Stereotypes
and labels hinder understanding of the intensifying immigration
debate in the United States. The debate divides sharply into two
sides. On one side stand those who believe that immigration flows
should be dramatically restricted. Commonly described as being
anti-immigrant, these groups object to the negative label, saying
that they oppose uncontrolled immigration, not immigrants themselves.
On
the other side of the immigration debate are those who believe
that immigration should be regulated but at levels that reflect
the reality of both emigration pressures outside the country and
labor needs within it. In contrast to those arguing for a clamp
down on immigration flows, these forces routinely point to the
economic and cultural benefits resulting from the immigrant community,
while also noting that the United States has always been a nation
of immigrants. Described variously by their opponents as the “pro-immigrant”
or “open-borders lobby,” they often assume the immigrants
rights’ standpoint: opposing governmental and private practices
that abuse or exploit illegal as well as legal immigrants.
Those
advocating reduced immigration flows can fairly be described as
being immigration restrictionists. Like most other policy reformers,
the immigration restrictionists have three main bases of operation:
policy institutes and think tanks in Washington, D.C.; local citizen
movements and organizations; and a loose team of pundits, politicians,
and polemicists dedicated to influencing public opinion.
Although
immigration restrictionists share a common agenda, they do not
operate as a unified political bloc. Anti-immigration forces include
partisans of the two main political parties as well as adherents
of parties and movements on the political left and right that
fall outside mainstream political thinking.
In
most cases, the leaders of the national restrictionist groups
are reactionary nationalists who fundamentally believe that immigrants
are undermining the U.S. economy and society, while also posing
an increasing threat to U.S. national security. But many restrictionist
groups, including NumbersUSA and the Center for Immigration Studies,
frame their views in the policy language of environmental protection,
access to jobs, anti-corporate sentiment, and population control.
Their rhetoric often sounds closer to liberal groups than to the
citizen militias, white supremacists, and more nationalist institutes
such as Americans for Immigration Control, which is explicitly
dedicated to “preserving our common heritage as Americans.”
The rhetoric obscures the profile of a growing movement that has
as its shared goal a campaign against immigrants and for draconian
border controls and legislation.
Most
immigration restrictionists are found within the political right,
but by no means do all Republicans, conservatives, and members
of other right-wing sectors believe that the government should
actively restrict immigration. Some of the strongest proponents
of immigration are found within the ranks of the Republican Party,
including the libertarians who believe that the market, and not
the government, should regulate labor supply and business sectors
favoring the easy flow of cheap immigrant labor.
Within
the anti-immigration camp, there are major differences. The paleoconservatives,
for example, together with associated traditionalists and social
conservatives, criticize the leading restrictionist policy institutes
such as the Federation for American Immigration Reform (FAIR)
and Center for Immigration Studies (CIS). They believe that these
groups espouse essentially secular and liberal ideas about population
control, environmentalism, and labor issues, rather than standing
firmly behind the country’s core Judeo-Christian culture
and values.
A
belief in the superiority of U.S. culture and values is a common
thread uniting the many restrictionists, although major differences
exist in how this perspective is expressed. The most militant
anti-immigrant activists are often associated with white supremacist
groups. Others take pains to avoid racist rhetoric, insisting
the issue is one of “control of our borders.”
A
strong populist streak also runs through the restrictionist movement.
Its critique of the “open borders” agenda of Corporate
America puts it as odds with the leadership of the Republican
Party and the corporate sponsors of both political parties. The
pro-worker, anti-big business arguments of the restrictionists
resonate with many Americans who feel hard-pressed to pay their
bills and who worry about their economic security.
The
terror attacks of Sept. 11, 2001, sparked an increase in anti-immigration
grassroots organizing, congressional bills, and media coverage—substantially
increasing the constituency base of the restrictionists. Anti-immigrant
forces quickly appropriated the administration’s language
of the “war on terrorism”, couching restrictionist
arguments in terms of the importance of gaining total control
of the U.S. borders, downsizing the resident immigrant population,
and severely restricting new immigration.
The
rising influence of these diverse forces rests in the widespread
public conviction that U.S. immigration policy and U.S. borders
are out of control. This concern with the cultural, economic,
environmental, and security impact of the influx of immigrants
does not necessarily arise from racist, xenophobic, or supremacist
beliefs. It is often the result of people’s own experience
with the effects of a large and expanding immigrant population
in their communities, combined with the lenses for interpretation
of this phenomena offered by governments and mass media.
