The Wonk Room

Tennessee Sheriff Pulls Out Of CIS Event Citing Think Tank’s Hate Group Ties

The Nashville City Paper reports that Sheriff Daron Hall of Davidson County, Tennessee has pulled out of an event hosted by the Center for Immigration Studies (CIS). Local immigration activists brought the group’s nativist history to his attention and Hall canceled his meeting with CIS so as not to “cause discord among the people [he's] trying to building bridges with.”

Hall was set to appear Thursday at a CIS event dedicated to perpetuating the myth that “immigrants have relatively high rates of criminality.” It’s unclear what position Hall was going to take at the event, but there certainly won’t be any dissenting opinions in his absence. The panel now solely consists of CIS staff: Director of Research Steven Camarota, Director of Policy Studies Jessica Vaughan, and Executive Director Mark Krikorian. When questioned about Hall’s cancellation, Krikorian remarked that CIS’ nativist ties have been exaggerated as part of a “broader, concerted effort to delegitimize any skeptic of amnesty or increased immigration”:

“They don’t have the balls to describe us as a hate group, they have to do this McCarthyite kind of guilt by association thing…Their function is to provide information for this campaign of vilification…The sheriff can do whatever he needs to do, we’re going to be disappointed he’s not here but that’s his call to make. It’s the advocacy groups that are essentially lying to him that are at fault here.”

The Southern Poverty Law Center (SPLC) describes CIS as a “think tank [which] bills itself as an ‘independent’ organization,” despite the fact that it “has never found any aspect of immigration that it liked.” SPLC explains that “the organized anti-immigration ‘movement,’ increasingly in bed with racist hate groups, is dominated by one man, John Tanton.” CIS, along with its unofficial sister organizations, NumbersUSA and the Federation for American Immigration Reform (FAIR), a designated hate group, were all founded by Tanton — the “nativist impresario.”

Hall faced “a firestorm of criticism” when he headlined a white supremacist event sponsored by the Middle Tennessee chapter of the Council of Conservative Citizens (CCC).

What Happens To Immigration Reform Now That The ‘Stalwart Of The Senate’ Is Gone

In a USA Today article today crediting Sen. Edward Kennedy (D-MA) for having “fashioned the modern day” immigration system, immigration advocate Frank Sharry pointed out that Kennedy “laid the groundwork” for the sort of humane immigration reform that he had spent much of his political career fighting for, but never achieved. It’s hard to imagine an immigration bill hitting the Senate floor without Kennedy’s binding support, but the truth is he’s already paved the legislative road for its debut and equipped progressives with the guts and principles to see it through.

Sen. Kennedy kicked off his political career in 1965 with a major overhaul of immigration laws that eradicated ethnically-biased immigration quotas that made it nearly impossible for anyone other than Western Europeans to emigrate to the US. “He created Americans,” says Dana Houle of the Daily Kos. After changing the face of immigration, Kennedy spent the next 40 years fighting to change how the nation treated its newcomers. Kennedy helped pass the Refugee Act of 1980 that brought “U.S. law into compliance with the requirements of international law.” He fought with all his might against the harshest provisions proposed in the Illegal Immigration Reform and Immigrant Responsibility Act of 1996, described in the Cornell Law Review as the most “the most diverse, divisive and draconian immigration law enacted since the Chinese Exclusion Act of 1882.” In the more recent past, Kennedy cosponsored the DREAM Act to legalize hardworking undocumented students who have lived in the US most of their lives at no fault of their own and the Agricultural Job Opportunity, Benefits, and Security (AgJOBS) Act of 2005 to improve the lives of immigrant farmworkers.

