The Puppeteer

The organized anti-immigration ‘movement,’ increasingly in bed with racist hate groups, is dominated by one man, John Tanton

Before he even said a word, U.S. Rep. Tom Tancredo (R-Colo.) got a standing ovation from the 27 anti-immigration activists who gathered at the Cannon House Office Building in Washington, D.C., on the morning of Feb. 13 to kick off a two-day lobbying effort on Capitol Hill.

Tancredo, chairman of the Congressional Immigration Reform Caucus, proceeded to regale his audience with ominous warnings of a global plot to destroy the United States.

Many countries are pushing immigration in order to erode American sovereignty, Tancredo warned: “China is trying to export people. It’s a policy for them, a way of extending their hegemony. It’s a government-sponsored thing.”

After Tancredo’s 10-minute pep talk, Brian Bilbray, a former Republican congressman from San Diego, Calif., weighed in with horror stories about an impending social catastrophe due to immigration.

“We are creating a slave class that criminal elements breed in,” said Bilbray, who complained bitterly — and improbably — that he lost his 2000 re-election bid because “illegal aliens” had voted against him.

But all was not doom and gloom, according to Bilbray.

Praising the post-9/11 sweeps of Arab communities by the Immigration and Naturalization Service (INS) that resulted in the indefinite detention of more than a thousand people, Bilbray called for the INS to carry out an enlarged dragnet. “We could have a terrorist coming in on a Latin name,” he said.

The meeting with Tancredo and Bilbray — and the entire lobbying operation in mid-February — was masterminded by NumbersUSA, an anti-immigration group that had recently opened a “government relations office” in a three-story, red-brick Victorian near the Capitol.

NumbersUSA hosted an afternoon open house at its plush new digs, where the lobbyists relaxed, nibbled on catered food, and conversed with the leaders and other officials of key anti-immigration organizations.

Patrick McHugh of the Washington-based Center for Immigration Studies, which purports to be a squeaky clean think tank that rejects racism, was there pressing the flesh along with Barbara Coe, head of the California Coalition for Immigration Reform, who repeatedly referred to Mexicans — as she has for years — as “savages.”

The Citizens Informer, a white supremacist tabloid put out by the Council of Conservative Citizens hate group, was available.

NumbersUSA executive director Roy Beck, a long-time friend of Coe’s, adopted a more moderate tone when he addressed his guests and told them what they should be doing to end the current immigration regime.

It would be better, Beck counseled, if their attempts to lobby legislators that week did not appear to be orchestrated by NumbersUSA. For their campaign to be effective, he said, it “needs to look like a grassroots effort.”

Grassroots — or AstroTurf?

To be sure, this was no grassroots effort. Nor is NumbersUSA, in any sense of the word, a grassroots organization.

Despite attempts to appear otherwise, it is a wholly owned subsidiary of U.S. Inc., a sprawling, nonprofit funding conduit that has spawned three anti-immigration groups and underwrites several others, many of which were represented at the NumbersUSA conclave.

What’s more, this interlocking network of supposedly independent organizations is almost entirely the handiwork of one man, a Michigan ophthalmologist named John H. Tanton.

A four-month investigation by the Intelligence Report, conducted in the aftermath of the September terrorist attacks, found that the appearance of an array of groups with large membership bases is nothing more than a mirage.

In fact, the vast majority of American anti-immigration groups — more than a dozen in all — were either formed, led, or in other ways made possible through Tanton’s efforts.

The principal funding arm of the movement, U.S. Inc., is a Tanton creation, and millions of dollars in financing comes from just a few of his allies, far-right foundations like those controlled by the family of Richard Mellon Scaife.

Moreover, tax returns suggest that claims of huge numbers of members — in the case of one group, more than 250,000 — are geometric exaggerations put forward to create a false picture of a “movement” that politicians should pay attention to.

Finally, even as activists court increasing numbers of national politicians in the wake of Sept. 11, the Report’s investigation reveals that they are moving in large numbers into the arms of hate groups like the Council of Conservative Citizens — a 15,000-member organization whose website recently described blacks as “a retrograde species of humanity.”

In fact, many anti-immigration groups have been growing harder- and harder-line since 1998, when they first began working together with open white supremacists. Today, many of their leading officials have joined racist organizations.

There’s a word in Washington for outfits like these anti-immigration organizations — “astroturf,” meaning that they lack any genuine grassroots base.

That such groups, with their increasingly direct links to racist organizations, should have real power in the nation’s capital may seem hard to believe.

But Americans have grown increasingly xenophobic in the wake of the September terrorist attacks, and the rapid growth of the Congressional Immigration Reform Caucus that Tancredo heads reflects that — from just 10 legislators prior to the attacks to 59 by May.

What kind of influence do extremists have in this congressional caucus?

Although that is hard to measure, the caucus website now carries a prominent link to an outfit called American Patrol — a racist hate group run by Californian Glenn Spencer.

With a tip of the hat to Tancredo and the other legislators who have helped to provide him legitimacy, Spencer recently deleted from his website the image of a cartoon figure urinating on a Latino Presidential Medal of Freedom recipient.

From Environment to Race

It is not often that a single individual is largely responsible for creating an entire political movement. But John Tanton can claim without exaggeration that he is the founding father of America’s modern anti-immigration movement.

In addition to directly controlling four prominent immigration restriction groups, Tanton has been critical in establishing or helping fund several other anti-immigration groups.

He serves on the board of the group with the largest membership, the Federation for American Immigration Reform (FAIR), which he founded 23 years ago.

It was an odd turn of events for an erstwhile liberal activist who loved beekeeping and the rural life.

Raising a family and practicing medicine in Petoskey, Mich., Tanton started out as a passionate environmentalist. In the 1960s and early 1970s, he was a leader in the National Audubon Society, the Sierra Club and other mainstream environmental groups.

But Tanton soon became fixated on population control, seeing environmental degradation as the inevitable result of overpopulation.

When the indigenous birth rate fell below replacement level in the United States, his preoccupation turned to immigration. And this soon led him to race.

Tanton had something akin to a conversion when he came across The Camp of the Saints, a lurid, racist novel written by Frenchman Jean Raspail that depicts an invasion of the white, Western world by a fleet of starving, dark-skinned refugees.

Tanton helped get the novel published in English and soon was promoting what he considered the book’s prophetic argument.

“Their [Third World] ‘huddled masses’ cast longing eyes on the apparent riches of the industrial west,” Tanton wrote in 1975. “The developed countries lie directly in the path of a great storm.”

And so he began to develop a counter-force. After 1979, when he co-founded FAIR, Tanton launched “a whole array of organizations that serve the overall ideological and political battle plan to halt immigration — even if those groups have somewhat differing politics,” explained Rick Swartz, the pro-immigration activist who founded the National Immigration Forum in 1982.

“Tanton is the puppeteer behind this entire movement,” Swartz said. “He is the organizer of a significant amount of its financing, and is both the major recruiter of key personnel and the intellectual leader of the whole network of groups.”

Tanton declined to be interviewed for this story.

[note]
John Tanton’s Network
The organized anti-immigration “movement” is almost entirely the handiwork of one man, Michigan activist John H. Tanton.
Here is a list of 13 groups in the loose-knit Tanton network, followed by acronyms if the groups use them, founding dates, and Tanton’s role in the groups.

Those organizations designated as hate groups by the Southern Poverty Law Center are marked with an asterisk (*).

