Arizona's Immigration Debate Gets Dirtier

The Arizona backlash story needs to be told.

Arizona is a social and economic cauldron. The state’s unusual demographics, boom-bust conditions, and home-grown right wing have served up a poisonous mix of border-security and immigration-enforcement fanaticism.  

Across the nation anti-immigrant activists and state legislatures consider Arizona’s “Support Our Law Enforcement and Safe Neighborhoods Act” (SB 1070) as a model for locally initiated immigration crackdowns.

In addition to a spate of state immigration- and border-control initiatives, Arizona has produced a cast of crackdown heroes – Sheriff Joe Arpaio, Sheriff Paul Babeu, Sheriff Larry Dever, State Senator Russell Pearce, Governor Jan Brewer, among others – that have tapped uninformed fears of immigrants and Mexicans.

But what makes Arizona such a breeding ground for conservatives, backlash populists, and assorted reactionaries? What are the factors that have put Arizona at the leading edge of the country’s anti-immigrant backlash and fear-mongering about border security?

Recently, the Phoenix New Times, which for decades has countered right-wing extremism in Arizona with excellent investigative reporting and commentary, tackled the question of what’s driving the anti-immigrant legislation and organizing in Arizona. And it found the answers -- not in Arizona but in Petoskey, Michigan and in Washington, DC.

In the Dec. 2 issue, veteran New Times journalist Terry Greene Sterling offers a 5,635-word badly jumbled tirade titled “Russell Pearce and Other Illegal-Immigration Populists Rely on Misleading, Right-Wing Reports to Scapegoat Immigrants and to Terrify Penny-Pinched Americans.”

Both the New Times and Terry Greene Sterling (who describes herself as “Journalist, Author, White Woman in the Barrio” on her personal website) should be ashamed.

The Tanton Network Conspiracy

Instead of attempting to tell the untold story of the anti-immigrant backlash in Arizona, the writer and the weekly tabloid recycled oft-reported facts about the key role of the Federation for American Immigration Reform (FAIR) in formulating the SB 1070 legislation. To tell her story of outside powers driving local politics, the author also recycled the legend of “Tanton Network.”

In their attempt to delegitimize the restrictionist institutes – and by extension all those who believe the immigration should be more strictly limited -- leading immigrant rights groups have promoted a conspiracy theory called the Tanton Network. That’s what they call the three leading Washington Beltway restrictionist institutes – FAIR, NumbersUSA, and Center for Immigration Studies – that have past or present ties to John Tanton, the environmental and anti-population growth activist who lives in remote northern Michigan.  

In its willingness to slander and smear, in its facile use of facts, and in its sloppy analysis, the disjointed piece by Greene Sterling has more in common with the anti-immigrant rants found in online comments sections than with the kind of constructive investigative often published by New Times.  It’s wretched journalism that unfortunately undermines the reputation of Greene Sterling, who is the author of a new book titled Illegal: Life and Death in Arizona’s War Zone.

The piece, which poses as investigative journalism, might be better considered as an ammunition dump. Depending,  apparently, on the assumed allegiances of progressive New Times readers, Greene Sterling, serves us page after page of bits of information and misinformation -- designed not to shed light on what’s happening in Arizona but to confirm conclusions that it is all a right-wing conspiracy.

For those on the attack against SB 1070 and its supporters, the Greene Sterling piece is loaded with easily dispensed ammunition about the great right-wing conpsiracy. It’s backlash against backlash. Worse yet, the ammunition she passes out is old and second-hand.

She doesn’t look around her own home state for social, economic, or demographic reasons that may explain why a majority of Arizonans support SB 1070. Instead, she posits that Russell Pearce  (a “populist”, really?) and other Arizona right-wing figures depended on information from a network of “white nationalist hate groups” to make their case for state-directed border security and immigration crackdown initiatives.

She asserts that “Brewer, Pearce, and practically every other Arizona illegal-immigration politico relied” on a FAIR report on the costs of illegal immigration in Arizona to get elected. But where is the evidence that this report was so very influential?

To explain the failure of immigrant-rights activists to advance liberal immigration reform, reform advocates like Greene Sterling tend to blame the so-called “Tanton Network” conspiracy.

Clearly, the three organizations – especially FAIR -- have associated themselves, at times, with white nationalists and other despicable individuals in their coalitions to stop “mass immigration” and “amnesty” over the past three decades.  Just as clearly, when this does happen, it merits strong criticism.

