An extensive article in this Sunday’s New York Times, confirms what the pro-Migrant community has been saying all along: anti-immigrant groups Federation for American Immigration Reform (FAIR), the Center for Immigration Studies (CIS), and NumbersUSA are all fruits of John Tanton’s poisonous tree:
From the resort town of Petoskey, Mich., Dr. Tanton helped start all three major national groups fighting to reduce immigration, legal and illegal, and molded one of the most powerful grass-roots forces in politics. The immigration-control movement surged to new influence in last fall’s elections and now holds near veto power over efforts to legalize any of the 11 million illegal immigrants in the United States.
One group that Dr. Tanton nurtured, Numbers USA, doomed President George W. Bush’s legalization plan four years ago by overwhelming Congress with protest calls. Another, the Federation for American Immigration Reform, or FAIR, helped draft the Arizona law last year to give the police new power to identify and detain illegal immigrants.
A third organization, the Center for Immigration Studies, joined the others in December in defeating the Dream Act, which sought to legalize some people brought to the United States illegally as children.
As we’ve written in the past, FAIR, CIS and NumbersUSA (all started by Tanton) stand at the nexus of the American nativist movement. We even produced a video about the Tanton groups:
