Confused about Immigration? Get the Facts

One of the toughest things about fighting in this nasty anti-immigrant war is that there seem to be more nativists than there are pro-immigrant sane people. Or at least they talk more and talk louder and have their own TV show. Ever been to a family reunion where the Republican uncles and the Democrat uncles are having what's euphemistically called a "conversation"? It's like that, only they're on steroids and we're not. Oh, and I, for one, don't claim kin.

They're also better organized and better funded, and they don't have any compunction about lying. This makes their tedious habit of using sane-sounding organizational names really dangerous. But lest I digress, see the Southern Poverty Law Center's expose of the anti-immigrant stampede orchestrated wholly by the racist, nativist Right.

Seriously, the far Right spin on immigration is dizzying, relentless, and deadly. People are dying because of it, and people are being detained and expelled without the means to survive or even a way to notify or contact their own families. Parents are being shipped out while their infants are kept in US detention camps.

Cruel things are happening daily to immigrants in your name. If you don't like that, do something about it.

You need facts -- and I mean, like, real ones -- to fight back. You and I. Actually we need a lot more than facts, but all I can deliver at the moment is a wonderful reliable online source where you'll find a world of facts organized in a way that anybody can find them. Even in a hurry.

Go there now. Bookmark. And then head out to do battle with the spawn of Dobbs Tancredo Tanton. California Immigrant Policy Center

Consider the Source

I'm a relative newcomer to the immigration issue, in the sense of appreciating its boggling complexity and in the sense of seeing how the country has been systematically led into the analytical equivalent of a sheep pen by the likes of Pat Buchanan and Lou Dobbs. But I'm learning.

Immigration is one of a handful of phenomena that will define the terms of life in the western hemisphere for us and our children. That's why I'm disappointed in myself and in other bloggers on the Left for not giving it the same degree of attention we've given so readily to the war or to environmental concerns.

But I'm changing. I'm making up for lost time. I understand better today why we haven't paid attention. It's more than that we're beseiged, or there's not enough time, or we don't know where to find the truth about the immigration issue.

It's worse than that. It's because most of us aren't even aware that we lack the facts. That's how good a job the Right has done of herding us into its sheep pens.

It's not easy. Mega-bloggers like Kos are simply not addressing it in a top-level way. Until that changes, we're in effect giving over our own progressives and moderates to the meme fictions generated and pumped out by the Right.

Trying to address those fictions feels like trying to shut off a firehose, but it's gotta be done.

Happily, a few diligent and ethical folk have been doing the heavy shoveling for quite some time.

It seems to me it's now time for the rest of us to do our part, by disseminating what they're finding.

Here's a start. Thanks to Duke1676, of Migra Matters, for resurrecting in comments on an important Kos diary by economist Alfredo Martin Bravo de Rueda Espejo this critical piece of dot-connecting from Southern Poverty Law Center:

The organized anti-immigration "movement" is almost entirely the handiwork of one man, Michigan activist John H. Tanton. Here is a list of 13 groups in the loose-knit Tanton network, followed by acronyms if the groups use them, founding dates, and Tanton's role in the groups. Those organizations designated as hate groups by the Southern Poverty Law Center are marked with an asterisk (*).
In this list, "founded" means a group was founded or co-founded by John Tanton. "Funded" means that U.S. Inc., the funding conduit created and still headed by Tanton, has made grants to the group.

1. American Immigration Control Foundation* AICF, 1983, funded
2. American Patrol/Voice of Citizens Together* 1992, funded
3. California Coalition for Immigration Reform CCIR, 1994, funded
4. Californians for Population Stabilization 1996, funded (founded separately in 1986)
5. Center for Immigration Studies
6. Federation for American Immigration Reform FAIR, 1979, founded and funded
7. NumbersUSA 1996, founded and funded
8. Population-Environment Balance 1973, joined board in 1980
9. Pro English 1994, founded and funded
10. ProjectUSA 1999, funded
11. The Social Contract Press* 1990, founded and funded
12. U.S. English 1983, founded and funded
13. U.S. Inc. 1982, founded and funded
SPLC Intelligence Report
Summer 2002

The information we get is only as good as its source. From now on, when you hear the crime, jobs, wages, drugs, reconquest, disease memes that, thanks to Lou Dobbs and Pat Buchanan and Tancredo and Hunter and the rest of the racist Right, have governed the immigration "debate" so far, consider the source.