Posts Tagged ‘anti-immigrant’
 
December 26, 2012 1

New “Environmentalist” Book, Life on the Brink, Features Anti-Immigrant Writers

Phil Cafaro

Life on the Brink: Envi­ron­men­tal­ists Con­front Over­pop­u­la­tion, a book released in Decem­ber 2012, fea­tures essay­ists that have strong ties to the anti-immigrant move­ment, a detail that is miss­ing from the authors’ bios.

Phil Cafaro, pres­i­dent of the DC-based anti-immigrant group Pro­gres­sives for Immi­gra­tion Reform (PFIR), and Eileen Crist, an envi­ron­men­tal sci­ences pro­fes­sor at Vir­ginia Tech, co-edited the book. It con­tains many essays that argue for reduc­ing immi­gra­tion for envi­ron­men­tal rea­sons. This argu­ment is one of the key themes pro­moted by the anti-immigrant move­ment in the United States.

Essay­ists in the book include:

Phil Cafaro – co-editor of the book and pres­i­dent of PFIR. Cafaro is a for­mer fel­low for the DC-based anti-immigrant group Cen­ter for Immi­gra­tion Stud­ies (CIS). In 2010, Cafaro wrote two blogs for the Vir­ginia based anti-immigrant group Num­ber­sUSA.

Al Bartlett – a Uni­ver­sity of Col­orado emer­i­tus pro­fes­sor and friend of John Tan­ton, the racist founder of the mod­ern day anti-immigrant move­ment. To date, Bartlett has pub­lished ten arti­cles, dat­ing back to 1995, in Tanton’s quar­terly jour­nal, The Social Con­tract (TSC). TSC has pub­lished the writ­ings of known white suprema­cists such as Sam Fran­cis and Jared Tay­lor.

Don Wee­den –head of the Wee­den Foun­da­tion, a group that has donated hun­dreds of thou­sands of dol­lars to anti-immigrant groups through­out the years. Wee­den is also an “inde­pen­dent advi­sor” for Num­ber­sUSA. CIS has invited Wee­den to speak on many panel dis­cus­sions orga­nized by the group over the years.

Leon Kolankiewicz – a senior writ­ing fel­low for the Santa Barbara-based anti-immigrant group Cal­i­for­ni­ans for Pop­u­la­tion Sta­bi­liza­tion (CAPS). Over a half dozen arti­cles by Kolankiewicz appear in issues of TSC, dat­ing back to 2001. He has pub­lished numer­ous reports for both CIS and Num­ber­sUSA in the past. Kolankiewicz sits on the advi­sory boards of CAPS and PFIR and is also the for­mer vice-president of the anti-immigrant group Car­ry­ing Capac­ity Net­work, based in San Francisco.

Richard Lamm– the for­mer gov­er­nor of Col­orado and a for­mer mem­ber of Fed­er­a­tion for Amer­i­can Immi­gra­tion (FAIR)’s board. He cur­rently sits on   FAIR’s advi­sory board as well as the advi­sory boards of CAPS and PFIR. Lamm also co-edited a report for CIS in 2001 and is pub­lished in two issues of TSC. He is also a close friend of Tanton’s.

William Ryer­son – for­mer pres­i­dent of PFIR and for­mer advi­sory board mem­ber of CAPS. He cur­rently heads two pop­u­la­tion aware­ness groups, the Vermont-based Pop­u­la­tion Media Cen­ter and the DC-based Pop­u­la­tion Insti­tute. Ryer­son is also a con­trib­u­tor to TSC.

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December 26, 2012 0

Former YWC Leader Taylor Rose Joins World Net Daily

Tay­lor Rose

Tay­lor Rose, the for­mer vice-president of the far-right stu­dent group, Youth for West­ern Civ­i­liza­tion (YWC) recently landed a job at World Net Daily (WND), a conspiracy-oriented right-wing news­pa­per. Rose’s first arti­cle for WND, where he is listed as a “staff reporter,” appeared about a month ago, on Novem­ber 26, 2012.

Rose’s arti­cles cover a range of right-wing issues from oppo­si­tion to immi­gra­tion to anti-Muslim con­spir­acy the­o­ries to seces­sion­ist move­ments in Europe and the United States. Rose is not the first for­mer YWC activist to make the move over to WND. YWC’s founder, Kevin DeAnna, joined WND in early 2012 and also works as a “staff reporter” though his last arti­cle for the site was pub­lished over two months ago, on Octo­ber 14, 2012.

