Monday, June 30, 2008

Tancredo Endorses McCain



CNN/TIME are reporting that Tom Tancredo is endorsing John McCain's presidential bid.

Back on the campaign trail late last year, amid snow drifts and ice storms, candidate Tom Tancredo spoke often about the possibility of defecting from the Republican Party if its eventual nominee failed to meet his benchmarks of conservatism, most importantly a zero-tolerance policy for undocumented immigrants.

"I am absolutely tired and sick and tired of being forced to go to the polls and say I'm going to make this choice between the lesser of two evils," the Colorado congressman said at an October debate in Michigan, standing across the stage from his ideological opponent, John McCain, who supports a pathway to citizenship for illegal immigrants. "I really don't intend to do that again."

But just months later, with Washington sweltering in humidity, the hawkish immigration reformer, who wants to deport the nation's 12 million illegal immigrants, has declared his support for McCain. "I expect to be supporting him in November," Tancredo told TIME last week. "But certainly it is not set in stone."

So Tancredo endorses McCain after a weekend appearance at the convention of National Assn. of Latino Elected and Appointed Officials, where McCain reaffirmed his support for comprehensive immigration reform. This says less about McCain and more about Tancredo. With both presidential candidates in favor of CIR, Tancredo has no place to go except to support his Party's nominee. Tancredo is retiring after this session. Look for him for crawl under some nativist safehouse such as FAIR or NumbersUSA.

Thursday, June 26, 2008

John Tanton and Peter Brimelow Publish Racist Tract Together


As if we needed more evidence that John Tanton, founder of the Federation for American Immigration Reform (FAIR) and NumbersUSA, is a racist extremist, Peter Brimelow has put together an anthology of his favorite racist writers for the latest issue of Tanton’s magazine The Social Contract. Eristic Ragemail has previously pointed out that the so-called grass-roots anti-immigrant organizations are in actuality a creature of a select cabal of extremist nutwings. If anybody had any doubt about Tanton’s racist proclivities, this should put them to rest. (Peter Brimelow makes no bones of his racism, defending it as a bulwark against “political correctness.”) John Tanton, founder of the Federation for American Immigration Reform and a dozen other nativist organizations, still proclaims agnosticism on the inferiority of non-whites, despite statements clearly belying such racism. The whole of the latest issue of The Social Contract exclusively features writings from the extremist website VDare with the unbowed racist, Steve Sailer featured prominently. Take this gem from a recent Sailer article, (one of a racist multitude) “there’s a much simpler explanation for why white kids spend no more time on their homework than black and Hispanic kids, yet score vastly higher on achievement tests: because they are, … smarter.” Next time the media runs a quote from FAIR or NumbersUSA, invite them to peruse this issue of John Tanton’s publication: The The Social Contract loves VDare and its stable of racists.

P.S. All this racist crap is paid for by you, the taxpayer. VDare is a so-called “non-profit” corporation.

Wednesday, June 25, 2008

Roll of Anti-Immigrant Groups

Political Research Associates has put together a fairly comprehensive list of anti-immigrant organizations. As readers of Eristic Ragemail know, many of these groups share a common kinship and are actually fronts for other, often more extreme, anti-immigrant groups. Here is the list as posted on PublicEye.org.

Symsess, of American Humanity, was kind enough to send a family tree of the nativist web which you can find here .




Anti-Immigrant Organizations

The following categories represent the main focus areas of anti-immigrant groups in the United States. Although some of these groups might fit under several categories, each is listed only once.

General

National

American Coalition for Immigration Reform

An organization of people seeking to pressure lawmakers to restrict immigration through grassroots lobbying.Calls for action through email alerts asking members to contact their representatives on specified immigration-related issues.

American Immigration Control (AIC)

PO Box 738, Monterey, VA 24465, 540/468-2023, www.immigrationcontrol.com
Founded in 1983, claims to be the nation’s largest grassroots lobby for immigration reform with more than 250,000 members.Says that it seeks to preserve harmony and “our” common Western values, which they say most immigrants do not share, through immigration control.Publishes Immigration Watch.AIC is headed by Robert H. Goldsborough.

American Immigration Control Foundation (AICF)

PO Box 525, Monterey, VA 24465, 540/468-2022, www.personal.cfw.com/~aicfndn/
Publishes a large catalog of “immigration crisis” material, including Immigration and Nation: a Biblical View, The Path to National Suicide: An Essay on Immigration and Multiculturalism, and Amnesty for Illegal Aliens: Repealing the Rule of Law.Distributes Jean Raspail’s Camp of the Saints.Expresses concern for what it believes is an endangered White Christian culture and calls for a return to national quotas within immigration policies. Worked with FAIR and NumbersUSA on a recent billboard campaign.Had received more than $190,000 from the Pioneer Fund through 1998.In 1999, had a $280,000 budget.Head of the organization is John Vinson (see below).

Center for Immigration Studies (CIS)

1522 K Street NW, Suite 820, Washington, DC 20005-1202, 202/466-8185, www.cis.org
Think tank that publishes hundreds of reports, articles, studies and books (many of which are available through its website) on the social, political, and economic impact of immigration.Claims to give “first concern to the broad national interest” and to promote “a pro-immigrant, low-immigration vision.”Opposes guest worker programs, legalization, and seeks greater enforcement of employer sanctions.Produces monthly Backgrounders and puts out daily email compilations of immigration-related news stories (see its website, under “Immigration News” to sign up).Has a budget of about$725,000. Mark Krikorian is Executive Director and Steven Camarota the Director of Research.

Coalition for the Future American Worker

Coalition of trade, environment, and immigration reform groups who collectively oppose legalization, guest workers, and high-tech visas.Among member organizations are American Immigration Control, Americans for Better Immigration, and FAIR Congressional Taskforce.Headed by Roy Beck (see below).

Diversity Alliance for a Sustainable America

1904 Franklin Street, Suite 517, Oakland, CA 94612, 510/835-5017, www.diversityalliance.org
DASA is directed by Yeh Ling-Ling, an immigrant from Vietnam, and its Board of Directors and Advisory Board are made up of a number of people of color.Claims to advocate for a race-blind immigration policy.Opposes granting citizenship to U.S.-born children of undocumented immigrants, providing public assistance to noncitizen immigrants, and naturalizing immigrants who do not speak English. Argues the United States is not in the position either economically or socially to handle more immigrants and calls for an immediate halt to all immigration beyond the replacement-level, which it defines as 200,000 immigrants per year.

Evangelicals for Immigration Reform

c/o Jim Robb, 1601 Kent St., #1100, Arlington, VA 22209, 703/816-8822
Looking to Christ for guidance on domestic immigration policy, this organization warns that the open borders, which reeked havoc in the Old Testament, will also plague the United States.They claim that current policy's failure "to respect social unity invites a resurgence of nativism" and also disenchants the poor and immigrants already within the borders.It calls for a 250,000 person immigration cap with special preference for spouses, offspring under 18, and those fleeing religious persecution. Works out of the same office as ProEnglish and NumbersUSA.

Federation for American Immigration Reform (FAIR)

1666 Connecticut Avenue NW, Washington DC 20009, 202/328-7004, www.fairus.org
Founded in 1979, one of the most prominent anti-immigration organizations in the country.Garners support from people across the political spectrum using a combination of social, economic and environmental arguments.Calls for immediate moratorium on immigration.Ran television ads in Iowa, South Carolina and Virginia blaming immigrants for sprawl.Received $1.2 million from the Pioneer Fund between 1985 and 1994. Promotes local anti-immigrant organizations.Founded in 1978 by John Tanton and currently led by Dan Stein (see below).

