Alliance of White Anti-Racists Everywhere – Los Angeles
White Nationalists
Top to Bottom, FAIR is Steeped in Extremism
01 year ago
‘What’s in a name?’ is an especially relevant question when it comes to the Federation for American Immigration Reform (FAIR). For an organization with such a benign moniker, it has a whole lot of hate propping it up. Go to FAIR’s website and at first glance it may seem like just another conservative, beltway organization; relatively boring, chock full of links to articles and “factual” data on immigration, but lurking a few clicks away are clues to FAIR’s more sinister core.
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.
Controversial Anti-immigrant Group Attends Immigrant Rights March
01 year ago
by Stephen Piggott
in American Renaissance, Americans For Immigration Control, Council Of Conservative Citizens, Federation For American Immigration Reform, Hate Campaign, Immigrant Rights, Immigration, Jared Taylor, John Tanton, Numbers Usa, Numbersusa, Politics, Roy Beck, White Nationalists, White Supremacist
Today in Washington D.C., Roy Beck, the executive director of the anti-immigrant organization NumbersUSA will be on the National Mall debating with immigration reform marchers who are flooding to the capital from all across the country.
NumbersUSA will be streaming the event live on its website as part of a four day anti-immigrant hate campaign which began on Friday. NumbersUSA’s campaign has so far failed to live up to its own high expectations with less than one percent of its alleged 900,000 members signing its most recent “anti-amnesty” petition, a key part of the four day campaign.
Throughout the campaign, NumbersUSA has updated its twitter page constantly. On many of the tweets there is the term “#AFIRE.” This term refers to Americans for Immigration Control and Enforcement, a “National DC based office in conjunction with Americans for Immigration Reform and Enforcement (AFIRE) made up of FAIR and Numbers USA.” According to this statement on the Utah chapter of the Federation for American Immigration Reform (FAIR), we can see that NumbersUSA and FAIR are actively working together. This is just another example of two John Tanton Network groups teaming up to bash immigrants.
NumbersUSA’s finances and ties to white nationalists are very disturbing. Roy Beck, the group’s executive director spoke at a 1997 Council of Conservative Citizens conference, something that has haunted Beck ever since. Council of Conservative Citizens (CofCC) is a white supremacist hate group. Its conferences have hosted a who’s who of the white nationalist hierarchy over the years, including Jared Taylor, founder of American Renaissance.
Beck is paid a colossal amount of money each year by NumbersUSA to spew anti-immigrant rhetoric. Beck was compensated a whopping $274,500 in 2007 alone, Beck’s paycheck is more than five times the net income of an average American.
Beck has also begun to think about the future of NumbersUSA and who will replace him at the helm when he finally retires. One of Beck’s right hand men at NumbersUSA is Chad MacDonald, the Director of Social Media Marketing for NumbersUSA. Chad recently spoke with Roy Beck and Tom Tancredo at the National Tea Party Convention, telling the crowd that each tea party group should have an “immigration expert.”
MacDonald has been busy in recent weeks in preparing for the four day anti-immigrant campaign. He has appeared in many videos, on both NumbersUSA’s website and YouTube page, discussing the immigration reform march and NumbersUSA’s anti-immigrant response to it. MacDonald is a much younger and more likable alternative to Beck, making him an ideal candidate to be the new face of NumbersUSA.
Anti-Immigration Group Calls Immigrants ‘Third-World Gold Diggers’
01 year ago
This post by Erin Rosa at Campus Progress describes the agenda of anti-immigrant groups that are attempting to disparage civil rights organizations.
Embattled by numerous reports of its ties to white nationalists, The Center For Immigration Studies (CIS), a Washington D.C.-based think thank that strongly opposes immigration reform, lashed out today against advocacy groups like the Southern Poverty Law Center (SPLC) and the National Council of La Raza for participating in “smear” attacks and “manipulating the press” on the immigration issue.
But in the end, it was CIS executive director Mark Krikorian who justified his own smears, defending his groups’ labeling of immigrants as “third-world gold diggers” by calling such rhetoric “colorful language that was too colorful.”
The CIS event, held this morning in Washington, was organized to premiere CIS’s newest report, “Immigration and the SPLC,” a quasi-investigative look at the watchdog group’s research and financial records.