However, Greene Sterling -- following the lead of the Southern Poverty Law Center (SPLC) as well as Americas Voice, Center for New Community, and the National Council of La Raza -- doesn’t offer thoughtful critiques of the current policies and statements of the Tanton Network organizations. Instead, she slanders, smears, and recklessly labels these organizations – and their members -- as white nationalists, white supremacists, and hate groups. In the process, Greene Sterling and the New Times have thrown aside the basic principles of journalism and the ethics of responsible public speech.  

It’s true that Arizona, as Greene Sterling writes, serves as “an experimental legal laboratory for FAIR, a place to test increasingly harsh laws.” But that is an old story – already told by many other reporters and news outlets. Rather offering a collection of old facts, half-truths, and myths, why didn’t Greene Sterling examine why Arizona has proved such fertile ground for FAIR and for home-grown proponents of immigration crackdowns?

The Population Question

Greene Sterling rightly points to Tanton’s longtime advocacy of zero population growth as having sparked his interest in changing immigration patterns.

“Tanton's Zero Population Growth movement,” notes Greene Sterling, “helped influence a reduction in the size of American families. Even so, the U.S. population soared from about 225 million in 1982 to more than 307 million in 2009, in part because immigrant babies have bolstered the birth rate Tanton has labored so hard to reduce.”

But rather than give credence to any of the anti-population growth arguments, such as resource depletion and environmental sustainability, she sets up the population argument for restrictionism to reflexively knock it down.

Dismissing the population/immigration conclusions of many leading immigration restrictionists, Greene Sterling assures us that these population-explosion arguments shouldn’t worry us. After all, “the U.N. reports that the world population may stabilize by 2300 because fertility rates are trending downward.” Perhaps, but at what unsustainable level?

She contends that “many population experts say this is a good thing, that immigrant babies will become the workers who pay taxes to provide social services for the aging American population.”

True, many economists do agree that immigration growth does contribute positively to economic growth, and there is also widespread agreement that cheap immigrant labor could meet the demand for elderly care. But should immigration policy be determined solely on the market mechanisms and GDP rates?

There’s no acknowledgment that some of the population/immigration arguments of the restrictionist institutes might merit examination, such as their contention that immigration policy must consider the impact on population growth, environmental sustainability, and a society’s capacity for integration –. This is not say, of course, that such concerns are what motivate the activism of Pearce, Brewer, Babeu, Arpaio, and other immigrant-bashing Arizona politicians.

Character Assassination

Greene Sterling characterizes former Arizona Republic reporter Jerry Kammer as an apologist for white-nationalist restrictionists. She claims that Kammer, a Pulitzer Prize-winning journalist who is currently a fellow at the Center for Immigration Studies, participated in the convening of a CIS panel that aimed to “discredit the SPLC.” According to Greene Sterling, Kammer “bashed the organization” but at the same time “sought to distance himself from Tanton.”

She quotes Kammer as saying that Tanton "has a tin ear for the sensitivities of immigration" and is a “’distraction’ in the immigration movement” because he "sometimes speaks with a freewheeling bluntness that even those who admire him find upsetting."

Nowhere in her own free-wheeling reporting does Greene Sterling mention Kammer’s 27-page report, Immigration and SPLC: How the Southern Poverty Law Center Invented a Smear, Served La Raza, Manipulated the Press, and Duped its Donors. Complete with 147 reference notes, the CIS report is everything that the Greene Sterling report is not – assiduously researched, professionally written, and thoughtful.

Clearly, FAIR and Tanton are deserving of much criticism for their narrow, mean-spirited restrictionism. But criticism and bashing are entirely different, and the New Times article is a good example of the latter – where character assassination, guilt by association, and a disregard for facts and truth prevail.

Greene Sterling accepts the widespread characterization among progressive immigration activists that the three organizations in the “Tanton Network” – FAIR, NumbersUSA, and CIS – are “hate groups.”

Labeling an organization a “hate group” is a serious matter because it implies they promote “hate crimes.” Blithely implicating a respected reporter as an instrument of a hate group isn’t something one would expect of a respected news organization like the Phoenix New Times.

Greene Sterling asserts – with no attempt to document – that “several human rights organizations have flagged FAIR, NumbersUSA, and CIS as white-nationalist hate groups.” It is true that SPLC did recklessly label FAIR as a hate group in late 2007.

But NumbersUSA and CIS were not included in that hate-group labeling by SPLC, as the author implies. What “human rights organizations” have charged that FAIR, NumbersUSA, and CIS are “white nationalist hate groups”?

