Right Prepares to Woo Left on Immigration

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Real progressives would do well to prepare in the coming months.
The civil rights organization Center for New Community announced in
the most recent edition of its e-bulletin, FAIR Exposed, that the
Tanton Network has launched a front group called Progressives for
Immigration Reform (PFIR). PFIR is simply another addition to a
growing list of anti-immigrant groups being set up under the Tanton
Network to give the illusion that the anti-immigrant movement is
broader than it really is.
This network of organizations is named after white nationalist John
Tanton the founder and key leader in a network of anti-immigrant
organizations, spin-offs and front groups. Key entities include Center
for Immigration Studies, Social Contract Press, and the Coalition for
the Future American Worker.
John Tanton is a controversial figure. The founder and a current board
member of the Federation for American Immigration Reform (FAIR),
Tanton helped secure over a million dollars in funding from a
foundation known as the Pioneer Fund, a racist foundation that peddles
pseudo-science claiming that blacks are intellectually inferior to
whites based on cultural and biological factors. In the 1930s the
Pioneer Fund distributed propaganda films developed by the Nazi
Germany to public schools.
The Tanton network has made repeated attempts to recruit within
progressive circles targeting environmentalists, labor and black civil
rights organizations with only token success. However, with
immigration reform back on the table and the majority of Americans
lining up behind it, progressives are now seen by the Tanton network
as a possible block to sink any attempts at creating a viable
immigration system in the United States.
During the summer of 2008 Tanton associate Roy Beck of NumbersUSA
began circulating a job posting for the executive director position at
Progressives for Immigration Reform (PFIR). Unsurprisingly the
position was given to another Tanton insider Leah Durant. In 1995,
while Leah Durant was joining Tanton’s Federation for American
Immigration Reform as legal counsel, Tanton was exploring both
aphrodisiacs and anti-Asian racism, writing “[i]t seems that the main
market is in the orient – very interesting, considering that in
general, male Orientals are less well equipped than those of some
other groups.”
As the debate surrounding immigration reignites, progressives should
remain vigilant to wolves in sheep’s clothing attempting to sell us
bigotry wrapped as economic and social justice. Progressives have much
more in common with emerging immigrant and refugee communities than
with white supremacy disguised as mere anti-immigrant hysteria.
In 1990 investigative journalist Chip Berlet authored a groundbreaking
memo on attempts by far right organizations to influence the anti-war
movement and highlighted the willingness of some left leaders choosing
to work alongside quasi neo-Nazi institutions. Released in 1990, Right
Woos Left still remains the quintessential essay on why so-called “Red-
Brown” alliances will never achieve more than nihilistic suicide for a
left that says it is committed to strengthening economic, political,
and social rights.
Chip Berlet opens Right Woos Left by quoting journalist George Seldes
who wrote in 1938 that “Fascism and Reaction inevitably attack. They
have won against disunion. They will fail if we unite.”
We should remember the words of Seldes in the coming months; we should
see the emergence of PFIR as a gauntlet thrown down in front of the
progressive community by the forces of bigotry. As progressives we
should respond as we always have–in one voice. The time has come to
shut down the Tanton Network and its peddlers of hate.