IREHR: Alarming New Trends in Anti-Immigrant Activity Away from Old Nativist Groups to the Tea Party
A new report by the Institute for Research & Education on Human Rights, Beyond FAIR: The Decline of the Established Anti-Immigrant Organizations and the Rise of Tea Party Nativism, details a new turn by anti-immigrant activists towards the Tea Party movement. The report is available at http://www.IREHR.org/images/pdf/BeyondFAIR.pdf.
New data is made available for the first time on two different trends: a fall in the membership and finances of established organizations and coalitions such as the Minutemen, the Federation for American Immigration Reform (the FAIR in the report's title), and the Federal Immigration Reform and Enforcement Coalition; and a simultaneous increase in the amount of anti-immigrant activism by Tea Party groups. Existing opinion polling information on the anti-immigrant sentiments of Tea Party supporters is referenced. The 55-page report includes endnotes and an appendix listing more than one hundred local anti-immigrant leaders who have enlisted in or spoken at events of the Tea Parties.
Among the report's findings:
The membership of the Federation for American Immigration Reform fell by 58% from a high in 2007 to a new low in 2011.
A new organization, the Tea Party Immigration Coalition, is emblematic of the increase in nativist activity by the Tea Parties.
"Immigrant rights advocates need to take notice of these new developments," cautioned Melinda Lewis, a policy consultant for El Centro, a social service agency in Kansas City, Kansas. "All the work we have done to expose the Tanton Network and the nativist establishment will be wasted if we can't pivot to neutralize the anti-immigrant activity coming from the Tea Parties."
http://www.irehr.org/component/k2/item/388-media-release-new-report-details-alarming-new-trends-in-anti-immigrant-activity-in-the-tea-party
The good news is that there has been a rapid decline in nativist groups like the Minutemen, the Federation for American Immigration Reform, and the Federal Immigration Reform and Enforcement Coalition. It's not surprising that right wingers leaving those old groups would congregate in the tea party which had become the "cool" (at least to the very conservative) group to join.
The Federation for American Immigration Reform must have some money left because they have been running anti-legal immigration TV commercials in Ohio for months and in South Carolina in the run-up to the republican primary.