(SPLC, it bears noting, is not a human rights organization but a self-described defender of “civil rights.”)

The SPLC doesn’t, as Greene Sterling implies, call FAIR a “white nationalist hate group” but rather a “hate group” with ties to white supremacists.

Phoenix New Times readers might be interested in the observations of Carol M. Swain, Professor of Political Science and Professor of Law at Vanderbilt University and author of The New White Nationalism in America, about reckless hate-group labeling. 

In her Oct. 12, 2009 article on Huffington Post, Guilt by Association: The Southern Poverty Law Center Hurls a Punch, Swain observed: 

“The SPLC needs to rethink its mission and the impact that its attacks can have on individuals who are limited in the means available to defend themselves. An organization with the rich history of the Southern Poverty Law Center should be above ad hominem attacks, guilt-by-association smears, and the never-ending search for red herrings."

In the immigration policy debate in Arizona, FAIR is not a red-herring but a very influential player, as Greene Sterling details. By implying, however, that FAIR and all those associated with the Tanton Network are white nationalists and hate groups, Greene Sterling resorts the tactics that she excoriates. 

Readers don’t need a conspiracy theory and guilt-by-association name-calling to understand that the Federation for American Immigration Reform is less than fair, less than reasonable. Simply laying out FAIR’s uncompromising position on all liberally initiated immigration reforms, including most recently the eminently fair and smart DREAM Act, should be enough to explain the narrow-minded, heartless politics of FAIR and other restrictionists.

“Russell Pearce and Other Illegal-Immigration Populists Rely on Misleading, Right-Wing Reports to Scapegoat Immigrants and to Terrify Penny-Pinched Americans” is yellow journalism.

Such reporting is not conducive to fostering constructive discussions about the future of immigration reform and immigrants in Arizona. 

See related articles:

Center for Immigration Studies Strikes Back

Hate and Immigration Reform

Real and Hidden Agenda of Restrictionists

Real and Hidden Agendas of Restrictionists

Following the listing of FAIR as a “hate group” in December 2007 by the Southern Poverty Law Center, there emerged within the progressive community a closely coordinated campaign to discredit the Federation for American Immigration Reform, which is the nation's oldest and largest anti-immigration policy institute.

The defeat of a compromise comprehensive immigration reform (CIR), which most of the immigrant-rights and Latino organizations had supported, was a sharp blow to the pro-immigration community, and a major victory for restrictionist groups like FAIR.

Over the past couple of years, these groups had organized massive demonstrations throughout the United States in support of immigrant rights and legalization. They had worked hard to win bipartisan support for a CIR bill on Capitol Hill, and had won support from the most influential print media.

But the compromises included in the propose bill included onerous preconditions for legalization, thereby sapping much grassroots and institutional enthusiasm for the Senate bill. These compromises, which were included largely to win the support of senators under pressure from anti-immigration forces, did nothing to dampen the opposition of the restrictionist movement, which organized a massive call-in, write-in, and speak-out campaign against the bill, persuading many in Congress that there was little political will for CIR
.

Since 2005 the pro-immigration lobby had worked with Congress to pass comprehensive immigration reform. But each year, support for legalization diminished while anti-immigration congressional members -- working closely with the restrictionist policy institutes (mainly FAIR and NumbersUSA) -- succeeded in passing new bipartisan bills to increase border security and immigration law enforcement.

Beaten down over three years, the pro-immigration lobby in Washington and the main immigrant-rights activist groups have regrouped and organized new fight-back strategies. These strategies include increasing the Latino/immigrant voting bloc, creating a new communications infrastructure, and mounting an initiative to discredit the restrictionist institutes. Signs of this campaign were quickly evident.

After 28 years of working against liberal immigration policies, FAIR was in late 2007 designated a “hate group” by the Southern Poverty Law Center. The National Council of La Raza launched its “We Can Stop the Hate” campaign, which educates about hate crimes while at the same time identifying FAIR, NumbersUSA, and Center for Immigration Studies as “hate and extremist” groups.

On its site, NCLR identifies FAIR and NumbersUSA as the core “fanatical factions,” along with two vigilante organizations (Minuteman Project and American Border Patrol) and two virulently anti-immigrant groups (Save Our State and California Coalition for Immigration Reform).

In September 2008 a grouping of allied organizations published a full-page ad in Capitol Hill newspapers attacking FAIR as a “hate group” at the same time that FAIR was conducting its annual congressional outreach campaign. Referring to FAIR, the ad asked: “When Did Extreme Become Mainstream?” 