It’s no secret why CIS had dedicated a 27-page report to disparage the SPLC and other entities like the NCLR, a Latino advocacy organization. Both of the targeted organizations have been steadfastly producing research that ties the Center and other anti-immigration groups to white nationalism and racist rhetoric.
But rather than actually responding to anything said about CIS, the report focuses on times when SPLC allegedly took quotes from other anti-immigration groups out of context. The report also blames the media for being too “cooperative” when citing SPLC, and questions the objectivity of the watchdog group for working with pro-immigration groups like the NCLR.
In an effort to get to the bottom of some of these claims, I asked Krikorian a question, about an instance, cited by SPLC, where one of CIS’s reports (no longer on the Web site) referred to immigrants as “third-world gold diggers.”
To read the article in its entirety, click here.
Anti-Immigration Group Calls Immigrants ‘Third-World Gold Diggers’
01 year ago
This post by Erin Rosa at Campus Progress describes the agenda of anti-immigrant groups that are attempting to disparage civil rights organizations.
Embattled by numerous reports of its ties to white nationalists, The Center For Immigration Studies (CIS), a Washington D.C.-based think thank that strongly opposes immigration reform, lashed out today against advocacy groups like the Southern Poverty Law Center (SPLC) and the National Council of La Raza for participating in “smear” attacks and “manipulating the press” on the immigration issue.
But in the end, it was CIS executive director Mark Krikorian who justified his own smears, defending his groups’ labeling of immigrants as “third-world gold diggers” by calling such rhetoric “colorful language that was too colorful.”
The CIS event, held this morning in Washington, was organized to premiere CIS’s newest report, “Immigration and the SPLC,” a quasi-investigative look at the watchdog group’s research and financial records.
It’s no secret why CIS had dedicated a 27-page report to disparage the SPLC and other entities like the NCLR, a Latino advocacy organization. Both of the targeted organizations have been steadfastly producing research that ties the Center and other anti-immigration groups to white nationalism and racist rhetoric.
But rather than actually responding to anything said about CIS, the report focuses on times when SPLC allegedly took quotes from other anti-immigration groups out of context. The report also blames the media for being too “cooperative” when citing SPLC, and questions the objectivity of the watchdog group for working with pro-immigration groups like the NCLR.
In an effort to get to the bottom of some of these claims, I asked Krikorian a question, about an instance, cited by SPLC, where one of CIS’s reports (no longer on the Web site) referred to immigrants as “third-world gold diggers.”
To read the article in its entirety, click here.
NumbersUSA’s Excuses are a Dime a Dozen
01 year ago
The controversial anti-immigrant group NumbersUSA is still having a difficult time being completely above board with the American public. Over the last year the organization has been busy spinning its connections with white nationalists and its organizational stance on reproductive rights. This week it appears that NumbersUSA is adding fundraising to the list.
Last week Imagine2050 blogger Stephen Piggott wrote about a NumbersUSA Action email solicitation that asked individuals to donate money. NumbersUSA Action is one of the three interlocking organizations under the umbrella of NumbersUSA.
In the email NumbersUSA Action suggests to its donors that, unlike its opponents, it receives no monies from government or foundation sources. The email does not inform supporters that its research and education arm has no problem taking millions of dollars from the right-wing Sarah Scaife Foundation and the population control oriented Colcom foundation.
Last week NumbersUSA Executive Director Roy Beck wrote to Imagine2050 saying “Our grassroots lobbying organization relies 100% on the small donations of concerned Americans.” According to its 990s (government tax records) that’s not exactly true either. In 2006 and 2007 alone NumbersUSA transferred nearly a million dollars from its research and education arm to NumbersUSA Action.
While it is perfectly legal for the organization to transfer these funds, to turn around and say that it “relies 100% on the small donations of concerned Americans” comes across as misleading. Something that NumbersUSA appears to be growing extremely comfortable with of late.
Last year, in response to concerns about its relationship to hate groups, Beck wrote that “NumbersUSA has never had connections with white supremacists — not in the past, not in the present, not in the future.” Once a picture surfaced of Beck speaking at a 1997 white supremacist event he simply explained “I have never denied having spoken to the Council of Conservative Citizens on my book tour in 1997.
