When Insiders Recant
September 19th, 2008
Members of the Federation for American Immigration Reform (FAIR) were in Washington, DC last week for FAIR's lobby days to prove to the country that it is still active. They spent most of the week defending themselves, but have not answered all of the questions raised about them, even by folks who were once with FAIR. It is one thing for outside watchdog organizations to decry their actions and words; it is another thing entirely when insiders admit it.
FAIR has become the voice of the anti-immigration movement in the media because it appears more moderate than other anti-immigrant groups. However, FAIR employed Joe Turner as its Western Regional Representative for a few years. Yes, the same Joe Turner who founded Save Our State and who, according to the Southern Poverty Law Center, liked to have neo-Nazis at its rallies.
FAIR's founder, John Tanton, is central to the anti-immigrant movement; he has been involved in the founding and funding of many such groups. He started out back in the 1960s interested in population control and eventually served as the president of Zero Population Growth (ZPG). But once population growth leveled off in the U.S., he turned his attention to outside causes of growth, namely immigration. Unfortunately for Tanton, ZPG was not interested in pursuing Tanton's agenda, stating that it had too many racial overtones.
So left without the support of ZPG, Tanton set off to create FAIR in the early 1980s. At its very creation, FAIR insiders acknowledged offensive and xenophobic rhetoric. One of ZPG's staffers explained their lack of support for Tanton and his allies noting that they "talk in very legitimate terms, about protecting our borders and saving the nation's resources and so on. But the trouble is, after you've heard them, you want to go home and take a shower."
One of the early groups that Tanton founded was U.S. English, aimed at making English the official language of the United States. While U.S. English attempted to convince Americans that the Spanish language was a threat to their country, FAIR focused on Hispanic immigrants. This would all backfire on Tanton in the late 1980s when the Arizona Republic published his WITAN memos (the word Witan, as explained by a Florida English Campaign member, meant "‘white man' in Druid," but WASP power is probably more accurate). The memos revealed the true colors of Tanton, FAIR, and U.S. English and prompted the resignation of a number of prominent insiders. Linda Chavez, who had been hired by Tanton as the Hispanic face of U.S. English, left the group noting that the memos were "repugnant and not excusable" as well as "anti-Catholic and anti-Hispanic." She expressed her feeling of betrayal after discovering that Tanton had hidden from her the funding of anti-immigrant groups through his U.S. Inc. foundation, while promising her that U.S. English was not involved in anti-immigrant activities.
Other dissenters were more direct; Katherine Holmes, U.S. English's research director in 1988 and 1989, is quoted as saying, "my opinion is that the guy is a racist." Another U.S. English insider, PR director Tom Olson, said that when you get to see what drives Tanton and his allies, you realize they are concerned with shaping demographics. They see immigrants and people of different cultures and races as a threat to the environment.
In addition to these U.S. English insiders, Walter Cronkite resigned from the U.S. English advisory board calling his affiliation with the group "embarrassing." The fallout continued as Arnold Schwarzenegger resigned from the board and even First Lady Barbara Bush got involved calling official English equivalent to "a racial slur."
In 2000, FAIR was again publicly called to task for its anti-immigrant, racist behavior. The group ran an ad in the Grand Rapids Press against Sen. Spencer Abraham (R-MI), featuring a photo of Abraham alongside no other than Osama bin Laden. The ad read, "Why is Senator Abraham trying to make it easier for terrorists like Osama bin Laden to export their war of terror to any city street in America?" One might ask what FAIR's beef was with this Republican senator from Michigan. Well, he's Lebanese American for starters. A Wall Street Journal column noted that the only thing that Sen. Abraham and bin Laden have in common is their "Arab ethnicity." Or maybe it was because Sen. Abraham defeated FAIR founder John Tanton in the primary election. Again, an insider responded to this blatant show of racism. Sen. Alan Simpson (R-WY) resigned from FAIR's advisory board in protest. In addition, Sen. Chuck Hagel was quoted as saying, "the trash that this crowd puts out is just beyond terrible," after seeing other ads orchestrated by FAIR in Nebraska.
Similar issues have dogged another well-known anti-immigrant outfit. Recently, Jim Gilchrist, the founder of the Minuteman Project (MMP), who once proclaimed "I'm damned proud to be a vigilante," recanted his involvement in the anti-immigrant movement. Speaking with the Orange County Register he expressed concerns "that a few self-proclaimed patriots might be carrying a gun" and said he wished he had taken steps to "root out troublemakers in the organization" whom he says "instigate violence." Regarding those who have left the organization, Gilchrist expressed fears that some have "sinister intentions." Perhaps most telling are his words of regret for the role he played in the creation of this movement after viewing online videos that encourage border violence: "I have found, after four years in this movement (...) I very well may have been fighting for people with less character and less integrity than the ‘open border fanatics' I have been fighting against. And that is a phenomenal indictment of something I have created."
It really should come as no surprise that Gilchrist is having regrets considering the history of tumultuous infighting within MMP. After ego-driven disagreements in 2005, the original founders split the organization into two groups: Gilchrist formed the Minuteman Project while co-founder Chris Simcox created the Minuteman Civil Defense Corps (MCDC).
Both men later faced allegations from within of financial misconduct. Former MCDC Arizona state chapter director, Stacey O'Connell, stated that the amount of money that Simcox claimed to have collected did not match that listed in the organization's 990 filing for 2006. Simcox was also sued by an individual donor who mortgaged his own house to fund the construction of an "Israeli-style" fence on the border, only to never see it built.
Gilchrist has faced his own set of financial allegations. In 2007, Marvin Stewart, an MMP board member, accused Gilchrist of not being able to account for $400,000 that the group had raised, and the board later revoked his title as president of MMP.
Financial misconduct is one thing, but more concerning are the insiders who have left the movement because of their concerns of racism and violence. Gilchrist is not alone in his concerns about potential violence within the Minuteman ranks. Andy Ramirez, organizer of the Friends of the Border Patrol, issued a press release in May 2005 declaring that he had received "several alarming emails" from Jim Chase, whom Gilchrist himself admits was one of the original organizers of MMP. After hearing Chase describe his plan to recruit "snipers" to keep watch on the border, Ramirez described his concern stating that the emails "indicate his outfit [as] being more of a militia-like type of organization." In another press release Ramirez criticized Joe Turner, the same Turner hired by FAIR, for "racism and neo-Nazi thuggery," citing a post on his website where he wrote, "Bring your bats, fellas. If we are lucky, we are gonna need them. PING!" Turner had earlier called Ramirez an "opportunistic snake" who is "only in it for himself and his own glory."
Concerns of racism from the inside are by no means new to this movement. In 2005, the head of the Texas Minuteman Civil Defense Corps, Bill Parmley, resigned saying that he had become concerned that some of the Minutemen in his region had a vendetta against the Hispanic sheriff of Goliad County. Parmley cited troubling comments in meetings, such as, "Can't we just shoot ‘em?" when discussing undocumented immigrants on private property in the county, and "Let the (expletives) die" after Parmley suggested buying boxes of drinks for the sheriff to provide to dehydrated undocumented immigrants after they were captured. Parmley noted, "That's their mind-set, and I don't want my name and my reputation associated with a group of people who are racist like that."
FAIR, the Minutemen, and their supporters like to say that their critics raise issues of hate speech and inflammatory rhetoric as a means of opposing their restrictionist agendas. This argument falls flat when people from their own ranks, who supported their policy views, come forward and acknowledge that-notwithstanding their public posture-groups such as FAIR, the Minuteman Project, and others are motivated by race and ethnicity.