Restrictionist
Policy Institutes
The
leading national restrictionist organizations in the immigration
debate, like those in the language debate, such as ProEnglish
[sic] and English First, are part of an institutional network
that emerged from the population control, environmental, and carrying-capacity
movements in the late 1970s. By the mid-1970s, the alarmist predictions
that zero population growth advocates had been making during the
post-WWII boom could no longer be supported by the population
statistics. Birth statistics were showing steady declines. But
population statistics began to show—as they still do—that
the main source of population growth in the United States is the
expanding first- and second-generation immigrant population.
So,
for a faction within Zero Population Growth, “population
control” in the United States became synonymous with “immigration
control.” John Tanton along with several other former board
members of ZPG in 1979 formed the country’s first anti-immigrant
policy institute, the Federation for American Immigration Reform
(FAIR) .
Rick
Swartz, who founded the self-identified “pro-immigrant”
National Immigration Forum in 1982, described Tanton as the “puppeteer
behind this entire [restrictionist] movement.” In addition
to being a cofounder and current board member of FAIR, Tanton
has been a key figure in establishing and funding a phalanx of
anti-immigrant and “English Only” institutes, including
NumbersUSA, Center for Immigration Studies, Population-Environment
Balance, U.S. English, ProEnglish, Social Contract Press, and
U.S. Inc.
Other
leading restrictionist groups include Project USA, Americans for
Immigration Control, and Americans for a Better Immigration (ABI).
The most influential institutes are FAIR, which focuses on providing
logistical support for the restrictionist movement, and CIS, which
concentrates on producing briefing papers for Congress and the
media. Associated groups that provide legal assistance to anti-immigrant
campaigns and organizations are the Immigration Reform Law Institute
and Friends of Immigration Law Enforcement.
Also
part of the D.C.-based infrastructure of restrictionist organizations
are anti-immigration political action committees—the most
prominent being Team America headed by Rep. Tom Tancredo, R-CO,
and the U.S. Immigration Reform Political Action Committee (USIRP),
whose president is Mary Lou Tanton, wife of John Tanton. These
groups often share interlocking directorates and sources of rightwing
financing.
These
and other leading restrictionist groups have reworked their image
since the early days of the movement to restrict immigration and
establish English as the official language in the states. They
explicitly maintain that they are not “anti-immigrant,”
and instead identify themselves as opposing “mass immigration”—which
has become the catch phrase of the restrictionist movement.
These
institutes are politically situated on the right and within the
umbrella of the Republican Party. But they operate outside the
political network of the right’s leading think tanks and
policy institutes, such as the American Enterprise Institute and
the Heritage Foundation—organizations that are closely associated
with the interests of Corporate America and therefore oppose the
restrictionist agenda. The restrictionist institutes are linked
with these and other right-wing organizations through the main
right-wing foundations that fund both groups.
White
Supremacists
Among
the most prominent white supremacist organizations are the Council
of Conservative Citizens (the successor to the White Citizen Councils),
the European-American Unity and Rights Organization-EURO (former
Ku Klux Klan chief David Duke directs EURO), the pro-eugenics
Pioneer Fund, the American Nationalist Union, and the Occidental
Quarterly (a journal dedicated to the notion that “immigration
into the United States should be restricted to selected people
of European ancestry”).
Although
not in the forefront of the current surge in anti-immigrant sentiment
and organizing, white supremacist organizations and their leaders
have ties to state-level anti-immigrant campaigns such as Protect
Arizona Now (PAN) and to national anti-immigrant advocacy organizations
such as the Federation for American Immigration Reform. Virginia
Abernathy, who served as the chair of PAN’s national advisory,
is an editorial board member of Occidental Quarterly and speaks
at forums sponsored by the Council of Conservative Citizens, for
example. According to Duke’s EURO, “Massive Third
World immigration will destroy the character and heritage of America
and put the European American population at risk. The time has
come to demand enforcement of our laws concerning illegal immigration
and to severely limit legal immigration.”