In this list, “founded” means a group was founded or co-founded by John Tanton. “Funded” means that U.S. Inc., the funding conduit created and still headed by Tanton, has made grants to the group.

• *American Immigration Control Foundation    AICF, 1983, funded
• *American Patrol/Voice of Citizens Together   1992, funded
• California Coalition for Immigration Reform  CCIR, 1994, funded
• Californians for Population Stabilization   1996, funded (founded separately in 1986)
• Center for Immigration Studies   CIS, 1985, founded and funded
• *Federation for American Immigration Reform  FAIR, 1979, founded and funded
• NumbersUSA  1996, founded and funded
• Population-Environment Balance  1973, joined board in 1980
• Pro English   1994, founded and funded
• ProjectUSA  1999, funded
• *The Social Contract Press  1990, founded and funded
• U.S. English   1983, founded and funded
• U.S. Inc.  1982, founded and funded

[/note]

The Strategy Emerges

Tanton’s strategy was to fight his war on several fronts. FAIR relied heavily on arguments about diminishing resources and jobs.

In 1982, Tanton created U.S. Inc. to raise and channel funds to his anti-immigration network. The following year, he created his second major vehicle, U.S. English, which made a cultural argument — that the English language was in mortal danger of being made irrelevant.

And later, in 1985, FAIR would spin off yet another major Tanton organization — the Center for Immigration Studies, which presented itself as an impartial think tank and later even sought to distance itself from the organization that had birthed it.

Today, the Center regularly dispatches experts to testify on Capitol Hill, and last year it was awarded a six-figure research contract by the U.S. Census Bureau.

In the 1980s, U.S. Inc. provided millions of dollars to FAIR, U.S. English, the Center for Immigration Studies and several similar groups — the 21st Century Fund, Population-Environment Balance, and the Immigration Reform Law Institute, which is now a litigation arm of FAIR.

During the 1990s, Tanton’s U.S. Inc. adopted a new tactic, creating programs called NumbersUSA, The Social Contract Press (which publishes The Camp of the Saints), and Pro English.

Although these units would often present themselves as independent, tax forms make it clear that they are merely programs of U.S. Inc.

Tanton’s funding organization, U.S. Inc., also has recently given money to Barbara Coe’s California Coalition for Immigration Reform and Glenn Spencer’s American Patrol (also known as Voice of Citizens Together), two of the most virulently anti-Hispanic groups in Tanton’s network.

In the Trenches

Tanton’s “movement” achieved some notable successes:

• Almost 30 states and many more local communities passed “English Only” statutes enshrining English as the language of official business.
• In 1994, after extensive campaigning by Tanton-supported groups, millions of Californians joined in passing Proposition 187, which denied social services to undocumented workers.
• Two years later, Tanton celebrated the passage of the Illegal Immigration Reform and Immigrant Responsibility Act, a law meant to cut illegal immigration that was heavily backed by anti-immigration groups. It required that asylum seekers be held in detention until they established a credible fear of persecution at home, a process that could take years.

There were failures, too. In 1996, Tanton helped to energize an effort to get the Sierra Club, a mainstream environmental group whose Population Committee he had headed during the 1970s, to pass an anti-immigration plank.

A major battle ensued, with many Sierra Club members seeing the proposed plank as fundamentally racist and out of line with the group’s charter. The plank was finally rejected by 60% of those voting — but that may not be the end of it.

Another Tanton-financed group, Californians for Population Stabilization, is now gearing up to reintroduce the issue to the Sierra Club.

Tanton was also careless in several ways.

Between 1985 and 1994, FAIR accepted $1.2 million from the Pioneer Fund — an outfit once described by eugenics expert Barry Mehler as a “neo-Nazi organization, tied to the Nazi eugenics program in the 1930s, that has never wavered in its commitment to eugenics and ideas of human and racial inferiority and superiority.”

When the Pioneer link was disclosed in 1988, Tanton, who was then president of FAIR’s board, said he knew nothing of Pioneer’s unsavory history. Yet his group continued to accept Pioneer grants for another six years, until 1994.

The Wise Men’s Mistake

More damaging, however, was the leak, shortly before a 1988 English Only referendum in Arizona, of the so-called WITAN memos written by Tanton and the then-executive director of FAIR, Roger Conner. (WITAN was short for the Old English term “witenangemot,” meaning “council of wise men.” The memos were meant for Tanton colleagues who met at retreats to discuss immigration.)

The memos were replete with derogatory references to Latinos, reflecting a kind of entrenched bigotry that had only been suspected before. They complained mightily of the high Hispanic birth rate suggesting that Latin American immigrants would bring political corruption to the United States.

The memos included a demographic punchline that depicted Hispanics as hyperactive breeders and revolted many readers: “[P]erhaps this is the first instance in which those with their pants up are going to get caught by those with their pants down.”

Linda Chavez, executive director of Tanton creation U.S. English and later a prominent Republican conservative columnist, quit over what she saw as Tanton’s bigoted, anti-Latino bias.

So did several well-known U.S. English board members, including advisory board member Walter Cronkite, who called the memos “embarrassing.”

Eventually Tanton left, although he complained he was being smeared as a racist, and went on to form a replacement organization — English Language Advocates, later renamed Pro English.

More to the point, perhaps, the WITAN memos spelled out the strategy that Tanton would continue to follow for years. “We have spent some time, money and effort trying to build a membership for purposes of political validity and power,” one memo said, “but this has not been a major emphasis.”

The memos candidly added what anti-immigration groups would not admit publicly — that the “movement” was “heavily based on a small number of donors.”

Crossing the Rubicon

In many ways, 1998 became a kind of political Rubicon for Tanton and his colleagues. That year, a federal judge found much of Proposition 187 unconstitutional, dealing the anti-immigration movement one of its harshest setbacks ever and igniting a kind of desperation that drove many activists into increasingly extremist politics.

At the same time, Congress was whittling away at the 1996 immigration law, and u.s. political and economic elites generally were supporting immigration.

At least partly as a result of these developments, anti-immigration activists increasingly came to embrace conspiracist ideas like the notion pushed by Spencer and Coe of a Mexican plot to reconquer the American Southwest.

More and more key leaders in the Tanton network seemed to abandon all caution when it came to joining forces with like-minded white supremacist activists.

That summer, The Social Contract Press released a special issue of its journal, The Social Contract (published by Tanton), that was entitled “Europhobia: The Hostility Toward European-Descended Americans.”

The lead article was written by John Vinson, head of the Tanton-supported American Immigration Control Foundation, and argued that “multiculturalism” was replacing “successful Euro-American culture” with “dysfunctional Third World cultures.”

Tanton himself elaborated on Vinson’s remarks, saying an “unwarranted hatred and fear” of white Americans was developing. The main culprits, in Tanton’s view, were immigrants and their ideological allies, the “multiculturalists.”

The issue was one of the first public manifestations of a collaboration between Tanton’s network and open racists. In addition to Tanton and Vinson, the line-up of authors included:

• Sam Francis, who would later become editor of the Citizens Informer, the racist publication of the Council of Conservative Citizens;
• Lawrence Auster, who also spoke at conferences of American Renaissance, a pseudo-scientific magazine devoted to racial breeding and the idea that blacks are less intelligent; and

Joseph Fallon, who writes for American Renaissance.

Later issues of The Social Contract would carry articles by James Lubinskas, an editor of American Renaissance; Derek Turner of Right Now!, a similar British publication; and Michael Masters, the Virginia leader of the Council of Conservative Citizens.

