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Choosing Nativism: What the Christian Right's Strange Alliance with the Anti-Immigrant Movement Means for Women

DifferenTakes Series
51 ~ Immigration
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By Tarso Luís Ramos, Pam Chamberlain

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"If we didn't abort our children, the U.S. wouldn’t need to hire illegals to work," reads the marquee first spotted in the fall of 2007 at a suburban Boston Baptist church. Such sentiments are surprisingly common. Prominent conservatives, including former House Majority Leader Tom DeLay (R-TX) and Prison Ministries' Chuck Colson, argue that abortion has created a worker shortage that in turn has created an immigration problem.

This rhetoric is emblematic of the recent and dramatic convergence between conservative White evangelical Protestants "the base constituency of the Christian Right”and the anti-immigrant movement, whose most vocal leader is a population control advocate forged in the eugenics movement. In this issue of Different Takes, authors explore how is it that Christian rightists have become bed-fellows with a movement at odds with them on the core principle of the sanctity of unborn human life.

Tarso Luís Ramos is the Director of Research at Political Research Associates and has been a research and writer on right-wing groups since 1991. As director of the Wise Use Public Exposure Project he led efforts to counteract anti-union and environmental campaigns, as well as anti-immigrant outreach to environmentalists in the Western United States.

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Pam Chamberlain is a researcher who studies and writes about opposition to the reproductive justice
and LGBTQ rights movement for Political Research Associates in Somerville, Massachusetts. She has worked with PRA since 1999, as an editor for the Activist Resource Kits, the lead researcher on their Campus Activism Project, and regular contributor to their magazine, The Public Eye. Pam has been involved with feminist, peace and human rights activism since her days as a high school teacher. She maintains a commitment to making research from various academic fields accessible to activists.