Hold-the-Line
Environmentalists
The
leading anti-immigrant policy institutes, including NumbersUSA
and Center for Immigration Studies, wield arguments about the
impact of immigrants on urban sprawl and resource depletion. The
environmental wing of the anti-immigrant forces emerged from the
zero-population movement of the 1960s and 1970s. Included in this
wing of the immigration restrictionists are such organizations
as Environment-Population Balance, Carrying Capacity Network,
and Negative Population Growth. These organizations base their
restrictionism on the fact that immigration is the most significant
factor in U.S. population growth.
Carrying
Capacity Network distributes a bumper-sticker bearing the slogan:
“Mass Immigration = Lifeboat USA Sinking.” Negative
Population Growth regards even the granting of political asylum
as a threat to U.S. sustainable development, and in the mid-1990s
it called the government’s purportedly liberal refugee policy
the “Achilles Heel of Immigration Reform.”
The
public voice of the anti-immigration environmentalists is Richard
Lamm, the former Colorado governor who is the coauthor of The
Immigration Time Bomb: The Fragmenting of America. Lamm, who serves
on FAIR’s advisory board, led the restrictionist slate of
candidates who in 2004 sought unsuccessfully to win control of
Sierra Club’s elected board of directors.
Paleoconservatives
These
traditional conservatives have consistently opposed “liberal’
immigration laws on both nationalistic and cultural supremacy
grounds. They argue that Corporate America has lost its loyalty
to the United States. In their view, transnational corporations
together with liberal pro-immigrant groups have imposed in practice
an open-borders agenda that not only facilitates trade and investments
flows but also immigration flows. In addition, they argue that
high immigration flows are diluting our national identity and
turning the United States into a polyglot nation that is losing
its Anglo-American core values.
Paleoconservatives
do not generally join with the ranks of language and immigration
restrictionist organizations. These traditionalists charge that
the leading restrictionist organizations are driven more by liberals
and progressive values than conservative ones. For example, they
complain that population-control measures run counter to orthodox
religious values. Although paleoconservatives are social conservatives,
they are not closely tied to the Religious Right and see themselves
more as intellectuals than as a grassroots force. A leading voice
of paleoconservative thought regarding immigration was Samuel
Francis, whose book America Extinguished: Mass Immigration
and the Disintegration of American Culture, published shortly
before he died, set forth the paleoconservative position. “Security,
economy, and party interests are well and good, but the fundamental
issue in the immigration debate is who we are and what sort of
nation we want to be.”
Paleocons
such as Samuel Francis and Patrick Buchanan quickly lined up behind
Samuel Huntington’s cultural war and “clash of civilization”
theses. “You cannot expect millions of aliens from one civilization
to enter the country, abandon all loyalties and values of their
old civilization and sign up with all of those of the new one
they have entered,” warned Francis. More intellectuals and
polemicists than activists, the paleoconservatives have seen their
influence expand as the anti-immigrant forces multiply. The popularity
of the American Conservative, the flagship publication of the
paleocons, demonstrates that these traditional conservatives are
experiencing a comeback—a result not only of their anti-immigrant
arguments but also of their opposition to the Iraq occupation
and their criticism of the neoconservatives and the Bush administration’s
“big government” policies.
Neoconservatives
This
influential small group of ideologues, foreign policy strategists,
and political operatives does not advocate immigration restrictionism.
Most of the leading neoconservatives, especially the Jews and
Catholics, have a strong sense of their immigrant origins. Moreover,
the neoconservatives, as a consequence of their forging ever-closer
alliance with Wall Street capitalists, have regarded immigration
flows of both cheap and skilled workers as a benefit for U.S.
corporations and hence the U.S. economy.
However,
neoconservatives, as part of their campaign against multiculturalism
and government policies that attempt to reshape the “natural
order” and promote equity, are fierce opponents of affirmative
action programs and government-sponsored bilingual education.
They are also proponents of what they call “Official English”
but what are more commonly known as “English Only”
laws. The Sept. 11 attacks and the war on terrorism have caused
many neocons to back away from their pro-immigration posture.
The
global backlash against the Bush administration’s war on
terrorism and its Middle East policies is partly evident in increased
anti-Semitism and anti-Americanism. This has raised neocon apprehension
about the expanding Muslim population in the United Staes and
Europe. In their book An End to Evil: How to Win the War on
Terror, leading neocons David Frum and Richard Perle called
for a national identification system as a way to break the alleged
immigration-terrorism link. Another indicator of the neoconservative
conversion to restrictionism is the anti-immigrant writings of
the Manhattan Institute’s Heather MacDonald, who concluded
a recent op-ed with this recommendation: “ Washington should
allocate the resources to detain and deport illegals and should
start enforcing long-standing laws against employing alien lawbreakers.
