On Website Mentions, Immigration, and the SPLC
Oh, it looks like I got under someone's skin...
Pamela Troy (a.k.a. paft ) alluded to lil ole me on the blog for the Institute for Creative Thought Crimes. Here's her entry from yesterday:
(Ostensibly) From the Federal Immigration and Nationality Act of 1965:
State and local law enforcement officials have the general power to investigate and arrest violators of federal immigration statutes without prior INS knowledge or approval, as long as they are authorized to do so by state law. There is no extant federal limitation on this authority.
It’s a quote that seems to have gone somewhat viral. When someone offered it the other day in the course of an online political discussion, I did a quick Google search and found numerous hits, mostly on discussion boards and right wing sites. It’s usually offered up in quotes as if it were lifted directly from the 1965 Federal Immigration and Nationality Act, and in at least one case the fact that Ted Kennedy supported the it is rather triumphantly cited.
Of course, it’s bogus. No such text appears in the Hart Cellar Act, which is remembered primarily for reducing discrimination against Non-European immigrants in immigration policy. It’s ridiculous to buy the claim that, in 1965, well after the feds had started intervening in the Jim Crow south, such a limitation on federal power would be inserted into a bill that was obviously intended to reduce racial discrimination in our immigration policy.
According to reporters who tracked down the quote after it was cited by Sheriff Joe Arpaio (natch) in a hand out last October, its source is the Federation for American Immigration Reform.
Source
Her post was regarding this entry that I posted several days ago and recently revised. For the record, I did not find the quote through some Joe Arpaio flier or FAIR's official website. I found it through ReportIllegals.com, a website that is run by a man named Dave Caulkett. Caulkett is part of a group known as Floridians for Immigration Enforcement (FLIMEN), which is considered a local FAIR group in the state of Florida. Caulkett is not listed as their contact person/spokesperson. He's listed as the CEO of Jumpin' Jupiter, Inc., a private company that maintains ReportIllegals.com. Therefore, the website is not affiliated with FAIR or their local group FLIMEN. However, the quotation mentioned is attributed to the up-to-date federal immigrations laws, and those can be viewed at the bottom of this page.
Guilt by association - it's a tactic that's been used by every political party and political pundit alike, and it was used last night by Rachel Maddow. On her program, she interviewed Dan Stein, the President of FAIR. During the course of the interview, she proceeded to name-drop any bad associations FAIR may have had in its past, even going back as far as 20 years. Instead of using the interview for its intended purposes (to discuss the immigration law in Arizona, what part FAIR had to play in it, and the work the organization has done in its 20+ year history), Maddow proceeded to do to Stein the same thing that the political Right was chastised for doing to ACORN - she tried to associate individual comments made by FAIR board members and staff (or individual actions) to the organization itself. Part I | Part II
Did Maddow and her crack staff get their information from the Southern Poverty Law Center (SPLC)? Probably. The SPLC go so far on their website as to refer to FAIR as a "racist hate group". They also mention FAIR in one of their so-called Intelligence Files on the Pioneer Fund (because the Pioneer Fund gave grants to FAIR as well as other immigration enforcement groups).
If people like Rachel Maddow are going to play the Guilt By Association game, it goes both ways. The SPLC was formally incorporated in 1971, and their first President was a man named Julian Bond. Bond founded the Student Nonviolent Coordinating Committee (SNCC) and later served 20 years in the Georgia legislature (he was elected to both houses). Bond once criticized Bush and stated that he made his cabinet choices "from the Taliban wing of American politics". He's not the only one from SPLC who's caused controversy. After giving a speech at Southeastern Louisiana University on November 8, 2006, SPLC founder Morris Dees was approached by some student journalists, one of who asked him, "Isn't it imperitive that you keep the issue of racism alive to keep your living going?". Dees' response? "Fuck you". The student who asked the question and the student who filmed the incident were both kicked out of the venue without an explanation. For people who wax poetic about civil rights for ALL, there was certainly nothing civil about his behavior. Let's not forget Mark Potok, the spokesman for the Southern Poverty Law Center. Potok is the editor of the SPLC's quarterly Intelligence Report publication. During an October 2009 appearance on Hardball with Chris Matthews, Potok was confronted by Stewart Rhodes, President of Oath Keepers. Rhodes stated he was offended that Potok lumped the Oath Keepers group with white supremacists and neo-Nazis, a charge that Potok denied. But what about this article from the Fall 2009 issue of IR which states:
In recent months, men with antigovernment, racist, anti-Semitic or pro-militia views have allegedly committed a series of high-profile murders - including the killings of six law enforcement officers since April.
