Posts on Center for Immigration Studies

“[O]n the pro-control side, the pro-borders side, the kooks and the racists are at the fringes,” said Mark Krikorian of the Center for Immigration Studies on CNN’s Glenn Beck show last week. “They're nuts, you know, living in their mother's basements.”

Krikorian, fellow guest Jim Gilchrist, and host Mike Brooks were complaining that the California Department of Transportation is moving the adopt-a-highway sign of the San Diego Minutemen to a less prominent area. But if these anti-immigrant commentators wanted to make the point that the anti-immigrant fringe is not part of their side of the debate, perhaps they would have been more convincing had they not been defending one of the most militant and radical vigilante groups in the country.

On this blog we’ve seen the San Diego Minutemen:

• on film aggressively harassing day-laborers,
• conducting an over-the-top protest of a Catholic church that offered breakfast to day-laborers (see photo),
• and ransacking a campground where a number of migrant workers lived—also on film.

A profile of the San Diego Minutemen by the Southern Poverty Law Center notes that the group was disowned for extremism by both major national Minutemen factions—including the Minuteman Project, founded by Gilchrist. But on CNN, Gilchrist said the dispute over SDMM was a matter of “those opposed to immigration law enforcement.”

CNN’s panel—composed of three anti-immigrant activists—was timely evidence for the importance of a new project from the National Council of La Raza to stop the increasing appearance of hate groups and extremists as “experts” in the immigration debate. Indeed, Gilchrist is listed on the site as a “suspect spokesperson,” a self-proclaimed vigilante featured as an immigration expert, and Glenn Beck is named as one of the prominent media hosts of extremism.

Center for Immigration Studies head says "immigrant communities ... serve as the sea, as Mao might have put it, within which the terrorists swim as fish."

While the effort to pass comprehensive immigration reform in the Senate suffered a setback last week, supporters vowed to continue to pursue a compromise this term. Nevertheless, right-wing activists declared victory. Jed Babbin, editor of Human Events, said it was a “Miers Moment” for the Right, referring to the far Right’s successful campaign to undo Bush’s nomination of Harriet Miers to the Supreme Court. Mark Krikorian praised a “vigilant citizenry” that “inundated” Senate offices, and Phyllis Schlafly’s Eagle Forum credited “overwhelming opposition to this amnesty bill.”

Rep. Steve King (R-Iowa) said, “I think there were people dancing in the streets in cities across America [after the vote]. I hope I can see the tape of some of that someday.”

While the Right Wing claims that the people have spoken, as the New York Times points out, polls find broad public support for the Senate bill’s provisions. For example, about two thirds of Americans support legalization of undocumented immigrants, according to the most recent Washington Post-ABC poll – the very provision opponents decry loudly as amnesty.

The effort to pass comprehensive reform continues, but meanwhile, local politicians and activists are working to undermine it. Like national anti-immigrant figures, Butler County, Ohio Sheriff Richard K. Jones declared that “the 'silent majority' was heard after all by federal legislators.” We heard from Jones last year, as he ramped up his personal campaign against undocumented immigrants in his county – putting up billboards and newspaper ads implying grave consequences for hiring “an illegal,” and making mass arrests of Hispanic workers only to release them without charge.

Like his attempts to “bill” the Department of Homeland Security and Mexico for his police expenses supposedly related to immigrants, Jones’s freelance efforts to treat immigration violations as if they were felonies did not seem to accomplish more than a breakdown of police relations with the Hispanic community.

Now Jones is teaming up with a state legislator to oppose the U.S. Senate bill and try to deport more immigrants:

"Let's create stricter state laws to go after employers who hire persons who are in this state illegally," he said. "Also, let's make English the official language of the state. Those who live in Ohio should know our language. Taxpayers should not have to pay for interpreters in schools, and U.S. citizens living here shouldn't have to learn another language."  …

"If we would make it a crime to be in Ohio illegally and local law enforcement could charge offenders with that as a state criminal offense, then we probably could get the federal government to deport those offenders," Sheriff Jones said. "Now is the time for Ohio to show the rest of the country how to deal with immigration problems."

Lawmakers in other states have sought to make illegal aliens subject to arrest under state and local criminal-trespassing laws since U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE), the Homeland Security agency responsible for deporting illegal aliens, generally does not respond to pick up illegals unless they have committed a crime.

“With some people, the issue of amnesty is a litmus test and anything short of a concentration camp is amnesty,” said Republican National Committee member Paul Senft Jr. of Florida. He was speaking of his fellow RNC members, a number of whom are plotting a party coup to prevent Sen. Mel Martinez (R-Florida), Bush’s pick, from assuming the title of general chairman.

Bush picked Martinez to head the Republican Party shortly after the midterm elections, in which the party lost control of both houses of Congress in spite of – or because of – the obsessive efforts by many to cement a Republican alliance with anti-immigrant extremism. Despite Martinez’s partisan and right-wing credentials – the Family Research Council gave him a perfect score – the Right reacted immediately by attacking the senator, who immigrated from Cuba as a teenager, for his support for comprehensive immigration reform. Pat Buchanan accused Bush of “pandering” to minorities only to alienate whites, and Mark Krikorian of the Center for Immigration Studies called the pick “disturbing.”  Rep. Tom Tancredo (R-Colorado) warned that if Martinez continues to support comprehensive reform he will alienate “rank-and-file Republicans” and cause “another shellacking at the polls.”

While the president’s selection seemed like a foregone conclusion, a group called English First unveiled a campaign to “defeat” the nomination, launching StopMartinez.com: “Wrong on English. Wrong on Amnesty. Wrong for the Republican National Committee.” In addition to immigration reform and declaring English as the national language, the web site decries Martinez’s use of Spanish in a Senate speech, as well as his alleged position on statehood for Puerto Rico. (“Think West Virginia or Alaska, only poorer,” warns the group ominously.)

Now, at the RNC meeting in Washington (which began today), many members are planning to vote against Martinez – and according to The Washington Times, some are planning to invoke parliamentary rules to disqualify him.

The conservatives -- one of whom accused the Bush White House of "outsourcing" party leadership -- say the general-chairman post does not exist under RNC rules, which can be changed only at the party's presidential nominating convention.

Unhappy committee members say that, in the past, Republican presidents and RNC leaders have successfully run roughshod over the rules, because the RNC officer presiding over votes at committee meetings have simply overruled points of order and other objections from the floor, with no accredited professional parliamentarians to exercise a check.

This time, the organizers of the rebellion say, their strategy will rely in part on having a parliamentarian present. And violations of Robert's Rules of Order and of the RNC's written rules -- adopted at the 2004 Republican National Convention in New York -- could result in legal challenges. …

[RNC member Randy] Pullen pointed out that Mr. Martinez, who served as Mr. Bush's secretary of Housing and Urban Development before winning a Senate seat, is not an RNC member. RNC rebels say the rules are clear that the person who heads the committee must be a member of the committee.  "Outsourcing our leadership at this critical time is not an option," Mr. Haugland said.

While the anti-immigrant faction hoping to undermine Bush’s selection may not succeed in preventing Martinez from becoming general chairman, they may succeed in further distancing the party from Hispanic voters.

Norquist blames “radio talk-show hosts” who “poisoned the atmosphere.” Meanwhile, anti-immigrant FAIR spins elections.

Center for Immigration Studies’ Krikorian “disturb[ed]” by Martinez as RNC chair. CIS’s Camarota echoes the spin.