Many aspects of Kennedy’s original Comprehensive Immigration Reform Act — which died in the Senate in 2007 — “continue to be the model” for comprehensive immigration reform today. With that said, there are some tough lessons to be learned from what went wrong that year. The final negotiated bill was attacked by both the left and the right, as both sides could point to major aspects of it that they were unwilling to swallow. Mary Giovagnoli says the immigration bill was “met with lukewarm support from many immigration advocates and was pilloried by those on the far right, who turned the Senate’s efforts to find a way out of our immigration mess into a personal vendetta against immigrants.” A small, but vocal minority of restrictionist constituents lit up the phones of Senate staffers who cowered and retreated in electoral fear. Labor was also adamantly opposed to the inclusion of a guest-worker program — something they perceived as a threat to wages, jobs, and immigrant worker rights. Kennedy will be remembered by many as the “master negotiater” and the “stalwart of the Senate.” But in 2007, it wasn’t enough.

Sen. Chuck Schumer (D-NY) is committed to giving immigration reform another shot, and he thinks he stands a good chance at passing it. Much like Kennedy partnered with Sen. John McCain (R-AZ) on immigration, Sen. Lindsey Graham (R-SC) will probably be Schumer’s Republican ally. But bipartisanship can’t just be symbolic. They’ll both have to reach out to conservative Democrats and other moderate Republicans — many who even Kennedy was unable to convince — in order to negotiate the votes needed to pass reform. Most importantly, Schumer will have to balance the delicate interests of business, labor, and immigration advocates, along with conservatives’ demands for harsh enforcement, without losing sight of the compassionate solutions that must be brought to immigrant communities across the country. It helps that the climate is a bit different this time around: immigration advocates are better organized, labor is on-board, the president is more engaged, and Latino voters have made clear that anti-immigrant rhetoric coming from Congress will render vulnerable nativist candidates obsolete. But if Kennedy were still around, he’d probably advise Schumer not to take any of that for granted.

When the 2007 immigration reform bill didn’t pass, Kennedy announced:

We will endure today’s loss and begin anew to build the kinds of tough, fair, and practical reform worthy of our shared history as immigrants and as Americans. Immigration reforms are always controversial. But Congress was created to muster political will to answer such challenges. Today we didn’t, but tomorrow we will.

While some argue that Kennedy’s death has left a “leadership gap,” the truth is his passing has yielded the floor to new voices who are versed in his political skills and progressive agenda. His notable absence doesn’t mean that his legislative triumphs and moral agenda won’t continue to guide the immigration debate closer to a fair and just solution. It would’ve been easier to reach with him, but it must be achieved without him.

The Israel Project Recommends Stoking 9/11 Immigration Fears In ‘Right Of Return’ Talking Points

The Israel Project (TIP), a pro-Israel Washington-based group dedicated to educating the press and the public on Israeli issues, is advising its supporters to invoke the United States’ immigration concerns as a general rule when discussing Israel’s “right of return” debate because it resonates with Americans’ fear of immigrants. Its 2009 Global Language Dictionary, described as “a manual on how to talk to journalists and opinion molders about the Arab-Israeli conflict,” states:

“Mass Palestinian immigration.” Thanks to 9/11 and the continuing threat of terrorism, Americans are particularly afraid of mass immigration of anyone right now. Comparing the challenges facing Americans in dealing with unrestricted immigration and Israel’s situation will be well received.

Thanks to 9/11 and the continuing threat of terrorism? You’d think the pro-Israel hawks would be a little more sensitive to the blatant exploitation of the violent deaths of thousands of people at the hands of hateful insurgents and the constant fear of future attacks.

Not only are TIP’s “talking points” shamelessly offensive, they’re also based on a total misinterpretation of the immigration issue in the United States. TIP is debating that the “right of return” principle doesn’t apply to the thousands of Palestinian refugees and their descendants that were forced from their homes in Israel, which doesn’t really have anything to do with immigration at all. Secondly, the only people who are framing the immigration issue in America using scare tactics like the ones TIP recommends are anti-immigrant xenophobes. Chances are someone like nativist Mark Krikorian isn’t going to help them win over any level-headed supporters. By appealing to the worse instincts of Americans, TIP isn’t contributing much to either the “right of return” or the immigration debate.

Anti-Immigrant Front Group Courts Progressives With Shoddy Polling Data

The deceptively named anti-immigrant front group, Progressives for Immigration Reform (PFIR), released a set of counter-intuitive polling data today suggesting that while over half of 600 polled liberals support a pathway to citizenship for the 12 million undocumented immigrants currently living in the US, they also see immigration as an economic, social, and environmental liability.

