Bernard Kerik joins Zoe Baird and Kimba Wood, President Clinton nominees who withdrew their names from consideration because they had employed an illegal immigrant and failed to pay Social Security taxes. Lani Guinier, Clinton's nominee for head of the Justice Department's civil-rights division also failed to pay taxes for a domestic worker and withdrew her name, but there was a lot more to that story.
In a statement released last night, Kerik revealed:
In the course of completing documents required for Senate confirmation, I uncovered information that now leads me to question the immigration status of a person who had been in my employ as a housekeeper and nanny. It has also been brought to my attention that for a period of time during such employment required tax payments and related filings had not been made.
While I have already initiated efforts to fulfill any outstanding reporting requirements and tax obligations related to this issue, it is my belief that upon disclosure of this matter the intense scrutiny that it is likely to generate will only serve as a significant and unnecessary distraction to the vital efforts of Department of Homeland Security.
According to the New York Post the nanny, a Mexican native, was hired to help his family living in New Jersey while Kerik was stationed in Iraq last year to train Iraqi policemen:
But she handed over immigration papers that were not hers, sources said.
[. . .]
“When he was going over the Senate confirmation forms with two lawyers, they discovered that all the information that she gave didn’t pass the smell test,” said a source close to the 49-year-old former NYPD commissioner. “She claimed to him that she was legal. She claimed she had papers, but we can’t verify that she did. “He had to withdraw his nomination, because you can’t head INS [the Immigration and Naturalization Service, which falls under the umbrella of homeland security] if you can’t be sure of the papers of someone you employed.”
That's exactly right, you can’t head Immigration and Naturalization Service if you can’t be sure of the papers of someone you employed.
Kerik probably could have withstood all the other dirt that was being raised about possible conflicts of interest and other issues and still been confirmed, but having employed an illegal alien he cannot be considered for head of homeland security.
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