Commentators surely are right to say that House Majority Leader Eric Cantor lost his Primary because voters thought he was out of touch with them and too beholden to big national corporate and financial lobbies, and Prof. Brat successfully used Cantor's immigration efforts to drive home that message.
Brat didn't just challenge Cantor's flirting with amnesties but attacked the whole mindset of most in national Republican Party leadership that the nation needs a lot more foreign workers during a time of historic high numbers of Americans who aren't working.
Immigration was the key issue in what numerous national commentators are indicating was one of the biggest political upsets in congressional history. David Brat was incredibly outspent and little known, but defeated the man who most Congress observers expected to be the next Speaker of the House.
My public statement this evening was:
"The wage-earning voters of Rep. Cantor's district apparently felt abandoned by his immigration positions that virtually ignored their anxiety about stagnant wages and high unemployment and that projected primary concern for unlawful foreign visitors and employers seeking more foreign workers.
"Prof. Brat's insistence that immigration policies should focus on the needs of American workers and taxpayers provided a sharp contrast to the corporate-driven vision of the top echelon of the Republican Party that Rep. Cantor exemplified.
"Prof. Brat pledged to seek all 12 of NumbersUSA's legislative priorities, which essentially are the recommendations of the bi-partisan U.S. Commission on Immigration Reform to cut legal immigration by half and to turn off the magnets for illegal immigration."
Brat is an economics professor who understands that even Congress can't revoke the law of supply and demand. He believes that if Congress floods labor markets with foreign workers, wages will be depressed, and that the government shouldn't do that to its citizens.
Novel thoughts, right?
View Prof. Brat's immigration survey
Prof. Brat said he supports eliminating birthright citizenship for the births to illegal aliens and foreign visitors, eliminating chain migration and the lottery, and stopping the importation of unnecessary foreign workers.
Rep. Cantor, on the other hand, was part of the House Republican leadership in 2011 and 2012 who refused to allow a floor vote on an exceptionally strong E-Verify bill passed by the House Judiciary Committee.
Behind the scenes all last year, Cantor sought to engineer passage of a series of bills that apparently would have given amnesty to at least a couple of million illegal aliens while greatly increasing the number of new foreign workers brought into the country. While Cantor was willing to require additional enforcement along with those increases, his influence repeatedly watered down the effectiveness of any new enforcement that was written into bills.
Nonetheless, none of those bills has come to the floor -- and he never unveiled the "Kids Act" amnesty despite talking about it for a year and giving ammunition to those who sought to unseat him.
Cantor's plummet from public approval based on the amnesty issue is even greater than that of Sen. Marco Rubio last year who went from being the most popular 2016 GOP presidential contender to an also-ran after leading the charge for the Gang of Eight amnesty.
We tend to agree with TV commentators tonight who suggest that Cantor's loss today threatens to greatly unsettle the House GOP leadership in ways yet to be determined.
Our interest, as always, will be only on how it affects immigration. Keep coming back to NumbersUSA.com to follow the story.
I know you are especially appreciative of our NumbersUSA staff who have kept you informed about this Virginia contest over recent months.
ROY BECK is the CEO & Founder of NumbersUSA