An unholy alliance had begun to take shape.

Number Inflation

Tanton also wrote an editorial in 1998 that spoke of “trying to touch off the political phase of the immigration reform movement.”

While Tanton didn’t spell out exactly what he meant, it seems clear that he sought to develop a real base of popular support — and to regain the trust of lawmakers, particularly the many Republicans who were scared off in the wake of the Proposition 187 fiasco. Many already had been punished at the polls for their support for the California proposition.

Typically, American politicians respond most to those groups that seem to represent a real constituency — groups whose leaders are presumed to be able to command votes and money. Obviously, it was in the interest of the now struggling anti-immigration groups to appear to have large numbers of paid-up members.

The problem was, most of them did not.

First of all, the vast majority of funding for most of these groups comes from just a handful of donors, many of them large, right-wing foundations.

• In 2000, the latest year for which tax returns are available, Vinson’s American Immigration Control Foundation (AICF) received 90% of its funding from just three contributors.
• Five contributions accounted for 82% of U.S. Inc.’s income in the same year.
• Fifty-eight percent of FAIR’s 2000 donations were provided by six donors.
• Fourteen donors account for 94% of the Center for Immigration Studies income for that year.

The narrow funding base of such groups becomes even more apparent in cases like that of FAIR (with a budget of $4.2 million in 2000), which received more than $6 million from a single donor between 1996 and 1999.

U.S. Inc. (whose 2000 budget was $2.3 million) likewise got nearly $5 million in that period from one donor, while three other Tanton-linked organizations were given $1 million to $2 million donations by single donors.

If these kinds of major grants are subtracted from the groups’ annual donation totals — and if the membership fees posted on group websites are taken seriously — then the membership claims made by many groups are clearly exaggerated.

For example, after subtracting the three major donations reported on AICF’s 2000 tax forms, only $39,386 in income is left. If members pay $15 a year, as the AICF website says, then the group has at most 2,625 members — hardly the 250,000-plus that it claims.

Similarly, ProjectUSA has said it has 3,000 members; but if a donation of $20 — a figure recently suggested on its website — was paid by each donor, then it would have had 841 members.

In the case of FAIR, which claims 75,000 members, the 2000 tax forms suggests a real membership base of about half that.

FAIR’s executive director, Dan Stein, defends his numbers, telling the Intelligence Report members pay “a certain amount over a period of 24 months … like $20″ — in other words, $10 a year. FAIR’s website says that membership costs $25 a year.

The Foundations

The tax returns reveal another hidden aspect of many anti-immigration groups — their heavy reliance on funding by right-wing foundations.

Tanton’s most important funding source for the last two decades may well have been the Scaife family, heirs to the Mellon Bank fortune.

Richard Mellon Scaife, a reclusive figure, has been instrumental in establishing right-wing organizations like the Heritage Foundation and supporting causes like the “Arkansas Project,” an effort to dig up dirt on President Clinton.

Scaife family foundations, including those controlled by Scaife’s sister, Cordelia May Scaife, provided some $1.4 million to FAIR from 1986-2000.

These foundations, along with private trusts controlled by Scaife family members, have also provided millions of dollars to other anti-immigration groups.

Other foundations that have supported the Tanton network include:

• The McConnell Foundation, whose president, Scott McConnell, is on both FAIR and the Center for Immigration Studies’ boards;
• The Shea Foundation, which also funds the Council of Conservative Citizens; and
• The Weeden, Salisbury, Smith Richardson, Blair and Sikes foundations.

Joining the Extremists

Since 1998, the links have been strengthened between key anti-immigration activists and groups and white supremacist organizations – in particular, the Council of Conservative Citizens (CCC) and American Renaissance (also known by the name of its parent, the New Century Foundation).

That year, Coe, Spencer and Rick Oltman, FAIR’s western regional representative, all came to Cullman, Ala., for a CCC-organized protest against a swelling local population of Mexican workers.

After the protest, Vinson, the leader of the American Immigration Control Foundation, began writing of the perils of immigration for the CCC’s paper, the Citizens Informer. Spencer started selling his anti-immigrant videotape in the same tabloid.

In 1999, the CCC hosted a panel on immigration that featured four key anti-immigrant activists — Vinson, Spencer, Population-Environment Balance’s Virginia Abernethy and Wayne Lutton, who had begun to edit The Social Contract, a Tanton publication, just a year earlier.

More recently, Lutton joined the editorial board of the Citizens Informer — and also became a trustee of the racist New Century Foundation, parent of American Renaissance magazine.

Barbara Coe of California Coalition for Immigration Reform has spoken at three recent CCC conferences and writes regularly for the Informer.

Brent Nelson, who is on the board of Vinson’s AICF, began serving as president of the CCC’s Conservative Citizens Foundation and as an adviser to the Informer.

Asked by the Intelligence Report about Lutton — who works out of Tanton’s Petoskey, Mich., offices — and other anti-immigration activists who have climbed on board with hate groups, Tanton declined to answer that or a series of other questions faxed to him by the Report at his request.

The questions showed “little evidence of tolerance for differences of opinion,” he wrote.

Last year, Virginia Abernethy, a professor emeritus at Vanderbilt’s medical school and leader of the Tanton-influenced Population-Environment Balance, became the latest in the Tanton network to join the Citizens Informer editorial board.

“My view of the Council of Conservative Citizens,” she told the Intelligence Report, “is that they support traditional values and the freedom of people to associate with people that they want to associate with.”

She spoke on the same day that the CCC’s website carried a comparison of black pop singer Michael Jackson and an ape — a comparison that Abernethy suggested may have reflected “bad taste,” but not racism.

“What is the point of a society that pushes [racial] mixing?” she asked when told of another CCC web item that derided the wife of murdered Wall Street Journal reporter Daniel Pearl as a “mixed race” woman who is “committed to racial and ethnic amalgamation.”

“Our society pushes mixing,” the retired Vanderbilt professor added. “I think this is probably not a good thing for the society.”

The Threat from the Right

Two weeks after the NumbersUSA lobbying trip to the offices of Tom Tancredo and a series of other congressmen, Glenn Spencer, head of the Tanton-funded anti-immigrant American Patrol, was one of the main speakers at a conference hosted by Jared Taylor of American Renaissancemagazine.

Joining Spencer, who warned his audience that a second Mexican-American war would erupt in 2003, was an array of key extremists:

 

• Mark Weber, a principal of the Holocaust-denying Institute for Historical Review;
• White power web maven, former Klansman and ex-con Don Black;
• Gordon Lee Baum, “chief executive officer” of the CCC; and
• several members of the neo-Nazi National Alliance.

Neo-Nazis like those of the National Alliance were not among those who lobbied Tancredo and the other politicians during the NumbersUSA event two weeks earlier.

But there were strong indications that the Tanton network and some of its new friends did make a number of key inroads in the halls of Congress.

The white supremacist CCC, for instance, later boasted in print about how its “members were welcomed … and made a number of stops” during the lobbying trip. Both congressmen and senators were offered copies of itsCitizens Informer, the group’s newspaper reported.

Several of the anti-immigration activists who attended later claimed that the Tancredo caucus had grown in size specifically because of their lobbying efforts. At the end of the day, the CCC told its members that the Senate was now expected to pass a restrictive visa-tracking bill, which it said President Bush would likely sign.

There were other indications, too, of the strength of the Tanton network inside Tancredo’s congressional immigration caucus.

