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Biased, Anti-Immigrant Tanton Group, CIS, Attacks New York Times for Pro-Immigrant Positions

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Yesterday we wrote a blog post about a Tanton network hate group, the Federation for American Immigration Reform (FAIR) attacking the Southern Poverty Law Center (SPLC), a civil rights organization, for hating on them.  Today another Tanton network extremist group, the Center for Immigration Studies (CIS), has put out a whole report attacking the New York Times for supposedly being biased in their coverage of the anti-immigrant wing.  What will these groups think of next?

The CIS report is about how the New York Times, under the influence of its publisher Arthur Sulzberger and its lead immigration editorial writer Lawrence Downes, has “poisoned the national discussion of a complex and emotional issue” by painting all immigration reform opponents as racists.  Here are some of the quotes the report finds offense with:

For instance, Lawrence Downes, the lead Times editorial writer on immigration, heaps scorn on those who express worry about the ability of unskilled and poorly educated immigrants to integrate into American life. He considers such concerns to be a mask for bigots, proof of nativist hostility. He calls them an “effective substitute” for the open racism that has been driven from the public square.”

In late 2012, a Times editorial touted its inclusive ideas for reform with this warning: “The hard-liners against reform — including the white-culture alarmists and the closet racists — have not gone away”…

But once again, the Times showed no sense of the inclination to compromise that made it a constructive force in the 1980s. It saw the opposition as tub-thumping bigots. It decried “the ferocity of the opposition from the restrictionist right, with talk radio lighting up over ‘amnesty’, callers spitting out the words with all the hate they can pour into it.” The verdict for those who wanted to restrict immigration was clear — guilty by association.

Here’s some simple advice for CIS: if you don’t want to be seen as bigots and nativists, don’t be bigots and nativists.

Who are some of these “hard-liners” and “white-culture alarmists” that CIS is complaining about being lumped in with?  How about Rep. Steve King (R-IA), who compares immigrants to dogs and cattle and considers that to be a “compliment”?  How about Rep. Lou Barletta (R-PA), who paints all immigrant detainees as criminals while Fox News hypes them as dangerous killers?  How about Rep. Dana Rohrabacher (R-CA), who recently screamed at a DREAMer that he “hates illegals” and threatened “now I know where you live”?  These are sitting Congressmembers who are part of the Republican rank and file, who regularly make headlines with hateful and dehumanizing comments toward immigrants.  How about we talk about them when we consider who is poisoning the national immigration debate?

How about we look at the Center for Immigration Studies itself, which failed to mention in its report that it is an anti-immigrant lobby group with its own biases?  How about we look at some of the writings of its executive director, Mark Krikorian, who likes to blame immigrants for everything from global warming to the Wall Street crash?

Granted, these are tough times for the anti-immigrant crowd. Krikorian is one of the creators of the GOP’s doomed “self-deportation” strategy and was gleeful when Mitt Romney adopted it in January of 2012. That worked out well for the GOP, right? The Tanton anti-immigrant groups have become so toxic that even conservatives are attacking them for being too extreme. Maybe going after the New York Times is an effort to win back some of those conservatives–but it’s a desperate move.

If CIS was serious about having a real discussion about immigration reform, maybe they should write a report about what members of their own side are saying, and lead the push for clearer minds to debunk, discredit, and dismiss these haters.  But then they’d have to clean up their own house.