg, the Chamber of Commerce, Rupert Murdoch, George Soros, and Michael Bloomberg, and was intended to push policies that would flood the labor market with foreign workers and drive down wages for American working families.
As Kirsanow has previously explained, “competition from immigration accounts for approximately 40 percent of the 18-percentage point decline in black employment in recent years… That’s nearly a million jobs lost by blacks to immigrants.”
By contrast, Sessions opposed the low-wage, high-immigration donor class policies supported by both Elizabeth Warren and Paul Ryan.
For years, Sessions has worked as a vocal advocate for the America worker against special moneyed interests—often taking on his Party’s own members and donors.
Significantly, unlike Sen. Warren, Sen. Sessions has gored sacred cows of his own Party.
As one political operative previously told Breitbart, Warren’s views represent a brand of “George Clooney populism,” in which one expresses views and sentiments that will be widely cheered by celebrities, entertainers, and media institutions that dominate the commercial culture.
By contrast, in his now-famous 2014 Masters of Universe speech, Sessions called out billionaires and immigration expansionists Mark Zuckerberg, Carlos Slim, and Rupert Murdoch. Similarly, following Microsoft’s announcement that it was firing 18,000 workers, Sessions took to the Senate floor to expose the “super billionaires” — such as Bill Gates, Warren Buffett, and Sheldon Adelson, for continuing to push for more H-1Bs and cheap labor while laying off American workers.
Many have suspected that as recompense for his willingness to take on his own party, GOP leadership pushed Sessions out of his Budget Committee Chairmanship in favor of Republican leadership ally, Mike Enzi.
Indeed, in his outspoken– and ultimately successful– crusade to stop special interests from flooding the nation with foreign workers, Sen. Sessions collected more hours speaking on the Senate floor than any other Senator in 2013. According to the Los Angeles Times, Sessions spoke for more than 33 hours that year.
In his Masters of the Universe speech, Sessions spoke about how the donor class’ immigration agenda would hurt job and wage opportunities for the “single mom… [that’s] trying to raise a family” or the “unemployed father.” Sessions argues that Americans—not foreign nationals—should have the first right to an American job.
In this regard, an Attorney General Jeff Sessions will provide a marked contrast to Attorney General Loretta Lynch, who made clear that she does not believe in basic job protections for American workers.
It was Sessions’ tough prosecutorial style of questioning of Lynch during her confirmation hearing that prompted her to admit her belief that foreign nationals illegally present in the United States are entitled to the same rights as American citizens to get U.S. jobs. Sessions pointed out that her view on this matter was not only directly at odds with our immigration laws, but it also represented an affront to American workers.
“With Jeff Sessions as Attorney General, American workers will finally have a seat at the table in Washington D.C.,” said civil rights attorney Sara Blackwell, who represents high-skilled American workers of all backgrounds, races, and ethnicities that have been displaced and discriminated against in their own country by virtue of their American nationality.
“Senator Sessions has stood up against the globalists to defend the dignity and basic rights of all American workers,” black, brown and white, Blackwell added. “His appointment gives me hope that American workers will finally get the protections they deserve, and I know his appointment will give hope to countless hardworking American families all across the country.”
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