Rosemary Jenks, who used to be a researcher at the Center for Immigration Studies, and Linda Purdue, who has worked with Tanton for years, are now both lobbyists with NumbersUSA.

Addressing her fellow lobbyists with Tancredo still in the room, Jenks said that she and Purdue could be reached any time in Tancredo’s offices — where, she said, they were “virtual staffers.”

This kind of strategy was explicitly foreseen in the WITAN memos, described under subtitles like “Infiltrate the Judiciary Committee” and “Secure appointments of our friends” to key governmental positions.

Indeed, Cordia Strom, who was once FAIR’s legal director, became a staffer for the House Immigration Subcommittee in 1996. Today, Strom is counsel to the director and coordinator of congressional affairs for the Immigration and Naturalization Service.

There is a real threat that members of Congress — many of whom are rushing to become involved in immigration issues in the wake of the Sept. 11 attacks — may be taken in by the propagandists of the racist right.

Opinion polls consistently show that a majority of Americans believe that immigration needs to be cut below current levels, although that does not imply that they support the ideas of white supremacists or other bigots.

Certainly, the lobbyists who visited in February were taken seriously by many of those they visited — today, the web page of Tancredo’s Congressional Immigration Reform Caucus carries links to the pages of a whole array of Tanton-associated groups.

The danger is not that immigration levels are debated by Americans, but that the debate is controlled by bigots and extremists whose views are anathema to the ideals on which this country was founded.

WITAN MEMO I
The first memo lays out Tanton’s plans to further insert FAIR into U.S. politics.

Memo to FAIR from John Tanton

Since launching FAIR [Federation for American Immigration Reform] in January of 1979, the board has adhered steadfastly to one of the possible models for changing U.S. immigration law and practice. Our plan emphasized the national (rather than the state and local) nature of the immigration question, and, therefore, concentrated on building a national office and staff rather than working at the grassroots.
It emphasized the need for changes in immigration law rather than using and defending existing statutes and regulations. Hence, we concentrated on legislative lobbying, rather than administrative lobbying of the executive branch of government, or use of the courts. We recognized the need to overcome the taboo that in 1979 proscribed discussion of the immigration issue, so we hired a writer as one of our initial staff persons to produce pamphlets, speeches, op-ed pieces, etc.

In my judgment, grassroots work has not been a major emphasis. On the media side of this question, I believe we get high marks for good and consistent effort throughout our existence.

We have relied upon the correctness and cogency of our argument, rather than upon raw political power. We cannot make it “snow on the Hill” as the saying goes for an organization such as the National Rifle Association, which can on short notice produce hundreds of thousands of postcards and letters from irate members. We have spent some time, money and effort trying to build a membership for purposes of political validity and power, but this has not been a major emphasis. Indeed, there has been disagreement among board members on whether this needed to be done.

We’ve also concentrated on illegal immigration versus legal, on the sweeping solution rather than the incremental approach, on the “quantity” of immigrants rather than their quality or the social effects of immigration.

Financially, FAIR grew rapidly its early years. The table shows our total revenues since its founding:

1979 $216,349
1980 442,916
1981 815,212
1982 1,269,126
1983 1,255,223
1984 1,447,161
1985 1,543,610
1986 1,600,000 (estimated)

GRAND TOTALS: 8 years & $8,500,000

Our financial growth was heavily based on a small number of major donors, who rapidly increased their contributions in the early years, but have now leveled off. We have found few new donors, as reflected by the plateau in our budgets. We’ve discussed but have had no meeting of the minds on whether this budget is adequate, or whether additional resources are needed for the task, given its size and complexity.

Our original plan called for a small board with one level of decision making. We’ve stuck to this, and in my judgment, it has worked well. We have had little turnover in the board membership, and even less among the officers, the undersigned in particular. We need to discuss how healthy a practice this is.

I would summarize our effort as under-capitalized, Washington-based, and focused on comprehensive reform of immigration law, with success measured in new laws passed. Judged by that standard, our plan has not worked very well, though we must give ourselves good marks for defeating initiatives of the opposition and securing a big increase in the Border Patrol’s appropriation. Unfortunately these successes are of the incremental variety and less satisfying and less saleable to members and donors than a comprehensive victory.

There are a number of reasons why we have not succeeded with comprehensive legislation, but chief among them has been the opposition to our ideas of one of the most senior members of Congress, the chairman of the House Judiciary Committee, “Mr. immigration” himself, Peter Rodino.

Speaker O’Neill has also been less than helpful, but he’ll be gone after this year. We have no idea how long Mr. Rondino will last, but his health is good, he’s filed for another term, and the House of Representatives is his whole life now that his wife has passed away. We must assume that he will be there for some years to come, and will remain a formidable obstacle.

As a result, I propose we stop banging our collective heads against that immovable wall, and that until Mr. Rodino moves on, we adopt a new strategy of working around him. Here are some proposals:

A. Congressional Strategy

A1. Work with other committees. For instance, we could go to the Ways and Means Committee to make sure that the earned income tax credit (the negative income tax that Mr. Nixon got through) is not available to illegal aliens. We could work with Henry Hyde — the opponent of many of us on abortion — on his interest in reducing document fraud.

We can continue our work with the Appropriations Committee to help assure good funding for the Immigration Service and modernization of their computer capacities, or with the committee that oversees passport matters, to help the State Department achieve their goal of a machine-readable passport. We could encourage the committees that oversee military and drug enforcement affairs to share equipment and the intelligence they gather with the Immigration Service.

We could try to assure that any protectionist trade legislation that passes requires, as a condition of the protection, that the employers hire only legal U.S. residents. What’s the sense of saving American jobs, if Americans don’t fill them?

The possibilities for going to other committees, while not endless, are substantial, and offer the chance to educate other members of Congress on immigration problems in their areas of interest and responsibility.

A2. Infiltrate the Judiciary Committees. This is a long-range project. We should make every effort to get legislators sympathetic to our point of view appointed to the House and Senate Judiciary Committees, and their Immigration Sub-Committees. Think how much different our prospects would be if someone espousing our ideas had the chairmanship! If we secure the appointment of our people as freshmen members of the committee, we will eventually secure the chairmanship. Remember: we’re in this for the long haul.

A3. Focus our grass roots and direct mail efforts in Congressional districts that are of particular importance to us: Jim Wright of Texas who will likely be the next Speaker, the majority and minority leaders, and selected other key individuals.

A4. Block the bills that our opposition wants. In our legislative system, it is far easier to stop a measure than to pass it. To pass a measure, one must be successful at the sub-committee, the committee and the full house level in both houses of the legislature, following which the House and Senate conferees must each vote separately to resolve differences, following which each chamber must adopt the Conference Committee Report before the President signs it. Count them up: it takes eleven positive responses in a row to pass a bill. To stop it, only a negative vote in one of the eleven places is needed. Passing a bill is almost as difficult as bowling a perfect game of ten pins.

B. Increased emphasis on better enforcement of laws already on the books: agency lobbying.

B1. Secure changes in the administrative rules governing immigration. For instance, the Immigration Service allows persons admitted for legal resident alien status to commute daily across both the Mexican and Canadian borders. This adds about 50 million border crossings a year to the total of 350 million, and makes the border that much more difficult to enforce. Let’s get them to stop this practice. Let’s follow up on Bob Park’s finding that employers of illegal aliens may be liable for withholding thirty percent of their wages in lieu of federal income taxes. This would get the IRS on our side, always an important ally. Let’s reverse Carter’s debilitating administrative rules on asylum.

