Report Proves Anti-Immigrant Network Tied to Racist Extremism

February 3, 2009 by Jill Garvey
Filed under: Immigration 
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The Southern Poverty Law Center (SPLC) released a report today exhaustively exploring the links between FAIR, Center for Immigration Studies (CIS), and NumbersUSA. Not just their relationships with one another, but their associations with racist extremists. The evidence is damning. These so-called “rational voices” on immigration are unequivocally founded in racist ideology. The more we learn, the more disturbing anti-immigrant associations become.

For years the real truth about these groups has been hovering near the surface of the public consciousness. All the while the founder of these groups, John Tanton, was steering them deeper into mainstream acceptance. It looks as if the charade is finally up. SPLC’s report states,

[FAIR] hired as key officials men who also joined white supremacist groups. It has board members who regularly write for hate publications. It promotes racist conspiracy theories about Latinos. And it has produced television programming featuring white nationalists.

An interactive website and video was launched by America’s Voice today as well. The video calls out Tanton, Dan Stein, Mark Krikorian, and Roy Beck as the leadership behind an extremist anti-immigrant network, calling them wolves in sheep’s clothing for passing themselves off as harmless advocacy organizations.

On the website you can vote on which of the anti-immigrant leaders is the “top anti-immigrant wolf”. My vote is going to Roy Beck, head of NumbersUSA. While John Tanton may be the mastermind, Roy Beck, Tanton’s long-time employee, has surpassed his mentor, gaining inroads into mainstream media on immigration. Unsurprisingly, the mounting condemnations against Tanton are threatening Beck’s mainstream success. According to SPLC,

John Tanton, it seems, is undermining Roy Beck’s respectability. ‘It is amazing that Beck has attained the mainstream status he has, considering where he comes from,’ concludes Henry Fernandez, a senior fellow at the progressive Center for American Progress, a think tank based in Washington, D.C. ‘His extremely close and decades-long relationship with Tanton should give pause to anyone who deals with NumbersUSA.’

With FAIR taking the heat for associations with white-supremacists, holocaust deniers, and white nationalists, it appears that NumbersUSA and Beck may be attempting to pick up the torch and keep on running this bigoted anti-immigrant network.

On the bright side, Republicans got a public bashing in a New York Times editorial on Saturday. The article took them to task over the well-hidden racial extremism that has had a strangle-hold on the party for several years, and warned of increased racism in times of economic uncertainty.

It is easy to mock white-supremacist views as pathetic and to assume that nativism in the age of Obama is on the way out. The country has, of course, made considerable progress since the days of Know-Nothings and the Klan. But racism has a nasty habit of never going away, no matter how much we may want it to, and thus the perpetual need for vigilance.

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Comments

3 Responses to “Report Proves Anti-Immigrant Network Tied to Racist Extremism”

  1. MdeG on February 3rd, 2009 2:14 pm

    Good work by SPLC. Thank you!

    [Reply]
  2. pookiebear on February 3rd, 2009 8:14 pm

    I had a chance during a mission trip to nuevo laredo to speak with a man who had illegally crossed the border and been caught and sent home three times. It is stirring to see the determination of someone to go through this so that his family can move out of the illegal house they live in on an old garbage dump. I think one should seperate patriotic ideas, entitlement, racial stereotypes, or any other concerns and wonder what is the moral thing to do? How would I feel if I was in their shoes? The thing is many of these anti-immigrant guys are Christian, how do they square that with the golden rule in the bible: “So whatever you wish that men would do to you, do so to them; for this is the Law and the prophets.” (Matthew 7:12 RSV)

    [Reply]
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