The BAD Three: FAIR, CIS, NumbersUSA

The Houston Chronicle and other newspapers from time to time quote what they designate as an "expert group" on immigration.  Groups such as the Federation for American Immigration Reform (FAIR), the Center for Immigration Studies (CIS), and NumbersUSA - are at times not revealed as anti-immigration, when in actually FAIR is in fact designated as a hate group.

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New SPLC Report: Three Leading Anti-Immigration Groups Share Extremist Roots

Southern Poverty Law Center

February 3, 2009

Three Washington, D.C., organizations most responsible for blocking comprehensive immigration reform in 2007 are part of a network of groups created by a man who has been at the heart of the white nationalist movement for decades, according to a report issued today by the Southern Poverty Law Center.

The Nativist Lobby: Three Faces of Intolerance describes how the Federation for American Immigration Reform (FAIR), the Center for Immigration Studies (CIS) and NumbersUSA were founded and funded by John Tanton, a retired Michigan ophthalmologist who operates a racist publishing company and has written that to maintain American culture, "a European-American majority" is required.

"These groups have infiltrated the mainstream by presenting themselves as legitimate commentators, when, in reality, they were all conceived by a man who is convinced that non-white immigrants threaten America," said Mark Potok, director of the SPLC's Intelligence Project. "They have never strayed far from their roots."

The report examines how Tanton, who still sits on FAIR's board of directors, founded the racist Social Contract Press and has corresponded with Holocaust deniers, white nationalist intellectuals and Klan lawyers for decades — correspondence documented by his own writings stored at a University of Michigan library.

It also shows that FAIR has been aware of his views and activities for years.

FAIR, whose members have testified frequently before Congress, has hired as key officials men who also joined white supremacist groups. It has promoted racist conspiracy theories. And it has even accepted more than $1 million from the Pioneer Fund, a racist foundation devoted to proving a connection between race and intelligence, the report found.

FAIR has been designated as a hate group by the SPLC.

The report also examines how the Center for Immigration Studies — which bills itself as a scholarly think tank — began its life as a FAIR program and continues to produce dubious studies furthering FAIR's anti-immigration agenda. It's a vision described by Tanton in a 1985 letter in which he wrote that CIS would produce reports "for later passage to FAIR, the activist organization, to remedy."

Similarly, NumbersUSA, a group that has achieved dramatic policy successes, began its life as a Tanton foundation program, the report found. NumbersUSA Executive Director Roy Beck has even been described by Tanton as his "heir apparent." He also edited The Immigration Invasion, a book by Tanton and a colleague that was so raw in its immigrant bashing that Canadian border authorities have banned it as hate literature.

complete report:

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splc_nativistlobby_022009

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Who is James Pinkerton?

James Pinkerton writes for the Houston Chronicle and other newspapers.  He also works for Fox news.  He worked in the Bush I and Reagan Administrations and was one of the main architects of the Willie Horton calamity that pushed Dukakis to lose the presidential election of  1988 - he also brought racism to the front of our national politics - by demonizing Dukakis who had instituted a furlough program  for prison inmates.  Horton, who actually went by William (Pinkerton and his colleagues changed his name to Willie to make him look more "lowdown") was furloughed and committed a violent crime soon after his release.  This of course was a tragedy, but a worse tragedy was how Pinkerton and other Republican minions blew the Horton case into a national story - pushing racial politics back a few decades or more (see "Willie Horton & Me" - link is below).

Today's NYT editorial on nativists and immigration mentions Pinkerton as one of the players.  Although some people had been telling me that the Houston Chronicle is not as right wing as it used to be, finding out who Pinkerton really is, makes me think that the Chronicle may still be in the 1950s.  It makes sense that the Houston suburbs are so strongly Republican.  What do you  expect if they are reading the work of someone like Pinkerton?

I write about Pinkerton because I see his articles from time to time, and have noted their slant to the right.  Lately he has written with Susan Carroll who also is writing such anti-immigrant fluff that some of my colleagues will no longer speak to her.  