B2. Develop strong relationships with the INS, and with the Bureau of Counselor Affairs in the State Department (which supervises the issuance of visas). Here I’m speaking of not just the people in Washington, but the workers in the field. We should recruit field people to membership, and get their ideas on how to change things, drawn form their perspective of daily work with the problem. The Departments of Labor and Education also have a piece of this pie, and we should get to know them as well.

B3. Secure employer sanctions by using legislation already on the books. Let’s get the INS to adopt and enforce our much more restrictive view of the Texas Proviso and the “protection” it offers to the employers of illegal aliens. If we can get employee sanctions this way, then suddenly our opposition will be on the outside looking in and will need to change the law. Here I have in mind the narrowing of the interpretation of the Texas Proviso.

B4. Secure appointments of our friends to positions on the Board of Immigration Appeals, to the Commissioner’s Post if Mr. Nelson leaves, as he will eventually, to other advisory boards in the INS and Justice Department.

B5. Look for other ways to enforce current laws. We’ve already done the background work with Dan Stein’s massive enforcement study. If we back away from our commitment to legislative lobbying, we’ll have the resources to do some of these other things.

C. Increased emphasis on litigation to prevent further weakening and increase enforcement of current laws.

C1. Challenge the Texas Proviso in court if necessary. If wecould get it thrown out, we would have employer sanctions without the amnesty that has been appended to it in Congress. Then we would have the same reversal of burdens that happened with the Supreme Court decision on abortion. We would then be king of the mountain. Our opposition would have to try to pass legislation to narrow employer sanctions, or to get amnesty passed without the bargaining chip of employer sanctions. The burden would be on their shoulders, and we’ve already seen above how difficult it is to pass something.

C2. Use the court system. We’ve done some of this, but we could work both harder and smarter. Our opposition has whittled away at many good laws, wounding them. We could help make good law by pursuing our own cases. And as we’ve learned, this research often shows ways to achieve changes without going to court, by working with the responsible agencies.

D. Shifting the emphasis of FAIR’s current programs: building for the long haul.

D1. Build the organization for the long term. This means strengthening our fund-raising, finding new major donors, funding the Endowment Fund and building our direct-mail membership.

D2. Work at the grass roots. This is difficult in immigration matters, where the federal government preempts the field. State-level employer sanction laws don’t seem to have worked very well. But perhaps we need to take some grass roots activity like picketing the plants of employers of illegal aliens. States could be encouraged to use the good offices of the INS to screen illegal aliens from their welfare and other benefit rolls, using the computer methods now available. In California for instance, the system is all set to go, but the political will is lacking to implement it. We could encourage our members to meet with the INS in their local areas to give moral support to balance their detractors.

D3. Build the political strength of the organization. Increasing our budget will do this, but so will finding more members through direct mail who can write, contribute and act on the local level.

D4 De-emphasize our media effort. This will be controversial, but Roger now spends a great deal of his time in this area. Will we need as much of this for the low-key behind-the-scenes approach suggested here? I think not, and we won’t have the time to undertake these measures unless Roger is freed up.

D5. “Go with the Flow.” Governmental emphasis is now on balancing the budget, cutting expenditures and, where possible, increasing revenues. Let’s make proposals consistent with this emphasis, such as a system of user fees for immigration services. For instance, the government now charges $100 for the issuance of an immigrant visa, but nothing for non-immigrant visas, as many other countries do. Let’s change that. And let’s use the Grace Commission to help publicize the way in which we can cut government costs by getting illegal aliens off benefit rolls. In these times, such measures should attract wide support in these times [sic].

D6. Continue to build the intellectual basis for immigration law reform. Ideas will win out in the end, or so I believe. We should continue to produce thoughtful monographs, op-ed pieces and participate in conferences that enrich the intellectual base form which we operate. The advent of the Center for Immigration Studies is a major step forward in this regard.

These suggestions don’t exhaust the possibilities, but I believe they do show a way in which we can work around the current impasse of Mr. Rodino, accomplishing useful work, and maybe even achieve our goals in a different way. I recommend we give it a try.

John H. Tanton

nlc

cc: R. [Roger] Conner
FAIR Board

WITAN Memo’ II
The second ‘WITAN’ memo reviews FAIR’s history and urges FAIR to take on legal — not just illegal — immigrants. Conner’s vision for a ‘Border Security Project’ seems to presage today’s controversies involving Ranch Rescue and other groups.

Memo to FAIR from Roger Conner

July 11, 1986
To: Board of Directors
From: Roger [Conner]
re: Quo Vadis

When John Tanton and I sat down on his deck back in 1978, he laid out a concept for FAIR [Federation for American Immigration Reform] that, with modifications by the Board, has guided us to this day. Now, with “Quo Vadis,” which John has sent to you separately, he has challenged us to think anew about where the immigration reform movement is headed and how FAIR fits in.

John asked me to share his memo with the staff, and to pass my own thoughts and theirs to you, which is the purpose of this document.

I. Where we have been: Some thoughts on what it means:
We started FAIR seven and one half years ago. Our goals were to stop illegal immigration and to conform legal immigration policies to the realities of the 1980s. To reach those goals, we set a series of objectives, including: make the idea of limiting immigration acceptable, develop policy ideas on how to curtail illegal immigration, and build a strong and enduring organization to implement them.

Our strategy was often dictated by external events: A Select Commission on Immigration and Refugee Policy proposed a comprehensive reform of U.S. Immigration laws shortly after we came into existence. So we made Simpson-Mazzoli (now Simpson-Rodino) the focus of our legislative efforts, and concentrated our research, education, and staff actions on decision-makers and media here in the nation’s capital.

Simpson-Mazoli is not (yet) law. Whether or not it passes in this session, John’s memo argues that FAIR needs to shift gears. To summarize (this is my summary, not his), he suggests that we:

(1) In Congress, put more effort into bills which originate outside the Judiciary Committee, to seek incremental progress rather than comprehensive reform;

(2) Put more effort toward persuading agencies to better enforce existing laws in ways that do not require new legislation;

(3) Put more effort into development of grass roots power, less into national media;

(4) Concentrate on building an organization for the long haul, not just the next few months.

When I look back at the last seven years, it seems to me that we have succeeded to an astounding degree at modifying public opinion, so that our ideas on how to control illegal immigration are now widely accepted. We came within a cat’s whisker of passing an immigration . . .refining a bill for the last eighteen months instead of trying to get one passed).

However, while we have been making progress in Congress and with the national media, we have been losing ground on other fronts. This leads me to my second point:

II. Things can get worse.
Our goal has been to stop illegal immigration. With 1.8 million apprehensions and the millions of illegals in the country, the situation is bad What we need to realize is things could get worse — much worse — than they are today if the enemies of immigration reform succeed. And they are succeeding. How?

One, they are raising huge war chests to bring lawsuits designed to expand the rights of illegal aliens. MALDEF (the Mexican–American Legal Defense and Educational Fund) has received annual grants of $500,000 from the Ford Foundation and $750,000 from the Carnegie Endowment. Their list of contributors includes many of the Fortune 500 companies. In the world of fund raising, Hispanic-oriented advocacy groups are the “hot” item, just as giving to higher education building campaigns was some 20 years ago.

Two, existing welfare bureaucracies are adopting illegals as a legitimate clientele, a process that is encouraging the illegals to become permanent residents. Indeed, the rhetoric used widely now classifies all illegals as “refugees.” The Ford Foundation’s annual report carries this designation throughout.

