Conservatives have great reasons to be active in the ongoing politics involving illegal immigration. We already tried an amnesty under Ronald Reagan, and it didn’t help. Now we’re being asked to do another one. Enough already.
That said, conservatives need to be very careful about whom we trust as a political ally in this. The left has a history of trying to adopt deceptive rhetoric to fool conservatives into advancing their agenda, as when the George Soros-tied Free Press convinced some to sign onto their big-government Save The Internet program.
It’s time we learned from that mistake and drained the swamps. We need to detach the mainstream anti-amnesty movement from fringe green-left groups like FAIR and NumbersUSA.
Some of us feel embattled as we fight amnesty, with Democrats, the press, and establishment Republicans all banding together to try to push this through. So when we see someone saying things against amnesty, sometimes we let a bit of confirmation bias seep in and don’t give those people a good, close look. We assume they must be pretty reasonable.
However what we’re seeing happen on immigration is that the radical green left has also adopted a position against amnesty, as part of a greater program of zero immigration, with a goal of zero population growth. Whereas we might talk about border security, the rule of law, and the threat of foreign gangs coming cross the border, all they care about is reducing America’s population.
Take a look at the published resume of John Tanton, founder of FAIR. Look at his track record: Northern Michigan Planned Parenthood founder, Sierra Club organizer, suing the Michigan government, Zero Population Growth national President, and then finally FAIR.
In fact, FAIR took a number of early members from ZPG, the group founded by Paul Ehrlich of The Population Bomb fame. They’ve now renamed themselves to Population Connection, but they’re always been a group about abortion and birth control in the global green left context. FAIR spun off from them when, in the United States, it turned out that our fertility rate before Roe v. Wade was low enough that the way to end population growth here was to end all immigration.
NumbersUSA is no better. Tanton is more closely associated with FAIR, and he did have a role with founding NumbersUSA, however the name to watch with NumbersUSA is Roy Beck. Beck started out as a green left ‘journalist,’ and the leftist opposition to conservatives values rears its head with him time and again, too.
NumbersUSA knows hooking in guys like Tom Tancredo is important to keep their donations flowing, so they keep this stuff off of the homepage, but buried in PDFs is the real NumbersUSA agenda. Take a look for example at Page 8 of this PDF by the group, which goes off into a whole rant against a vast Catholic conspiracy to oppose abortion and birth control. Or take Page 189 of this PDF which outlines Beck’s green left agenda, including “Laws that force greater cuts in consumption and waste,” and “Tougher enforcement of environmental laws.”
You see, this is why these guys oppose immigration to the United States. They think we are wasteful defilers of Gaia, and so we need to make sure there are fewer Americans, living the American standard of living, in order to prevent Ehrlich’s predicted disaster from happening. They live in a fantasy land, a time warp back 40, 50 years, to when we were going to run out of water, oil, and food by the end of the 20th century. They’re not credible, they’re not our friends, and we need to reject any influence they have on our movement.
Photo via Shutterstock
Join the conversation as a VIP Member