We have published and spoken, myself and my staff, millions of words and there is nothing in there that you’re gonna be able to say that is based on a sort of using a religious or racial or ethnic criteria in running our immigration policy. Decades of psychometric testing has indicated that at least in America you have Jews with the highest average IQ, usually followed by East Asians, and then you have non-Jewish whites, Hispanics and then blacks. "We've never had any institutional relationship," Krikorian told the SPLC in an email in 2009. He authored pieces for the white nationalist website Alternative Right, founded by Richard Spencer. Tanton donated his correspondences to the University of Michigan and among the conversations with Klan lawyers and white nationalists, his role in establishing CIS is made clear. "It was the first check I have seen from him in nine or 10 years ... We have no institutional relationship. Documenting the Impact of COVID-19 through Photography, Photo credit: Rodrigo Abd, "Mass for the Dead"  from the series The Virus Strips Peru. They're wrong about the impact of immigrants on the U.S. economy and on U.S. society.” Speaking about CIS to Univision in August of 2017, Illinois Rep. Luis Gutierrez stated, "Their research is always questionable because they torture the data to make it arrive at the conclusion they desire, which is that immigrants are criminals and a burden on the U.S. and our economy. The David Rockefeller Center for Latin American Studies (DRCLAS) at Harvard University works to increase the knowledge of the cultures, economies, histories, environment and contemporary affairs of Latin America; foster cooperation and understanding among the peoples of the Americas; and contribute to democracy, social progress and sustainable development throughout the hemisphere. His stint at FAIR is is not mentioned on his bio page at the CIS website. Working off of the results of this report, Krikorian accounted this decline to attrition through enforcement. A 1994 Tanton letter also shows that he was critical to raising funds for CIS. The civil rights group Center for New Community contacted Pearson about the 2009 reprint and his response was, “If I remember correctly, it was reprinted with the permission of Center for Immigration Studies.”. AFP was founded by now-deceased antisemite Willis Carto, who like Pearson was active on the radical right for over half a century. "To say that 2020 was a challenge would be an understatement. From a democratic crisis to a global pandemic to a long overdue reckoning with racial inequalities, this past year forced us to look hard at who we are and how we interact as a society.". Krikorian says in denying immigrants access to jobs, identification, housing and “in general making it as difficult as possible for an illegal immigrant to live a normal life here,” undocumented individuals would “self-deport.”. Fjordman was cited over 100 times in the manifesto of racist mass murderer Anders Behring Breivik, who killed 77 people in Norway in 2011. Explaining that Europeans previously accounted for the majority of immigration, he laments most immigrants today come from the “third world.” He believes this is the main issue with immigration today. VDARE was founded by English white nationalist Peter Brimelow, a former National Review contributor who now is seen as a key player in the racist Alt-Right movement. Application deadline is March 12, 2021. CIS circulates a weekly email to its supporters that contains articles on immigration written by people from across the political spectrum. Its research is nonpartisan and nonproprietary. Under the subject line, Infiltrate the Judiciary Committees, Tanton wrote, “This is a long-range project. Donald Trump’s rise to power brought CIS and the rest of the nativist movement closer to the White House and closer to shaping immigration policy than ever before. The Departments of Labor and Education also have a piece of this pie, and we should get to know them as well.”. They’re not going to go away tomorrow, and for that reason we have to address them in our immigration discussions.”, SPLC is a nonprofit, tax-exempt 501(c)(3) organization (EIN: 63-0598743), Local Policing and Immigration Enforcement, Request for Legal Assistance — Economic Justice, repeated circulation of white nationalist and antisemitic writers, publishing reports that hype the criminality of immigrants, collaborated with white nationalist Richard Spencer, Federation for American Immigration Reform, Dan Stein was recording his own oral biography with Tanton, also worked with Border Patrol in the past, disgraced former Heritage Foundation analyst. Stephen Miller, a Sessions staffer-turned Trump advisor and speechwriter, served as the keynote speaker at a CIS awards ceremony in 2015. Krikorian believes many of these immigrant communities make America vulnerable and the threat “isn’t confined to radical Islam.” In fact, he says America is also susceptible to threats from North Korea, “Communist China,” and Colombia. — CIS executive director Mark Krikorian on anti-Muslim conspiracist Frank Gaffney’s radio show, 2014, “There’s no court that will stop Obama from doing anything. He adds that Colombian communities in the United States would “serve as a base of operations for FARC attacks in the United States in the event of war.”, On Mexicans he says, “It could well be that there are cultural or other reasons that Mexican immigrants are especially deficient in institution building, but they nonetheless reflect a broader trend in modern society.” Krikorian adds, “But Mexico, already the eight-hundred pound gorilla of immigration policy, is the eight-thousand-pound gorilla with regard to sovereignty, due to its domination of the immigration flow, its proximity, and the historical resentments that many of its people harbor toward our country.”. Commentary is produced by the Center for Strategic and International Studies (CSIS), a private, tax-exempt institution focusing on international public policy issues. He stated, “If I had my druthers, we would bring back something like the McCarran Act, in the 50s which barred communists and fascists on the grounds that they believe in things that are subversive to the Constitution. Following the tragic shooting death of Kate Steinle in San Francisco in July of 2015 by an undocumented immigrant, CIS and other anti-immigrants used it as an opportunity to attack so-called “sanctuary cities.” CIS published a map of sanctuary jurisdictions on its website which prompted a backlash. The novel depicts an invasion of France by immigrants from India who are painted as sexually voracious savages who destroy the country and rape white women. "He wrote us a check, I think it was a year ago," he said of Tanton. Krikorian says today’s immigrants “look” a lot different than immigrants from 100 years ago. Krikorian bragged to Reuters in October of 2016 that the Trump team had received requests for research and studies during the campaign. Both Krikorian and his staff are regular attendees at the TSC Writers Workshop, which also attracts white nationalists, and their writings regularly appear in TSC. In early 2014, as the prospect of comprehensive immigration measures diminished, CIS again relied on leaks from its friends in DHS to publish two reports. He said Tanton "had some role back in the mid-80s in helping rustle up money for CIS," but added that he and Tanton had no "personal relationship." In 1958, Pearson founded the Northern League, a “Pan-Nordic cultural organization” dedicated to convincing Northern Europeans to recognize “their common problems and their common destiny,” and to come to “an appreciation… of the threat of biological extinction with which we [i.e. The question is: Is it run well?” — CIS executive director Mark Krikorian on private detention centers with “volunteer” work programs that pay undocumented immigrants $1 to $3 a day for cleaning, cooking and other jobs, 2015, “The diminution of sovereignty engineered by the EU is bad enough for some share of the population, but many more will object to extinguishing their national existence à la Camp of the Saints.” — CIS executive director Mark Krikorian referencing the racist novel published by John Tanton’s white nationalist publishing house The Social Contract Press, 2015, “Am I a bad person for thinking it was already a holiday?’ — CIS executive director Mark Krikorian commenting on a story about the major Islamic holiday Eid al-Adha falling on September 11, 2016, “Obama's Justice Dept has been doing everything in its power for 7.5 yrs to foment race war. Kobach first began experimenting with this policy on a smaller scale, helping to draft and then defend legislation like Ordinance 5165 in Fremont, Nebraska, which barred undocumented individuals from renting property. CSIS's Asia portfolio includes the broader Asia Program encompassing numerous endowed chairs and programs — the Freeman Chair in China Studies, the Japan Chair, the Korea Chair, the Economics Program, the Wadhwani Chair in U.S.-India Policy Studies, the Southeast Asia Program, the China Power Project, and the Trustee Chair in Chinese Business and Economics. What began as a reflection of IRCA in 1987 has evolved into CIS's core policy. And a group of Evangelical grandees has decided to mark the holy season by prostituting scripture for political ends.” — CIS executive director Mark Krikorian in response to a group of evangelical leaders calling for immigration reform, 2013, “We can expect a disaster. David Rockefeller Center for Latin American Studies1730 Cambridge StreetCambridge, MA 02138Tel. While CIS and its position within the Tanton network has been on the Southern Poverty Law Center’s (SPLC) radar for years, what precipitated listing CIS as an anti-immigrant hate group for 2016 was its repeated circulation of white nationalist and antisemitic writers in its weekly newsletter and the commissioning of a policy analyst who had previously been pushed out of the conservative Heritage Foundation for his embrace of racist pseudoscience. The Center for Immigration Studies (CIS) argues that John Tanton “played no part in its organization” as they state their founder is Otis L. Graham. Former FAIR executive director Julie Kirchner also was hired to a position at USCIS. In July of 2017, Mark Krikorian published a piece on the two year anniversary of Steinle’s death, using it to push for anti-sanctuary policies. The Melikian Center for Russian, Eurasian and East European Studies advances innovative use-inspired research and teaching on the languages, societies and geopolitics of greater Eurasia. CIS director of national security policy Janice Kephart left the organization to take up of special counsel to the Senate Judiciary Committee. Graham did hold the role of executive director and others that were not specified. “First of all, 72 individuals, according to the Center for Immigration Studies, have been implicated in terroristic activity in the United States who hail from those seven nations, point one,” Miller said on NBC’s Meet the Press. Liz Paddok left the main FAIR board and went over to the Center for Immigration Studies board. In 1957, Pearson wrote, “If a nation with a more advanced, more specialized, or in any way superior set of genes mingles with, instead of exterminating, an inferior tribe, then it commits racial suicide, and destroys the work of thousands of years of biological isolation and natural selection.” In total, three reports published by CIS were reprinted in Pearson’s journal, two back in 2002, and one in 2009. These are real differences. As Tanton himself wrote in 1993, "I've come to the point of view that for European-American society and culture to persist requires a European-American majority, and a clear one at that.". That's much worse news." Taylor has actually asked questions at multiple CIS events, and both men have attended Tanton’s Writers Workshop events in the past. TSC’s longtime editor is white nationalist Wayne Lutton, a man described by Gardiner in his 2005 paper as one of the “intellectual theorists of white nationalism.” While Tanton hobnobbed with white nationalists and shared their beliefs, Lutton has a long track record of directly working for white nationalist groups. Being arrested in illegal status in New York, and being sent home to Lima or Sydney is a major disincentive, and the individual either will not try again, or will not try again quickly,” he says. Before working for Tanton, Lutton wrote for and sat on the advisory board of the Institute for Historical Review (IHR), one of America’s longest-running Holocaust denial organizations. Perhaps his most vile came in the aftermath of the devastating earthquake in Haiti in 2010, that killed an estimated 160,000 people. It is the worst kind of deception, but politicians, the conservative media and some Americans eat it up because it always looks somewhat legitimate at first glance.” CIS has also defended the usage of “anchor babies” and released a report on “terror babies,” popular concepts among the nativist movement. In addition to the cost of implementation and maintenance of this program, E-Verify often wrongly presumes workers guilty and forces individuals to defend their documented status. This Fall has been a busy season for democracy, from elections in Bolivia (and the United States) to a resounding vote for a new Chilean constitution. In 2008, Krikorian wrote a book on immigration restriction, The New Case Against Immigration: Both Legal and Illegal. In a report Steinlight wrote for CIS four years before he joined the organization titled, “The Jewish Stake in America's Changing Demography,” Steinlight painted American Muslims as Jew haters, writing, “For reasons that appear simultaneously self-evident and self-serving, spokespersons from the organized Muslim community regularly cite the figure of six million Muslims. Attrition through enforcement was formalized in the anti-immigrant movement in 2005. A week earlier, Steinle’s father, who was with her on the night she died, provided quotes in a piece in the San Francisco Chronicle titled, “Leave Kate Steinle Out of the Immigration Debate.” “I don’t know who coined ‘Kate’s Law,’” Jim Steinle, stated, “It certainly wasn’t us.” In 2015, Steinle said in an interview that his family is not opposed to sanctuary policies. But Tanton's correspondence makes clear that he was able to get Graham to leave the FAIR board in order to run CIS, a job he did until Krikorian took over. April 2, 2021 In Russian Roulette In this episode of Russian Roulette, Heather sits down with Michael J. With the end of the Cold War — which too many imagined to be the End of History — we eliminated the legal bar to enemies of America who were not actual members of terrorist organizations or card-carrying members of totalitarian political parties.”. Journalists, as well as civil rights groups such as the SPLC and the Anti-Defamation League, reported on a the racist nature of Richwine’s Harvard dissertation in which he claimed, “No one knows whether Hispanics will ever reach IQ parity with whites, but the prediction that new Hispanic immigrants will have low-IQ children and grandchildren is difficult to argue against.” Richwine’s beliefs in IQ differences between the races are prevalent not only in anti-immigrant circles, but also white nationalist ones. Founded in 1985 by John Tanton, the Center for Immigration Studies (CIS) has gone on to become the go-to think tank for the anti-immigrant movement with its reports and staffers often cited by media and anti-immigrant politicians. During the heated debates over the bill in the Senate, then-Alabama Senator Jeff Sessions, a longtime ally of the anti-immigrant movement, was the key spokesperson on the Senate floor in opposite to the bill. Scholar Steven Gardiner describes in his 2005 paper, “White Nationalism Revisited,” “[t]here are also organizations, the Federation for American Immigration Reform (FAIR) for example, that in their push for mainstream acceptance vehemently denying racist motivations, even while playing to radicalized fears and allying themselves with doctrine white nationalists.” The same can be said of CIS despite the best efforts of Tanton and others to play up its independence from FAIR and Tanton himself. In a letter dated September 16, 1985, Tanton spelled out the need for creating CIS and explicitly confirmed that it would start as a project of FAIR. The Pew report Krikorian cites actually says family reunification is the top reason for leaving. CIS’s much-touted tagline is “low immigration, pro-immigrant,” but the organization has a decades-long history of circulating racist writers, while Founded in 1985 by John Tanton, the Center for Immigration Studies (CIS) has gone on to become the go-to think tank for the anti-immigrant movement with its reports and staffers often cited by media and anti-immigrant politicians. Regnery also founded the Charles Martel Society, the publisher of the racist and antisemitic journal Occidental Quarterly. Trump’s victory resulted in nativists obtaining top jobs in the administration and DHS and Alabama Senator Jeff Sessions was appointed Attorney General. (First Place Winner), Through programs, grants, fellowships, and activities, DRCLAS strives to provide support and resources for students, faculty, and scholars working in and on Latin America.Â. In another memo also written in 1986, Tanton talked about the need to get CIS fully funded and properly functioning, “To expand our fund-raising market, we created the Center for Immigration Studies last year. The man Tanton recorded his oral biography with was a close friend, Otis Graham, who helped grow CIS during its early years before the arrival of its current executive director, Mark Krikorian, in 1995. Though there is no explicit evidence of collusion between Tanton, Krikorian and Dan Stein, FAIR’s president, all three have attempted to change the narrative, attempting to put some distance between FAIR, Tanton, and the think tank. According to his book, Debating American Immigration, 1882–present, Otis L. Graham was a chairman of the board for the The Center for Immigration Studies (CIS) (1985-1995). In early 2017, Miller made the rounds on national media defending the Trump administration’s Muslim ban by citing the CIS. Within a few weeks of his appointment, Tanton sent Krikorian a letter of congratulations, telling him “If there is anything I can do to help out at any point, please let me know.”, It was around this time, too, that the historical revisionism around the founding of CIS began. In sum, we’ll witness the unmaking of America.” — CIS senior policy analyst Stephen Steinlight commenting on the prospect of 2014 immigration reform passing, 2014, “Send him back to Liberia so it’s on their dime.” — CIS executive director Mark Krikorian on the Liberian immigrant who was diagnosed with ebola in Texas, 2014, "We have to have security against both the dishwasher and the terrorist because you can't distinguish between the two with regards to immigration control." Tanton described in his oral biography that CIS “has gone on to be quite successful” and that most certainly is the case in part due to the group working hard to distance itself from its founder, while at the same time fostering relationships with elected officials and government agencies. Kevin MacDonald was far from the only antisemite circulated by CIS to its supporters. Decades of psychometric testing has indicated that at least in America you have Jews with the highest average IQ, usually followed by East Asians, and then you have non-Jewish whites, Hispanics and then blacks. They’re not going to go away tomorrow, and for that reason we have to address them in our immigration discussions.” — CIS contributing writer, Jason Richwine, during a panel about Krikorian’s book, 2008, “My guess is that Haiti’s so screwed up because it wasn’t colonized long enough.” — CIS executive director Mark Krikorian after the 2010 Haitian earthquake that killed 160,000 people, 2010, “You don’t know how long it will be here before the political activists get engaged in [the Mexican] community and foment something that will look like the civil rights movement for African Americans, but I can promise you it will be a lot bloodier.” — CIS senior policy analyst Stephen Steinlight on the prospect of Mexican immigrants attaining U.S. citizenship, 2013, “Tomorrow is Ash Wednesday...It’s a season of repentance, prayer, and self-denial, to prepare the believer for the commemoration of Christ’s suffering and death and for the celebration of his resurrection. For credibility, this will need to be independent of FAIR, though the Center for Immigration Studies, as we’re calling it, is starting off as a project of FAIR.” The next day, Tanton wrote to Gregory D. Curtis in Pennsylvania where he again described CIS as a “project,” writing, “We’re in the process of setting up independent projects both the Center for Immigration Studies, and the Litigation Program.”. The David Rockefeller Center for Latin American Studies (DRCLAS) at Harvard University works to increase the knowledge of the cultures, economies, histories, environment and contemporary affairs of Latin America; foster cooperation and understanding among the peoples of the Americas; and contribute to democracy, social progress and sustainable development throughout the hemisphere. CIS’s much-touted tagline is “low immigration, pro-immigrant,” but the organization has a decades-long history of circulating racist writers, while also associating with white nationalists. Center for Middle Eastern Studies Extends Commitment to Its Tunisia Office for Six Years. The Critical Languages Institute (CLI) at Arizona State University’s Melikian Center is a national training institute for less commonly taught languages, offering summer intensive courses and study-abroad programs around the world.. Citizenship and Immigration Services (USCIS) in 2009 estimates it would cost the federal government $635 million, an additional $10 million in compliance costs, and at least $200 million to the private sector alone. These immigrants, he claims, have intense difficulties with assimilation such as learning English, transnationalism, and “affirmative action for immigrants.”. Vaughan wrote, “One legacy of TPS has been its contribution to the burgeoning street gang problem in the United States.” A 2008 report authored by CIS fellow David Seminara referred to immigrants as “Third-World gold-diggers.” In the same report, he wrote, “The use of fraudulent marriage petitions is prevalent among international terrorists.”, In 2010, another CIS fellow David North attempted to blame teenage obesity on immigrants in a piece titled, “Farfetched? We should make every effort to get legislators sympathetic to our point of view appointed to the House and Senate Judiciary Committees, and their Immigration Sub-Committees. Fact-checkers at The Washington Post debunked the talking point, which collapsed several categories of crimes related to terrorism to reach a higher number, and awarded it “Three Pinocchios.”, “That means the children and grandchildren of immigrants are committing a lot of crime, making this a long-term problem. With offices located in Santiago, Buenos Aires, São Paulo, Mexico City, as well as Cambridge, DRCLAS offers programs covering all of Latin America. And I wouldn’t stop. Miller has been instrumental in pushing for anti-immigrant policies in the Trump White House and has regularly drawn from CIS. Research proposals are accepted from all disciplines, but must be directly related to the region.. E-Verify has an almost 1% inaccuracy rate for wrongly identifying legal workers as unauthorized. CIS fellow Don Barnett and CIS board members Frank Morris, and William Chip as well as former member Vernon Briggs are also published in TSC. “Today’s ‘systematically different’ immigrants are simply continuing the traditional pattern (common among the Irish and Italians and others in the past) of trying to climb over the backs of black Americans to achieve assimilation” he says. Tanton was a big fan of Taylor’s helping to fund the American Renaissance journal when Taylor launched it in 1990. Steinlight and other CIS staffers have not been shy about promoting their strong ties with agencies now under the Department of Homeland Security (DHS), a department formed long after Tanton wrote his strategic memos. When CIS came up, Stein admitted that both organizations shared office space but also stated, “Yes, CIS was never a project of FAIR, but it was a bit of a spin-off.” This is a bit of a whitewash of the facts contained in Tanton’s memo almost 10 years earlier where he specifically states that CIS was starting off “as a project of FAIR.”, In a correspondence to the SPLC as well as testimony before Congress, Krikorian has also pushed this narrative. Krikorian worked at FAIR as a newsletter writer and then working at a few newspapers before joining CIS. E-Verify is an integral component of attrition through enforcement according to Krikorian. As Stein put it in his oral bio, “Well, yes, there has always been an important role for CIS with its research-oriented profile and greater appearance of objectivity. While members of Congress are comfortable working with FAIR, it is CIS that currently has the monopoly when it comes to testifying before Congress. But a number of publications also contain bigoted language demonizing immigrants from all walks of life and making a mockery of CIS’s “pro-immigrant” tagline. We subsequently hired a retired foreign service officer, David Simcox, to run CIS.” Tanton also remarked, “Forming [Immigration Reform Law Institute] and CIS were part of an effort to develop a balanced program – a neatly rolled rug!”. 5% are pursuing fellowships and further study. Krikorian’s book cites his own organization, CIS, and Krikorian himself over 50 times, while also citing white nationalists Peter Brimelow, Steve Sailer and Patrick Buchanan. One white nationalist who has routinely cited CIS figures is Jared Taylor, one of the most prominent white nationalists of the past quarter century. Over 1,700 articles circulated by CIS in its weekly email came from VDARE, a racist website that serves as a hub for white nationalists, antisemites and nativists. In 2016, CIS fellow John Miano spoke at the gathering, while Krikorian did the year before, and Jessica Vaughan, CIS’s director of policy studies, spoke in 2012. The E-Verify system compiles data from 20 different databases and the effort to clear the system error can not only be rigorous but costly as well. In 2002, Lutton joined the editorial advisory board of the antisemitic Occidental Quarterly publication. “Being arrested as one heads illegally over-the border, and then being sent back to the nearest port of entry, is a nuisance, and little more. At a Tea Party event in 2014, Steinlight was filmed calling for the hanging of then-President Obama. Tanton told Graham that "there is a lot going on out there on the cultural and ethnic (racial) difference" front and added, in a hopeful tone, that it was "all tied to immigration policy. Remember: we’re in this for the long haul.”, Later in the memo, Tanton wrote about the need to “Develop strong relationships with the [U.S. Immigration and Naturalization Service], and with the Bureau of Consular Affairs in the State Department (which supervises the issuance of visas). The book gained more notoriety during the 2016 election campaign after reports that Trump’s senior advisor and Breitbart executive Stephen Bannon was a major fan of the novel. In 2016 CIS began commissioning Jason Richwine, a disgraced former Heritage Foundation analyst, to write reports and blogs for the organization. And I wouldn’t stop. During Sessions’ rebuttals Kephart could be seen sitting behind the Senator. Does Illegal Immigration Facilitate Teenage Obesity?” Also in 2010, following the BP oil spill, then CIS writer Phil Cafaro attempted to blame immigrants for the spill, writing, “Population makes a difference — and immigration levels make a difference to our overall population,” before concluding, “In the long-term, regarding efforts to create a sustainable society, these demographic trends loom a lot larger than whether or not BP or Halliburton made some greedy, foolish decisions to cut corners in the Gulf.”. He says the Pew report suggests that if we implement nationwide E-Verify, track and punish individuals who overstay their visas, prosecute “border infiltrators” and deport every “illegal arrested by local police,” then the “illegal population will shrink considerably.” However, no analysis or evidence is provided to substantiate this claim. Aside from working hand in hand with Kephart in 2013, Sessions has endorsed the work of CIS and participated in a panel discussion event organized by the group in 2006 and spoke on a CIS teleconference in 2013. CIS fellow John Miano has written dozens of pieces for VDARE, dating back to 2001, and in 2016 attended VDARE’s Christmas party. Writing in his regular column on the conservative National Review Online nine days after the natural disaster, Krikorian remarked, “My guess is that Haiti’s so screwed up because it wasn’t colonized long enough.” (His emphasis).