Vernon Briggs’ Little White Anti-Immigrant Lies

May 29, 2009 by Eric Ward
Filed under: Immigration, Politics 
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Vernon Briggs

Unless I’m just coming in from a night out on the town I’ve always detested early mornings. There just seems to be something unnatural about awakening before the sun starts to rise. It makes me feel as if I’m missing some key piece of data that helps to inform my day. That’s how I felt this Thursday morning when I awoke at 4:30 a.m., but as you will see for a completely different reason.

On Wednesday I had received a call from National Public Radio (NPR) asking if I would be willing to participate on one of its daily news shows, Tell Me More with Michel Martin. I love the opportunity to dialogue even at 6:30 in the morning, and the subject was African Americans and immigration so I readily agreed.

I was told later that afternoon that my co-guest was Vernon Briggs a professor at Cornell University. What neither I nor NPR realized at the time was that Briggs was engaging in the “sin of omission.” Briggs decided not to disclose that he was an active leader with the Center for Immigration Studies (CIS) an organization with ties to hate groups according to the civil rights institution the Southern Poverty Law Center.

It was only later that evening as I prepared for the radio show that it became clear who this simple professor from Cornell University really was. Briggs, a current board member of the Center for Immigration Studies, has worked with the controversial John Tanton Network of anti-immigrant organizations since 1984. Tanton, who has defended Holocaust Deniers and dabbles in racist eugenics science, raised over $25,000 to support Briggs work in 1995. John Tanton identified himself as the main leader of CIS until 1994.

Briggs also served as a board member of John Tanton’s Social Contract Press. Social Contract Press publishes the writings of many individuals associated with the reconstituted 1960’s white citizens’ councils now calling itself the Council of Conservative Citizens. Briggs obviously felt that in discussing the issue of race and immigration that his links to CIS, Social Contract Press and John Tanton might cause listeners to become actively objective when considering his arguments.

Briggs instead chose to play down his controversial background to both NPR and its listening audience. When I brought this up to viewers during the conversation on African Americans and immigration Briggs became very agitated. And when I pointed out that the Center for Immigration Studies makes numerous assertions without substantiating them Briggs began shouting out names of black leaders as if the very names themselves would somehow protect him from CIS’s manipulation of data.

Like I said, when I woke up very early this morning I felt like something was missing. By 7:15 a.m. I found out what it was. It was simply that turning to Vernon Brigg’s and Center for Immigration Studies for unbiased and objective data on immigration is like turning to David Duke and the Klan for information on affirmative action.

Listen and hear for yourself:

http://www.npr.org/templates/story/story.php?storyId=104652090

I’m going to bed, I feel much better now.

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