CIS points out race-baiting tactics used by La Raza

The Center for Immigration Studies, (CIS) a Washington immigration think tank, has commissioned a new report detailing the some the race baiting policies of the top two Latino immigration organizations, National Council of La Raza (NCLR) and the Southern Poverty Law Center (SPLC).

Pulitzer Prize-winning investigative reporter Jerry Kammer, who is now a Senior Research Fellow at CIS, wrote the report. And uncovers a host of toxic hate campaigns to ensure amnesty for those who are living in the country illegally.

Some of the highlights of the report are listed below;

While the SPLC presented itself as a public-interest watchdog, it became a propaganda arm of the National Council of La Raza (NCLR). Its designation of Federation for American Immigration Reform (FAIR) as a 'hate group' was a publicity stunt in the service of La Raza's 'Stop the Hate Campaign.' That campaign, formally launched in early 2008, is actually an effort to stop the debate on national immigration policy. ?

The SPLC had demeaned FAIR for years, without tarring it with the toxic 'hate group' smear. It tried to justify its timing of the hate group announcement – the month before the 'Stop the Hate' campaign was launched – with a drummed-up accusation that FAIR had 'crossed the Rubicon of hate' with a meeting between a single FAIR official and a delegation from a right-wing Belgian political party that was visiting Washington.
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When the SPLC designates an organization as a 'hate group,' it places that organization on a list already occupied by such notorious groups as the Ku Klux Klan and racist skinheads. Yet SPLC director of research Heidi Beirich acknowledged that 'we do not have a formal written criteria' for assigning a label intended to bring disgrace to its recipients. Beirich said this in a radio interview: 'You qualify as a hate group if you treat an entire group of people for their internal characteristics, or their inherent characteristics, or you demean them in some way.' The report observes: 'A definition this flexible and imprecise could summon the SPLC Hate Patrol to the door of nearly any group of football fans, political activists, or Apple computer enthusiasts.' It says such laxity is an invitation for the malice and mischief that are characteristic of the SPLC.

When the SPLC designates an organization as a 'hate group,' it places that organization on a list already occupied by such notorious groups as the Ku Klux Klan and racist skinheads. Yet SPLC director of research Heidi Beirich acknowledged that 'we do not have a formal written criteria' for assigning a label intended to bring disgrace to its recipients. Beirich said this in a radio interview: 'You qualify as a hate group if you treat an entire group of people for their internal characteristics, or their inherent characteristics, or you demean them in some way.' The report observes: 'A definition this flexible and imprecise could summon the SPLC Hate Patrol to the door of nearly any group of football fans, political activists, or Apple computer enthusiasts.' It says such laxity is an invitation for the malice and mischief that are characteristic of the SPLC. ?

The SPLC's attacks on Roy Beck, executive director of NumbersUSA, are a classic guilt-by-association smear based on Beck's relationship with FAIR founder John Tanton. Noting that Beck says he is not a racist, the SPLC has acknowledged that 'his website and other writings do not contradict that.' Meanwhile, the SPLC ignores a large body of evidence that demonstrates his rejection of immigrant bashing and his search for measured public debate. ?

Because of Tanton's role as the founder of FAIR, and because he was instrumental in the establishment of CIS and NumbersUSA, he can rightly be described as the father of the modern movement to restrict immigration.

The SPLC/La Raza campaign to delegitimize FAIR, NumbersUSA, and CIS diverts attention from substantial issues about immigration policy. The report cites the work of journalists and scholars who acknowledge that there are sound, respectable reasons to want to restrict immigration, both legal and illegal. ?

Mexican American leaders such as Cesar Chavez and Rep. Henry Gonzalez were sharply critical of the political uses of the term 'la raza.' Chavez warned, 'Some people don't look at it as racism, but when you say la raza, you are saying an anti-gringo thing, and our fear is that it won't stop there.' ?

The report concludes that the SPLC smear campaign, 'demonstrates that the Southern Poverty Law Center has become a peddler of its own brand of self-righteous hate. It is a center of intolerance, marked by a poverty of ideas, a dependence on dishonesty, and a lack of fundamental decency.'

As the Democrats prepare to launch a comprehensive immigration reform bill later this year, groups like NumbersUSA, FAIR and Americans for Legal Immigration PAC (ALIPAC) are staging rallies across the country pointing out the true cost of illegal immigration and the plethora of new immigrants rushing the borders if amnesty is part of the package passed in Washington D.C.

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