Having, at least in his own mind, explained why he spoke to an organization that was formed by those who defended racial segregation, Beck chooses to ignore why he and his organization continue to find themselves in similar predicaments seventeen years later. Until 2005 Beck continued to regularly publish in the The Social Contract Press. The journal is edited by Wayne Lutton a longtime leader in the white nationalist movement and a board member of the anti-Semitic Charles Martel Society.
But it is not just the past. This year NumbersUSA joined in a project with two notorious anti-immigrant organizations, Californians for Population Stabilization (CAPS) and U.S. Inc.
CAPS is headed up by Rick Oltman a purported member of the Council of Conservative Citizens who was removed from a Republican Party post in 1996 for supporting physical attacks on undocumented immigrants. The other organization, U.S. Inc., is run by white nationalist John Tanton who wrote that hate crime laws in Europe were pushed by “Jewish interests” and revealed to the American public that immigration was simply “a skirmish in a wider war.”
Instead of accepting responsibility for its actions, NumbersUSA seeks to satisfy its critics with excuses, omissions, and political spin. Recently, while giving a workshop at a national Tea Party gathering Roy Beck was confronted about NumbersUSA’s alleged support of abortion and population control. Beck responded by telling the tea party activists that these were not NumbersUSA issues.
Again Roy Beck wasn’t being quite as truthful as he could have been. I guess he somehow forgot to mention that he and Leon Kolankiewicz released a history of the U.S. Population Stabilization (1970-1998) in 2000 available on its website. Abortion and contraceptive are key components of population stabilization the essay argues.
I’m sure that NumbersUSA will shortly deliver up to twenty more excuses to explain its inability to be transparent with the American public. If excuses truly come a dime a dozen, NumbersUSA won’t ever have to worry about fundraising again.
NumbersUSA’s Three Branches of Financial Shadiness
01 year ago
NumbersUSA, the grassroots mobilizing arm of the John Tanton Network, has had a long history of lies and deceit. Executive director Roy Beck has long denied his connections to white nationalists. Beck spoke at the 1997 Council of Conservative Citizens National Conference, a fact he denied on numerous occasions until recently. At a recent event in Glenarden, Maryland, Beck told the crowd that he hadn’t been invited back since, in reference to the 1997 Conference.
NumbersUSA’s financial information is as murky and misleading as its leader. The group itself is split into three arms: NumbersUSA Education & Research Foundation, NumbersUSA Action, Inc., and Americans for Better Immigration. According to financial documents, all three share offices and personnel with one other. NumbersUSA Education & Research Foundation is a 501(c)(3) organization which means its lobby for legislation powers are limited. NumbersUSA Action, Inc. and Americans for Better Immigration are 501(c)(4) organizations meaning they have unlimited lobbying ability.
First let’s compare the income of NumbersUSA Education & Research Foundation and NumbersUSA Action, Inc. According to its 2008 financial documents, NumbersUSA Action, Inc. received over $1.5 million in direct public support, NumbersUSA Education & Research Foundation received over 8 million.
According to Open Secrets, NumbersUSA.com spent a whopping $630,000 on lobbying in 2008. NumbersUSA.com is the website listed on both NumbersUSA Education & Research Foundation and NumbersUSA Action, Inc.’s 2008 financial documents.
Recently, Roy Beck wrote to NumbersUSA supporters asking them to donate money to help them pay the $90,000 a month they spend on “faxing, internet activism and grassroots mobilization programs.” Beck went on to say that NumbersUSA “doesn’t get a penny from any foundation or the government.”
This is yet another example of Beck possibly stretching the truth. According to its 2008 financial documents, the Sarah Scaife Foundation paid NumbersUSA Research and Education $50,000, but because it shares office space, personnel and a website with NumbersUSA Action, Beck’s statements are suspicious.
According to the Colcom Foundation’s 2007 financial documents, they gave NumbersUSA Education & Research Foundation over $2 million. According to its 2008 financial documents, the Weeden Foundation gave NumbersUSA $25,000.
Roy Beck and NumbersUSA have a history of distorting the facts. There is a clear lack of transparency in this organization.
Though NumbersUSA’s financial information is very murky, its connections to the John Tanton Network are as clear as day.