National Grassroots Alliance

Founded in 1997, a consortium of over forty grassroots organizations that seek to restrict immigration.Works to coordinate national activities, helps grassroots organizations get started, in part by seeking funding for these groups and selected projects, and represents these organizations in Washington, DC. Formed by a $25,000 donation from FAIR.Headed by Craig Nelson (see below).

Social Contract Press

445 E. Mitchell St., Petoskey, MI 49770, 231/347-1171, www.tscpress.com
Publishes journals and books that support immigration restriction and calls for strengthening ties to “our” British cultural roots. According to the Southern Poverty Law Center, the Social Contract Press "publishes a number of racist works, including a reprint of the "gripping" 1973 book, The Camp of the Saints...a French racist fantasy novel about the obliteration of Western civilization by dark-skinned hordes from India. The novel, like the race war fantasy The Turner Diaries, has become a key screed for American white supremacists." Prints a quarterly journal, The Social Contract (archives available on the web at www.thesocialcontract.com).Founder and publisher is John Tanton.Washington editor is Roy Beck.(See below).

Note: There is an error in the printed version. In the sentence about the book "The Camp of the Saints," please cross out all text after the book title and if possible, print out this entry and tape it in the book. We apologize for the error and are correcting all the books we can locate.

U.S. Border Control

8180 Greensboro Drive, Suite 1070, McLean, Virginia 22102-3860, 703/356-6568, www.usbc.org
An immigration restriction group founded by Larry Pratt (see below).Began a pledge campaign in 1999 to get members of Congress to opposeall future legalization bills.Was a member of Coalition Against NAFTA Trucking (CANT). Publishes Border Alert.

United States Immigration Political Action Committee (USImpac-Coalition)

Founded by Joe McCutchen, a former Arkansas business owner.The national extension of MichIMPAC which formed for the purpose of ousting Senator Spencer Abraham (R-Mich.) who was the Senate Subcommittee on Immigration Chairman (now is Secretary of Energy in the Bush administration).Through advertisements targets pro-immigrant legislators.

United to Secure America

1301 Pennsylvania Ave. NW, Suite 500, Washington, DC 20004, 202/628-4426, www.secureamerica.info/
A new national coalition that incorporates many conservative issues under the banner of lowered immigration levels as a national security measure. Has policy statements on manageable immigration levels, effective border controls, effective interior enforcement and visa tracking, and secure identification documents.Spokesperson for the organization’s 2002 ad campaign was Dan Stein of FAIR.

Local

American Civil Responsibilities Union

1442 E. Lincoln Avenue #336, Orange, CA92665, www.acru.com
Small California-based group.Promotes morality-based (“Traditional Judeo-Christian”) reform to rectify the alleged cultural decay of the United States partially spurred by the “invasion” of undocumented immigrants.Wants to close the border and deport all illegal immigrants.Supported California Proposition 187.Founder, Howard Gerber, testified in Anaheim, California in favor of granting power to local law enforcement to arrest suspected undocumented immigrants.

American Patrol

See Voices of Citizens Together.

Arizonans for Immigration Reform

PO Box 32552, Tuscon AZ 85751-2552
A member of the National Grassroots Alliance.Headed by retiree Wes Bramhall.

Border Solutions Task Force

555 Saturn Blvd., Suite 514BSan Diego CA 92154, 619/549-1285, http://thorin.adnc.com/~bstf/index.html
Ben Seeley is executive director.Group has advocated inland immigration checkpoints as part of a more comprehensive plan to end undocumented immigration from Mexico.Has coordinated protests with CCIR and VCT. The group incorporated in 1994 and has a core group of about 20 to 30 members.

California Coalition for Immigration Reform (CCIR)

Box 2744-117, Huntington Beach, California 92649, 714/665-2500, http://ccir.net/
Founded and directed by Barbara Coe (see below).Works closely with Glen Spencer of Voices of Citizens Together, and has supported other local anti-immigrant groups such as Sachem Quality of Life and Alabama Christians for Immigration Reform.CCIR co-authored and heavily campaigned for Proposition 187 in California. Claims U.S. society is being polluted by different cultures and ethnicities and recommends immediate deportation of undocumented immigrants.Warns of an impending Mexican “Reconquista” and urges Congress to follow through with its “constitutional obligations” to deal with the “ILLEGAL ALIEN INVASION” of the United States. Supports ranchers’ “right” to detain undocumented immigrants that cross their property and argues that local police should have the right to arrest undocumented immigrants.Publishes 9*1*1.

Concerned Citizens of Cochise County

PO Box 130, Hereford, AZ 85615, 520/364-5363, ltvance@theriver.com
Group of residents and ranchers in the Douglas, Arizona area concerned with undocumented immigration from Mexico.Headed by rancher Larry Vance.Members include Roger and Don Barnett (see below) and Andreas Mueller, who was sued by an immigrant for assault.

Georgia Coalition for Immigration Reform

gacoalition@hotmail.com
Claims to be racially and ethnically diverse organization that opposes racist and hateful views.Warn of the Mexican “Reconquista.”From their website: “Our coalition seeks reductions in immigration from ALL other countries, but we focus particularly on the massive numbers from certain Third World countries for reasons that become clear as one observes and studies the consequences of allowing ourselves to become a dumping ground for corruptly governed nations that use us as a safety valve for their desperate millions while advancing hostile and neo-Marxist agendas against us.” A member of the Southeast Alliance for Sensible Immigration Policy and the Diversity Alliance for a Sustainable America.Website written by Donna Locke.

The Independence Institute

14142 Denver West Pkwy, Suite 185, Golden, CO 80401, 303/279-6536, http://i2i.org
Colorado-based think tank that seeks alternatives to government programs through libertarian policy initiatives.Houses the Immigration Public Policy Center which conducts and publishes research and sponsors forums on the issue of immigration.Focuses on the purported social and economic costs of immigration to Coloradans.

Massachusetts Diversity Coalition for Immigration Reform

PO Box 962 Duxbury, MA 02331, 781/934-6996, mdcir@adelphia.net
A small volunteer-based group working for a reduction in legal as well as undocumented immigration.

Ranch Rescue

900 North Walnut Creek, Suite 100-213, Mansfield, TX 76063, 817/355-4782
Vigilante organization dedicated to protecting private property from the “invasion” of undocumented Mexican immigrants. Organizes armed volunteer security forces to “protect” ranches along the southern borders of Arizona, New Mexico, and Texas from “criminal trespassers.”Has sent volunteers to Roger Barnett’s (see below) Cross Rail ranch.Supports heavier enforcement on the border.Headed by Jack Foote.

Sachem Quality of Life Organization

PO Box 767, Farmingville NY 11738, 516/480-7124, www.sqlife.org
Long Island-based organization.Calls for the deportation of day laborers—many of whom are undocumented immigrants—working in Farmingville, Long Island area. Helped defeat a bill that would have provided county funds to maintain a day laborers’ hiring hall.Urges local law enforcement to arrest those suspected of being undocumented immigrants. Has received assistance from Federation for American Immigration Reform and Voices of Citizens Together in local organizing efforts

TRI-State Immigration Moratorium, Inc.

PO Box 1812, Cathedral Station, New York, NY 10025, 212/439-8746
Has membership in New York, Connecticut and New Jersey.Calls for greater attention to the issue of legal immigration, seeking a five-year moratorium on immigration and a return to pre-1965 immigration levels.Argues that the numbers are too high, bringing wages down and causing population growth.Proclaims to be defending the interests of working people, African Americans and environmentalists.

