Alliance of White Anti-Racists Everywhere – Los Angeles
Anti Immigration
Anti-immigrant Forces Target Struggling American Communities
01 year ago
by Jill Garvey
in Anti Immigration, Center for Immigration Studies, FAIR, Federal Immigration Law, Federation For American Immigration Reform, Fremont Nebraska, Immigration, Immigration Laws, John Tanton, John Tanton Network, Kris Kobach, Nebraska Community Colleges, Politics, Racial Profiling, Sheriff Joe Arpaio, Undocumented Immigrants
Kobach
Tanton
The man at the heart of the most influential anti-immigrant network in the country, John Tanton, has created an empire of organizations consisting of lobbyists, lawyers, legislators, and “experts” who have infiltrated the very depths of social and political debate.
Lately, that has been no more apparent than in Arizona’s Maricopa County, where the Tanton Network’s favorite attorney, Kris Kobach, is busy working with notoriously brutal Sheriff Joe Arpaio. A Kansas attorney, professor, and politician with controversial associations, Kobach has a history of preying on vulnerable communities. Communities weakened, for example, by corruption or political division.
Maricopa County residents learned that the hard way when Kobach abruptly appeared with a plan to train over 800 deputies in the art of terrorizing the immigrant community. Supporters of Kobach’s program say it will help local deputies enforce federal immigration law, but fail to take a cue from the federal government’s recent decision to strip deputies of their power to make immigration arrests. Additionally, it does little to help the sheriff’s office fend off persistent accusations of racial profiling and related legal troubles.
Maricopa residents aren’t alone.
Last year Kobach partnered with a small group of Fremont, Nebraska residents to propose a city ordinance that would make it a crime to aid or abet undocumented immigrants. And just last month Kobach sued the Board of Regents for the University of Nebraska System, the Board of Governors for the State College System, and the Board of Governors for each of the Nebraska Community Colleges to end the practice of public universities offering in-state tuition to students who cannot prove citizenship. Interestingly, fewer than 50 undocumented students are receiving in-state tuition at Nebraska’s colleges and universities.
Kobach has attempted to pass severe anti-immigration laws in towns across Pennsylvania, California, Missouri, and Texas. What do these communities have in common besides Kris Kobach? They reap no benefits from the anti-immigrant laws and ordinances he is trying to implement and are often left with a costly legal mess.
In Hazelton, PA, after an ordinance crafted by Kobach and fellow IRLI attorney Michael Hethmon was struck down by a federal judge, the city was forced to pay for all legal fees.
Mr. Kobach has penetrated all these communities while drawing a hefty paycheck from the Immigration Reform Law Institute, the legal arm of the anti-immigrant group, the Federation for American Immigration Reform (FAIR). The Southern Poverty Law Center, a respected civil rights organization, lists FAIR as a hate group on its website, based on FAIR’s association with white nationalist organizations.
What appears to the public as a myriad of voices advocating for immigration enforcement is nothing more than a series of front groups and spin-offs seeking to overwhelm reasonable debate on immigration. Tanton founded the Federation for American Immigration Reform 30 years ago and shortly thereafter U.S. Inc. These two entities jointly fund and support most of today’s national anti-immigrant groups. They operate under names like Center for Immigration Studies which serves as the Network’s quasi-think tank, or the Coalition for the Future American Worker which pretends to be the voice of American workers. Names meant to belie the most sinister aspect of John Tanton’s Network. Civil rights groups continue to uncover the Tanton Network’s troubling associations with racists, white supremacists, and political extremists. One is the Pioneer Fund, a foundation committed to eugenics and “scientific racism”. The Pioneer Fund provided John Tanton with the funding he needed to build a multi-million dollar operation.
Anti-immigrant groups are using vulnerable communities like Maricopa County and Fremont to give their leadership mainstream legitimacy in the immigration debate, regardless of the cost to residents. While the Phoenix community embroils itself in a costly debate, Kris Kobach is busy building his campaign for Secretary of State in Kansas and his national political profile.
The Tanton Network’s agenda is obvious – create racial divisions among Americans using immigrants as the wedge. In communities across the nation, from Arizona to Nebraska to Pennsylvania, our towns and cities have become casualties of the anti-immigrant movement’s intolerant agenda. Before anti-immigrant rhetoric takes hold, they must loudly and collectively reject extremist groups. It is in our nation’s best interest.