The anti-immigration movement has long been trying to woo progressives by exploiting pro-labor and environmental arguments to make the case against immigrants. The Center for New Community’s (CNC) Eric Ward warns:

“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.”

PFIR’s Executive Director Leah Durant is listed as the Federation for American Immigration Reform’s (FAIR) Legal Analyst. Frank Morris, PFIR’s vice president, is also a board member of the Center for Immigration Studies and sits on FAIR’s national board of advisors. According to the CNC, PFIR’s “sister group,” the House Immigration Reform Caucus, chaired by Republican Rep. Brian Bilbray (CA), has an abominable voting record on environmental and labor issues.

According to the poll, 67% of liberals/progressives feel that immigration causes population growth which “negatively impacts the quality of life.” 58% feel that immigration is environmentally harmful and 63% think immigration hurts American workers. Yet over half support a pathway to citizenship.

PFIR’s confusing findings might also have something to do with their polling company, “Pulse Opinion Research,” the favored pollster of the Center for Immigration Studies (CIS), a group which was recently pinned for fueling hate crimes with its anti-immigrant rhetoric and the Eagle Forum, a “pro-family” organization that opposes the “liberal agenda,” “radical feminists,” and supports “American identity.” The pollster has also been used to promote the presidential bids of Libertarian candidates Bob Barr and George Phillies. Yet, while Pulse Opinion Research’s findings were used to predict the relative success of Barr and Phillies, Phillies lost his bid for the Libertarian Party’s nomination to Barr who only won 0.4% of the national vote — compared to the 7% win that Pulse Opinion Research predicted.

Most immigration polling backs the claim that the majority of Americans support a legalization program for undocumented immigrants. Yet, it’s hard to find any polling that shows the same respondents holding immigrants responsible for the nation’s woes. According to a Benenson Strategy Group poll, 71% of 1,000 likely voters said that immigrants are not responsible for taking American jobs. A poll conducted by Bendixon and Associates for the progressive think tank, the New Democratic Network (NDN), found that 60% of voters in four battleground states echoed similar views. Both surveys were bi-partisan polls that consistently showed Democrats leaning towards pro-immigrant views and solutions. None of polls connected immigration to environmental or population growth concerns, however the progressive Green Party itself specifically condemns scapegoating immigrants for social and environmental problems:

“While we recognize that there must be some controls on immigration, if only for the sake of national security, the Green Party would endorse a friendlier (less intimidating) attitude towards immigration in all nations within certain guidelines…We oppose those who seek to divide us for political gain by raising ethnic and racial hatreds, and by blaming immigrants for social and economic problems.”

Polling data aside, US government scientists say there’s insufficient evidence to draw any clear conclusion on immigration’s impact on the environment.

Arizona Sheriff ‘Scoffs’ At Possibility Of Expanded Federal Investigation

Bettina Hansen/The Arizona Republic

“I have nothing to hide. Let them look…They are just coming down here hoping to find something,” said Arpaio. However, it appears that federal officials might find more than Arpaio is willing to publicly admit. Maricopa County Supervisors already voted against accepting $1.4 million in state funding for Arpaio’s immigration enforcement. A Pulitzer Prize-winning series of articles published in the East Valley Tribune chronicled the high cost associated with Arpaio’s immigration enforcement activities. According to the Tribune, the MCSO budget (excluding jails) nearly doubled from $37 million to $72.5 million since 2001. As of 2008, Arpaio’s office created a $1.3 million deficit in just three months. Meanwhile, crime rates are up and even the conservative Goldwater Institute has asked the state attorney general and Maricopa County attorney to investigate Arpaio’s office’s alleged practice of declaring unsolved crimes solved.

Arpaio took on the DOJ earlier this month when he accused officials of “not playing fair.” Arpaio has declared he won’t back down:

ARPAIO: Every law enforcement agency the DOJ has investigated in the past has bowed down or rolled over to the federal government. This agency and this Sheriff will not. Washington should not tell an elected Sheriff how to conduct his law enforcement responsibilities.