Voices of Citizens Together (VCT)

13547 Ventura Blvd., Suite 163, Sherman Oaks, Calif.91423, 818/501-2061, www.americanpatrol.com
Also known as American Patrol.Founded and led by Glenn Spencer, a major backer of California Proposition 187.One of the most vocal and hard-lined local anti-immigrant groups in the country. Holds annual anti-immigrant 4th of July rallies, often attended by Lenora Fulani. Has large and frequently-updated website.Says dwindling enforcement on border will lead to Mexican takeover of Aztlán – now the American Southwest.An email dated Feb. 5, 2001 to the group’s list stated, “Powell says we no longer have a border line with Mexico. That is an invitation for Mexicans to flood into the United States. GET A GUN. Bush has sold us out. There is no question.”

Pro-Official English Groups

National

Center for Equal Opportunity/ Equal Opportunity Foundation (CEO/EOF)

815 15th Street NW, Suite 928, Washington, DC 20005, 202/639-0803, www.ceousa.org
Describes itself as devoted to colorblind equal access to opportunity and to racial harmony.Argues that immigration is not a problem, but that we need to promote assimilation by establishing English as the national language and opposing both bilingual education and affirmative action. Advocates for immigration admission based on skill qualifications, not family reunification. Headed by Linda Chavez (see below).

English First

8001 Forbes Place, Suite 109, Springfield, VA 22151, 703/321-8818, www.englishfirst.org
Founded in 1986 to advocate for official English and eliminate multilingual programs. Headed the Coalition Against Puerto Rico Statehood.Considered politically to the right of U.S. English, which has denounced English First as “an insignificant knock-off organization.”Criticizes Bush for Spanish language speeches, which, it claims, is slowing the assimilation process and dividing voters into “tribes.”Founded by Larry Pratt (see below).

English for the Children

555 Bryant St., #371, Palo Alto, CA 943011, 650/853-0360, www.onenation.org
Created by One Nation/One California to pass Proposition 227, California’s antibilingual education initiative. Opposes federal funding for bilingual education program. Chaired by multimillionaire Ron Unz (see below), who in 2000 bankrolled the successful antibilingual education initiative in Arizona and has since shifted his efforts to New York, Colorado and Massachusetts.

Institute for Research in English Acquisition and Development (READ)

815 15th Street NW, Suite 930, Washington, DC 20005, 202/639-0803, www.ceousa.org/
Founded in 1989 and now a project of the Equal Opportunity Foundation.Conducts research and provides assistance to schools about educational programs for limited-English students, consistently favoring English immersion over bilingual education. Publishes READ Perspectives.Directed by Linda Chavez (see below).

ProEnglish

1601 N. Kent Street, Suite 1100, Arlington, VA 22209, 703/816-8821, www.proenglish.org
Formerly known as English Language Advocates.Founded in 1994 to legally defend an English-as-the-official-language amendment to the Arizona constitution.Works in courts and legislature to establish English language constitutional amendments at state and federal levels.Opposes bilingual education and government translation services.Shares offices with Evangelicals for Immigration Reform and NumbersUSA. John Tanton (see below) is founder and a board member.

U.S. English

1747 Pennsylvania Ave. NW, Suite 1100, Washington, DC 20006, 202/833-0100, www.us-english.org
Consists of two organizations, one focusing on legislative work at the state and federal levels, the other a much smaller nonprofit education and resource center.Advocates for official English, opposes statehood for Puerto Rico, bilingual programs, and legalization.Has a budget of more than $7 million. Founded in 1983 by John Tanton (see below) and the late Sen. S.I. Hayakawa (R-CA).

Population Control & Environmental Groups

National

Carrying Capacity Network (CCN)

2000 P Street NW, Suite 240, Washington, DC 20036, 202/296-4548, www.carryingcapacity.org
Blames high levels of immigration for a range of environmental problems, including sprawl and the energy crisis. Claims overpopulation decreases U.S. carrying capacity, the number of people the country’s resources can sustain, and calls for a five year moratorium on immigration and tougher employer sanctions. Ultimately seeks to decrease current immigration quota of 1 million per year to 100,000.

Negative Population Growth, Inc. (NPG)

1717 Massachusetts Avenue NW, Suite 101, Washington, DC 20036, 202/667-8950, www.npg.org
Population control group that promotes small families and decreased immigration to ensure ecological preservation and sustainability.Blames immigrants for U.S. mass consumption of natural resources.Has an extensive print, television, and radio advertising campaign endorsing population control and immigration restriction.Publishes the quarterly Population and Resource Outlook.Executive Director is Sharon McCloe Stein (see below).

NumbersUSA

1601 N. Kent Street, Suite 1100, Arlington, VA 22209, 703/816-8820, www.numbersusa.org
A self-described “pro-immigrant and pro-immigration but anti-overimmigration” organization.Says “overimmigration” will lead to overcrowded schools, deteriorating quality of life, and urban sprawl.Opposes high-tech visas.Claims union support for undocumented immigrants hurts U.S. workers but monetarily benefits union.Distributes “report cards” on all congress members.Shares office with ProEnglish and Evangelicals for Immigration Reform.Roy Beck (see below) is founder and president.

POP.STOP

Advocates for reduced immigration which it claims is the single largest cause of overpopulation in the United States.As a member of the Coalition for the Future American Worker participated in a large television and newspaper ad campaign opposing to high-tech visas.

Population-Environment Balance

2000 P St NW, Suite 600, Washington, DC 20036, 202/955-5700, www.balance.org
Opposes any immigration beyond replacement level and seeks a 100,000 immigrants per year cap for the next five years. Connects immigration to urban sprawl, electricity blackouts, and water shortages. A founding sponsor of the Alliance for Stabilizing America’s Population! (ASAP!). Directed by Virginia Abernathy a demographer at Vanderbilt University and a frequent speaker at Counsel of Conservative Citizens conferences.

ProjectUSA

38-11 Ditmars Blvd # 544, Long Island City, NY 11105, www.projectusa.org
Population control organization that calls for immediate moratorium on immigration to prevent congestion, pollution, and a balkanized society.Blames unassimilated immigrants for destroying the “monocultural” United States.Founded by Craig Nelson (see below). Supports a five year guest worker program as opposed to legalization for current undocumented immigrants.

Sierrans for U.S. Population Stabilization

PO Box 60736, Palo Alto, CA 94306-0736, (800) 352-4843, www.susps.org
Formed by members of the Sierra Club who advocated that the Club promote immigration restriction as part of a population control campaign, and more recently as part of an anti-sprawl campaign. Focuses only on legal immigration and not on unauthorized immigration.

Zero Population Growth (ZPG)

1400 Sixteenth Street NW, Suite 320, Washington, DC 20036, 202/332-2200, www.zpg.org
A liberal organization that advocates population control, especially in the United States, through education, advocacy and service efforts that lower birth rates.Although it argues that immigration is best decreased by addressing factors that compel people to leave their home countries, also calls on the government to set immigration levels that are consistent with slowing U.S. population growth and to increase the INS’ ability to prevent violation of immigration laws. Founded by John Tanton (See below).

Local

Bay Area Coalition for Immigration Reform

PO Box 2457, San Francisco, CA 94126, 415/241-8810, and

Immigration Reform Network of Silicon Valley

PO Box 1395, Los Gatos, CA 95031, 408/399-2132, www.limitstogrowth.org
These two San Francisco-area groups share a website and put out a joint newsletter, Limits to Growth. They argue that a stable population and restrictions on immigration are necessary to solve various social, environmental, and economic problems in the United States. They state that through immigration the United States is importing misogyny and antisemitism, especially from the Middle East, and that the U.S. Southwest is in danger of becoming a separate Hispanic nation.Share editor, Barbara Walker, with ProjectUSA.

Californians For Population Stablization (CAPS)

1129 State Street, Suite 3-D, Santa Barbara, CA 93101, 805/564-6626, www.cap-s.org
Started in 1986 after the California contingent of Zero Population Growth broke from the national group.Seeks to decrease fertility and immigration rates by limiting California immigration, increasing border control, and the eliminating “automatic citizenship.”Advocates population control for environmental reasons.Advisory board includes Anne Ehrlich, co-author with husband Paul Ehrlich, of 1968 landmark bestseller The Population Bomb.Publishes CAPSnews and other activist resources.

Floridians for a Sustainable Population

PO Box 6212, Pompano Beach, FL 33060, 954/942-6446, www.flsuspop.org
Charges that the booming Florida population is responsible for destruction of the environment.Seeks to decrease domestic and foreign migration to Florida in part through an immigration cap and photo-ID social security cards, and through increased aid for international population control and family planning.Claims U.S. immigration policy is an infringement on the rights of Americans to live in comfortable, sustainable environments.

Midwest Coalition to Reform Immigration

100 E. Roosevelt Rd., Suite 42 #359, Northfield, IL 60181, 630/678-0929, www.immigrationreform.org
Calls for 300,000 cap on immigration, arguing that high immigration will create a labor crisis, additional public expenses, and restrict local political voice in policy decisions. Also calls for harsher employment sanctions and deportation, denial of citizenship to children of undocumented immigrants, and greater state participation in immigration policy.Publishes MCRI Immigration News.A subsidiary of NumbersUSA.Dave Gorak is director.

White Nationalist Groups

National

American Nationalist Union

PO Box 426, Allison Park, PA 15101, www.anu.org
Promotes independent and third party candidates who support nationalist agendas to re-establish governments for the “great Middle American core.” Demands an end to American involvement in NAFTA and the construction of a security fence along the border of Mexico.Urges a ten year moratorium on immigration. Publishes monthly Nationalist Times.

CitizensLobby.com

PO Box 23037, Washington, DC 20026, http://citizenslobby.com
Dedicated to “the preservation of American sovereignty, culture, and values” and to putting U.S. interests first.Website includes links to the FBI and INS so that those who know of “illegal aliens” or “terrorists” in their community can submit tips. Scott Lauf, the Executive Director, worked for Senator Jesse Helms in 1992 and was a national staffer for Patrick Buchanan's 1996 presidential campaign.

Council of Conservative Citizens (CoCC)

PO Box 221683, St. Louis, MO 63122-9957, 314/291-8474, www.cofcc.org
Paleoconservative organization with close connections to Jesse Helms, John Ashcroft, and Trent Lott that seeks to restore Confederate values. Opposes the “Hispanic invasion,” big business and globalization.Calls for re-education of the Right on economic issues. Has campaigned to restore the Confederate flag and seeks to end racist attacks on Whites.Heir to the White Citizens Council of the 1960s.Publishes The Citizen Informer.

European-American Rights Organization

Box 188, Mandeville, LA 70470, 504/626-7714, www.whitecivilrights.com, www.davidduke.org
Formerly known as National Organization for European American Rights (NOFEAR). Founded in 2000 by former Klan leader, David Duke (see below).Modeled on the structures of the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People and the Anti-Defamation League, with multiple chapters and a legal branch. Predicts the genocide of European Americans if immigration rates are not decreased.Accuses the government of discriminating against European Americans to appease the growing minority population.Opposes welfare, hate crime laws, affirmative action, “forced busing,” and Third World immigration that “will destroy the character and heritage of America.”

Middle America News (MANews)

PO Box 17088, Raleigh, NC 27619, 919/839-1001, www.manews.org/Default.htm
A monthly newspaper with a web presence.Advocates for a strict reading of the Constitution.Frames immigration as main cause of exploding U.S. population, overcrowded schools, devaluation of the economy, and rising unemployment.Claims immigration, bilingual education, and multiculturalism are a conspiracy of the elite who want to compromise the liberties of other Americans.Urges readers to reclaim, in Boston Tea Party fashion, the liberties originally established in the Constitution.Frequent contributors include Samuel Francis, Don Feder, and Charley Reese.

National Association for the Advancement of White People

Box 10625, New Orleans, LA 70181, 504/328-7477, www.naawp.com
Claims to be working to protect the “endangered” civil rights, values and heritage of the White majority in the United States.States that unauthorized immigration is turning the United States into a Third World nation.Its website asks, “Aren't you sick of reverse discrimination, busing, minority welfare rip offs, massive immigration, gun control, anti-white movies & TV shows? Do you want to see America become like Mexico or South Africa, or Uganda?”

New Century Foundation

Dept. A, PO Box 527, Oakton, VA 22124, 703/716-0900, www.amren.com
Founded by Jared Taylor, cites preservation of religious and racial homogeneity as main argument against immigration. Taylor says, that “the strength of diversity is one of a whole series of monstrous absurdities on which liberalism depends.” Other “absurdities” he names are “the equality of the races, the equivalence of the sexes, the unimportance of heredity, the normalcy of homosexuality, and the insignificance of physical and mental handicap.”Publishes American Renaissance.

Pioneer Fund

1204 Third Avenue, Suite 150, New York, NY 10021, www.pioneerfund.org
Originally created to fund research on eugenics and innate differences between genders and races. Has provided millions in grants to academic “race scientists” at public and prestigious private universities.Has donated more than $190,000 toAmerican Immigration Control Foundation.Provided $1.2 million to FAIR between 1985 and 1994, including grants to promote Proposition 187. Heavily funded many of the researchers cited in The Bell Curve.

General: Websites Only

Affirmative Action for Immigrants?

Claims immigrants are reaping the benefits of affirmative action programs at the expense of African Americans.Calls on the government to include new legislative wording that would reserve affirmative action for African Americans only.Research sponsored by The Social Contract Press and the website was created by editor James Robb, who has written a booklet on the same topic for American Immigration Control Foundation.

Americans for Better Immigration

Immigration restriction website that monitors the voting records of committee chairs and other federal politicians since 1989.It also reports on the current administration’s immigration positions, giving Secretary of Energy Spencer Abraham an “F,” and Attorney General Ashcroft a “D.” A member of the Coalition for the Future American Worker.

Iconservative

The self-declared "New home for the Right."Offers harsh anti-immigrant opinions, denounces Bush for being soft on immigration, and features articles from a variety of conservative sources.Houses extensive site dedicated to the presidential aspirations of Pat Buchanan, whom it dubs “a real conservative.”

Sierra Club Parody

Parody site of the official Sierra Club.Attacks official organization for failing toaddress immigration as what it claims to be the largest environmental problem.Alleges “high-immigration extremists” within Sierra Club ordered the neutral policy.Supports immigration cap and withholding of citizenship from children of undocumented immigrants.

VDARE

Witan@vdare.com, www.vdare.com
A coalition website of individual members, including Peter Brimelow (see below), a British immigrant and author of Alien Nation. VDARE is short for Virginia Dare, the first English child born in what is now the United States.Warns that Mexican President Fox is trying to open the U.S.-Mexico border and take over the country.Samuel Francis (see below) is a frequent contributer.

General: Leaders/Ideologues

Roger and Don Barnett

Armed with pistols and assault rifles, claim to have held 1000 undocumented immigrants who have trespassed on their Cross Rail Ranch until U.S. Border Patrol agents have arrived.

Roy Beck

Supports population control and immigration restriction policies.Founder of Numbers USA, Washington editor for The Social Contract Press, author of The Case Against Immigration, director of the Coalition for the Future American Worker, and member of the Midwest Coalition for Immigration Reform Advisory Council.

George J. Borjas

From a Cuban family who immigrated in 1962, Borjas is an Economist at the John F. Kennedy School of Government at Harvard University. He says immigrants today are less skilled, less educated and more likely to go on welfare than natives, and are a drain on the national economy—mostly because of the 1965 laws that dropped race-based immigrant quotas and led to an increase in poor immigrants. He favors curtailingimmigration and changing policies to favor skilled immigrants.Author of Heavan’s Door: Immigration Policy and the American Economy.

