Posts Tagged ‘anti-defamation league’
 
February 13, 2013 1

Rep. Ted Poe (R-TX) Named Head of House Immigration Reform Caucus

Rep­re­sen­ta­tive Ted Poe (R-TX) announced on Feb­ru­ary 7, 2013, that he will chair the House Immi­gra­tion Reform Cau­cus (IRC). The immi­gra­tion restric­tion­ist replaces out­go­ing chair­man Brian Bil­bray, who lost his seat in Cal­i­for­nia in Novem­ber 2012. Founded in 1999 by for­mer Col­orado Rep. Tom Tan­credo, IRC is the main block of immi­gra­tion restric­tion­ists in the House.  It is very closely aligned with the anti-immigrant movement.

Poe’s views closely align with the anti-immigrant move­ment. The Beltway-based anti-immigrant group Num­ber­sUSA give Poe an “A” grade for his vot­ing record on immi­gra­tion, which indi­cates that his record is in line with their ide­ol­ogy. In 2010, Poe signed onto an ami­cus brief in sup­port of Arizona’s SB1070 law, drafted by the Immi­gra­tion Reform Law Insti­tute (IRLI), the legal arm of the DC-based anti-immigrant group Fed­er­a­tion for Amer­i­can Immi­gra­tion Reform (FAIR).  Poe has attended FAIR’s annual “Hold Their Feet to the Fire” radio event in Wash­ing­ton, D.C. The event brings radio hosts to Wash­ing­ton to broad­cast live and inter­view anti-immigrant activists and restric­tion­ist politi­cians. On Novem­ber 19, 2009, Poe par­tic­i­pated in a forum with other mem­bers of the House Judi­ciary Com­mit­tee enti­tled “Amer­i­can Jobs in Peril: The Impact of Uncon­trolled Immi­gra­tion.” Speak­ers included Roy Beck, pres­i­dent of Num­ber­sUSA, and Jerry Kam­mer and Steven Camarota of the anti-immigrant think-tank Cen­ter for Immi­gra­tion Stud­ies (CIS).

The Feb­ru­ary 7, 2013 press release also announced the mem­bers of the IRC Exec­u­tive Com­mit­tee: Diane Black (R-TN), Bill Flo­res (R-TX), Phil Gin­grey (R-GA) and Lamar Smith (R-TX). All four Exec­u­tive Com­mit­tee mem­bers have “A” grades from Num­ber­sUSA.  Lamar Smith and Phil Gin­grey have close ties to the anti-immigrant move­ment. Dur­ing his tenure as chair of the House Judi­ciary Com­mit­tee, Smith invited many promi­nent mem­bers of the anti-immigrant move­ment to tes­tify on immi­gra­tion issues. Gin­grey and Smith are also reg­u­lars at FAIR’s “Hold Their Feet to the Fire” event. Both men received dona­tions from the U.S. Immi­gra­tion Reform PAC in the past. Mary Lou Tan­ton, the wife of racist John Tan­ton, the founder of the modern-day anti-immigrant move­ment, runs the PAC.

The Poe press release stated that IRC cur­rently has 58 mem­bers, although 77 peo­ple who were pre­vi­ously IRC mem­bers won re-election in 2012. It is unclear why so many IRC mem­bers decided to leave the Cau­cus, but some may want to dis­tance them­selves from the anti-immigrant move­ment now that immi­gra­tion reform has become more accept­able to both polit­i­cal par­ties. IRC’s pre­vi­ous two chairs, Bil­bray and Tom Tan­credo, a for­mer rep­re­sen­ta­tive from Col­orado, both lost elec­tions, per­haps in part due to their restric­tion­ist views on immi­gra­tion. It remains to be seen how Poe’s new posi­tion will impact vot­ers in his district.

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January 30, 2013 0

New FBI Hate Crime Training Manual Published

The FBI has pub­lished an excel­lent new hate crime train­ing man­ual – the sin­gle best, most inclu­sive hate crime guide now available.

The enact­ment of the Matthew Shep­ard James Byrd, Jr. Hate Crimes Pre­ven­tion Act (HCPA) in 2009 prompted the need to revise and update the Bureau’s pre­vi­ous online FBI hate crime data col­lec­tion guid­ance, since the HCPA included the new require­ment that the Bureau col­lect data on hate crimes directed against indi­vid­u­als on the basis of their gen­der or gen­der iden­tity – and crimes com­mit­ted by and against juveniles.

The new 64-page FBI guide, Hate Crime Data Col­lec­tion Guide­lines and Train­ing Man­ual, con­tains updated def­i­n­i­tions and a num­ber of hate crime train­ing sce­nar­ios, includ­ing ones designed to help law enforce­ment offi­cials under­stand gender-based and gen­der identity-based hate crimes.   