Arpaio will meet with Rev. Al Sharpton, who accused Arpaio of racial-profiling and called for his resignation, in a debate today. Last week, Arpaio forced his inmates to cook 5,000 pounds of beef liver for his birthday dinner.

Alleged Minuteman Killer Co-Hosted Anti-Immigration Event Featuring GOP Presidential Candidates

Firedoglake reports that Shawna Forde, the anti-immigrant leader of the Minuteman American Defense (M.A.D.) who was recently charged with the murder of a 9-year-old Hispanic girl and her father, co-hosted the 2007 Washington State Illegal Immigration Summit that reportedly featured presidential candidates Tom Tancredo, Duncan Hunter, and Fred Thompson.

The Reagan Wing, a conservative blog dedicated to picking up Ronald Reagan’s “sword” still features a plug for the summit which it describes as “the pinnacle Conservative event of 2007“:

In addition the event is co-hosted by Minutemen American Defense, a Washington state-wide American citizen defense coalition headed by Shawna Forde, a re-born Rock promoter from the days of the music world-shaking Seattle Rock explosion. Shawna will speak.

Representatives (or the actual candidates) will appear from Presidential campaigns for TOM TANCREDO, DUNCAN HUNTER and FRED THOMPSON.

Minuteman leader Jim Gilchrist, who has tried to distance himself from Forde in recent days, also headlined the 2007 event.

The summit, which featured the slogan “The Great Gringo awakens from siesta,” was reportedly attended by “white supremacists, militia types, neo-Nazis, and skinheads.”

Right wing anti-immigration groups are frantically trying to distance themselves from Forde. The anti-immigrant group, the Federation for American Immigration Reform (FAIR), issued a press release this afternoon denying any association with Forde after a video popped up of Shawna Forde speaking as a FAIR activist. The blog Long Island Wins reports that web pages from Gilchrist’s website where he supposedly defends Forde are nothing but broken links in a google cache. VDARE, “the homepage of educated racism” has reportedly also “scrubbed” all of its web pages that once supported Forde. So far, CNN’s Rick Sanchez has been one of the few mainstream journalists to question Forde’s connection to the larger movement against immigration.

SANCHEZ: The nation’s largest minuteman group has distanced itself from Forde we should say. And we’ve learned that within Minuteman circles she is considered a bit of a loose canon. But you do have to wonder: how did Shawna Forde–a supposed fringe element–turn up on PBS as a player in the anti-immigration movement?

Watch it:

Immigration advocates are outraged at the mainstream media’s lack of coverage and are asking their supporters to share the story of the 9-year-old victim’s death. Today, Crooks and Liars posted an emotional recording of the 911 call placed by her mother on the day of the attack.

Florida Senate Candidate Marco Rubio Speaks Spanish To Win Votes, But Espouses English-Only Policies

Marco Rubio, who recently announced that he will run for Mel Martinez’s Senate seat in Florida, came out yesterday in favor of making English the official language of the United States, randomly pointing out that his name is spelled the same way in both Spanish and English.

Rubio’s new position echoes a recent MSNBC report which discussed the recent “revival” of the controversial pro-English movement which some say is motivated by anti-immigrant sentiment and reeks of “self defeating” “simple racism.” Rubio’s hard-line immigration position has helped win him the support of right-wing Sen. Jim DeMint (R-SC) who called Rubio “a real diamond in our own back yard.” Meanwhile, Miami blogger Kyle Munzenrieder pointed out that Rubio must be hoping to “appeal to Florida’s Hispanic voters simply because he is Hispanic,” as his positions are not in line with the interests of the Hispanic and immigrant communities.

Yet while Marco Rubio supports English-only legislation, he’s still willing to talk about his campaign in both languages. Watch it:

Munzenrieder reminds readers that Rubio has also been accused of sending English- and Spanish-speaking voters conflicting messages:

“Great Marco, just about everyone names is spelled the same in English in Spanish. Good for you. We just wish your politics were the same in both languages. Unfortunately, what you say to your English-speaking supporters isn’t always what you say to your Spanish-speaking supporters.”