A deafening roar of ‘racism’ will result—but
with the country at war, pandering to the race advocates must
give way to protecting American lives.”
A
development worth noting is that the emerging anti-immigrant position
among neoconservatives is increasingly akin to that of the cultural
and “value” arguments of the paleoconservatives, who
have been the leading critics of the neoconservatives since the
neocon-paleocon split in the right-wing in the early 1980s.
Border
Vigilantes
Over
the past few decades numerous incidents have occurred in southeastern
Arizona in which white ranchers resort to violence—including
torture—against immigrants crossing from Mexico. In the
past few years, anti-immigrant vigilante activity has become institutionalized
in the form of citizen militias that have emerged in Arizona and
to a lesser extent in California and Texas.
The
leading voice among the border vigilantes is Glenn Spencer, who
founded the American Border Patrol. Before moving to Arizona from
California, the outspoken Spencer, who is associated with such
white supremacist groups as the Council of Conservative Citizens
and the National Alliance, was a leading advocate of the anti-immigrant
Proposition 187 and proposals to make English the official language
of California. Recently, the national media have portrayed him
as a grassroots patriot protecting America and Arizona from an
“invasion of illegals.”
Other
vigilante groups include Ranch Rescue, Arizona Ranchers’
Alliance, and Civil Homeland Defense. Ranch Rescue has organized
volunteer hunts for “hordes of criminal aliens,” encouraging
volunteers to “come and have fun in the sun” and to
bring their weapons and night-vision equipment.
The
latest citizen group to take border patrolling into its own hands
is the Minuteman Project, which is organizing hundreds of volunteers
from around the nation to patrol the border and help apprehend
immigrants. “This is a direct challenge to President Bush,”
said project organizer Chris Simox who lives in Tombstone, AZ.
“You have continued to ignore this problem. So this is a
last-ditch effort to roll up our sleeves and do it ourselves.”
State
Anti-Immigration Movements
Framing
immigration as an issue of “Them versus Us” in the
1980s, garnered Republican Party stalwarts and New Right constituencies
in California landslide support for the anti-immigrant Proposition
187 in 1994. A spate of complaints by native Latinos who said
that police were stopping them to ask for proof of citizenship
sparked the creation of a state-wide coalition to oppose the discriminatory
treatment resulting from the proposition.
In
1998 a court decision that ruled the measure unconstitutional
proved a severe setback for the restrictionist movement. Unable
to push anti-immigrant bills forward in Congress, the country’s
chief restrictionist strategists and policy institutes, notably
John Tanton and FAIR, switched tactics; they began to support
local and state-level anti-immigrant campaigns as part of a bottom-up
strategy to stop immigration flows.
In
November 2004, Arizona voters approved the anti-immigrant Proposition
200 referendum that requires voters to present proof of citizenship,
denies non-federally mandated services to unauthorized immigrants,
and requires local and state employees to alert immigration authorities
if they determine a client is an “illegal alien.”
Exploiting post-Sept. 11 fears about attacks by foreigners on
the U.S. homeland, the proposition organizers called their campaign
Protect Arizona Now. AN’s logo has a mounted figure galloping
across the state map waving the U.S. flag.
Although
PAN did not openly appeal to racist beliefs, its national advisory
board included prominent white supremacists and cultural nationalists.
And it was funded by a network of national anti-immigrants --
including FAIR, Population-Environment Balance, Americans for
Immigration Control, and Americans for Better Immigration.
Following
the victory of the PAN anti-immigrant initiative, PAN director
Kathy McKee advised other citizen groups around the country to
“get busy now” because “things are really, really
tough with tens of thousands of illegals invading our country
every single day.” After the proposition beat back a legal
challenge to its constitutionality, the PAN victory has sparked
enthusiasm among other state-wide groups determined “to
take our country back.”
