Later this month, House Majority Leader Eric Cantor (R-VA) is slated to visit New York to stump for an immigration bill as part of the bipartisan Becoming America tour. Among Cantor’s stops: Ellis Island, the Museum of Jewish Heritage, and the African Burial Ground National Monument. Canter, among other Congressmen, is scheduled to speak at a naturalization and dine with New York City Mayor Michael Bloomberg. The African Burial Ground National Monument was discovered in 1991 while building a federal office building; as the website describes it, “From about the 1690s until 1794, both free and enslaved Africans were buried in a 6.6-acre burial ground in Lower Manhattan, outside the boundaries of the settlement of New Amsterdam, later known as New York.” The grounds were originally buried under a landfill.
Cantor will be traveling with Rep. Joe Crowley (D-NY), Rep. Mario Diaz-Balart (R-FL), former Bush commerce secretary Carlos Gutierrez, Reps. Fred Upton (R-MI), Michael Grimm (R-NY), Barbara Lee (D-CA), Lois Capps (D-CA), Luis Gutierrez (D-IL), Steve Cohen (D-TN), Jim McGovern (D-MA), Susan Davis (D-CA), Ann Kirkpatrick (D-AZ) and Carolyn Maloney (D-NY).
Cantor will speak at an event in Jackson Heights, Queens, Crowley’s district.