Munzenrieder is referring to critics who have accused Rubio of resorting to “hateful fear-mongering” when discussing the Obama administration in Spanish and taking a more “neutral” tone in English. Chances are Rubio probably hasn’t mentioned his pro-English position nor Demint’s endorsement to the Spanish-language media.

Another U.S. Citizen ‘Accidentally’ Deported

Earlier this month, U.S. citizen, Irving Palomo, was detained and put in a van headed for Mexico due to an ICE mix-up. A few months ago Mark Lyttle, a U.S. citizen who suffers from mild retardation, was deported to Mexico. Mexican officials then deported him to Honduras, and Honduras deported him to Guatemala. After spending four months in Latin American prisons and homeless shelters, Atlanta airport officials tried to deport Lyttle again on his way back to his home in North Carolina.

Now a Louisiana newspaper is reporting that Diane Williams, a U.S. citizen of Caucasian and Native American descent, was recently deported to Honduras due to a mistake made by U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) officials.

Williams was finishing up a prostitution sentence in Texas under a fake alias when she received a deportation order from the U.S. government. Two weeks later she found herself pleading her case at the U.S. Embassy in Tegucigalpa, Honduras. Williams claims that she was pressured by ICE officials to waive her right to judicial review. “They didn’t read nothing to me. They just told me to sign,” says Williams.

Jorge Baron, executive director of the Northwest Immigrant Rights Project in Seattle, told Louisiana’s Daily Comet that ICE officials “cut corners” and “are pushed to deport people quickly.” According to the newspaper:

Immigration-rights advocates say thousands of people with credible claims to U.S. citizenship are detained every year by an overloaded immigration-enforcement system, in part because of pressures on agents to show results in numbers of deportations and a lack of adequate civil-rights protections.

The American Civil Liberties Union (ACLU) conservatively estimates that approximately 100 U.S. citizens are accidentally ensnared by the country’s broken immigration system each year. Joanne Lin, legislative counsel with the ACLU in Washington, told a Tennessee newspaper that these mistakes are indicative of “a whole host of immigration enforcement and due process problems that exist in the system.” As immigration restrictionists incessantly call on immigration officials to ramp up their deportation efforts, ICE can barely handle the deportation work they’re already doing.

Minuteman Leader Allegedly Kills 9-Year-Old And Father To Finance Hate Group

This weekend, Shawna Forde, 41, leader of the Minuteman American Defense (M.A.D.) group and two of her associates were arrested in connection with the murder of a 9-year-old girl, Brisenia Flores, and her father, Raul, in Arivaca, AZ. Local police are reporting that Forde and her posse broke into the Flores home dressed as law enforcement officers looking for money and drugs to finance her border watch group with the intention of leaving no witnesses behind.

Much like Jim Gilchrist’s Minuteman Project and Chris Simcox’s Minuteman Civil Defense Corps, Forde’s group is an extreme nativist organization made up of volunteer border vigilantes. M.A.D. has gone into damage control, posting a statement expressing condolences for the Flores family and distancing itself from Forde’s violent crime. Yet directly below its offering of “deepest regrets,” the website boasts a message from Shawna Forde, Executive Director:

“I would like to let everyone know that we are in full operation we have people coming from Florida and other parts of the country to assist in gathering exclusive footage of drug cartel drug smuggling and humane trafficking…We will expose and report what we know and find, we will recruit the serious and train the revolutionist, time for words have passed the time for bravery and conviction are now. I shall lead you to challenge yourself and your American heart into the future of what was once a great country and will be again but at what price?“

Other border vigilante groups are disassociating themselves from Forde and M.A.D. However, the Anti-Defamation League points out that many of them have publicly supported her anti-immigrant statements in the past. On three different occasions, Forde claimed to have been shot, raped, and beaten by Spanish-speaking assailants. Most inside her own anti-immigrant community questioned her credibility and accused her of faking the attack, but some, like Minuteman Project Executive Director Stephen Eichler stood by her, saying:

“I believe what I have been told, and the reports I have read in the newspaper, to be factual and accurate…I may be called gullible, sucker, and naïve, but it is of little consequence to me if I am right and the victims were comforted.”

