Felon Rights

Today's Wall Street Journal explains why Congress will continue to allow felons to work at US ports. First:

The Department of Homeland Security recently investigated the ports of New York and New Jersey and found that of 9,000 truckers checked, nearly half had criminal records. They included murderers, drug dealers, arsonists and members of the deadly MS-13 gang. [emphasis added]

Consequently, unions, fearful that too many of the members would lose jobs, lobbied hard to prevent background checks for dock workers. This problem is also in state laws. Consider South Carolina:

"There is a gaping hole in port security," Byron Miller of the Charleston, S.C., port, the nation's sixth largest, told me. "Right now, by law we cannot do background checks on 8,000 people who work at this port." He noted that a state bill to provide for background checks was killed last year after unions applied a full-court press against it. [emphasis added]