Anti-Immigrant Political Action Committee Sees Rise in Contributions for 2012 Election Cycle

US Immigration Reform PAC, a political action committee whose purpose is to “reduce immigration” and “secure our nation's borders,” has seen a sharp increase in contributions for the 2012 election cycle. The PAC’s president is Mary Lou Tanton, the spouse of John Tanton, the architect of the modern day anti-immigrant movement in the United States. 

According to the website Open Secrets, which tracks federal campaign contributions, US Immigration Reform PAC’s total receipts for 2012 to date are over $14,500 with almost four months to go before Election Day. While this figure is relatively low, it is up almost ten-fold from the last election cycle, where the PAC only received a little over $1500 in total receipts. In the 2012 cycle, US Immigration Reform PAC has donated $2500 to congressional candidates, so far.

Open Secrets also lists individual donors who have given $200 or more to the PAC. Among the donors for 2012 is Sharon Barnes, a longtime board member of the Federation for American Immigration Reform (FAIR), an extreme anti-immigration group that was founded by John Tanton in 1979. Barnes, who has donated $300 to date, formerly sat on the editorial advisory board of Tanton’s anti-immigrant journal, The Social Contract. Another contributor of over $200 is John Rohe, who, along with his wife, donated a combined $500 to the PAC for the 2012 election cycle. Rohe is a good friend of John and Mary Lou Tanton, even penning the couple’s biography, which was published in 2002. Rohe is also the Vice President of Philanthropy at the Colcom Foundation, an organization that donates millions of dollars to anti-immigrant groups each year.

It is no surprise that US Immigration Reform PAC’s contributions are up since immigration is a hot-button issue in the 2012 election cycle. The four congressional candidates that the PAC has donated to thus far in 2012 are Lou Barletta (R-PA), Paul Broun (R-GA), Steve King (R-IA) and Allen West (R-FL). 

As a 501(c)(3) non-profit charitable organization, ADL does not endorse or oppose any candidates for political office.

Panelists at CPAC Attack Multiculturalism

The 2012 Conservative Political Action Conference (CPAC) featured a panel on multiculturalism on February 9, which was hosted by ProEnglish, an organization whose mission is to make English the official language of the United States. 

John Tanton, who has expressed racist views and is the architect of the modern anti-immigrant movement, founded ProEnglish and is still on the organization’s board. Robert Vandervoort, the head of ProEnglish, hosted the panel.

One of the main speakers on the panel was Peter Brimelow, who runs the racist Web site VDARE that features the works of white supremacists, anti-Semites and anti-immigrant activists. Brimelow asserted that multiculturalism and bilingualism were examples of “modern political diseases.” He mostly focused on Canada as an example of how bilingualism has destroyed a society but claimed that America could follow the same example if bilingualism was institutionalized in the United States. 

Peter Brimelow

Brimelow alleged that kids cannot get a job at MacDonald’s because they can’t speak Spanish – a trend he described as a “ferocious attack on living standards of the American working class…just as immigration policy in general is.” Later, in the Q&A section, Brimelow said that Democrats had given up on “the white working class,” and that this was “treason.”

One of Brimelow’s co-panelists was John Derbyshire, a National Review contributor who straddles the line between the mainstream and the extremist worlds. He has shared the stage with racist speakers at the H.L Mencken Club, a far-right organization. Derbyshire also agreed to speak at the 2010 white supremacist American Renaissance conference, which was later cancelled. At CPAC, Derbyshire warned that “racism will reemerge in a new and more virulent form” because the tension between what the white elite is supposed to think and what it actually thinks about race will reach a breaking point of “cognitive dissonance.”

A surprise guest at the panel was Congressman Steve King (R-IA), who has made a number of virulently anti-immigrant statements over the years. King is trying to pass a bill which will make English the official language of the United States.