Three, the new legal immigrants are quickly forming lobbies to demand increased legal immigration from their home countries by obtaining exemptions from the numerical limits in our immigration laws. Indians are opposing deletion of fifth preference, Southeast Asians are lobbying to increased “refugee” admissions from Vietnam, the Cubans want unlimited Cuban admissions.

Four, Hispanic migration is large, and new Hispanic leaders are increasingly adopting a demanding, intimidating style to insist on preferential, deferential treatment form non-Hispanic politicians.

Five, a new idea is taking root that any person from a country where there is political violence should have the right to come to the U.S.; the sanctuary movement is merely the first stage in a movement designed to play on the sympathies of the American people for the admission of first one group and then another.

Six, legal immigration is growing — to over 600,000 per year now. Many of the problems we have talked about are worsened by immigration on this scale.

In short: The situation today is far different from in the past, and unfortunately, presages trouble in the future. The rules are different and the aims are new. For example, assimilation and learning English do not seem to be high priorities. There are many successful efforts under way to expand the rights of illegal aliens and to expand the numbers of immigrants.

The current situation, which seems so bad to us, could be — indeed will be — vastly worse in another decade. The political power of the immigrants — legal and illegal — will be so great that nothing can stop it, and the greatest migration in the history of the United States will fundamentally transform our society and economy.

III. Our long term agenda: a recapitulation
I am often asked, what would it take to restore American immigration policy? I talk about five “C’s” of immigration reform:

1. Cut the magnet of jobs which draws illegals here (employer sanctions)
2. Control the border with technology and manpower
3. Cap legal immigration, with the level periodically reviewed
4. Close the loopholes which give illegals rights to welfare and lengthy bureaucratic procedural rights
5. Contribute to population control and economic development in source countries

.
Recently I have toyed with a sixth: acculturation or citizenship training, encouraging the new immigrants to become Americans instead of forming into separate political and social groups.The Board has considered raising the spectre of long-term failure of assimilation and national division, but has not resolved whetber and how we should raise this topic.

Our strategy has been to focus primarily on Number 1 above, i.e. Cut the magnet with employer sanctions. John’s memo suggests that we need to do more to “Close loopholes” (Number 3), which we can do with changes in agency procedures and relatively minor changes in the law.

I agree, and so does the rest of the staff. In fact, as the Reagan administration has only two and a half years remaining, there is an urgent need for us to do more to get friendly administrators to formalize policy changes, for there is no way to assure that a future administration will be as supportive as this one.

In addition, we should be looking for an opportunity to get a “cap” on legal immigration into law, and build a base of support for true Border control. (More on this later.)

Our rationale, the issues we raise to persuade people to support this platform, revolves around simple issues: Sovereignty (we have a right to determine who comes), limits (we can’t take unlimited immigration given the huge growth in world population and migration pressures), effects on our own disadvantaged, and increased burdens on the taxpayers. We have recently added concerns over Border crime and immigration fraud as minor themes.

IV. Highpoints of Our First Seven Years: Another Recapitulation
Dan Stein suggests that a good way to think about John’s memo is to make a list of our most important successful projects (by success he means important both to immigration reform and to building FAIR.) Here’s my list. You might want to make your own as a way of thinking about John’s memo.

• 1979 Census Lawsuit. Though the Census Bureau won, it put us on the map.
• 1980 Florida Campaign to stop the Cuban flotilla. The half-page ads, the thousands of angry letters we generated, all combined, this generated more members than any other project.
• 1982 Poll of Hispanics and Blacks – led eventually to fundamental change in how opinion-makers viewed Hispanic opposition.
• 1982 Publication of “Breaking Down the Barriers,” our monograph on use of welfare by illegals, eventually changed how many people think in this subject; “Bible” for INS advocacy of SAVE program.
• 1982-83 Full-page ads endorsing Simpson-Mazolli from broad cross-section of American leaders.
• 1983 Attention given FAIR in Fallows article, Wash Post feature.
• 1984 Tip O’Neill forced to reverse himself and bring up Simpson-Mazolli bill after FAIR campaign.
• 1984 Largest increase in history for Border Patrol.
• 1985-86 Publication and promotion of Lamm’s book.
• 1985 Defeat of Sanctuary Resolution in Austin.

V. Implications of Quo Vadis for FAIR programs
One can come away from John’s memo overwhelmed . It is a long list of ideas, each of which takes power to implement. Patrick reminds me of Chairman Mao’s saying that the three sources of power are “People, Money, and Guns”- and each is interchangeable. To that list must be added “Information.” And up until now, information — about the immigration problem, our opponent’s strategies, legislative ideas — has been the primary source of our influence. With Mac’s modified admonition in mind, what are the implications of John’s memo?His suggestion is that we recognize our current “plateau” of funding as a given and reallocate resources away from media and lobbying for comprehensive legislation, and toward administrative lobbying, grass roots membership activism, and litigation.

We can do that. Indeed, we already have shifted tactics in these directions. But if that’s all we do, we will never attain our goals. We will only contain our losses. As I outlined above, things could get far worse than they are today, so that limiting our losses would be a worthwhile goal. But we must engage in a significant expansion of our efforts if we are serious about stopping illegal immigration.

Here is how John’s memo relates to our programs.

Lobbying. John is correct in saying that we should try to achieve incremental changes through . . . we should abandon the effort to secure employer sanctions if Simpson-Rodino fails. The notion of introducing legislation through other Committees is sound, but in order to do so we will need an expansion in our lobbying staff and activities, not merely a reallocation of existing resources.
Changes in Agency Rules, Regulations and Practices, and the Courts: IRLI [Immigration Reform Law Institute]

We have already taken steps in this direction by creating a Litigation Program. At the last meeting the Board approved the creation of IRLI, the Immigration Reform Law Institute, which we hope can expand our fund-
Raising market. The Litigation Program has already won successes: a dramatic reversal of an INS policy not to prosecute employers, and more recently a decision by the State of Texas not to give in to MALDEF’s demand that illegal aliens should receive unemployment compensation.
To effectively bring about changes in Agency policy we will need to expand IRLI into a major, independent organization, one which can sue (on behalf of FAIR) when needed, pressure the agencies to change their policies, and resist proposed rule changes that come from the enemies of immigration control.

Grass Roots: We have taken steps within the past year to increase Field activities. We now have a more senior, energetic person running the program in Marty Winans. The “Targeted Congressional District Program” approved by the Board at the last meeting is providing us with a test of how to increase membership in key districts. And the establishment of a field office in Texas is giving us greater visibility in that state.
John’s memo implies an expansion of these efforts. One idea which came out of the staff responses to John was the creation of regional specialists on the Washington staff, i.e. staff members working out of our office here whose job it is to develop ties with local media and local members in the key six states of major migration: Texas, California, New York, New Jersey, Florida, and Illinois.

John’s memo also implies that we should look for local issues which can serve as a catalyst for grass roots development. Our anti-Sanctuary campaign in Austin is an example. We not only defeated the Sanctuary resolution there, but also created a large committee of local activists who are continuing efforts in education and lobbying for FAIR’s broader agenda. Another example is that we have opposed a race track near the Border in San Diego that will disrupt the Border Patrol’s activities.

One additional way to create higher visibility is to conduct regional or national meetings and workshops. We have discussed annual meetings of FAIR members. Why not have three or four “annual meetings” in the areas of our major membership groups?

