Photo by owaief89.

The behavior of anti-immigrant groups and talk radio hosts gathering in Washington this week is a reminder that immigration, like so many divisive issues before it, brings out the worst in the body politic. Many of those classic hot-button culture issues—such as euthanasia or abortion—shift into intensely personal religious, moral and philosophical disagreements that often erupt in ugly ways.
Read the rest of this entry »

Photo by marvinjonataylor.

A New York Times article from 1882 stated, “It is a trite saying that in a free country public opinion rules. […] It often happens that a question of policy becomes of pressing importance before public opinion develops in regard to it.” More than one-hundred years later, this idea remains true—especially in regard to Latino voters and the Republican Party.
Read the rest of this entry »

Anti-immigrant groups like the “Minutemen” vigilantes are not only proliferating, but are rapidly beginning to resemble the white-supremacist and anti-government militias that have populated the netherworld of the Radical Right since the early 1990s. Adding insult to injury, the farcical conspiracy theories that circulate among both extreme nativist groups and right-wing militias are now being mainstreamed by commentators on CNN, MSNBC, and FOX News. Although the various strains of far-right extremism have by no means coalesced into a single movement, the ideological lines that once distinguished them have begun to blur.
Read the rest of this entry »

Photo by Tián.

The Federation for American Immigration Reform (FAIR)—an anti-immigrant hate group based in Washington, DC—claims in a new report that “Pennsylvania’s illegal immigrant population costs the state’s taxpayers about $728 million per year for education, medical care and incarceration.” However, the statistical contortions in which FAIR engages to produce this number render it virtually meaningless. FAIR dramatically exaggerates the fiscal “costs” imposed by unauthorized immigrants by including the schooling of their native-born, U.S.-citizen children in its estimate, and completely discounts the economic role that unauthorized workers play as consumers who help support Pennsylvania businesses.
Read the rest of this entry »

Photo by zzzack.

This week the National Institute on Money in State Politics released a study on funding spent supporting and opposing immigration-related ballot measures. Immigration Measures: Support on Both Sides of the Fence examined 2008 ballot initiatives in Oregon and Arizona and found that money raised by both sides of the issue totaled more than $17.5 million.

Read the rest of this entry »

Photo from Norm Schrager.

Without an ounce of originality, tired old anti-immigrant groups are once again joining forces to exploit California’s bad economy and scapegoat the Golden State’s immigrant population. Through a ballot initiative, they seek to cut benefits to U.S. citizen children and throw the 14th amendment of the U.S. constitution, which grants individuals born in America their citizenship, out the window. According to the L.A. Times, the organizers of the amendment are seeking to curb what they call “invasion by birth canal” and are using the bad California economy as their latest opportunity to bash immigrants.
Read the rest of this entry »

Photo by hey mr glen.

Anti-immigrant groups have repeatedly tried to drive a wedge between African Americans and immigrants by capitalizing on the myth that immigrants take American jobs—particularly jobs that would otherwise go to African Americans. That myth, as anti-immigrant groups present it, is simply not true, says Gerald Jaynes, a professor of Economics and African American Studies at Yale University. In a new Perspectives piece for the Immigration Policy Center, A Conversation about the Economic Effects of Immigration on African Americans, Jaynes dispels the myth that immigrants take “black jobs” and instead suggests we find solutions on how to lift up all low-wage American workers.
Read the rest of this entry »

Photo by guuleed.

In a new “special report” released on July 1, the Federation for American Immigration Reform (FAIR) regurgitates an old and deeply flawed argument: that immigration causes pollution. Specifically, the report claims that, because immigration increases the size of the U.S. population, it also increases U.S. energy consumption, which increases U.S. greenhouse gas emissions, which contributes to global warming. If this line of reasoning seems a tad weak, that’s because it is. As Andrea Nill writes for the ThinkProgress Wonk Room, the report relies largely on “anecdotes and inferences” in an “attempt to pander to progressive soft spots” on the environment.
Read the rest of this entry »

Photo by freefotouk.

Today, the Washington Post highlighted a report by civil rights leaders linking the recent spike in hate crimes against Hispanics and people perceived to be immigrants with inflammatory rhetoric present in the immigration debate.

The report, published by the Leadership Conference on Civil Rights Education Fund (LCCREF), looks at FBI hate crime statistics and calls for a more civil discourse that informs progress rather than “dehumanizing, racist stereotypes and bigotry” that so often permeate the debate. Michael Lieberman, Washington counsel for the Anti-Defamation League, echoed these sentiments, “The tone of discourse over comprehensive immigration reform needs to be changed, needs to be civil and sane.”
Read the rest of this entry »

Photo by LullAry.

In a new report, the Federation for American Immigration Reform (FAIR)—an anti-immigrant hate group headquartered in Washington, DC—claims that “Virginia’s illegal immigrant population costs the state’s taxpayers nearly $1.7 billion per year for education, medical care and incarceration.”  However, the statistical gymnastics in which FAIR engages to produce this number render it virtually meaningless.  FAIR dramatically exaggerates the fiscal “costs” imposed by undocumented immigrants by including the schooling of their native-born, U.S.-citizen children in its estimate and completely discounts the economic role that undocumented workers play as consumers who help support Virginia businesses.
Read the rest of this entry »