The main focus of the article was "Patriot" groups like Oath Keepers. Potok even went so far as to try and connect Oath Keepers with David Koresh, a religious cult leader who raped children. But the most fascinating factoid about the Southern Poverty Law Center and a revealing clue to their agenda lies in their section on SPLC's history. To the right are lists of SPLC's accomplishments, separated by decade. Among the various lawsuits and judgments, nestled within the fights for civil rights and equality for the sexes and sexual orientations is this...
...Removal of a three-ton Ten Commandments monument from the Alabama Supreme Court building...
For those of you who've ever actually read our U.S. Constitution, it states that our citizens have freedom OF religion, i.e. the freedom to practice whatever religion we choose and that the country as a whole has no designated religion. The "separation of church and state" that people love to lament is not in the Constitution or the Declaration of Independence. It's a quotation from a letter written by Thomas Jefferson in reply to the Danbury Baptists Association who were concerned that the government was going to designate a national religion. No one is holding a gun to your head and ordering you to read the Ten Commmandments or even follow them. To display them is an exercise of free speech and should be welcomed, not punished, just as other religions are free to display symbols of their faith.
The bottom line is this - our federal government isn't doing anything to deter people from illegally crossing our borders. Deportation of illegal residents has been slow for several years. A Justice Department study in the beginning of 2009 showed that 80% of illegal residents with deportation orders were still in the United States. If the Arizona law is enough to light a fire under the Federal government and wake the people of this country up to the fact that illegal immigration is a serious problem in the United States, so be it. Other states are jumping on board and considering or already drafting legislation similar to what the state of Arizona has passed into law. Until a court of law rules that the Arizona law is unconstitutional or choose to uphold it, the debate is going to rage on.
Pamela Troy (a.k.a. paft ) alluded to lil ole me on the blog for the Institute for Creative Thought Crimes. Here's her entry from yesterday:
(Ostensibly) From the Federal Immigration and Nationality Act of 1965:
State and local law enforcement officials have the general power to investigate and arrest violators of federal immigration statutes without prior INS knowledge or approval, as long as they are authorized to do so by state law. There is no extant federal limitation on this authority.
It’s a quote that seems to have gone somewhat viral. When someone offered it the other day in the course of an online political discussion, I did a quick Google search and found numerous hits, mostly on discussion boards and right wing sites. It’s usually offered up in quotes as if it were lifted directly from the 1965 Federal Immigration and Nationality Act, and in at least one case the fact that Ted Kennedy supported the it is rather triumphantly cited.
Of course, it’s bogus. No such text appears in the Hart Cellar Act, which is remembered primarily for reducing discrimination against Non-European immigrants in immigration policy. It’s ridiculous to buy the claim that, in 1965, well after the feds had started intervening in the Jim Crow south, such a limitation on federal power would be inserted into a bill that was obviously intended to reduce racial discrimination in our immigration policy.
According to reporters who tracked down the quote after it was cited by Sheriff Joe Arpaio (natch) in a hand out last October, its source is the Federation for American Immigration Reform.
Source
Her post was regarding this entry that I posted several days ago and recently revised. For the record, I did not find the quote through some Joe Arpaio flier or FAIR's official website. I found it through ReportIllegals.com, a website that is run by a man named Dave Caulkett. Caulkett is part of a group known as Floridians for Immigration Enforcement (FLIMEN), which is considered a local FAIR group in the state of Florida. Caulkett is not listed as their contact person/spokesperson. He's listed as the CEO of Jumpin' Jupiter, Inc., a private company that maintains ReportIllegals.com. Therefore, the website is not affiliated with FAIR or their local group FLIMEN. However, the quotation mentioned is attributed to the up-to-date federal immigrations laws, and those can be viewed at the bottom of this page.