Laine Lawless, an anti-immigration activist who started the group Border Guardians, praised Forde’s border activities and argued that Forde’s alleged attack was “obvious proof that the reach of the Mexican cartels extends way beyond the borders of Mexico deep into the United States.” After the Flores family murder, Minuteman in-fighting has lead the San Diego Minuteman to blame The Minuteman Project’s Jim Gilchrist for continuing to support Forde, who served as Gilchrist’s 2008-2009 Border Director, “despite warnings.”

Finger pointing aside, what all of these groups have in common is that they target individual immigrants rather than immigration policies. Their mission and rhetoric consistently fits the description of “rightwing extremist groups” that the DHS report warned have “the potential to incite individuals or small groups toward violence” in part due to pent-up “frustration over a perceived lack of government action on illegal immigration.” Forde’s alleged murder comes shortly after a white supremacist shooting rampage in Pittsburgh, an abortion doctor murder in Kansas, and a racially-motivated shooting at the Holocaust Museum that have caused some to “herald a disturbing surge in U.S. hate crimes.”

Romney Tells Ailing GOP Not To Change ‘Principles’ On Immigration

After hedging his bets and unsuccessfully campaigning for the GOP presidential bid on an anti-immigration platform, Mitt Romney announced yesterday that the Republican Party should not change its principles on immigration.

During the 2007-2008 election cycle, Romney was said to have been taking cues from anti-immigration zealot, Pat Buchanan, who warned Republicans that “pandering to Hispanics has cost them white votes.” Romney spent upwards of $1.5 million on harsh immigration ads and is now saying that repairing the GOP’s relationship with Hispanic voters is simply a matter of “messaging”:

MR. STEPHANOPOULOS: But you’re also facing a demographic problem. Mike Murphy, the Republican strategist, points this out in Time magazine this week. He says the Republicans are facing an ice age. And what he points to is the fact that in the last election and if you look at polling today, the Republican Party is losing young people. It is losing Latinos. It is losing well-educated Americans. That this really is a time, that if the Republican Party doesn’t reform, Mike Murphy says, it will die. How specifically should the Republican Party expand its outreach right now, become a more inclusive party for those voter groups that it is now losing?

MR. ROMNEY: Well, what you don’t do is try and change your principles. But what you do is make sure that you’re communicating your principles in an effective way to the audiences of America that are listening…You got to make sure that you fight very hard to get your message through. And you’re right, George, in many cases, the people on the opposition said that Republicans were anti-immigrant, which – nothing could be further from the truth. Republicans celebrate immigrants coming legally into this country, even becoming citizens…We’re a party that loves legal immigration.

Watch it:

Romney’s new messaging also involves flip-flopping on immigration reform for the second time. After conveniently changing his stance from favoring a path to citizenship to outright opposing comprehensive immigration reform in an attempt to drive a wedge between himself and his opponent John McCain, Romney recently suggested that “one way to attract more minorities to the GOP is to pass immigration reform before the next election.”

Romney was labeled the “hypocrite of the week” in late 2006 when it was discovered that not only did his family flee to Mexico and stay there for three generations, he also hired undocumented Guatemalan workers to clean up his yard.

Arrested White Supremacist Blogger Tied To Hannity, Buchanan

Harold “Hal” Turner, a white supremacist New Jersey blogger and former radio host who frequented the same right-wing circles as Sean Hannity and Pat Buchanan turned himself into police today after encouraging his audience to “take up arms” against two lawmakers and a state official. The comments that lead to Turner’s arrest were made because he was reportedly “angry over legislation that would have given lay members of Roman Catholic churches in Connecticut more control over their parish’s finances.”