Peter Brimelow

Author of Alien Nation.Focuses attention on national unity and White preservation.Editor of VDARE.Senior editor for Forbes Magazine and The National Review.

Patrick Buchanan

Xenophobic economic nationalist and populist. Left the Republican Party during the 2000 presidential election to run on the Reform Party ticket with Ezola Foster, anti-immigrant activist and an African-American former member of the John Birch Society.In 2001, under Buchanan’s leadership, the Reform Party voted to support a ten-year ban on immigration.Author of Death of the West: How Mass Immigration, Depopulation & A Dying Faith Are Killing Our Culture and Country.

Linda Chavez

Former Reagan appointee and George W. Bush’s initial pick for Secretary of Labor.Proponent of assimilation and English as the official U.S. language.Believes bilingual education should be abandoned in favor of English immersion. Author of Out of the Barrio, president of the Center for Equal Opportunity and the READ Institute, and former head of U.S. English. Syndicated columnist and political analyst for Fox News.

Barbara Coe

Director of California Coalition for Immigration Reform.Has appeared at the conferences of the Council of Conservative Citizens and written for its newsletter.In 1996 told the Washington Times, “Are we shocked by the demands that Latinos be given instant citizenship privileges?These are the same legal and illegal immigrants who bleed our welfare and medical care programs dry for benefits that citizens are denied, destroy our educational system, and laugh at our judicial system while they grab their welfare checks with one hand, deal drugs with the other and their gangs savagely murder our citizens.”

Samuel Francis

Isolationist concerned about promoting White culture as a cornerstone of U.S. national sovereignty. Editor and publisher of Sam Francis Weekly.Also, was syndicated columnist and editorial contributor for the Washington Times, until he was fired for writing a racially offensive column.Once chaired the American Immigration Control Foundation.Currently is a frequent contributor to the Conservative Chronicles andeditor of Citizens Informer, a publication of the Council of Conservative Citizens.

Craig Nelson

Founded ProjectUSA in 1991and directs the National Grassroots Alliance.Has erected billboards proclaiming, "Over 80 percent of Americans support very little or no immigration" and "Immigration is doubling U.S. population in your lifetime." Has admitted to falsifying statistics that appeared on his “billboard democracy” campaign against the alleged immigrant-spawned population boom and to having employed undocumented immigrants in his Manhattan restaurant.

Larry Pratt

Has founded several groups that are to the right of their right-wing counterparts:English First (as opposed to U.S. English), Gun Owners of America (as opposed to the National Rifle Association), U.S. Border Control (as opposed to FAIR) and the antichoice Committee to Protect the Family.Resigned as co-chair of Pat Buchanan’s national campaign in 1996 after allegations linked him to militias and White supremacist organizations.A ruling elder in the Presbyterian Church in the United States.

Dan Stein

President of Federation for American Immigration Reform since 1988.Married to Sharon McCloe Stein of NPG.On The Social Contract Editorial Advisory Board.Operates the website, The Stein Report, www.steinreport.com.A former congressional staffer. According to the ADL, Stein once said: “Certainly we would encourage people in other countries to have small families.Otherwise they’ll all be coming here, because there’s no room in the Vatican…Many [immigrants] hate America, hate everything the United States stands for.Talk to some of these Central Americans.”

Sharon McCloe Stein

Executive Director of Negative Population Growth.Married to Dan Stein of FAIR.

John Tanton

Served as founder and director of Zero Population Growth (ZPG) from 1971-75 and the first president of the Northern Michigan Planned Parenthood.From 1975-77 was chairman of the Sierra Club National Population Committee.When Tanton failed to convince ZPG board to deal with immigration as a population control issue, he founded Federation for American Immigration Reform (FAIR) (he is now on the Board of Directors) and later joined with Sen. S.I. Hayakawa (R-CA) to found U.S. English.Resigned as chair of U.S. English and Linda Chavez resigned as president when a now-infamous Tanton-authored memo was leaked.The memo posited that California could become a state with educated, English-speaking, Protestant Whites being outnumbered by uneducated, poor, Spanish-speaking and Catholic Hispanics: “Perhaps this is the first instance in which those with their pants up are going to be caught by those with their pants down!”He has since founded ProEnglish and publishes The Social Contract.

Ron Unz

Silicon Valley entrepreneur and physicist who bankrolled the antibilingual education campaigns in California and Arizona.Created English for the Children to further his English immersion campaign.Ran for governor of California in 1994 against Pete Wilson on a pro-immigrant platform and opposed Proposition 187.Is on the board of Center for Equal Opportunity.

John Vinson

Has headed American Immigration Control Foundation since 1990.Has worked closely with White supremacist Council of Conservative Citizens, as a speaker at its conferences and a columnist, and more recently a contributing writer for its publication.


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Tuesday, June 24, 2008

Human Rights Groups Condemn ICE Detentions

Human Rights Watch and Partner Organizations Submit Brief Detailing Rights Violations Committed by US Immigration and Customs Enforcement


In an Amici Curiae Brief filed in the US Ninth Circuit Court of Appeals, Human Rights Watch and a number of other organizations provide profiles of individual cases that illustrate the unconstitutional nature of US Immigration and Customs Enforcement's (ICE) detention scheme. These detentions can last months or years, and often result in a detainee being placed in an ICE facility thousands of miles away from their families and communities. In many cases, such detainees have a viable claim against removal, yet are forced into the position of choosing between remaining indefinitely detained while pursuing that claim—which may take years—or simply accepting removal to a country with which they may have no meaningful connection or where they have a legitimate fear of persecution and torture.ICE claims that the majority of removal cases are completed in an average of 45 days, and that when detentions run longer than that period, it is typically because the detainee is asserting a claim that is “unlikely to succeed.” However, the Brief offers examples of specific cases where individuals pursuing a legitimate claim have been detained for periods far longer than that. Among others, these examples include individuals who were subjected to prolonged detention due to administrative errors, or who were forced to spend years in locations far from their families despite the eventual success of their claim.
You can read the full brief here.

Excerpts from the brief:

Adil Mohammed endured a year and a half of immigration detention before an immigration judge recognized his U.S. citizenship. A refugee of the Ethiopian civil war, Mr. Mohammed was born in a Sudanese refugee camp and admitted to the U.S. as a refugee in 1982.

The key issue in his case was whether his parents had naturalized as U.S. citizens before Mr. Mohammed’s eighteenth birthday, rendering him a derivative citizen. ICE delayed Mr. Mohammed’s initial proceeding for a year while
translating his birth certificate, finally producing an incorrect translation that placed his birthday eight months earlier than the actual date due to an
erroneous transposition of the month and day. Mr. Mohammed was
finally released when an immigration judge recognized ICE’s translation
error and pronounced him a U.S. citizen.

Samuel Ankrah came to the United States from Ghana as a young childand derived citizenship through the naturalization of his mother.
In 2005, however, he was placed in removal proceedings, and the immigration judge denied his claim for citizenship based on an erroneous interpretation of the Ghanaian law of legitimation. In order to vindicate his client’s citizenship rights, it was necessary for Mr. Ankrah’s attorney to gather letters from a Ghanaian attorney, a report concerning Ghanaian law from the Library of Congress, decisions of the Ghanaian Supreme Court, and a Ghanaian family law treatise. On the basis of this evidence, a district court judge recognized the immigration judge’s error and determined Mr. Ankrah to be a United States citizen. Although detained for two years, Mr. Ankrah was never afforded a hearing to determine if his prolonged detention was justified.

