Considering the routing Democrats took in last year’s anti-amnesty elections, it’s no surprise conservatives around the country are pushing for Tennessee congresswoman, Marsha Blackburn, to jump into the race for House speaker. Ms. Blackburn has been earning the praise of pro-restrictionist Americans for years and her voting record on immigration policy is flawless. If speaker, not only will she inspire working-class voters in despair over the GOP’s weakness on immigration, she’ll have firmly cemented what’s becoming a truism in America: that the staunchest and most effective immigration patriots in the country are women.
Surveying NumbersUSA’s report card on House members between 1989 and this year, over half of all female House reps are well above the average grade with most having top-notch marks. Why immigration softies are disproportionately male (especially among House leadership) perhaps isn’t a mystery. Women (and especially married women) seem to instinctively know and understand issues like national security and job security; two areas that have been dissolving for years due to our open-borders policies. Women are also probably more likely to be honest and principled, putting the good of the country ahead of what’s good for the donor class.
In the face of big farming interests in her state, Arizona Governor Jan Brewer pushed through a mandatory e-Verify bill that made so many illegal aliens return to Mexico, the neighboring state of Sonora sent a delegation to Tucson asking her to rescind it. The governor didn’t back down. She stood up again to Mexico when that country’s chronically corrupted leadership decided to meddle in the lawsuit Obama launched against her after she passed legislation aimed at reigning in mass immigration’s budget-crushing effects which had been burdening her state for decades.
For political commentators, the list of pro-enforcement women is very long. West Coast menace to the open-borders lobby, Michelle Malkin, wrote the first book linking mass immigration with the threat of terrorism in 2002. She’s been fighting for American sovereignty ever since. Her latest book, Sold Out, is about the abuse of “skilled” guest-worker visas and is co-authored by my colleague at the Immigration Reform Law Institute (IRLI), John Miano.
Her fellow East Coast compatriot, Ann Coulter, came out as a “one-issue girl” at CPAC in 2013 and she hasn’t looked back since. In the face of that conference’s near total ban on speakers against open borders, she eviscerated conservative supporters of the now-defeated Gang of Eight bill.
A just as staunch (and blond) defender of immigration limits, Laura Ingraham, is so persuasive on the issue, on her radio show she recently got the DREAM Act-supporting, presidential candidate, Carly Fiorina, to say she not only thinks illegal immigration is a problem, but that legal immigration should be cut down as well.
When the act that would birth our current mass immigration system, the Immigration Reform Act of 1965, was debated, one of the strongest voices outside the intellectually passive crowd of congressmen who bought Ted Kennedy’s promises that America’s ethnic balance would not be upset was a woman named Myra Hacker. Representing her restrictionist organization, the New Jersey Coalition of Patriotic Societies, Ms. Hacker testified before the Kennedy’s immigration subcommittee saying regardless of the bill’s benevolent intent toward the Third World, it “fails to give due consideration to the economic needs, the cultural traditions, and the public sentiment of the citizens of the United States.” Another patriotic voice at that time, Phyllis Schlafly, has been beating that same drum for 50 years.
The disastrous effects of the ‘65 act were routinely lamented in subsequent presidential commissions, such as the Rockefeller Commission of 1972, the Hesburgh Commission of 1978 and the Jordan Commission of 1993. The latter commission was the most effective leading to the passage of the Illegal Immigration Reform and Immigrant Responsibility Act of 1996 and it was all down to the commission’s leader, famed civil rights activist, Barbara Jordan.
Two leading ladies of the restrictionist movement will be convening in Washington, D.C. this month to protest the immigration status quo. Maria Espinoza, a partner with IRLI, has been advocating for years against illegal alien crime. Her organization, The Remembrance Project, will be in town bringing attention to the Vitter-Flake Senate bill that will cut off substantial amounts of federal aid to sanctuary cities. Meanwhile, Leah Durant, leader of both the Black American Leadership Alliance and the Progressives for Immigration Reform (PFIR), will be holding her annual conference for PFIR activists.
Other honourable mentions include Michelle Bachman, Carol Swain, Robin Hvidston, the late Barbara Coe, Cynthia Kendoll of Oregonians for Immigration Reform, Jo Wideman of California for Population Stabilization, and Ms. Ezola Foster who became Pat Buchanan’s running mate after she was fired from her job as a L.A. school teacher for complaining about illegal immigration.
Whoever’s man enough to match Congresswoman Blackburn’s pro-enforcement stance will no doubt be given a warm welcome by the voting public going forward. The GOP males in House, however, particularly among leadership, have a long way to go.