Maybe Houston's newspaper thinks that it will continue to be solvent in these bad times by pandering to hate.  They need to be careful.  Remember what happened to so many of the Republicans in Congress.  

see "Willie Horton & Me," by Antony Walton, New York Times, August 20, 1989

see "Anti-Immigrant Electoral Campaign "The New Willie Horton" Rooted in Old Racism," -  by Roberto Novato, Huffington Post, November 7, 2007

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Editorial
The Nativists are Restless
New York Times
February 1, 2009

...Last week at the National Press Club in Washington, a group seeking to speak for the future of the Republican Party declared that its November defeats in Congressional races stemmed not from having been too hard on foreigners, but too soft.

The group, the American Cause, released a report arguing that anti-immigration absolutism was still the solution for the party’s deep electoral woes, actual voting results notwithstanding. Rather than “pander to pro-amnesty Hispanics and swing voters,” as President Bush and Karl Rove once tried to do, the report’s author, Marcus Epstein, urged Republicans to double down on their efforts to run on schemes to seal the border and drive immigrants out...

...What was perhaps more notable than the report itself was the team that delivered it. It included Bay Buchanan, former adviser to Representative Tom Tancredo and sister of Pat, who founded the American Cause and wrote “State of Emergency: The Third World Invasion and Conquest of America.” She was joined by James Pinkerton, an essayist and Fox News contributor who, as an aide to the first President Bush, took credit for the racist Willie Horton ads run against Michael Dukakis...more

Sex on the Plaza

Tomorrow I leave Madrid. Its been a few weeks of (mostly) boring work. A colleague of mine came into town last week... today she told me the strangest story.

In broad daylight today (a Wednesday) she was walking through a neighborhood plaza in downtown Madrid and saw 2 people having sex - right there, with scores of people around. She said that people all around were watching. Two men were taking pictures with their cell phones, some men were laughing...

The two people involved appeared to be homeless and native born Spaniards. The incident was disturbing and surprising. Yet, what surprises me even more is that the whole 16 days I have been here I have heard constant complaints about immigrants flooding the city, esp. Romanians and Africans. That these people bring problems, violence, crime, unsanitary conditions.

Yet, as I just mentioned, the most outrageous act was performed by two Spàniards.

Homeland Security - the New Inquisition

I am sitting in the Biblioteca Nacional in Madrid, looking through 400 year old reports on civil unrest in the Americas. Between the years of 1640 and 1650 the Inquisition in Mexico took on the role of Homeland Security. There were many political factors but the main result was that by 1649 the Jewish population in New Spain was decimated. There was a time in the first half of the 1600s that Jewish people could actually practice their faith openly in Mexico. Scholar Seymour Liebman wrote in his book on Jews in Mexico that before 1640 there were at least 10 synagogues in Mexico City.

The whole "cleansing movement" was directly related to Portugal separating from Spain in 1640. Every Portuguese person was seen as a suspicious character (sound familiar) and assumed to be Jewish. Even if you were a practicing Christian, if your grandmother had been Jewish you would be under scrutiny. There were certain religious orders that had laws again conversos (people who converted from Judaism or their descendants). If you recall from World History class, the Jews were expelled from Spain in 1492 just after Columbus said he found America (interesting timing - just as the world was going global).

Anyway, my project has a lot to do with that time period and the history that has been produced from those stories. Someone told me that the Inquisition had nothing to do with the current nativism movement in the U.S. Well, they weren't exactly the same, but there were interesting similarities:

1. People were constantly "telling on each other." Remember the policeman who was a DREAMER - got into the police force with his cousin's I.D. - someone told on him.

2. DREAMERS are children of undocumented immigrants who are also "tainted" according to Lou Dobbs and our Senate.

3. A certain hysteria took over the population.

4. Some people made a lot of money.

5. The people in question were "different."

Well thank goodness no one is getting burned at the stake these days -- but the way we are going... what would it take to be genocide? As it is we are holding people in jail indefinitely without charges; taking nursing babies from their mothers (I understand the baby didn't eat for 3 days), keeping kids out of college (sounds like pre 60s segregation), raiding people's homes without warrants, going into malls (and fast food places) to take people... among other things.

