Hate and Immigration Reform

(The following commentary was spurred by the publication of a report by the Center for Immigration Studies on the anti-hate campaign of leading immigrant-rights and pro-immigration groups. The CIS report, which quotes a blog post of mine, is available here:http://cis.org/immigration-splc The following post reviews that report.)

Hate is the issue. In particular, hate that leads to extremism.

It’s hard to miss or dismiss the hate and extremism in the immigration debate. Even the casual observer of immigration issues encounters this hate and extremism in the commentary sections of most online news articles about immigration.

Where does all this hate come from? To what degree is it orchestrated and amplified by organized groups?

These are important questions – not only because immigrant bashing and hate-mongering about immigrants distort the policy debate about border control and immigration, but also because they often lead to discrimination, exploitation, and personal violence.

Unfortunately, the leading immigration policy advocacy groups have not taken this hate seriously. Neither those groups advocating immigration reform through new laws restricting immigration or those supporting increased immigration through more visas and the legalization of unauthorized immigrants have addressed increased immigrant bashing in a responsible, constructive, and intellectually honest manner.

The leading restrictionist institutes – Federation for American Immigration Reform (FAIR), NumbersUSA, and Center for Immigration Studies (CIS) – have seen their anti-immigration policy agenda boosted in the last decade by the rise of anti-immigrant sentiment throughout the country, particularly in rural America and in areas that have since the mid-1990s experienced an influx of immigrants.

NumbersUSA explicitly and persuasively condemns immigrant bashing, stating that it is concerned about the large numbers of immigrants not about the presence or ethnicity of any individual immigrant. Yet NumbersUSA successfully tapped anti-immigrant feelings at the grassroots in its internet mobilization against a 2007 proposal in Congress for comprehensive immigration reform that was regarded as furthering what the restrictionist institutes describe as mass immigration.

The failure of CIR in June 2007 spurred the pro-CIR coalition to refine their educational and organizing strategy. In moving forward toward next round in the CIR campaign in 2009, the leading members of the CIR coalition and their foundation donors decided to mount an anti-hate campaign. For them, one of the main take-away lessons of the collapse of CIR was that the immigration debate had been skewed and shaped by the forces of hatred and extremism.

Bolstered by new infusions of foundation grants from the Ford Foundation, Four Freedoms Fund, and Carnegie Corporation, among others, the leading CIR groups – including Center for American Progress, America’s Voice (created in late 2007 to lead the CIR communications campaign), National Council of La Raza, and National Immigration Forum, as well as smaller players like the Center for New Community – the reconstituted CIR coalition launched a campaign to identify and stop anti-immigrant hate and extremism.

But rather than addressing the socioeconomic and political origins of anti-immigrant hate, the anti-hate campaign was at its core a strategy to “take out” and “delegitimize” the main restrictionist institutes – not because of they were responsible for the proliferation of immigrant bashing and hate language (and crimes) but rather because they had proved so successful in stopping CIR. For the pro-immigration groups in DC it was so frustrating to see the increasing access of FAIR and CIS to the media and to Congress. If the restrictionist institutes could be identified as hate groups, as extremists, as white supremacists, then their restrictionist message would be regarded suspiciously and they would be denied media and policy community access.

The Southern Poverty Law Center, which had long been critical of the current and past associations with John Tanton (labeled by SPLC as “The Puppeteer” for his key role in promoting restrictionist and English-only causes), responded to the pressing pro-CIR concerns about the rising influence of FAIR, NumbersUSA, and CIS by opportunistically and unfairly labeling FAIR as a “hate group” in late 2007 – a label that was used to smear by association CIS and NumbersUSA and the entire movement against CIR.

Empowered by SPLC’s hate group designation of FAIR, the pro-CIR coalition created two separate albeit overlapping campaigns to smear and delegitimize the restrictionist institutes. The more formal campaign was the “Stop the Hate” website of the National Council of La Raza, while other members of the coalition, also with the assistance of SPLC researchers, began to issue press statements and other declarations smearing FAIR, CIS, and NumbersUSA as hate groups and extremists.

It’s a strategy that has diverted the attention, energy, and financial resources of the pro-CIR immigrant-rights forces from the pressing challenge of articulating a more persuasive and coherent immigration reform message – one that speaks to the concerns of U.S. citizens and legal residents about the impact of the unauthorized immigrant population and of new immigrant flows on the nation’s general welfare. This needs to be better developed and disseminated.

The credibility and integrity of the anti-hate strategy of the immigration reformers have suffered from their failure to demonstrate or document the hate component of what these institutes do every day and do so effectively – that is, promote policy prescriptions based on arguments that “mass immigration” is not good for the country and that until low-immigration policies are adopted by the federal government, all pro-immigration policies must be opposed. Devoid of any considerations of justice, decency, and fair play, the institutes hammer away at our sensibilities with their narrow anti-immigration arguments.

By focusing almost exclusively on the DC restrictionist institutes, the strategy has also failed to produce

a better understanding of the socioeconomic and cultural foundations of the anti-immigrant backlash that has swept many parts of the country and many social sectors.  

Certainly, CIR proponents need to challenge the wisdom and justice of the restrictionist message, but this means a more serious commitment to refuting restrictionist arguments about mass immigration and about their own purported “open borders” convictions not calling them names.  Certainly, too, do the pro-CIR forces and the foundations that support them need to fight back against immigrant bashing.  But such a determination to fight hate should not be used as excuse to smear counterparts in the policy community as distasteful as their message may be.