Aside from serving as the North Jersey coordinator for Pat Buchanan’s 1992 presidential campaign, a 2005 article by The Nation points out that Hannity “offered his top-rated radio show as a regular forum for Turner’s occasionally racist, always over-the-top rants.” The Nation also reported that Turner and Hannity’s conversations continued off-the-air as Hannity offered Turner “encouragement” while he struggled to kick his cocaine habit and overcome his “homosexual leanings.” In 2007, Hannity backed away from his association with Turner in a tit-for-tat debate with Black Panther leader Malik Shabazz. Watch it:

Much like Wednesday’s Holocaust Museum shooter (who Hannity conveniently didn’t cover on on the day of the attack), Turner has promoted violence in the name of racism, anti-semitism and white nationalism. In 2006, Turner left former Jersey City Deputy Mayor, Jaime Vazquez, with a back injury and a fractured wrist when Vasquez began publicly protesting his anti-immigrant comments:

TURNER: “(T)he illegal immigrants are breaking the law, and people like me should break the law as well by shooting them down.”

The Southern Poverty Law Center describes Turner as:

“A belligerent, foul-mouthed talk show host, Turner is the maestro of radio hate — a man who rants about a ‘Portable Nigger Lyncher’ machine, ‘faggots,’ ’savage Negro beasts,’ ‘bull-dyke lesbians’ and ‘lazy-ass Latinos … slithering across the border.’”

Phoenix Mayor Asks Sheriff To ‘Disavow’ His Extremist Ties After Holocaust Shooting

In a press conference in which he was supposed to talk about the Phoenix light rail, Mayor Gordon called on Arpaio to distance himself from his extremist allies:

GORDON: He has given a sense of recognition to the Nazis and neo-Nazis that he’s associated with…and so I ask the Sheriff today to publically disavow his associations with these hate mongerars and apologize so we can begin righting the ship.

Joe Arpaio, America’s self-proclaimed “toughest sheriff,” has won right-wing praise for his controversial immigration enforcement tactics and is currently under investigation by the Department of Justice for allegations of “discriminatory police practices and unconstitutional searches and seizures…and of allegations of national origin discrimination.”

The Anti-Defamation League recently noted that well-known white supremacists showed up at a march protesting Arpaio’s anti-immigrant tactics and hurled racial epithets to “incite violence in support of Sheriff Arpaio.” Arpaio posed for a picture with his neo-Nazi supporters and a video was released shortly after of them assuring Arpaio, “Sheriff, we have your back.” Watch it:

According to Arizona’s KTAR radio, “Arpaio has responded to Gordon’s comments by calling him a liar and saying his accusations are false.”

Beck Decries ‘Empathy’ For ‘Anchor Baby Thing’

While railing about the Department of Homeland Security’s decision to temporarily halt the deportation of widows and widowers of U.S. citizens, Fox News’ Glenn Beck yesterday slammed “anchor babies,” the U.S.- born children of immigrants, and called for the overturn of the 14th Amendment which grants natural-born citizenship:

BECK: You know the anchor baby thing has already really hacked me off. You know the anchor baby, you know what that is. That’s when somebody — a child that is born here — becomes a citizen. And they help the illegal parents here become citizens. Remember empathy, oh empathy — no one wants to separate that family. Oh that baby is a child — it’s an anchor — it’s an anchor to stay here.

Watch it:

Aside from repeatedly demonizing U.S. citizen children with a derogatory term that equates their birth with a mud hook, Beck challenges the concept of U.S. citizenship and ignores the benefits of family immigration which include significant economic, social, and tax contributions.

Beck also overlooks the fact that so-called “anchor babies” aren’t even allowed to file a visa petition for their parents until they are 21-years-old. According to the law firm of Scott and Associates, Attorneys at Law PLLC:

The Restrictionists present this information as though it then becomes a simple matter of filing paperwork. What they don’t tell you is that if the parent entered without inspection, the parent is not able to apply for a green card from within the US…As the child is not a qualifying relative for a waiver of this ground of inadmissibility, she [the mother] would not be able to return to the US legally for ten years despite have a US citizen child over age 21…Despite the fallacy of the Anchor Baby Myth, Restrictionists keep pushing it.