In recent years, Rose spent most of his time in Europe, meet­ing and orga­niz­ing with far-right orga­ni­za­tions and polit­i­cal par­ties.  He par­tic­i­pated in a May 2011 rally “against the Islaminiza­tion of Europe” in Cologne, Germany. At the rally, Rose spoke along­side lead­ers of far-right xeno­pho­bic Euro­pean par­ties, includ­ing the Vlaams Belang of Bel­gium, the Free­dom Party of Aus­tria, as well as smaller par­ties from France and Ger­many. More recently, in 2012, Rose pub­lished a book titled, Return of the Right: How the Polit­i­cal Right is Tak­ing Back West­ern Civilization.

 Rose’s move also casts more doubt over YWC’s per­se­ver­ance. It appears that Rose, DeAnna and other YWC lead­ers did not have suc­ces­sors lined up to main­tain the orga­ni­za­tion when the orig­i­nal core group grad­u­ated. YWC’s Web site is down and it appears the chap­ters are inac­tive. Although Rose seems to no longer be involved with YWC, his move to WND shows that he is still an active player on the right.

The one for­mer YWC activist still mak­ing head­way on cam­pus is Matthew Heim­bach at Tow­son Uni­ver­sity in Mary­land. Heim­bach was forced to dis­band YWC at the school in early 2012 when its fac­ulty advi­sor quit after the group was involved in con­tro­ver­sial activ­ity. Heim­bach is still attempt­ing, how­ever, to cre­ate a “white stu­dent union” at Tow­son. He invited white suprema­cists Jared Tay­lor and Mer­lin Miller, from the Amer­i­can Third Posi­tion party, to speak at the school dur­ing the fall 2012 semester.

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November 9, 2012 1

Key Coalition of Anti-Immigrant State Lawmakers Declines by 30% after Election

State Leg­is­la­tors for Legal Immi­gra­tion (SLLI), a coali­tion of law­mak­ers work­ing to intro­duce and pass anti-immigrant leg­is­la­tion at the state level, will lose mem­bers when the new leg­is­la­tures con­vene in Jan­u­ary. Start­ing in 2013, the coali­tion will offi­cially drop from 68 mem­bers to 49, a decline of more than 30%. The coali­tion not only loses size but scope, with rep­re­sen­ta­tion drop­ping from 40 states to 33.

The coali­tion, started by Penn­syl­va­nia Rep­re­sen­ta­tive Daryl Met­calfe, is very closely tied to the anti-immigrant move­ment in the United States. The coalition’s web­site cur­rently boasts 68 mem­bers from 40 states. While these num­bers are slightly exag­ger­ated because they include some mem­bers who are no longer elected rep­re­sen­ta­tives (Rus­sell Pearce, for exam­ple, the for­mer Ari­zona State Sen­a­tor was recalled in 2011), the addi­tional loss of 19 mem­bers will result in a far smaller coalition.

In the 2012 elec­tions, many SLLI mem­bers did not run for rea­sons rang­ing from term limit restric­tions, to run­ning for another pub­lic sec­tor posi­tion or choos­ing retire­ment. The decline in SLLI mem­ber­ship is a blow to the anti-immigrant move­ment, which par­tially relies on SLLI mem­bers to push anti-immigrant legislation.

Just a few months after SLLI’s found­ing in 2007, Daryl Met­calfe was joined by Dan Stein, pres­i­dent of the largest anti-immigrant group in the United States, the Fed­er­a­tion for Amer­i­can Immi­gra­tion Reform (FAIR) and Mike Heth­mon of the Immi­gra­tion Reform Law Insti­tute (IRLI), FAIR’s legal arm, at a press con­fer­ence. At the press con­fer­ence, SLLI announced that it had “entered into a work­ing part­ner­ship” with IRLI. Essen­tially, IRLI works with SLLI mem­bers to draft anti-immigrant leg­is­la­tion which the SLLI mem­ber then intro­duces in his/her state leg­is­la­ture. This part­ner­ship has been effec­tive, most notably in Ari­zona where then-SLLI mem­ber Rus­sell Pearce worked with IRLI to draft the harsh­est anti-immigrant bill at the time, SB 1070.

Unfor­tu­nately, the decline in SLLI mem­ber­ship will likely not spell a decline in the amount of anti-immigrant leg­is­la­tion intro­duced at the state level. The anti-immigrant move­ment does not rely solely on SLLI to intro­duce leg­is­la­tion that it drafts. In Alabama, for exam­ple, IRLI drafted HB 56, a law even harsher than Arizona’s SB 1070, but did not court a SLLI mem­ber to intro­duce the bill.

It remains to be seen whether Met­calfe will attempt to recruit new mem­bers for his coali­tion post-election. Regard­less, the anti-immigrant move­ment, and more specif­i­cally IRLI, will con­tinue to draft anti-immigrant leg­is­la­tion based on its “attri­tion through enforce­ment” (self-deportation) model and seek out law­mak­ers in states around the coun­try will­ing to intro­duce it.

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