Anti-immigrant Movement Attacks American Property Owners
01 year ago
by Jill Garvey
in Apartment Owners, Center for American Unity, Economy, Extremist Groups, Federation For American Immigration Reform, Immigrant Communities, Immigration, Immigration Laws, Immigration Reform Law Institute, John Tanton, Peter Brimelow, Politics, VDARE, White Nationalists, White Supremacist
The anti-immigrant movement wants private property owners to enforce immigration laws, and be punished when they don’t. It’s shocking the lengths some groups have gone to in order to pressure, intimidate or force ordinary citizens into complying with their anti-immigrant activities.
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.
The John Tanton Network Brings Hate to African American Community in Maryland
01 year ago
Tonight in Glenarden, Maryland, a townhall meeting is taking place entitled, “Understanding the Impact of Illegal Immigration on the Citizens of Prince George’s County and the State of Maryland.” The event features three groups connected to the John Tanton Network: Help Save Maryland, a group that is listed as a state contact on FAIR’s website; NumbersUSA, a project of the John Tanton Network; and Immigration Reform Law Institute (IRLI), another project of the Tanton Network. The discussion’s moderator is Sandy Pruitt of People for Change. Leo Alexander, a candidate for mayor of Washington DC and Paulette Faulkner, a former State of Maryland employee are also speaking.
When I first read about this event the immediate question that came to mind was, ‘why is the John Tanton Network, a network of organizations with strong ties to white nationalists, coming into a town that is 95% black and holding a discussion on immigration?’
On the surface, it looks as if the John Tanton Network is reaching out to African Americans, but this is not the case. It is instead trying to divide the African American community over the issue of immigration. In recent months, the Tanton Network has used a populist method to attempt to divide religious leaders from constituents, and business and union leaders from workers over the issue of Immigration. For African Americans, this is a civil rights issue, not an immigration issue. The fact that the Tanton Network has the audacity to come into an African American community and attempt to divide it is unacceptable and cannot be tolerated. The fact is the Tanton Network does not care about the African American community, they are merely using it for political gain.
This impudent attempt by the John Tanton Network to divide the African American community will not end after the discussion in Glenarden tonight. Roy Beck of NumbersUSA will go back to Virginia and Monique A. Miles of IRLI will return to Washington DC, but one group, Help Save Maryland will remain. This group has been extremely active over the past year and will continue to be so for the foreseeable future. This group is a danger not only to the African American and immigrant communities, but to all residents of Maryland. Until Marylander’s take a strong stand against it, Help Save Maryland will continue to divide communities at the local level just as the national organizations of the John Tanton Network are attempting to divide both nationally and locally.
Sheriff Arpaio Joins Forces with Anti-immigrant Attorney
01 year ago
by Sarah Viets
in American Renaissance, Civil Rights, Federation For American Immigration Reform, Gop Candidate, Hate Group, Immigration, Immigration Reform Law Institute, Joe Arpaio, John Tanton, Kris Kobach, Maricopa County, Politics, Sheriff Arpaio, Southern Poverty Law Center, Wayne Lutton, White Nationalists
Joe Arpaio has found a new friend who is just as controversial as the sheriff himself. Kris Kobach and Arpaio appeared together at a press conference yesterday afternoon to unveil a new program that trains officers to target immigrants. Kobach, a GOP candidate for Secretary of State in Kansas, works for the Immigration Reform Law Institute (IRLI). According IRLI’s website, it is the “public interest law affiliate of the Federation for American Immigration Reform” aka FAIR, designated as a hate group by the civil rights organization Southern Poverty Law Center.
Before detailing FAIR’s controversial relationships with white nationalists, let’s first examine Kobach’s colleague at IRLI, Mike Hethmon. Hethmon has worked with John Tanton (the founder of FAIR) for nearly nine years. Just last fall he attended Tanton’s annual Writers Workshop. In fact, Hethmon began his “legal overview” presentation by personally thanking “Dr. Tanton for hosting and sustaining what is now I believe 33 years of the Writers Workshop.” Hethmon also added that he has “had the privilege of attending for several years.”
What is even more disturbing is Hethmon’s association with two other attendees: Peter Brimelow, the founder of VDARE, a website dedicated to “race-betterment,” and Wayne Lutton, editor of The Social Contract, a quarterly white nationalist journal published by John Tanton. According to a recent article Lutton also writes for the anti-Semitic publication Occidental Quarterly and was scheduled to give a presentation on immigration issues during an anti-Black annual conference sponsored by American Renaissance.