Armando Vergara Ceballos entered the United States legally when he was eight years old and naturalized in 1996. At some point in the subsequent decade, he misplaced his naturalization certificate. Despite his status as a naturalized citizen, Mr. Ceballos is currently in immigration detention while removal proceedings are underway against him on the basis of a robbery conviction. He has repeatedly protested to the immigration judge that he is a U.S. citizen, a fact of which the government should have a clear record. At his third hearing before the immigration judge, the ICE attorney admitted that Mr. Ceballos’s “permanent file is lost.” He has remained in detention for five months while the government attempts to recover the files it has misplaced.

Monday, June 23, 2008

Eugenics and Nativism: Joined at the Hip

Racism and Xenophobia

The Federation for American Immigration Reform ('”FAIR”) received a good deal of negative publicity after it was disclosed that it had received most of its start-up money from nonprofit Pioneer Fund foundation. The Pioneer Fund has a long history of promoting eugenics and giving funding to researchers who champion white supremacist causes. As well, the Pioneer Fund has provided money to a variety of anti-immigrant causes. The Southern Poverty Law Center and the Anti-Defamation League have both condemned FAIR and the Pioneer Fund as promoting racist hate views. Most critically for the present discussion is the role of eugenics and immigration. Eugenics is broadly defined as follows:

Eugenics: Literally, meaning normal genes, eugenics aims to improve the genetic constitution of the human species by selective breeding. The use of Albert Einstein's sperm to conceive a child (by artificial insemination) would represent an attempt at positive eugenics. The Nazis notoriously engaged in negative eugenics by genocide.

The word "eugenics" was coined by Sir Francis Galton (1822-1911) to denote scientific endeavors to increase the proportion of persons with better than average genetic endowment through selective mating of marriage partners.

The practice of eugenics was first legally mandated in the United States in the state of Indiana, resulting in the forcible sterilization, incarceration, and occasionally euthanasia of the mentally or physically handicapped, the mentally ill, and ethnic minorities (particularly people of mixed racial heritage), and the adopting out of their children to non-disabled, Caucasian parents. Similar programs spread widely in the early part of the twentieth century, and still exist in some parts of the world. It is important to note that no experiment in eugenics has ever been shown to result in measurable improvements in human health. In fact, in the best known attempt at positive eugenics, the Nazi "Lebensborn" program, there was a higher-than- normal level of birth defects among the resulting offspring.

Eugenics, notorious for its association with the enactment of the Nazi Nuremberg laws, which led inevitably to the holocaust, was largely born in the United States. The Pioneer Fund played a large role in the promulgation of eugenics based laws in the United States. These laws forced the sterilization of thousands and banned interracial marriage. States (27) that had sterilization laws still on the books (though not all were still in use) in 1956 were: Arizona, California, Connecticut, Delaware, Georgia, Idaho, Indiana, Iowa, Kansas, Maine, Michigan, Minnesota, Mississippi, Montana, Nebraska, New Hampshire, North Carolina, North Dakota, Oklahoma, Oregon, South Carolina, South Dakota, Utah,Vermont, Virginia, West Virginia, Wisconsin. In fact, the Nuremberg laws were largely shaped by eugenics laws and anti-miscegenation laws from the United States.

During the first decades of the century… major political figures such as Henry Cabot Lodge had unblushingly defended Anglo-Saxonism, the superiority of the “original” American stock. The eugenics movement flourished in these years. Theodore Roosevelt and Woodrow Wilson embraced racist theories; Henry Adams, Henry James, the president of Harvard, and other cultural heavyweights did the same. Many key members of the new generation of social scientists, including E.A. Ross and John R. Commons, doubted the intellectual capacity of racial and ethnic minorities. These pioneers in sociology and economics provided additional authority to nativists’ arguments. As late as the early 1920s, when the prominent social psychologist William McDougall proposed a racist interpretation of history based on the results of intelligence tests, when Madison Grant’s The Passing of the Great Race and Lothrop Stoddard’s The Rising Tide of Color found a wide audience of college-trained readers for their racist theories, the “genetic case” for nativism remained a position that could be defended in rational discourse. (“The Party of Fear: The American Far Right from Nativism to the Militia Bovement,”David H. Bennett (Vintage Books 1988) p. 283)

Eugenicists generally hold that certain people (mostly northern-hemisphere Caucasians) are superior in a variety of qualities to other people (mostly non-Caucasians and non-Anglos such as Jews). The latter are said, by eugenicists, to be innately inferior. Eugenicists, therefore believe that the inferior members of the human species must be controlled by a variety of methods ranging from birth control to sterilization and, in extreme cases, extermination. The superior members of the species must, in turn, be encouraged to breed and must not sundry their superior genes by association with inferior members (miscegenation or race-mixing). Given that the Nazis carried these programs to their logical conclusion, the mass extermination of inferior human beings, eugenics has come to be viewed as scientifically indefensible and morally repugnant.

"American intelligence will be more rapid than the decline of the intelligence of European national groups, owing to the presence of the negro..."

A natural extension of the eugenicist view is that the superior members of the species should not be outnumbered by the inferior members. In order to prevent an influx of inferior members, eugenicists promote measures to prohibit or sharply curtail immigration. Such measures found voice in the restrictive and racist Immigration and Restriction Act of 1924. The Act sharply curtailed immigration by countries with undesirable members like immigrants from Latin Countries, Eastern Europe, Russia and Jews. “The [Immigration and Restriction Act of] 1924 act, following a barrage of eugenicist propaganda, reset the quotas at 2 percent of people from each nation recorded in the 1890 census (Southern and eastern Europeans arrived in relatively small numbers before then)… Cynical, but effective. “America must be kept American,” proclaimed Calvin Coolidge as he signed the bill.” ( (“The Mismeasure of Man,”Stephen Jay Gould, p. 262) As stated by one of the eugenicist social scientists who backed race and national origin restrictions on immigration:

The decline of American intelligence will be more rapid than the decline of the intelligence of European national groups, owing to the presence of the negro. These are the plain, if somewhat ugly, facts that our study shows. The deterioration of American intelligence is not inevitable, however, if public action can be aroused to prevent it. There is no reason why legal steps should not be taken which would insure a continuously upward evolution.

The steps that should be taken to preserve or increase our present intellectual capacity must of course be dictated by science and not by political expediency. Immigration should not only be restrictive but highly selective. And the revision of the immigration and naturalization laws will only afford a slight relief from our present difficulty. The really important steps are those looking toward the prevention of the continued propagation of defective strains in the present population. (Brigham 1923) (“The Mismeasure of Man,”Stephen Jay Gould, p. 260)

The Pioneer Fund, which almost exclusively funded FAIR in its early years, was instrumental in promoting eugenicist views and the enactment of eugenicist laws. Harry Hamilton Laughlin, a Pioneer Fund president, was a life-long eugenicist, who was part of the Eugenic Research Association (“ERO”), a government project that promoted eugenics laws among the states.

A preoccupation with controlling migration was just one of the habits that FAIR founder, Laughlin and his fellow immigration restrictionists shared with Adolf Hitler

From the time he moved to New York in 1910 until his death in 1943, Laughlin committed himself to a search for patterns of bad heredity or “dysgenesis.” Even more impressive than the abundance of statistical material collected during Laughlin’s research was his success in translating the implications of eugenical theory into law. The ruling passions of his career as a eugenicist were immigration restriction, eugenic sterilization, and prohibition of interracial marriage.

Laughlin’s efforts at immigration restriction included an attempt to survey every public charitable institution or mental hospital in American. He combined those data with material on the number of foreign-born persons in jails, prisons, and reformatories to provide a basis for testimony to Congress as its appointed “Expert Eugenics Agent.” Reflecting in large part Laughlin’s testimony, Congress passed the Immigration Restriction Act of 1924, which was consciously drawn to block the flow of Jews and Italians from 1900 to 1920.