Guilt by association - it's a tactic that's been used by every political party and political pundit alike, and it was used last night by Rachel Maddow. On her program, she interviewed Dan Stein, the President of FAIR. During the course of the interview, she proceeded to name-drop any bad associations FAIR may have had in its past, even going back as far as 20 years. Instead of using the interview for its intended purposes (to discuss the immigration law in Arizona, what part FAIR had to play in it, and the work the organization has done in its 20+ year history), Maddow proceeded to do to Stein the same thing that the political Right was chastised for doing to ACORN - she tried to associate individual comments made by FAIR board members and staff (or individual actions) to the organization itself. Part I | Part II
Did Maddow and her crack staff get their information from the Southern Poverty Law Center (SPLC)? Probably. The SPLC go so far on their website as to refer to FAIR as a "racist hate group". They also mention FAIR in one of their so-called Intelligence Files on the Pioneer Fund (because the Pioneer Fund gave grants to FAIR as well as other immigration enforcement groups).
If people like Rachel Maddow are going to play the Guilt By Association game, it goes both ways. The SPLC was formally incorporated in 1971, and their first President was a man named Julian Bond. Bond founded the Student Nonviolent Coordinating Committee (SNCC) and later served 20 years in the Georgia legislature (he was elected to both houses). Bond once criticized Bush and stated that he made his cabinet choices "from the Taliban wing of American politics". He's not the only one from SPLC who's caused controversy. After giving a speech at Southeastern Louisiana University on November 8, 2006, SPLC founder Morris Dees was approached by some student journalists, one of who asked him, "Isn't it imperitive that you keep the issue of racism alive to keep your living going?". Dees' response? "Fuck you". The student who asked the question and the student who filmed the incident were both kicked out of the venue without an explanation. For people who wax poetic about civil rights for ALL, there was certainly nothing civil about his behavior. Let's not forget Mark Potok, the spokesman for the Southern Poverty Law Center. Potok is the editor of the SPLC's quarterly Intelligence Report publication. During an October 2009 appearance on Hardball with Chris Matthews, Potok was confronted by Stewart Rhodes, President of Oath Keepers. Rhodes stated he was offended that Potok lumped the Oath Keepers group with white supremacists and neo-Nazis, a charge that Potok denied. But what about this article from the Fall 2009 issue of IR which states:
In recent months, men with antigovernment, racist, anti-Semitic or pro-militia views have allegedly committed a series of high-profile murders - including the killings of six law enforcement officers since April.
The main focus of the article was "Patriot" groups like Oath Keepers. Potok even went so far as to try and connect Oath Keepers with David Koresh, a religious cult leader who raped children. But the most fascinating factoid about the Southern Poverty Law Center and a revealing clue to their agenda lies in their section on SPLC's history. To the right are lists of SPLC's accomplishments, separated by decade. Among the various lawsuits and judgments, nestled within the fights for civil rights and equality for the sexes and sexual orientations is this...
...Removal of a three-ton Ten Commandments monument from the Alabama Supreme Court building...
For those of you who've ever actually read our U.S. Constitution, it states that our citizens have freedom OF religion, i.e. the freedom to practice whatever religion we choose and that the country as a whole has no designated religion. The "separation of church and state" that people love to lament is not in the Constitution or the Declaration of Independence. It's a quotation from a letter written by Thomas Jefferson in reply to the Danbury Baptists Association who were concerned that the government was going to designate a national religion. No one is holding a gun to your head and ordering you to read the Ten Commmandments or even follow them. To display them is an exercise of free speech and should be welcomed, not punished, just as other religions are free to display symbols of their faith.
The bottom line is this - our federal government isn't doing anything to deter people from illegally crossing our borders. Deportation of illegal residents has been slow for several years. A Justice Department study in the beginning of 2009 showed that 80% of illegal residents with deportation orders were still in the United States. If the Arizona law is enough to light a fire under the Federal government and wake the people of this country up to the fact that illegal immigration is a serious problem in the United States, so be it. Other states are jumping on board and considering or already drafting legislation similar to what the state of Arizona has passed into law. Until a court of law rules that the Arizona law is unconstitutional or choose to uphold it, the debate is going to rage on.