Rather than address the concerns being raised, Camarota instead implied that the organizer had a “deep hatred of American workers.”

For more information on CIS go here, here, here or here.

FAIR was founded 30 years ago by John Tanton to address his obsession with racial eugenics, population growth, scarcity of resources, and more specifically which population group would have control of said resources. Tanton believed that the majority of immigrants were and would continue to be non-white, hence immigration became a convenient intersection and entry point for his agenda three decades ago. Immigration was a threat to Tanton’s vision for America and he set out to stop it.

Despite rooting it in racially extreme ideas, Tanton has increasingly mainstreamed his organization to achieve maximum political impact; however, FAIR’s reputation took a turn for the worst when it solicited and received 1.2 million from the Pioneer Fund in the 1990s. The Pioneer Fund was founded to promote the genes of white European Americans and funds groups who promote “race-betterment” – a controversial theory that supports the biological IQ difference between white and non-white people. In the 1930s the Pioneer Fund distributed propaganda films developed by the Nazi Party in Germany to public schools.

With that kind of financial support Tanton was able to build his empire of anti-immigrant groups that naturally attracted individuals with politically extreme ideologies that fit its own, mostly white nationalists.

Case in point, Concerned Citizens and Friends of illegal Immigration Law Enforcement (CCFIILE) is a Massachusetts-based group promoted on FAIR’s website as a state contact. One of FAIR’s main objectives is to foster anti-immigrant action at the local level. So it lists, promotes or supports dozens of state-level groups in an effort to network anti-immigration activists.

Just one problem, not only does CCFIILE crudely bash immigrants, but most of its content is dedicated to anti-Semitic videos and holocaust revisionism. It’s an unapologetic and ugly display of neo-Nazi propaganda.

The Anti-Defamation League has this to say about CCFIILE’s leader, Jim Rizoli:

Jim Rizoli, an anti-immigrant activist and anti-Semite based in Framingham, Massachusetts, delivered a lengthy diatribe promoting Holocaust denial during the October 20, 2009 segment of his public access television show. Along with his twin brother Joe, Rizoli runs Concerned Citizens and Friends of Illegal Immigration Law Enforcement (CCFIILE), a group founded in 2003.

Mainly known for demonizing Brazilian immigrants in Framingham, Rizoli took more than ten minutes of his hour-long show to defend Iranian President and Holocaust denier Mahmoud Ahmadinejad and to promote his own anti-Semitic views. Before launching into his diatribe, Rizoli spent the vast majority of his show discussing undocumented immigrants as “crimaliens” who “God doesn’t really care much about.”

This is hardly new territory for FAIR; Tanton has funded and promoted the work of white nationalist leader Jared Taylor. Taylor is both a member of the old White Citizens Council, and founder of the racist eugenicist publication, American Renaissance. In 2005, Jared Taylor would write that when black people are left on their own, “any kind of civilization disappears.” in response to Hurricane Katrina.

Even FAIR’s own staffers and board members have let slip their extremely bigoted beliefs. In 2000, Tanton’s Advisory Board Member Donald Mann was quoted as saying, “We should give incentives to low-income people who agree to sterilization. We should make available free abortions to low-income people on demand.”

Another of Tanton’s D.C.-based anti-immigrantion groups, Center for Immigration Studies (CIS), promotes the white nationalist website VDARE, which publishes the works of numerous white nationalists, including Jared Taylor and the late Sam Francis. The website also features Kevin MacDonald, the anti-Semitic California State University-Long Beach Professor.

FAIR’s close associations with extreme bigotry are inexcusable. It is time for FAIR’s leadership to come clean on their racist agenda.

Beck at a CofCC event

NumbersUSA operates at the nerve center of the most influential anti-immigrant network in the country.

This network, created by John Tanton, consists of over two dozen lobby, legal, legislative, and environmental groups that have penetrated mainstream social and political discourse. Of late, no group has been more successful than NumbersUSA, which is leading a vicious campaign against immigration reform advocates. NumbersUSA was founded in 1997 under the financial umbrella of Tanton’s U.S., Inc.