I apologize for being so morose, but looking at these old manuscripts just reminds me that somethings don't change.

image: http://www.hungersbrides.com/images/inq_dunce_cap_left.jpg

The Anger is Not Really About Immigration

Anwer Sher writes in the Post Global WP blog that it isn't immigration that causes all the problems, it's people's attitudes
towards other people that produce the most harm.

He brings up a point I have mentioned many times:

"you cannot argue for free trade and then put up controls on people who want to immigrate."


If you think of the logic in this.... you might wonder what is wrong with all the people that are screaming their nativism full blast. How can you (a country) want globalization while simultaneously controlling the immigration you need so you can achieve global significance?


I don't want to make it very simplistic, but it does seem that much of the problem revolves around nativists' fear of the dark-skinned people that are now surrounding them. As long as their numbers are kept to a controlled minimum, and they are basically out of site except for certain situations... then they are ok... but it's the whole idea of being "surrounded" that creates the fear that creates the anger.

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ANWER SHER
Dubai, UAE
Washington Post
Post Global Blog
December 4, 2007

Originally from Pakistan, Anwer Sher is based in Dubai and writes for Gulf News, Khaleej Times and Emirates Today. His varied career experience includes banking, consulting, and real estate development. He has a Masters degree in International Relations.


Immigration Disruptive Only to Some

Is immigration disruptive? The answer all depends on your individual perspective. From my view, you cannot argue for free trade and then put up controls on people who want to immigrate. You cannot use a lack of integration as an excuse to discriminate against immigrants; after all, most colonizers did not integrate into the countries they colonized. Societies prosper when they open their doors, and despite how much the Americans, the British or the French complain about non-Caucasian minorities, they also need to see how much immigrant doctors, engineers and professionals have contributed to their society. Every American who is not a Native American is an immigrant, and one should never forget that no land belongs to anybody in the true historical sense.

This is an interesting question given the recent riots in France, protests in Malaysia by Malaysians of Indian origin, and with human migration generally becoming a more critical subject. Immigration has always been an integral part of the human saga of development, and under various names the phenomenon of people seeking new opportunities in new lands has always been there: in America, in Australia, and so on. In the modern world it has become more of an issue and more 'disruptive,' as nationalist sentiments make one question the rationale of allowing 'other people' into a society. In a number of former colonizing societies – Great Britain, France, The Netherlands – the 'import' of cheaper labor in the post-colonial era resulted in large migrations of people, particularly in England. With higher birth rates and the tendency of such immigrants not to assimilate, one can are England is now facing 'reverse colonialism'; who would have though 50 years ago two members of the House of Lords will be Asian descent.

In the overall scheme of human settlement, the disruptive element of immigration has been nominal. While riots may seem to suggest a catastrophe waiting to happen, the reality is less troublesome. In France it is the French youth who are being hooligans; they happen to be of African or Moroccan descent, but make no mistake: they are born and bred Frenchmen. Immigration is not the issue - our attitude towards people is.

http://newsweek.washingtonpost.com/postglobal/anwer_sher/2007/12/immigration_disruptive_only_to.html

Eclipsed by a Fevered Minority

To the World:

Most Americans are not like Tancredo, Giuliani, and Romney!

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As I move around Madrid, go to stores, libraries etc. I am still surprised at the rudeness of many Spaniard. No! they aren´t all like this, but it happens often enough to leave me a little shaken.

It may be a cultural thing, but then I wonder, maybe they are angry at us because of Iraq... since the Madrid subway bombing was related to the IRAQ war that we started. Maybe they think all Americans are jerks who think they own the world (like our presidential administration?)

Well, it has been said many times, but I´m saying it again. A large percentage of Americans DID NOT want the IRAQ war, and did not vote for Bush-Cheney in either election. In fact many think the elections were stolen.

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Scare tactics on the border


Most Americans back citizenship for illegal migrants, but are eclipsed by a fevered minority

Michael Tomasky in Washington
Monday December 3, 2007
The Guardian (London)


It may not look like it much of the time, but we Americans are a fairly reasonable people. The rugged individualist streak inherited from the frontier culture cohabits in the collective soul with a civic and communal strain that started in New England and spread from there. The strong hatred of government you hear so much about is balanced by an affection (in many cases stronger than the hatred) for many of the outcomes the government makes possible, such as the delivery of a social security cheque.

