Anti-Immigration Hardliners Launch Fake "Progressive" Front Group

By Eric Ward, Imagine 2050. Posted April 1, 2009.

During the summer of 2008 Tanton associate Roy Beck of NumbersUSA began circulating a job posting for the executive director position at Progressives for Immigration Reform (PFIR). Unsurprisingly the position was given to another Tanton insider Leah Durant. In 1995, while Leah Durant was joining Tanton’s Federation for American Immigration Reform as legal counsel, Tanton was exploring both aphrodisiacs and anti-Asian racism, writing "[i]t seems that the main market is in the orient -- very interesting, considering that in general, male Orientals are less well equipped than those of some other groups."

As the debate surrounding immigration reignites, progressives should remain vigilant to wolves in sheep’s clothing attempting to sell us bigotry wrapped as economic and social justice. Progressives have much more in common with emerging immigrant and refugee communities than with white supremacy disguised as mere anti-immigrant hysteria.

In 1990 investigative journalist Chip Berlet authored a groundbreaking memo on attempts by far right organizations to influence the anti-war movement and highlighted the willingness of some left leaders choosing to work alongside quasi neo-Nazi institutions. Released in 1990, Right Woos Left still remains the quintessential essay on why so-called "Red-Brown" alliances will never achieve more than nihilistic suicide for a left that says it is committed to strengthening economic, political, and social rights.

Chip Berlet opens Right Woos Left by quoting journalist George Seldes who wrote in 1938 that "Fascism and Reaction inevitably attack. They have won against disunion. They will fail if we unite."

We should remember the words of Seldes in the coming months; we should see the emergence of PFIR as a gauntlet thrown down in front of the progressive community by the forces of bigotry. As progressives we should respond as we always have–in one voice. The time has come to shut down the Tanton Network and its peddlers of hate.

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