Hitler praised the racist features of American immigration legislation in Mein Kampf even before he came to power. He condemned the automatic grant of citizenship, extended indiscriminately to “every Jewish or Polish, African or Asiatic child” born in Germany as “thoughtless” and “hare-brained.” America, “by simply excluding certain races from naturalization,” was making “slow beginnings” toward a vision Hitler could support. A preoccupation with controlling migration was just one of the habits that Laughlin and his fellow immigration restrictionists shared with Adolf Hitler. "The American Breed" (“The American Breed”: Nazi Eugenics and the Origins of the Pioneer Fund, by Paul A. Lombardo, J.D., Ph.D., Albany Law Review (2002) (emphasis added)).

Today’s nativist agenda is no different than the one that animated the nativists who helped enact the restrictive 1924 immigration act. Nor is there a difference in the latent racism inherent in such views. “Earlier generations of Americans knew that in most cases, what are now called Third World populations, by their very nature, are temperamentally different from the European Christians who settled North America, fashioned the United States, devised its system of laws, and fathered its free institutions. .. We must never, never, never shrink back in craven fear of the imbecilic words that our adversaries hurl at us -- "racist," "bigot," "fascist," and such rubbish ” Father James Thornton

Tanton had the Social Contract Press translate, publish and promote The Camp of the Saints, a starkly racist apocalyptic novel

John Tanton, perhaps more than any other person, is the architect of the modern nativist movement. In a recent article, Tanton, who rarely grants interviews, forthrightly admitted as such:

The success of U.S. English taught Tanton a crucial lesson. If the immigration restriction movement was to succeed, it would have to be rooted in an emotional appeal to those who felt that their country, their language, their very identity was under assault. “Feelings,” Tanton says in a tone reminiscent of Spock sharing some hard-won insight on human behavior, “trump facts.

More than anyone, Tanton served as the liaison between the “mainstream” anti-immigration movement, whose arguments were still rooted in population and job concerns, and its natural allies on the far right, who saw an epic struggle to maintain America’s national and racial character. He courted mainstream conservative donors, like the Scaife family, as well as the fringe Pioneer Fund, whose current president argues that blacks are genetically less intelligent than whites. He had the Social Contract Press translate, publish and promote The Camp of the Saints, a starkly racist apocalyptic novel about a wave of Indian immigrants overrunning France. In 1996, Tanton coauthored The Immigration Invasion with Wayne Lutton, who sits on the advisory board of a publication put out by the white nationalist Council of Conservative Citizens. Editor of the Social Contract Press since 1998, Lutton now occupies an office just a few feet from Tanton’s.

Though he plays the victim, Tanton wants it both ways: harnessing the political power that comes from tapping into nativist grievances and building bridges with outright racists, while at the same time dismissing any of the negative consequences that might come from such partnerships. Perhaps Tanton shares the views of his allies, or perhaps he simply understands that if what people like Taylor euphemistically call “cultural” issues were taken out of the equation, there wouldn’t be the same flood of phone calls to senators. “If the 12 million illegal immigrants in this country were all good-looking, English-speaking, white people,” Taylor told me, “the opposition to illegal immigration would be considerably less.”

Aside from Tanton, the other person most identified with what is euphemistically called “white nationalism” but is in reality “white supremacy” is the British expatriate, Peter Brimelow. Brimelow penned the anti-immigrant book, Alien Nation and founded the forthrightly racist website VDare.com. Brimelow has stated that the United States is a white Protestant country and that it must keep its whie character by sharply limiting immigration of non-whites. Among the racists that Brimelow regularly features on his VDare and who also contribute to John Tanton, periodical, The Social Contract, are the following:

Steve Sailer

http://www.vdare.com/Sailer/no_excuses.htm

http://www.vdare.com/sailer/061126_iq.htm

Jared Taylor

http://www.adl.org/Learn/Ext_US/jared_taylor/default.asp?LEARN_Cat=Extremism&LEARN_SubCat=Extremism_in_America&xpicked=2&item=taylor

http://library.flawlesslogic.com/levin.htm

Kevin MacDonald

http://library.flawlesslogic.com/juif.htm

http://www.splcenter.org/intel/intelreport/article.jsp?aid=741

http://www.vdare.com/macdonald/040619_1924_immigration.htm

http://www.jewishjournal.com/los_angeles/article/the_professor_the_antisemites_love_20080509/

http://www.adl.org/learn/ext_us/kevin_macdonald/activity.asp?LEARN_Cat=Extremism&LEARN_SubCat=Extremism_in_America&xpicked=2&item=kevin_macdonald

Daniel Seligman and Arthur Jensen

Geoffrey Sampson "There's Nothing Wrong with Racism"

The founder, chief ideologue and long-time funder of FAIR is a racist. Key staff members have ties to white supremacist groups, some are members, and some have spoken at hate group functions. FAIR has accepted more than $1 million from a racist foundation devoted to studies of race and IQ, and to eugenics

John Tanton and Peter Brimelow, despite being racist extremists, are not marginal figures in American politics. Tanton’s organization, FAIR, testifies often before Congress and it is regularly quoted in the mainstream press. Brimelow has been affiliated with The National Review and was a journalist for Forbes magazine. Both Tanton and Brimelow are regulars on the talk show circuit and their cronies are regularly featured on the right-wing cable “news” shows. Each has made racist statements but it is Brimelow who pushes a far right agenda that explicitly embraces racism and anti-Semitism. These extreme views have constantly challenged organizations such as the Southern Poverty Law Center’s Hatewatch and the Anti-Defamation League. In a recent posting on SPLC’s website, they articulated their reasoning behind listing FAIR as a hate group.

The Federation for American Immigration Reform (FAIR) is almost certainly the most-quoted immigration restriction organization in America. … In the past six years, FAIR officials have testified at least 30 times to Congress. Day in and day out, FAIR is taken seriously as a mainstream commentator on the immigration debate…

The founder, chief ideologue and long-time funder of FAIR is a racist. Key staff members have ties to white supremacist groups, some are members, and some have spoken at hate group functions. FAIR has accepted more than $1 million from a racist foundation devoted to studies of race and IQ, and to eugenics — the pseudo-science of breeding a better human race that was utterly discredited by the Nazi euthanasia program. It spreads racist conspiracy theories. Its political ads have caused numerous politicians, Democratic and Republican, to denounce it.

Much of this has been known for years. But last February [2007], underlining the way that FAIR does business, its leaders met with the leaders of Vlaams Belang — a hastily renamed Belgian party that under a prior appellation, Vlaams Blok, was officially banned by the Belgian Supreme Court as a racist and xenophobic group. It was, for some, a final straw — the Rubicon of hate, as it were. When FAIR officials met with Vlaams Belang leaders to seek their “advice” on immigration, we decided to take another look at FAIR. When our work was done, it was obvious that FAIR qualified as a hate group.

The identification of FAIR as a bona fide hate group is important. FAIR is the hub of the American nativist movement, the group that more than any other has contributed to the rancid turn the national immigration discussion has taken. With FAIR fanning the flames of xenophobic intolerance, hate groups, hate crimes and hate speech directed at foreigners and Latinos continue to rise in America.

It cannot be gainsaid that FAIR, NumbersUSA, VDare and the coterie of anti-immigrant organizations have an agenda which is larger than merely restricting immigration. Nativist writers such as Steve Sailer, Jared Taylor and Kevin MacDonald fervently believe that blacks are of inferior intellect, that Jews are controlling the media and that the white race should be protected from nonwhites. Their ideology is exactly the same ideology that led to the Nazi Nuremberg laws. They have used immigration as a gateway to the mainstream, witness Lou Dobbs, Bill O’Reilly, Glen Beck and Sean Hannity preaching their gospel of hate to millions every single night. Unless and until these modern day eugenicists are marginalized, the way David Duke and the Aryan Nation have been marginalized, these extremists will continue to influence public policy to the peril of a great many Americans.