The organizations paying for the aid were: America’s Voice (a new post-CIR defeat creation), Center for New Community, Fair Immigration Reform Movement (creation of Center for Community Change), and the national union SEIU. NCLR’s “We Can Stop the Hate” campaign was a central feature of the aid.

Over the past year and a half, these and other groups have mounted an education and communications campaign in an attempt to discredit FAIR, NumbersUSA, and Center for Immigration Studies because of their purported extremist, nativist, fanatical, and hateful views.

But aside from a few snippets of provocative commentary by the principals of these groups and poorly substantiated charges that they are front groups for a white-supremacist conspiracy, there is little in their volumes of analysis, propaganda, and videos to peg them as being extremist – unless being against “mass immigration,” as they call it, is regarded as too extreme for U.S. polity.

There is also no public evidence that FAIR, NumbersUSA, and CIS stoke or support hate crimes, which is implied and sometimes stated by this grouping of immigrant-rights critics.

Assessed as a strategy, the campaign of character assassination presents risks for all those favoring liberal immigration policies. One is that it damages the credibility of the critics. Another is that blinds the opponents of restrictionism. They start believing themselves that these groups have no legitimacy and thereby don’t bother to respond to what they are saying.

This was quickly evident after SPLC made its “hate group” designation in December 2007 when there arose a chorus of progressives dismissing FAIR, CIS, and NumbersUSA as hate groups. Immediately after the SPLC designation, Cristina Lopez, deputy executive director of the Center for Community Change in Washington, DC, told a reporter: "[FAIR] is an organization that clearly has an agenda. There’s no difference between putting a member of FAIR on TV to talk about immigration and putting a member of the Ku Klux Klan to talk about race relations."

NCLR apparently feels the same way, having designated FAIR’s Dan Stein and NumberUSA’s Roy Beck as “suspect spokespeople” and lumping together the three institutes in the category of “extremist and hate” groups. One wonders just whom the media is supposed to talk to about the restrictionist cause if reporters are to reject these three influential institutes as illegitimate.

Within the wide-ranging restrictionist movement, these institutes are regarded as weak-kneed moderates and branches of the liberal elite by the truly extreme anti-immigration groups. But for a klatch of liberal critics, the institutes are commonly regarded as being extremist purveyors of hate.

Rather than considering and responding to the published anti-immigration agendas of FAIR, NumbersUSA, and CIS, they insist that the public, media, and policy community evaluate these groups by their alleged hidden agenda – an agenda that’s purportedly the same as the one that guides the KKK and other racist organizations.

The Center for the New Community has targeted FAIR as part of its “nativism watch” project, which was launched in 2006. Its research details the extent of FAIR’s reach through what the center calls “front groups” and its close connections with the controversial founder of FAIR and current board member, John Tanton.

Pointing to FAIR’s agenda for the 111th Congress, CNC notes that FAIR has been “named a hate organization alongside the Ku Klux Klan and neo-Nazi skinheads by the Southern Poverty Law Center,” while noting that “while attempting to portray itself as a mainstream organization, FAIR maintains relationships with political extremists including white nationalists.”

While it is certainly true that FAIR in its near-three decades history has associated with organizations and individuals who have had vile views about race, does that mean that the organization itself is a nativist group or that it is part of “organized racism,” as CNC charges?

Nothing in its policy statements, including the latest congressional agenda, supports that. Wouldn’t it be more constructive to challenge FAIR over its policy agenda, or to formulate a pro-immigration policy agenda that is as detailed and comprehensive (and hopefully more persuasive) than to engage in a name-calling campaign over an alleged hidden agenda?

Photo: FAIR's Dan Stein

Attacking the Messengers, Not the Anti-Immigration Message

It didn’t work for John McCain and Sarah Palin. But the immigrant-rights groups apparently believe that a campaign of character assassination and misinformation about the leading anti-immigration groups is the best way to take on their opposition in Washington, DC. 


Are NumbersUSA, Federation for American Immigration Reform (FAIR), and the Center for Immigration Studies conservative organizations that scapegoat immigration for the many of the country’s crises (financial meltdown, urban sprawl, climate change, rising unemployment, social services shortfalls, etc.)? 


Do they oppose guest worker programs, legalization (or "amnesty") for illegal immigrants, and most family-reunification and refugee visas? Do they all have ties to John Tanton, a prominent zero-population-growth and environmental activist who in the 1970s turned his focus to “mass immigration” and founded numerous organizations that opposed “mass immigration” including FAIR and Social Contract Press and who is labeled as a white supremacist and nativist by immigrant-rights groups? 