However, we're living through an age when this commonsensical balance tends to get overshadowed by a very vocal and fevered minority. On no issue is this truer than on immigration, which figures to emerge as the leading rightwing scare issue for next year's voting.
Earlier this year, Congress was, remarkably, fairly close to passing major immigration reform legislation, something that hasn't happened in Washington in 20 years. The bill's chief adherents, who had spent years working on it, were a Democrat and a Republican, Ted Kennedy and John McCain respectively. For the right, it strengthened the Mexico border with more secure fencing to keep new illegal migrants out; for the left, it offered the 12 million or so undocumented people already in the US a shot at working their way toward citizenship.

Solid majorities of my reasonable compatriots supported the bill's main provisions. According to a New York Times poll in May, for example, 67% supported renewable visas for illegal migrants, and 62% backed the more controversial notion that those in the States for at least two years should be allowed to seek legal status.

Well, the bill died. Liberals disliked certain provisions that changed a key premise of immigration policy from family reunification to employer need. But what really did the bill in was the tsunami of anger that swept across rightwing America. This, the nativists thundered, was an amnesty bill for law-breakers. It was not - amnesty means amnesty, as in all is forgiven, while the bill's provisions for securing citizenship were in fact fairly onerous.

It was a minority view - 33% in that Times poll felt that illegal migrants here for two years should be deported, as opposed to the 62% who backed a citizenship process. But it happens to be a minority that is in possession of: 1) overrepresentation in the Republican party and in Congress, which because of the way individual districts are drawn skews more conservative than the country as a whole; 2) an apoplectic propaganda network on various talk radio stations that reaches at least 25 million Americans every day; and 3) Lou Dobbs, the CNN host who is to immigration in America what, say, Peter Hitchens is to "Britishness", except that Dobbs has the more prominent pulpit of a nightly cable show from which to launch his artillery shells, and does so every single night.

And so the immigration debate as presented in the media is not about how three out of five people think a path to citizenship is an acceptable idea that is preferable to deportation; that may be true, but it's boring and lacks good visuals. So it is instead about how furious "everyone" is, which isn't necessarily true but makes far better television.

Into this maelstrom arrive our presidential candidates. The Democrats strive to represent that safe and poll-tested 62%, with the added fillip that, because of their Latino constituencies, they try to brush past any discussion of fences.

But the ground isn't always safe there. Not long ago, Hillary Clinton strolled into the propellers during a Democratic debate by taking no position (or two positions) on the question of whether illegal migrants should be able to get drivers' licences in her "home" state of New York, where the governor had proposed it. It should be noted that several other states already grant such permission, without overwhelming discord. She has since come out against such a plan. Interestingly, and perhaps riskily, Barack Obama stood by (or, based on the way he answered the question, sort of hunched by) his support for it.

On the Republican side, the two leading candidates, Rudy Giuliani and Mitt Romney, are men with humane track records on immigration now running as far and fast as they can from those records. Their sparring in last Thursday night's debate about who could be tougher on illegal immigrants was as distasteful a display of pandering as we've seen all year. Mike Huckabee, the current belle of the Republican ball, has had compassionate words to say about the children of illegal migrants, though not the migrants themselves.

In sum, the Democrats represent views held by a larger percentage of the population, while the Republicans by and large are pandering to the same 33% they usually pander to. And yet, it is assumed with near unanimity here in Washington that the issue will help the Republicans next autumn, for the reasons cited above and because of the minority's intensity of feeling.

Campaigns usually win by controlling the day-to-day issue agenda. If, next November, American voters are thinking about healthcare and jobs and not seeming insane to the rest of the world, the Democrat should win. But, of course, Republicans know this. They will want Americans to be thinking about terrorism and our porous borders - preferably in tandem. Next year's Willie Horton will not be black, but brown. I hope my fellow Americans stay reasonable when he appears.

· Michael Tomasky is editor of Guardian America michael.tomasky@guardian.co.uk

http://www.guardian.co.uk/comment/story/0,,2220788,00.html