Holocaust Museum Shooter Raises Concerns About ‘Crazed Conspiracies’ From Hate Groups

Shortly after opening fire at the National Holocaust Museum today, James Wenneker von Brunn, the suspected shooter, was identified as a white supremacist with a “history of associations with prominent neo-Nazis and Holocaust deniers,” according to the Southern Poverty Law Center (SPLC). Brunn’s hateful rhetoric followed by today’s violent outburst chillingly echoes a controversial warning issued by the Department of Homeland Security concerning a rise in “rightwing extremist activity.”

In his book, “Kill the Best Gentiles,” Brunn wrote:

We are witnessing today on the world stage a tragedy of enormous proportions: the calculated destruction of the White Race and the incomparable culture it represents.

Brunn’s supremacist views weren’t limited to anti-semitism, he also condemned the “browning of America” in a public email:

Millions of low-IQ non-whites are encouraged to illegally invade the USA.  They are provided sanctuary, jobs, health-care schooling, by those intent upon destroying Western Civilization.

SPLC’s Heidi Beirich spoke with Fox New’s Shep Smith this afternoon about the shooting and the warning signs it poses for the U.S.:

SMITH: There’s these crazies out there. And we know it’s absolutely — there is no truth whatsoever — zero to any of those ideas. Yet, they live within the computer and they fester within people’s minds.

BEIRICH: Shepard, you’re hitting the nail on the head. We’re extremely concerned about these kinds of crazed conspiracies, whether they’re about the President, or the fact — we’re hearing things like FEMA setting up camps to round up Americans and put them in. I’m getting bad sort of deja vu from the 1990s, when anti-government militias were on the rise, when Tim McVeigh committed that violence in Oklahoma City. I’m really hoping we’re not going through a repeat of that.

Watch it:

A DHS report leaked earlier this year warned of “Rightwing extremist groups’ frustration over a perceived lack of government action on illegal immigration has the potential to incite individuals or small groups toward violence.” The DHS cited the rise in right-wing extremist ideology as “the most dangerous domestic terrorism threat.”

Activists And Labor Organizations Unite To Launch National Immigration Reform Campaign

This morning at the National Press Club in Washington, D.C., Reform Immigration for America launched its nationwide effort to bring “together individuals and grassroots organizations with the mission to build support for workable comprehensive immigration reform.” The campaign is being led by various labor, policy and activist groups such as the AFL-CIO, the Services Employees International Union, the NAACP, the Center for American Progress, the National Immigration Forum and the National Council of La Raza.

In fact, support for immigration reform is already gaining momentum. A Pew Research Center for the People and Press “Trends in Core Values 1987 to 2009” report released last month found that “by nearly two to one (63 percent to 34 percent), most [Americans] favor a way for illegal immigrants in the United States to gain legal citizenship if they meet certain conditions, including passing background checks and paying fines.” Indeed, a number of recent polls echo these sentiments:

– April 24, 2009 Washington Post/ABC News Poll: Sixty-one percent of those polled support “a program giving illegal immigrants now living in the United States the right to live here legally if they pay a fine and meet other requirements.”

– April 2009 New York Times/CBS News Poll: Forty-four percent of respondents support a path to citizenship for undocumented immigrants, up from 38 percent in December 2007.

A new national poll released just yesterday found that nearly two-thirds of voters (64 percent) support comprehensive reform. But when given specific details of what that reform entails — including securing the border, cracking down on employers who hire undocumented immigrants, requiring immigrants to register for status, pay back taxes and learn English — 86 percent offered their support. Moreover, the poll respondents perceived “an economic and fiscal benefit to immigration reform and want Congress to address the economy and immigration reform simultaneously.”

The Times/CBS poll also found that 59 percent believe that President Obama was at least “somewhat likely” to “bring about significant immigration reform in his first term.” And it appears that Obama is planning on getting started. Politico reported last month that he will be inviting members of Congress to the White House in the coming weeks to “highlight immigration reform.” “The meeting will be an opportunity to launch a policy conversation that we hope will be able to start a debate that will take place in Congress later in the year,” an administration official said.