At
least 30 groups, most of them receiving logistical assistance
and in some cases funding from FAIR and other national anti-immigration
organizations, are preparing to sponsor new state referendums
and legislation that they hope will send a clear message to immigrants
that they aren’t wanted. Included among them are Georgians
for Immigration Reform and Defend Colorado Now. After spearheading
a successful campaign to pressure Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger to
veto a bill to permit undocumented residents to obtain driver’s
licenses, the right-wing California Republican Assembly has launched
another campaign that would in effect resurrect the provisions
of Proposition 187.
Proposition
187 set the precedent of a state initiative targeting immigrants.
It mandated that government workers, including teachers, check
immigration status and deny services to those in the United States
illegally. Championed by Save Our State, the anti-immigrant measure
was sold as a solution that would solve California’s financial
crisis. While benefiting from some national funding, support for
Proposition 187 was widespread among the state’s non-Latino
voters.
The
recent increase in restrictionist legislation, anti-immigrant
activism and media excitement about the dangers of immigration
shows that a broad-based offensive has taken root in the United
States. The groups coordinating this offensive, despite their
rhetorical and ideological differences, are well-funded, well-connected
and increasingly powerful.
Fears
about immigrant terrorists after Sept. 11, combined with rising
concerns about economic security after the end of the 1990s’
boom, have diminished the near-term prospects for an immigration
reform agenda that favors immigrants, whether in the country legally
or illegally. Immigration restrictionism has moved to the center
of the public debate, once occupied by advocacy for broad legalization,
amnesty, and family reunification.
Tom
Barry is policy director of the International Relations
Center, online at www.irc-online.org
and an associate of the IRC Americas Program.
Endnotes
1 The Puppeteer,” Intelligence Report, Southern Poverty
Law Center, Summer 2002
http://www.splcenter.org/intel/intelreport/article.jsp?aid=93
2
“John Tanton,” Right Web Profile (International Relations
Center, 2004), at: http://rightweb.irc-online.org/ind/tanton/tanton.php
3
The major sources of funding for the restrictionist institutes
include the following foundations: Philip M, McKenna Foundation,
Jaquelin Hume Foundation, Sarah Scaife Foundation, John M. Olin
Foundation, Carthage Foundation, and the Scaife Family Foundation.
4
See various articles and reports published by The Center for New
Community, including “White Nationalist Staffing U.S. Immigration
Reform PAC” (nd), at: http://bdi.newcomm.org/content/view/5/2/;
and Protect Arizona Now Selects White Supremacist to Chair National
Advisory Board, August 2004, at: http://www.newcomm.org/pan.pdf
5
“Our Principles,” European-American Unity and Rights
Organization, http://www.whitecivilrights.com/
6
Samuel Francis, “Weak Reasons for Immigration Control,”
Chronicles, January 17, 2004.
7
Heather MacDonald, “Get Serious About Immigration Enforcement,”
Dallas Morning News, December 30, 2004.
8
Zoe Hammer-Tomizuka and Jennifer Allen, Hate or Heroism: Vigilantes
on the Arizona-Mexico Border ( Tucson: Border Action Network,
December 2002), at: http://www.borderaction.org/PDFs/BAN-Vigilante%20Report.pdf
9
David Kelly, “Taking Border Patrol Into Their Own Hands,”
Los Angeles Times, February 2, 2005.
10
Fred Krissman, “Them or Us?: Assessing Responsibility for
Undocumented Migration from Mexico,” Center for US-Mexican
Studies, 2004.
11
Margot Veranes and Adriana Navarro, “Racist Fervor becomes
Law in Arizona : Calls for State Boycott Gain Momentum,”
IRC Americas Program, June 2005,http://americas.irc-online.org/
12
“Funding Information,” Protect Arizona Now, at www.pan2004.com/funding.htm
13
According to Protect Arizona Now, other restrictionist initiatives
are active in Arizona, Arkansas, California, Colorado, DC, Florida,
Idaho, Illinois, Maine, Massachusetts, Michigan, Mississippi,
Missouri, Montana, Nebraska, Nevada, North Dakota, Ohio, Oklahoma,
Oregon, South Dakota, Utah, Washington, and Wyoming.
14
Yvonne Wingett, “Prop. 200 Win Inspires Other Groups Across
U.S.,” ArizonaRepublic, Nov. 7, 2004; “State Initiatives,”
Protect Arizona Now, at: www.pan2004/whatshot_stateinitiatives.html