They Thinly Veil their Hatreds

Facebook has really become my place to look for blog ideas, and today I want to write about something a future classmate of mine posted yesterday. It has to do with the ways in which xenophobia and racism can become failed behind a veil of legitimacy. It has to do with the ways in which some people actively try to conceal their more horrible hatreds so as to infiltrate public discourse.

A little background first, though. A few days ago, NPR ran a story on José Antonio Vargas, a writer and journalist who came forward publicly in The New York Times about being an undocumented immigrant from the Philippines. Vargas' admission came on the heels of the Dream Acts failure (Vargas himself was brought over by his parents as a child, and he went through his formal education and life here in the US). Of course there are reactions to this from all sides, as Vargas himself most likely intended. People who heard the story were stimulated to think about immigration and the life of immigrants very seriously. But my intention is not to comment on immigration.

Instead, I wanted to talk about one, specific reaction that received air time that really shouldn't have. My Facebook friend posted this story from NPR entitled "Why Jose Antonio Vargas Should Leave the U.S." The article itself was, thankfully, not an editorial from NPR staffers, but was instead an interview with a man named Mark Krikorian of the Center for Immigration Studies (CIS). So far so good? Wrong. From this NPR interview alone there are things to find wrong with Krikorian's rhetoric. For me, the problems started with this little gem:

"The moral case that you can make for the Dream Act — or something like the Dream Act ... really only applies, it seems to me, to people whose identities have been formed here, who have no memory of any other country, who really are — as some of the advocates sometimes put it — are Americans in all but paperwork,"

Now, what has me very upset here is two things. Firstly, it is a statement that pretends to defend what a "true American" is and thus define it along some specified line. Secondly, part of this line is that people have "no memory of any other country" which is a remarkably dense thing to say. I was born and raised here, and still I have strong affections for my father's home country of Mexico. And, mind you, my father is a US citizen who also has strong affections for (and family in) Mexico. Are we not really American? Clearly its already difficult for me to take anything this man says seriously. So when I read that the CIS is "a think tank that advocates a 'low immigration, high enforcement' immigration policy" I can't help but read that as the workings of a strongly nativist organization rather than a serious think tank. 


This alone was enough to upset me. I mean, it is seriously upsetting that there is a serious organization that sets out with an agenda against immigration but that creates this paper thin arguments that actually disqualify many American citizens. But then it got worse. It got much, much worse. The same friend who posted the NPR article later posted this link to a Southern Poverty Law Center- an organization that has worked at tracking groups with anti-minority and anti-immigration agendas. The SPLC writes:

Although the think tank bills itself as an "independent" organization with a "pro-immigrant" if "low-immigration" vision, the reality is that CIS has never found any aspect of immigration that it liked.

There's a reason for that. Although you'd never know it to read its materials, CIS was started in 1985 by a Michigan ophthalmologist named John Tanton — a man known for his racist statements about Latinos, his decades-long flirtation with white nationalists and Holocaust deniers, and his publication of ugly racist materials. CIS' creation was part of a carefully thought-out strategy aimed at creating a set of complementary institutions to cultivate the nativist cause — groups including the Federation for American Immigration Reform (FAIR) and NumbersUSA.

showing that, at the very least, the CIS has some rather dubious origins. The article goes on to reveal how unsavory the CIS really is and, for me, invalidates the CIS as a "think tank." Before, I strongly disagreed with Krikorian and his piss-poor logic. Now I disagree with the very existence of his organization.

What is so upsetting is the way CIS actually postures itself as a legitimate organization working on some issue or problem and releases "studies" and various other "research projects." See, the CIS bills itself as legitimate and appeals to the power real research institutions wield in the eyes of the public (ok, so maybe the average person pays little attention to think tanks). But still, here is a strongly and demonstrably xenophobic organization. Research and serious scholarship is not the aim of the organization: pushing its anti-immigrant and highly nativist agenda is. By hiding behind the title of a think tank and disavowing its connections to its partner organizations who are much more overtly xenophobic, the CIS hopes to find legitimacy in the eyes of the public. And, unfortunately, NPR gave them exactly that legitimacy.

Thankfully, the NPR article did not try to make CIS out to be a powerful or influential organization. But still, the CIS tarnishes what it is research institutions should be. They shield the more ugly aspects of their racism behind the guise of legitimacy and work their way into the public eye. And for this they deserve nothing but scorn and disrepute. I want to leave this post with one, final quote from the SPLC article, which highlights just what is wrong with the CIS. We need to be very wary of the experts we listen to. Some deserve our respect and attention. Others simply deserve to be exposed for all their lies.

CIS makes much of its mainstream credentials, saying it seeks "to expand the base of public knowledge" in an effort to show the need for immigration policies that serve "the broad national interest." And indeed, CIS' website shows that it has testified to Congress close to 100 times since Krikorian took over in 1995.