Yes, to all of the above. But does that mean that these groups are “nativists,” “racists,” "hate groups," “extremists,” “immigrant bashing,” “white supremacist,” and “illegitimate.” Or that their executive directors – Roy Beck and Dan Stein – are “suspect spokespeople” – the label used by the National Council of La Raza (in collaboration with the Southern Poverty Law Center)? 


Yes, according to immigrant advocacy groups that seek to counter the growing influence of these restrictionist organization in the public and policy debate. But no, if you attempt to find hate talk, extremism, or immigrant bashing in their publications or on their websites. (In fact, they all explicitly declare that while advocating dramatically lower immigration levels they are not anti-immigrant. See for example, NumbersUSA.) 


No, if they are judged by what they write and what they do. Rather than challenging the restrictionist policy institutes and their leaders on the validity of their policy agendas, many immigrant-rights organizations seek to discredit them because of their purported motives, associations, or funding sources. 


There is no doubt that FAIR, NumbersUSA, and CIS believe that what they call "mass immigration" constitutes a threat to the United States and that they believe that the country’s large numbers of immigrants are a causal factor in many of the country’s social, cultural, and economic crises. 


It is certainly true that the policy measures they support adversely affect the welfare of millions of immigrant familes. But is seeking to undermine the influence of these groups in the media and on Capitol Hill by throwing in the same lot as the Ku Klux Klan and National Socialist Aryan Order really be considered an effective and principled political strategy? 


Will smearing the restrictionist policy institutes and their leaders in campaigns of character assassination bolster the possibilities of passing a liberal immigration reform bill? 


Alarmed by the growing backlash in U.S. against new immigrants and the increasing success of the Washington, DC restrictionist institutes to frame the immigration debate, a network of immigrant-rights groups inside and outside Washington, DC began a campaign to delegimitize the restrictionist institutes. 


This response to the DC institutes began in earnest in mid-2007 after the defeat of the comprehensive immigration reform bill in the U.S. Senate. Restrictionist forces, led by NumbersUSA and FAIR, had mobilized massive grassroots opposition to the proposed bill and were a major factor in its defeat. In the aftermath, immigrant-rights and other progressive groups -- funded in concert by the major liberal foundations -- mounted a strategy to replicate the communications infrastructure of the restrictionist institutes while at the same time they sought to delegitimize them. 


Nothing's wrong, of course, with modeling progressive communications and outreach campaigns after successful conservative ones. But to match the successes, the groups that support immigration and advocate for immigrants will need to fashion their own message about the benefits of immigration to the American people. 


Trying to stick a label of "extremism" on institutes that have massive memberships, good relations with the media, and good standing on the Hill is a measure of how desperate and isolated the pro-immigration forces that have embraced this strategy really are. 


 The designation of FAIR as a “hate group” by the Southern Poverty Law Center in late 2007 provided highly explosive ammunition for the character assassination campaign. 


 Rather than counter the arguments and policy proposals of FAIR and the other institutes with convincing counterarguments and substantive counterproposals, the common response -- from such groups as America’s Voice, Center for New Community, National Council of La Raza, SEIU, and Center for Community Change (and its sponsored Fair Immigration Reform Movement) -- is to dismiss these restrictionist groups, asserting they are racist and illegitimate. 


At a time when FAIR, NumbersUSA, and CIS are increasingly framing their anti-immigration message within the context of the economic crisis and massive unemployment, the leading immigrant-rights groups focus almost exclusively on the character of the messengers rather than on the substance of their message. 

See related articles: 

“It’s Time to Fight FAIR”

http://americasvoiceonline.org/page/content/fightfair/

 “New Immigration Ads Stir the Melting Pot,” Washington Post http://voices.washingtonpost.com/sleuth/2008/09/new_immigration_ads_stir_the_m.html

 “When Did Extreme Become Mainstream?” http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-srv/politics/documents/SEIU_ad.pdf

 FAIR, “Who’s Inciting Hate?” http://www.fairus.org/site/PageServer?pagename=media_release992008

 Southern Poverty Law Center, “Crossing the Rubicon of Hate” http://www.splcenter.org/blog/2007/12/11/fair-crossing-the-rubicon-of-hate/

 “FAIR Added to Hate Group List,” Scripps News Service http://www.scrippsnews.com/node/29303