The FBI has been track­ing and doc­u­ment­ing hate crimes reported from fed­eral, state, and local law enforce­ment offi­cials, since 1991 under the Hate Crime Sta­tis­tics Act of 1990 (HCSA). Though clearly incom­plete, the Bureau’s annual HCSA reports pro­vide the best sin­gle national snap­shot of bias-motivated crim­i­nal activ­ity in the United States. The Act has also proven to be a pow­er­ful mech­a­nism to con­front vio­lent big­otry, increas­ing pub­lic aware­ness of the prob­lem and spark­ing improve­ments in the local response of the crim­i­nal jus­tice sys­tem to hate vio­lence – since in order to effec­tively report hate crimes, police offi­cials must be trained to iden­tify and respond to them.

The FBI’s 2011 Hate Crime Sta­tis­tics Act report, showed a wel­come decline in the over­all num­ber of hate crimes in the United States, but sig­nif­i­cant con­cerns remain, as high­lighted in the ADL analy­sis of the report.

Since the tragic mur­der of six Sikh wor­ship­pers at their Gur­d­wara in Oak Creek, Wis­con­sin on August 5, the League has been work­ing with a broad coali­tion of civil rights, reli­gious, and law enforce­ment orga­ni­za­tions to expand the HCSA cat­e­gories to include hate crimes directed against Sikhs, Hin­dus, and Arabs.  ADL also sent a let­ter to Attor­ney Gen­eral Eric H. Holder, Jr. urg­ing him to sup­port these addi­tional cat­e­gories.  Jus­tice Depart­ment offi­cials are sup­port­ing this new data col­lec­tion man­date, as well

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January 25, 2013 1

Oklahoma Anti-Immigrant Group Blames Jews For Promoting Gun Control

The anti-immigrant group Immi­gra­tion Reform for Okla­homa Now (IRON), based in Jenks, cir­cu­lated its lat­est newslet­ter on Jan­u­ary 11, 2013, with a head­line that blamed Jews for push­ing “gun dis­ar­ma­ment” and asked read­ers not to let Jews “suc­ceed in shred­ding America’s Con­sti­tu­tion.” The newslet­ter then attempted to jus­tify the head­line by pro­mot­ing the anti-Semitic con­spir­acy the­ory that Jews con­trol Hol­ly­wood and claim­ing that promi­nent Jew­ish politicians/businesspersons are the most vocal gun con­trol advocates.

IRON tried to blame gun vio­lence on Jews by claim­ing that “Jew­ish mil­lion­aires con­trol Hol­ly­wood enter­tain­ment [sic] feed­ing TV media, vio­lent movies with porno­graphic inserts.  IRON went on to claim, “They must take respon­si­bil­ity for glam­or­iz­ing vio­lence AND GUNS, depict­ing rou­tine gun vio­lence, ter­ror, vig­i­lante rape, pornog­ra­phy, and pro­fan­ity.” The newslet­ter then called Jews “hyp­ocrites” for allegedly want­ing to con­trol guns while sup­pos­edly glo­ri­fy­ing guns in the media.

The newslet­ter also included  a list of “gun con­trol voices,” includ­ing Sen. Bar­bara Boxer (D-CA); Sen. Chuck Schumer (D-NY); Sen. Frank Laut­en­berg (D-NJ); Sen. Richard Blu­men­thal (D-CT); for­mer Sen­a­tor Joe Lieber­man, and Chicago Mayor Rahm Emanuel—all Jew­ish polit­i­cal figures.

The list then sin­gled out Jew­ish bil­lion­aire George Soros, call­ing him the “Agenda 21 finance tycoon.” Agenda 21 is a United Nations action plan aimed at pro­mot­ing sus­tain­able devel­op­ment, which many anti-government and far-right groups claim will result in the United States giv­ing up its sov­er­eignty.  The list also men­tioned the Jew­ish mayor of New York City, Michel Bloomberg, claim­ing that he “funded [a] super PAC tar­get­ing pro-gun candidates.”

The anti-Semitic rant by IRON is per­plex­ing for a group whose pur­pose is “inform­ing tax­pay­ers of the enor­mous costs of ille­gal immi­gra­tion.” This rhetoric reveals that the group har­bors big­otry beyond anti-immigrant sen­ti­ment.  IRON is listed by the DC-based anti-immigrant group Fed­er­a­tion for Amer­i­can Immi­gra­tion Reform as a state con­tact for Oklahoma.

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