Again: more grass roots organizing will increase our effective membership and our perceived political power. And it will take more money and staff, money which has either to be raised or reallocated.

Research and Publications: I said earlier that information is the source of our power. To expand our fund-raising market, we created the Center for Immigration Studies last year. We need to get CIS fully funded and entrenched as a major Washington think-tank, one that can venture into issues which FAIR is not yet ready to raise.
This does not imply a retrenchment in FAIR’s information gathering and dissemination, however. Indeed, Patrick makes a strong case that we should expand these efforts, especially to get better information on the effects of immigration on key states and Congressional Districts, and to better synthesize the information so that it will be more useful to journalists.

Media: Typical reaction from the staff to the suggestion that we cut back here: “Sacrilege.” Media is a major conduit to the public, decision-makers, and our own members. Effective media coverage strengthens our other programs. For example, FAIR members see us and want to give; members of Congress and their staffs [sic] great media consumers. The only change I can contemplate is better targeting of our media efforts.
Direct Mail: Currently we are holding our own, generating enough new contributors to offset those who stop giving, but not much more.
John’s memo suggests that we do more to build membership in crucial Districts, but there is no suggestion that we try to become a truly mass organization of 100,000 to 200,000 members by investing more in direct mail. The staff is divided on this point, which could be revisited by the board.

Fund Raising: To raise more money, we need to involve more of our closest friends. This means creating some sort of “cadres” of people, whether via Committees or some other designation, who will feel the sense of ownership required to put themselves on the line to raise funds for FAIR.
Administration: I do not see major implications here. It “ain’t broke.”
Border Control: We all hoped at the beginning that Sanctions alone would be enough. I have reluctantly concluded that we will have to do much more at the Border itself.
What we need to do is develop a specific project to define what will be needed in each local stretch of Border, and build a specific constituency for each change. The old adage that “all Politics is local” applies here. We will never bring about needed fences, trenches, and manpower in Chula Vista, El Paso, and Brownsville without a meaningful plan and a local constituency. Each area is different, but determined local opposition will doom any plan developed in Washington, D.C.

We need a Border Security Project which would be an integral part of FAIR, but it will never really succeed unless it has a “Champion” on our own staff and strong mandate from the Board. If we do not take the lead on better border control, somebody else will!

Going after the opposition One suggestion which has repeatedly arisen from within the staff is that we take a tougher line versus our principal adversaries. MALDEF is pursuing a line of litigation clearly designed to block immigration control and expand the rights of illegal aliens, yet they are supported by a “Who’sWho” of American foundations and corporations. We could do research which would document what MALDEF is up to and try to get them “defunded,” an act which would serve notice that we are “taking the gloves off.”
Second, we could pursue employers. We could publicize well known employers of illegal aliens, or simply issue lists of INS arrest records, or we could put information on apprehended illegals and their employers into a rudimentary computor [sic] program in order to give the information to the IRS or the state tax collectors.

Third, we could try to get an agreement from major U.S. corporations to have a policy of not hiring aliens out of immigration status. If we could threaten a big one–like Levi Strauss–with a nationwide consumer boycott, and force them to enter into an agreement, it might generate nationwide publicity.

These are three examples of a new tactic of “taking the gloves off’ to put our opponents on the defensive and give our members and supporters fresh enthusiasm. Is it time for such tactics of confrontation?

VI. Quo Vadis
I really think FAIR is at a crossroads during the next three months. One path is to lower our sights to achievable, realistic objectives, objectives that will ameliorate the problem but not solve it. The second is to raise our sights, recognizing that the current level of effort has not been enough.

The first path means a modest reorientation of current efforts: One lobbyist instead of two, more field appearances and less media, the same number of lawyers (one and one half), more time lobbying bureaucrats and less lobbying Congressman.

The second path means expanding IRLI to be a major arm for litigation and changing agency rules and regulations (two and a half lawyers and a paralegal instead of the current one and a half); adding a full time lobbyist to work committees other than Judiciary; adding at least one field person to work at organizing and coordinating field committees; setting up a Border Enforcement Project as a major initiative for FAIR; funding a writer to do a significant investigation of the MALDEF’s activities, and the activities of other Hispanic groups; assuring the perpetuation of the Center for Immigration Studies as a major Washington think tank.

WITAN MEMO III
Addressed to attendees of Tanton’s exclusive retreats, where colleagues met to discuss the future of immigration, this memo is the most explicit, discussing Latinos and others in derogatory terms.

Memo to WITAN IV Attendees from John Tanton

TO: WITAN IV Attendees
FROM: John Tanton
DATE: October 10, 1986
Here is a set of questions and statements that I hope will help guide our discussion of the non-economic consequences of immigration to California, and by extension, to the rest of the United States. These are not highly polished; I ask your indulgence.

These notes are based on reading Bouvier’s and related papers, on the WITAN III Meeting, and my own thinking over several years on the topic of assimilation and the character of American society. The assignment of subtopics to the main categories is a bit arbitrary; many of them could be moved around.

I. Political Consequences.

1. The political power between the states will change, owing to differential migration six immigrant-receiving states. The heartland will lose more political power (see appended Table I).

2. Will the newcomers vote democratic or republican, liberal or conservative, and what difference does it make? A lot, if you’re one or the other.

3. Gobernar es poplar translates “to govern is to populate,” (Parsons’ [Thomas Malthus] paper, p. 10, packet sent May 8). In this society where the majority rules, does this hold? Will the present majority peaceably hand over its political power to a group that is simply more fertile?

4. Does the fact that there will be no ethnic majority, in California early in the next century mean that we will have minority coalition-type governments, with third parties? Is this good or bad, in view of the European and other experiences?

5. Shall illegal aliens be counted in the census and used to apportion congressional and state house seats, thereby granting them political power?

6. Is apartheid in Southern California’s future? The democraphic picture in South Africa now is startlingly similar to what we’ll see in California in 2030. In Southern Africa, a White minority owns the property, has the best jobs and education, has the political power, and speaks one language. A non-White majority has poor education, jobs and income, owns little property, is on its way to political power and speaks a different language. (The official language policy in South Africa is bilingualism — the Blacks are taught in Zulu and related tongues.)

In California of 2030, the non-Hispanic Whites and Asians will own the property, have the good jobs and education, speak one language and be mostly Protestant and “other.” The Blacks and Hispanics will have the poor jobs, will lack education, own little property, speak another language and will be mainly catholic. Will there be strength in this diversity? Or will this prove a social and political San Andreas Fault?

7. Illegal aliens will pay taxes to the Federal Government; their costs will mostly be local.

8. The politicians are way behind the people on these issues. This brings to mind the story told of Gandhi: he was sitting by the side of the road when a crowd went by. He said, “There go my people. I must get up and follow them, for I am their leader!”

9. Griffin Smith’s point from the Federalist Papers: It was argued that the colonies would make a good nation, as they shared a common culture and language. Nineteen eighty seven is the celebration of the adoption of the Constitution, 1988 its ratification, and 1989 the setting up of the first Federal Government. Can we tie into these discussions?

II. Cultural.

1. Will Latin American migrants bring with them thetradition of the mordida (bribe), the lack of involvement in public affairs, etc.? What in fact are the characteristics of Latin American culture, versus that of the United States? See Harrison’s Washington Post article in the September 3 packet.