Friday, June 20, 2008

John Tanton’s Network of Hate: How A Small Group of the Wealthy founded the Contemporary Nativist Wave.


Contrary to Lou Dobbs, and other cable-TV hate-mongers, the current nativist wave is not an organic movement of Americans “fed up illegal immigration.” The better part of the current nativist movement was orchestrated by a retired Michigan opthamolagist by the name of John Tanton and a small group of wealthy donors. Starting in 1979, Tanton orchestrated a series of moves to establish a network of non-profit groups, advocacy organizations and media propaganda fronts. The foremost of these groups is the Federation for Immigration Control (“FAIR”) which continues to enjoy legitimacy amongst the mainstream media despite clear ties to racist and extremist organizations. The network that Tanton founded continues to function and the fronts that he established continue to be treated as indepenent entities, despite their shared kinship.

It was Tanton who founded the anti-immigration movement's most powerful institution, the Federation for American Immigration Reform (“FAIR”). Tanton’s interest in immigration was marked in the beginning by an explicitly racial argument. “To govern is to populate,” Tanton wrote in 1986. “Will the present majority peaceably hand over its political power to a group that is simply more fertile? … As Whites see their power and control over their lives declining, will they simply go quietly into the night? Or will there be an explosion?”

Tanton founded FAIR in 1979. Between 1982 and 1994, it received more than $1.2 million from the Pioneer Fund. A little-known foundation created in 1937, the Pioneer Fund likes to benignly describe its origins in “the Darwinian-Galtonian evolutionary tradition, and the eugenics movement.” In the late 1930s, though, it frankly admired Hitler. Today, it still bankrolls groups such as the racist American Renaissance and the American Immigration Control Foundation (AICF) in Virginia.

[A] single -- but not seamless -- web connects ideological white supremacists, armed border vigilantes, nativist think tanks, political action committees, and Republican Party officeholders in an anti-immigrant movement of growing significance. Formal policy deliberations may include debates on the fiscal costs of providing social services to undocumented workers, the supposed downward pressure immigrant labor exerts on the marketplace, the net costs and benefits of immigration, and the national-security problems evinced by holes in our borders. But at gatherings like these, the raw issues are race and national identity.

Differences between legal and illegal immigrants fade into a generalized belief that a brown-skinned, Spanish-speaking tidal wave is about to swamp the white-skinned population of the United States. The attempt to stop undocumented workers at the borders morphs into a campaign to end immigration altogether, to save our supposedly white nation from demographic ruin. As Tancredo told interviewer John Hawkins, “[If] we don't control immigration, legal and illegal, we will eventually reach the point where it won't be what kind of a nation we are, balkanized or united; we will have to face the fact that we are no longer a nation at all … .

The New Nativism: The alarming overlap between white nationalists and mainstream anti-immigrant forces. Leonard Zeskind The American Prospect,| October 23, 2005.

In addition, FAIR's political action committee, the U.S. Immigration Reform PAC, routinely receives significant contributions from Tanton and his wife. FAIR's PAC has contributed more than a quarter-million dollars for and against candidates since 1999. In 2000, it spent more than $30,000 against Republican Senator Spencer Abraham of Michigan, an Arab American, who lost that general election. Not surprisingly, it has also given the virulently anti-immigrant, Tom Tancredo $15,000 over the years, according to Federal Election Commission documents. The PAC had Peter Gemma on its payroll. Gemma is a denizen of Holocaust-denial meetings and other hardcore anti-Semitic venues, according to Devin Burghart, the author of numerous reports on anti-immigrant groups for the Center for New Community in Chicago.

"The New Nativists" In a notorious set of memos from 1986, Tanton set forth the vision and strategy of what was to become the anti-immigrant enterprise. In the most extensive memo, Tanton laid out a series of queries to guide the movement:

Is apartheid in Southern California’s future? The democraphic picture in South Africa now is startlingly similar to what we’ll see in California in 2030. In Southern Africa, a White minority owns the property, has the best jobs and education, has the political power, and speaks one language. A non-White majority has poor education, jobs and income, owns little property, is on its way to political power and speaks a different language. (The official language policy in South Africa is bilingualism -- the Blacks are taught in Zulu and related tongues.)

In California of 2030, the non-Hispanic Whites and Asians will own the property, have the good jobs and education, speak one language and be mostly Protestant and "other." The Blacks and Hispanics will have the poor jobs, will lack education, own little property, speak another language and will be mainly catholic.

Do ethnic enclaves (Bouvier, p. 18) constitute resegregation? As Whites see their power and control over their lives declining, will they simply go quietly into the night? Or will there be an explosion? Why don’t non-Hispanic Whites have a group identity, as do Blacks, Jews, Hispanics?

[T]he Whites and Asiatics will own and manage, but will not be able to speak to the Hispanic field workers. They will need bilingual foremen. Does this sound like social peace? Or like South Africa?

Initially, Tanton’s organizations did not meet with much legislative success but the media treated them as if they were legitimate grass-roots organizations. FAIR was widely quoted on all questions bearing upon immigration and they often testified before Congress. Another element of Tanton’s plan was infiltration of Congress and the Judiciary. As set out in another 1986 strategy memo by Tanton:

Since launching FAIR [Federation for American Immigration Reform] in January of 1979, the board has adhered steadfastly to one of the possible models for changing U.S. immigration law and practice. Our plan emphasized the national (rather than the state and local) nature of the immigration question, and, therefore, concentrated on building a national office and staff rather than working at the grassroots.

In my judgment, grassroots work has not been a major emphasis. On the media side of this question, I believe we get high marks for good and consistent effort throughout our existence.

Financially, FAIR grew rapidly its early years. The table shows our total revenues since its founding:

1979 $216,349
1980 442,916
1981 815,212
1982 1,269,126
1983 1,255,223
1984 1,447,161
1985 1,543,610
1986 1,600,000 (estimated)

GRAND TOTALS: 8 years & $8,500,000

Our financial growth was heavily based on a small number of major donors…

[We must] Secure appointments of our friends to positions on the Board of Immigration Appeals, to the Commissioner’s Post if Mr. Nelson leaves, as he will eventually, to other advisory boards in the INS and Justice Department.

FAIR and its sister organizations were heavily dependent on a small number of donors, most of whom had racist motivations for their contributions. The network of Tanton organization that this small group of wealthy individuals funded includes the front ograntizations.

American Immigration Control Foundation
AICF, 1983, funded

American Patrol/Voice of Citizens Together
1992, funded by Tanton

California Coalition for Immigration Reform
CCIR, 1994, funded by Tanton

Californians for Population Stabilization
1996, funded (founded separately in 1986) by Tanton

Center for Immigration Studies
CIS, 1985, founded and funded by Tanton

Federation for American Immigration Reform
FAIR, 1979, founded and funded by Tanton

NumbersUSA
1996, founded and funded by Tanton

Population-Environment Balance
1973, joined board in 1980 by Tanton

Pro English
1994, founded and funded by Tanton

ProjectUSA
1999, funded by Tanton

The Social Contract Press
1990, founded and funded by Tanton

U.S. English
1983, founded and funded by Tanton

U.S. Inc.
1982, founded and funded by Tanton

Each of these organizations keeps up a front of nominal independence despite being part of Tanton’s web. And each in turn has mingled extremist politics with its anti-immigrant rhetoric. In subsequent posts we will explore further the dark elements that make up Tanton’s Nativist movement.