Anti-immigration is White Nationalism
02 years ago
After reading about the John Tanton Network’s relationship to eugenics and possibly sterilization, I finally broke down in tears. As a researcher who studies white nationalism and anti-immigration for a civil rights organization, the majority of what I read is deeply offensive. It usually doesn’t bother me; I see my work as a necessary tool to educate people about white nationalism in a post-civil rights era. But as I re-read how eugenics scholars may have advocated for the forced sterilization of non-Christian people who weren’t white, I turned off my desk lamp and went home for the night.
As Barry Mehler points out in the video, Immigration and the White Nationalist Movement, modern day anti-immigration is rooted in the eugenics movement of the 1920s, similar to anti-immigration in the 20th century. Both fought, and are fighting, to preserve the idea of a white nation. However, unlike today, anti-immigration of the 1920’s openly fought to preserve white supremacy. Since it’s no longer socially acceptable to openly promote eugenics, modern anti-immigration hides its white nationalist roots.“The movement to restrict immigration, legal immigration and illegal immigration is a white nationalist movement. The concern is for white control of the United States”, says Mehler when addressing the links between the two movements.
Intellectual thinkers behind modern anti-immigration are some of the exact same leaders behind the current white nationalist movement. The creation of over two dozen anti-immigrant organizations, including the Federation for American Immigration Reform (FAIR), was driven by white nationalism. Both concur their believe that multi-racial societies are inherently unstable, and…that a preference for one’s own group is natural, normal, and healthy and that “the genetic make-up of “non-white” people is biologically and culturally inferior to white people.” In fact, anti-immigration is white nationalism.
For example, John Tanton, the founder of FAIR, the Center for Immigration Studies, and NumbersUSA, received over 1.2 million from a pro-eugenics foundation. The editor of Tanton’s quarterly journal, The Social Contract, is also a board member of the well-known anti-Semitic organization, The Charles Martel Society. The summer 2009 issue of The Social Contract asserts that “new research shows that evolutionarily driven genetic factors provide a powerful explanation of differences in both achievement and temperament.” According to the author, “Not only are we supposedly biologically different, immigration will threaten the intellectual development of our nation. “
As Rep. Luis Gutierrez lays the ground work for immigration reform, Americans must remember that the issue isn’t necessarily immigration.
It’s a debate about what America should look like.
Tancredo Kicks Off Tea Party Convention with Racist Comments
0The registration room was an open hallway lined with media on one side and sponsors’ booths on the other. Sponsors included Judicial Watch, Jensen Apparel, Leadership Institute, and Surge USA. At 7:00pm attendees were ushered inside the grand ballroom, which had about 30 small tables for four and 400 seats surrounding an elaborate stage. Before taking seats, the masses were treated to hors’dourves of coconut shrimp and pulled pork canapé while the event’s organizer, Judson Phillips, took to the stage. Forgetting his notes didn’t help him remember the long list of sponsors he was supposed to thank, and after several awkward flubs Phillips collected himself enough to introduce former Colorado congressman Tom Tancredo to the stage to a standing ovation. Tancredo stood smiling at the crowd and waving before starting off his speech with “I’m Tom Tancredo and I drive a Harley!” He quickly moved on from the topic of motorcycles, however, to get to his main target: immigrants.
He stated that many of the people who voted Obama into office “can’t even spell the word vote or even speak English,” which brought loud applause from the crowd. He said that it was a good thing that McCain didn’t win the election otherwise we would be see him and Rep. Gutierrez receive awards from NCLR for introducing and implementing an amnesty bill. He went on to talk about the “cult of multiculturalism” which is “aided by leftists.”
He issued a warning to the crowd that “our culture is at stake” and that our culture “is based on Judeo-Christian values whether people like it or not!” Near the end of his speech Tancredo announced to the crowd that he was going to be working with Roy Beck, executive director of NumbersUSA (an anti-immigrant group with strong ties to white nationalists) at their breakout session on Friday. He encouraged people to attend the session and thanked Roy Beck and NumbersUSA for all their good work.
It is obvious that Beck and Tancredo are trying to push the issue of immigration to the forefront of the tea party movement, something that was explicitly clear during Tancredo’s speech. The acts that followed paled in comparison to Tancredo, who definitely stole the first night spotlight of the three day event. Tancredo was followed by two musical acts and a prayer led by Dr. Rick Scarborough before the movie, Tea Party, A Documentary was screened.
Stay tuned to Imagine2050 for more updates on the first ever Tea Party National Convention.