2. When does diversity grade over into division?

3. Will Blacks be able to improve (or even maintain) their position in the face of the Latin onslaught? (See Graph 3)

4. How will we make the transition from a dominant non-Hispanic society with a Spanish influence to a dominant Spanish society with non-Hispanic influence?

5. Do ethnic enclaves (Bouvier, p. 18) constitute resegregation? As Whites see their power and control over their lives declining, will they simply go quietly into the night? Or will there be an explosion? Why don’t non-Hispanic Whites have a group identity, as do Blacks, Jews, Hispanics?

6. Note that Graph 2 shows virtually all the population growth will come from immigrants and their descendants.

7. Is there a difference in the rates of assimilation between Asians and Latins?

8. Should something be said about the competing metaphors of the salad bowl and the melting pot?

9. What exactly is it that holds a diverse society together? Gerda’s paper said that in our case, it was a common language.

10. Is assimilation a function of the educational and economic level of immigrants? If so, what are the consequences of having so many ill-educated people coming in to low paying jobs?

11. We’re building in a deadly disunity. All great empires disintegrate, we want stability. (Lamm)

12. Enclaves lead to rigidity. (Hardin)

13. The theory of a moratorium: the pause in immigration between 1930-1950, combined with the assimilating experience of fighting side-by-side in the trenches in World War II, gave us a needed pause so that we could assimilate the mass of people who came in the early years of the century. Do we again need such a pause?

14. Concerning the moratorium, here are some phrases that could be used: “The pause that refreshes.” “A seventh inning stretch.” “Take a break, catch-up, eliminate a backlog, take a breather.”

15. Perhaps mention should be made of Pacific Bell’s move to install completely separate Spanish and Chinese language phone systems in California (see May 27 packet).

16. Novak’s term “unmeltable ethnics” is probably better than some of the others that have been suggested. Similarly, ethnicity is a more acceptable term than race. It should also be noted that 50% of all Hispanic surname people on the census forms designate themselves as White. So perhaps we should speak of Hispanic Whites and non-Hispanic Whites, to further diffuse the issue. Is Anglo a better term that White? LANGUAGE IS VERY important here.

III. Conservation and Demography

1. What will be the effect on the conservation movement, which has drawn its support in the past from other than the minorities, and which has relied on the political power of the majority to pass legislative measures? As the people that groups like the Sierra Club represent go into opposition (minority political status), will many of the things they’ve worked for be lost because the new majority holds other values?

2. Can homo contraceptivus compete with homo progenitiva if borders aren’t controlled? Or is advice to limit ones family simply advice to move over and let someone else with greater reproductive powers occupy the space?

3. What are the consequences to California of the raw population growth that is coming, the ethnic change aside (see Graph 1)?

4. What is the conservation ethnic [sic] of the Asian and Latin American newcomers? Will they adopt ours or keep theirs?

5. The Sierra Club may not want to touch the immigration issue, but the immigration issue is going to touch the Sierra Club! (To mention just one group.)

6. On the demographic point: perhaps this is the first instance in which those with their pants up are going to get caught by those with their pants down!

7. Do you agree with Teitelbaum’s statement, “International migration has now become an important point of intersection between the different demographic profiles of developing and developed countries”? (Fear of Population Decline, p. 134–see also pp. 111-115.)

IV. Jurisprudence

1. What are the consequences for affirmative action of the ethnic change coming along? Will the non-Hispanic Whites (NHW) have a limited number of spots in professional schools, etc. proportionate to their numbers? Or will affirmative action go beyond this (as it does now in Malaysia) to cut spots to below their proportionate share, to enable other groups to “catch-up?”

2. Anything to be said about drugs and the border?

3. Will we get more of the Napoleonic Code influence, and does it make a difference?

4. What do we demand of immigrants–or more correctly, what should we demand of them:
a. Learn our language.
b. Adopt our political ideals.
c. Assimilate and add their flavoring to our stew.

V. Education

1. What are the differences in educability between Hispanics (with their 50% dropout rate) and Asiatics (with their excellent school records and long tradition of scholarship)?

2. Where does bussing fit into the picture? Keep in mind that by 1990, over 50% of all the people under 15 years of age will be of minority status. They will also be heavily concentrated in certain geographic areas.

3. The whole bilingual education question needs to be mentioned.

VI. Race/Class Relations.

1. What will be the fate of Blacks as their numbers decline in relationship to Hispanics? As they lose political power, will they get along with the Hispanics? Relations are already heavily strained in many places.

2. What happens when we develop a new underclass, or a two-tiered economic system? Especially if the two groups can’t speak the same language! (See Bouvier and Martin Chapter 5)

3. Is resegregation taking place, in the Southern part of the state in particular?

4. Phil Martin’s point: In agriculture, the Whites and Asiatics will own and manage, but will not be able to speak to the Hispanic field workers. They will need bilingual foremen. Does this sound like social peace? Or like South Africa? Keep in mind the poor educational level of the field hands.

VII. The Economy.

I don’t think we should dwell much on the economy: I think we should try to make our contribution by talking about the non-economic consequences of immigration. Nonetheless:

1. Do high levels of immigration cut back on innovation (Bouvier, p. 27)?

2. Does it reduce the tendency and need of employers to hire current minority teens (Bouvier, p. 27)?

3. Is there a downward pressure on labor standards in general (Bouvier, p. 28)?

4. Phil Martin’s point on the colonization of the labor market. (Chapter 5).

VIII. Retirement

1. Since the majority of the retirees will be NHW, but the workers will be minorities, will the latter be willing to pay for the care of the former? They will also have to provide the direct care: How will they get along, especially through a language barrier (Bouvier, p. 40)?

2. On the other hand, will the older and NHW groups be willing to pay the school taxes necessary to educate the burgeoning minorities?

3. The Federal Government may have to pay for the care of the elderly in schools–will it?

XI. Religious Consequences.

This is the most difficult of all to tackle, and perhaps should be left out. Nonetheless:

1. What are the implications of the changes shown on Graphs 2 and 3 for the separation of church and state? The Catholic Church has never been reticent on this point. If they get a majority of the voters, will they pitch out this concept?

2. Same question for parochial schools versus public schools.

3. Same question for the topic of abortion/choice, birth control, population control.

4. Same question for the role of women.

5. Will Catholicism bought in from Mexico be in the American or the European model? The latter is much more casual.

6. Keep in mind that many of the Vietnamese coming in are also Catholic.

7. Is there anything to be said about the Eastern religions that will come along with the Asiatics?

X. Mexico and Latin America (Chapter 7, Bouvier & Martin).

Perhaps the main thing to be addressed here is whether or not shutting off the escape valve will lead to revolution, or whether keeping it open can avert it.

XI. Additional Demographic Items.

Teitelbaum’s phrase, “A region of low-native fertility combined with high immigration of high-fertility people does not make for compatible trend lines!”

Finally, this is all obviously dangerous territory, but the problem is not going to go away. Who can open it up? The question is analogous to Nixon’s opening of China: he could do it, Hubert Humphrey could not have. Similarly, the issues we’re touching on here must be broached by liberals. The conservatives simply cannot do it without tainting the whole subject.

I think the answers to many of these questions depend on how well people assimilate. This, in turn, depends heavily on whether the parent society has made up its mind that assimilation is a good thing (we’re confused on this point now), whether it works at assimilating newcomers (as Canada and Australia do by following them longitudinally), whether the people coming want to assimilate (not all of them do), and, even if all the factors are favorable, whether the numbers are small enough so as not to overwhelm the assimilative process.

Good luck to us all!