Who Is Amnesty’s Most Important GOP Supporter?


By CHQ Staff | 12/04/13




Many CHQ readers might be inclined to bestow the dubious honor of being the Republican Party’s most important supporter of amnesty for illegal aliens upon two establishment Republicans; Senator John McCain and Lindsey Graham, or – to the great disappointment of the many Tea Party movement voters who backed them – to otherwise conservative Senators Marco Rubio and Jeff Flake.

But we think that assessment is fair, but it misses a key piece of information that has been kept skillfully out of the public eye.

McCain, Graham, Flake, and Rubio are influential, but none of them hold a leadership position within the Senate or Republican power structure on Capitol Hill.
But House Majority Leader Eric Cantor does, and a very powerful one at that, and Cantor is all in for amnesty for illegal aliens, starting with the so-called “Dreamers,” illegal aliens who were brought to this country without their consent as children.

Why is Cantor’s support for amnesty so crucial to the potential for an amnesty bill moving through Congress, especially during a year-end rush of legislation?

Simple: the House Majority Leader, in addition to having an influential platform for advocating amnesty for illegal aliens, and a powerful position from which to strong arm votes, also traditionally schedules bills for the House.

According to Breitbart’s Matthew Boyle, Cantor has been writing the KIDS Act [the GOP version of a bill granting amnesty to young illegal aliens] for months, but has not introduced it since announcing that he was working on amnesty legislation with House Judiciary Committee chairman Rep. Bob Goodlatte (VA-6). Goodlatte is, like Cantor, from Virginia – a state where Cantor wields enormous political power over his GOP colleagues. Read the Breitbart article here.

Cantor has largely kept his efforts off the radar of his constituents, and national conservative supporters of the rule of law and American exceptionalism, but he outed himself in a recent interview with reporter Bob Rayner of the Richmond Times-Dispatch.

According to Rayner’s reporting, Cantor said one of his priorities will be “incremental improvements” in the country’s broken immigration system, beginning with the Kids Act, which would create a path to citizenship for people who were brought to the United States illegally when they were children. “We should not be holding kids liable for the acts of their parents,” Cantor said according to Rayner.

Now here’s the kicker in Bob Rayner’s article, including a little bit of editorializing on Rayner’s part we include for context:

“We have to broaden our appeal,” he (Cantor) said during a visit last week with theTimes-Dispatch Editorial staff. The House majority leader, a Henrico Republican, said his party must make consistent and concerted efforts to improve its standing with women and minorities. That comes as no surprise to anyone who has glanced at the exit polls from the past few elections.

Clearly Cantor’s motivation isn’t “fixing” a broken immigration system, which of course would begin with enhanced border security, it is about trying to bribe voters of Hispanic heritage with the betrayal of American exceptionalism that amnesty would entail.

What’s more, as First Lady of the Conservative Movement Phyllis Schlafly observed in a column not too long ago, there’s no evidence that the bribe, once paid, will actually work.

Phyllis Schlafly documents that “An enormous body of survey research shows that large majorities of recent immigrants, who are mostly Hispanic and Asian, hold liberal views on most policy issues and therefore vote Democratic two-to-one. Their motivation is not our immigration policy; it is economic issues.

“The 2008 National Annenberg Election Survey found that 62 percent of immigrants prefer a single government-run health care system. The 2010 Cooperative Congressional Election Study found that 69 percent of immigrants support Obamacare, and the Pew Research Center found that 75 percent of Hispanic and 55 percent of Asian immigrants support bigger government.”

It is also worth noting a Harris poll Mrs. Schlafly cites that “found that 81 percent of native-born Americans believe the schools should teach students to be proud of being American, compared to only 50 percent of immigrants who had become naturalized U.S. citizens. Only 37 percent of naturalized citizens (compared to 67 percent of native-born citizens) think our Constitution has a higher legal authority than international law.

The Pew Research Center reported in 2011 that, of all groups surveyed, Hispanics have the most negative view of capitalism in America -- 55 percent.

This is even higher than the supporters of Occupy Wall Street.”

What’s the bottom line in Mrs. Schafly’s article?

The data do not support the notion that immigrants are social conservatives.

As Mrs. Schlafly notes in quoting Heather MacDonald of the Manhattan Institute, "It is not immigration policy that creates the strong bond between Hispanics and the Democratic Party, but the core Democratic [Party] principles of a more generous safety net, strong government intervention in the economy, and progressive taxation."

Our nomination for the Republican Party’s most important supporter of amnesty for illegal aliens? House Majority Leader Eric Cantor of Virginia’s 7th Congressional District.

We urge you to call Eric Cantor’s office, the Capitol switchboard is 1-866-220-0044, and tell him you are opposed to amnesty for illegal aliens and that you are now on to the game and his push for amnesty is no longer a secret.
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