After reviewing the long list of these troubling relationships, it’s hard to tell if immigration is the only issue of concern for Kris Kobach and the Immigration Reform Law Institute.
But the Immigration Reform Law Institute’s attorneys don’t just rub elbows with hate groups and far-right extremists, both Kobach and Hethmon have received significant financial support from FAIR. According to tax documents, FAIR has paid Hethmon over $400,000 and Kobach $125,000. In 2004, Kobach also accepted $10,000 from the U.S. Immigration Reform PAC, formerly known as the FAIR PAC. Perhaps IRLI’s legal counselors are merely following in the footsteps of their financial backers.
Arpaio’s office has not disclosed where it got the funds to pay Kris Kobach. Maybe the Maricopa County Sheriff’s Office is receiving a little help in that department.
According to several documents, John Tanton, the founder of FAIR, solicited and successfully received over 1.2 million from the Pioneer Fund. The Pioneer Fund is a foundation committed to eugenics and “scientific racism” used to justify the crimes of Nazi Germany.
FAIR also hired members of the Council of Conservative Citizens, an organization originally developed to fight integration during the Civil Rights Movement. When civil rights organizations asked FAIR to explain its controversial relationships, particularly its funding sources, FAIR’s current president Dan Stein stated, “I don’t give a sh*t what they do with their money, my job is to get every dime of Pioneer’s money.”
In 1989, John Tanton wrote, “I have all along seen the immigration battle as really a skirmish in a wider war . . .” Since that time critics of Tanton have worried that his “wider war” is one steeped in racism and white nationalism.
Yesterday’s development should alarm Maricopa County residents. Kobach’s ongoing relationship with the Immigration Reform Law Institute and FAIR is disturbing. According to a Kansas City Star article, Kobach blamed his loss of a 2004 Senate race on a series of ads “that charged Kobach with associating with groups that had white supremacist ties.” Kobach said he underestimated the ads’ effect. Perhaps he thought Kansas voters would support a candidate who works for a hate group. Gratefully, he was wrong.
If voters in Kansas stood tall against bigotry, so should Maricopa County.
White Nationalist Rhetoric Prevalent in Mainstream Discourse
02 years ago
The term “illegal alien” or “illegal immigrant” is not acceptable in mainstream rhetoric. Not from anti-immigrant advocates and especially not from immigrant rights supporters. I sometimes hear conversations that allude to using the term “illegal” to gain support for immigration reform from people in the ‘middle’. While the argument sounds logical, the term “illegal” was inserted into the mainstream by anti-immigrant groups, and every time we use it, beyond criminalizing people, we perpetuate a racist framework.
The term “illegal alien” is fairly new. When the 14th amendment was ratified in the 1800s, the term did not exist. After 1965, when the Immigration and Nationality Act was passed, which redressed previous laws that favored immigrants from Europe, terms like “illegal Immigrant” or “illegal alien” were inserted into mainstream discourse by white nationalists. Those that saw this country as a homeland for white people – not only to be controlled economically and politically by whites, but to look white – were disturbed by the influx of people from the global south after the 1965 Act.
It was intentional on the side of anti-immigrant leaders to label immigrants of color as “alien” and as the “other”. The term “illegal” was part of the effort to repeal anti-discrimination laws passed during the civil rights era, and to enact a set of legislation and enforcement that criminalized and restricted immigrants of color from entering the country. The language created by white nationalists is reflected in so many of the comment sections of blogs and articles on immigration. Just recently, Dream Act students blasted USA Today reporter Emily Bazar when she used the term “illegal student” in an article.
Language constructs reality. So why do I find it disturbing when I hear strategies about gaining support for immigration reform by using the term “illegal”? Not only does it irk me to use the framework and language of white nationalists, but it is a way of consenting to bigotry.
While we must always act strategically and gauge our goals based on the actual political climate, when we take up the language of anti-immigrant white nationalists it is not concession; it is putting our hands up and claiming defeat. This is a time to stick to what we know is right, to use the term “undocumented”, to fight for what is true and real in the face of political games and gains. If we do, we will have laid the foundation for a society that is based on human dignity rather than fear, divisiveness and separation.