Anti-Immigrants Believe Third Time’s a Charm for Greens

August 19, 2009 by Eric Ward
Filed under: Ecopolitics, Immigration 
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This morning I came across a quote from the Christian Bible that says “Be sober, be vigilant; because your adversary the devil, as a roaring lion, walketh about, seeking whom he may devour.” The environmental movement, if it is to remain politically relevant, would do well to remember this in the coming years. Anti-immigrant bigots are once again targeting the green movement. Environmentalists’ responses will impact the movement’s relationship to communities of color for decades to come.

The controversial anti-immigrant organization, the Center for Immigration Studies (CIS), announced yesterday that it will be holding a “debate” called Immigration, Population, and the Environment. The event is to be held at the National Press Club, Tuesday, August 25, at 9:30 a.m. in the Murrow Room, Washington D.C. The Center for Immigration Studies is known for its ties to political extremists including white nationalists.

According to the Southern Poverty Law Center, a national civil rights organization, in 2007 Mark Krikorian, executive director of CIS, spoke at the Michigan State University chapter of Young Americans for Freedom. That chapter has been named as a hate group by SPLC. At the time of Krikorian’s speech, the Young American’s chapter had been widely covered in the media for staging controversial events — like “Catch an Illegal Immigrant Day,” a “Koran Desecration” competition, and posting “Gays Spread AIDS” fliers on campus.

Krikorian seems not to care that he was part of a speaker’s series that included Nick Griffin, a Holocaust denier who heads the British National Party, and white nationalist Jared Taylor of the revamped white citizens’ councils of the segregation area. The Center for Immigration Studies also regularly circulates articles to its membership produced by the white nationalist website VDARE. VDARE is named after Virginia Dare, allegedly the first white child born in North America. It is not surprising that none of these relationships concern CIS when one looks at its founder.

The Center for Immigration studies was founded by John Tanton, who also founded the Federation for American Immigration Reform (FAIR). CIS is part of the John Tanton Network, a network of anti-immigrant front groups and spin-off organizations designed to give the illusion of being a mass movement. John Tanton’s relationship to white nationalism has been covered extensively in the blogosphere.

CIS was created to serve as the pseudo-think tank of the Network. As Tanton said at the time, according to documents obtained by the Center for New Community, “[f]or credibility, it [CIS] will need to be independent of FAIR, though the Center for Immigration Studies, as we’re calling it, is starting off as a project of FAIR.” Even today, CIS continues to pretend as if it is a neutral beltway think tank instead of a strategic piece of the anti-immigrant network.

Two of the three panelists in the Immigration, Population and the Environment “debate”, sponsored by CIS, have deep relationships with the John Tanton Network. Philip Cafora works with CIS and is a co-author of its recent paper entitled “The Environmental Argument for Reducing Immigration to the United States.” According to Mickey Fitzpatrick, M.A., who teaches and studies as a doctoral student at The Chicago School of Professional Psychology, “Dr. Cafora posits in his writings a controversial belief that immigration and immigrant rights impinges on his (and others) freedom to lead his understanding of a good and virtuous life.” It also appears that underlying Cafora’s philosophy is a belief that there is a “moral obligation to protect such a way of life by arguing that a reduction in immigration not only protects the environment and its resources (which he believes are burdened by immigrants), it also fosters the “good life” as he and others know it,” Fitzpatrick notes. The gist – bashing immigrants is the way to maintain the “good life.”

Also participating in the three person panel is Don Weeden, the executive director of The Weeden Foundation. The media release by the CIS fails to mention that Weeden’s foundation has funded CIS since at least 2002 and that the foundation’s president sits on the board of the Federation for American Immigration Reform (FAIR) from which CIS was created. In addition, the Weeden Foundation consistently funds Californians for Population Stabilization (CAPS). CAPS staffer Rick Oltman was a former regional director for FAIR and was also named as a member of the white nationalist Council of Conservative Citizens.

To give the panel a veneer of respectability CIS has invited respected environmentalist Andrew Light to participate at the event. Light is a Senior Fellow at the Center for American Progress and Director of the Center for Global Ethics at George Mason University. Let’s hope that Light knows better than to share a platform with groups and individuals associated with white nationalists.

Environmental organizations cannot afford to remain silent in the face of anti-immigrant activists who are attempting to speak on its behalf. Local and national environmental leadership should see these resurgent attacks as an opportunity to speak out aggressively against organized bigotry.

Thirty years ago moderates within the Republican Party remained on the sidelines as radicals drove a so-called Southern Strategy steeped in anti-black racism. Today, the Republican’s shrinking membership is quickly sending the GOP into political irrelevancy. Now rejected by most people of color because of their relationship to bigotry, Republicans have a shrinking base from which to grow. If the environmental movement continues to allow the John Tanton Network “to walketh about within its midst”, its fate will surely be the same.

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