Unlike Tanton’s other groups, NumbersUSA strategically avoids overt white nationalist rhetoric in favor of emphasizing the alleged negative economic and environmental impacts of immigrants. Based in Arlington, VA, NumbersUSA presently consists of three legally distinct but financially intertwined organizations: NumbersUSA Education & Research Foundation, NumbersUSA Action, Inc., and Americans for Better Immigration.

Roy Beck is the executive director of NumbersUSA Education & Research Foundation, NumbersUSA Action, Inc., and chairman of Americans for Better Immigration. Looking at Form 990s from each group, Beck is listed as a paid employee at all three. Compensated a whopping $274,500 in 2007 alone, Beck’s paycheck is more than five times the net income of an average American. Not bad for a gig at a “grassroots” organization.

Last week Beck laid bare his plot, called “S.T.O.P. Amnesty” to defeat a powerful march for immigration reform. NumbersUSA’s troops of choice are tea partiers and hard-core anti-immigrant activists. Beck all but ordered fractured tea partiers to fall in line behind his anti-immigrant agenda on a conference call last week. As evidenced at the national tea party convention, beating up on immigrants appeals to many tea party members; however, one has to wonder if they would be so enthusiastic were they to know about Beck’s views on population control.

Just in case the tea partiers don’t stick to the anti-immigrant talking points, Roy Beck is using his environmental background and population growth “expertise” to push anti-immigrant sentiment among the conservation crowd.

Under a coalition called America’s Leadership Team for Long Range Population Immigration-Resource Planning, NumbersUSA is partnering with the American Immigration Control Foundation (AICF). AICF president John Vinson regularly writes for the white supremacist organization Council of Conservative Citizens. Vinson is also a founding member of the racist League of the South.

This year NumbersUSA released a report with Californians for Population Stabilization (CAPS). Rick Oltman, the media director of CAPS, was listed as a member by the Council of Conservative Citizens. Oltman also lost a Republican Party post in California after he supported physical attacks on undocumented immigrants.

While population growth is certainly a legitimate issue to address, just based on its ties to white nationalism as outlined above, NumbersUSA should be excluded from the discussion.

NumbersUSA supporters argue that the organization is merely a grassroots operation trying to protect American workers, but they conveniently ignore its ties to organized bigotry and murky financial structure. At the beginning of the week NumbersUSA’s campaign was heartily promoted by white nationalist David Duke. Nothing conveys “tolerance” quite like a pat on the back from a former Grand Wizard of the Knights of the Ku Klux Klan.

And what should be made of yesterday’s alert on NumbersUSA’s website that stated, “Organizers for the Amnesty March are providing transportation for marchers and have a website dedicated to helping marchers organize before Sunday. Immigration Equality is also providing transportation for the LGBT community, encouraging them to take part in the Amnesty March.”

It sounds as if NumbersUSA is pushing the buttons of some of its say, more extreme supporters, who may be into both gay and immigrant bashing.

Whether it’s in far-right conservative, working-class, or environmental communities, NumbersUSA, along with a host of related anti-immigrant groups, is trying to stir up trouble, not find solutions.

The answers to immigration issues will not be found through NumbersUSA’s brand of political extremism, but rather a vision that includes immigrants and native-born U.S. citizens working together to achieve a better life for all Americans.

Nothing else can explain its recent response to a comprehensive report on the failure of E-verify. Rather than accept the program’s failures and promote more effective ways to fix the immigration system, the network of anti-immigrant groups led by John Tanton is attacking the report and trying to discredit hard facts. The anti-immigrant trifecta of the Tanton Network – FAIR, Center for Immigration Studies and NumbersUSA – came out swinging against the report which effectively debunks their data on E-verify.

Mark Krikorian of Center for Immigration Studies said, “Nevertheless, it’s certainly true that E-Verify isn’t tight enough yet, but in a glass-half-full sense, this isn’t really bad news,” and “…we know perfectly well what the problems are, and they don’t have much to with with the E-Verify system itself.”

We do indeed know perfectly well what the problems are. The problems are anti-immigrant groups with ties to racist organizations injecting themselves into a mainstream debate and distorting data.

Here is the truth: E-verify encourages discrimination in hiring. The harder it is for employers to properly utilize the system (and it sounds nearly impossible), the more potential employees they will pass over. Don’t be surprised to one day hear reports of employers who admit to resorting to racial profiling because it was easier than E-verify. Anti-immigrant leaders like Krikorian know this. They know that applying for a job while brown is hell and E-verify just makes it worse.

Putting aside undocumented immigrants for a moment, this has serious implications for all workers of color. Think unemployment among communities of color is bad now? Just wait.

Just as the anti-immigrant movement has tried to turn landlords, local law enforcement, and ordinary citizens into the federal immigration police, so too would it like to turn employers into immigration snitches.

We can’t afford it. America is in economic trouble, and lawmakers and employers can’t afford to spend their time tracking down and reporting every single potentially undocumented immigrant. It’s a waste of precious resources and will hurt American businesses.

When anti-immigrant groups make their motives clear, when they renounce all associations with white nationalist organizations, then we can talk about E-verify. Until then, their opinions on the matter simply aren’t valid.

Leading this effort is Immigration Reform Law Institute (IRLI), the legal arm of the John Tanton Network. IRLI’s primary purpose is to push legal causes that unfairly target immigrant communities. IRLI works with extremist anti-immigrant groups and leaders to push anti-immigrant ordinances at the municipal level. In 1985, John Tanton launched IRLI, but made sure he kept it firmly under the control of Federation for American Immigration Reform, which has tried to portray itself as a mainstream organization despite its links to extremist groups, including white nationalists.

IRLI “was structured in such a way that it could operate under FAIR’S tax exemption but have its own board, appointed initially by FAIR’S board,” Tanton says in an oral history. “We tried to keep control of IRLI by making sure that the FAIR board was the ultimate authority in appointing the IRLI board.”

In New Jersey, IRLI brags about bringing a federal civil racketeering lawsuit against apartment owners for “illegal harboring” in 2008. In Pennsylvania, IRLI has persistently tried to pass anti-harboring ordinances and cost the city of Hazelton an untold amount of money in the process.

These are just a few examples of IRLI’s efforts to set a model for local legislation that will make it impossible to rent an apartment or give someone a ride in a car without first confirming their citizenship. This will make for some very serious divisions in our communities. Divisions that would make John Tanton’s white supremacist friends very happy.

Friends like VDARE, the white supremacist online publication founded by Peter Brimelow and supported by his foundation Center for American Unity. This 2006 brief illustrates Center for American Unity’s collaboration with John Tanton Network organizations. The Center for American Unity considers multiculturalism a threat to American heritage.

Then there is the question of who will be targeted next. Will taxi drivers be sued for picking up customers? Will school bus drivers have to defend themselves in court if they drive undocumented children to school? What about motel owners in these communities or ambulance drivers? I wouldn’t put it past The John Tanton Network to do whatever is necessary to divide communities along racial lines. One of FAIR’s state contacts, Minnesotans for Immigration Reform, has already taken these activities to the fringe. It recently promoted a very extreme website to supporters. The website asserts that “aiding and abetting” undocumented immigrants is a felony, and offers visitors the opportunity to “report” their landlord. Aside from all the blatantly inaccurate information contained on the site, it is clearly advocating for extreme vigilantism.

The anti-immigrant movement claims to be protecting regular, working Americans, but its actions say otherwise.

Americans value the freedom to prosper. And the freedom to do with their property as they see fit. Threatening property owners with lawsuits to further a political agenda is underhanded and hinders the economic prosperity of average Americans.