WHO IS REALLY BEHIND ALL THE ANTI-LatinoIMMIGRANT MOVEMENT???

From C.I

Friends - Please take the time to read this entire document, and explore its related links. It is the single most important information you need, to understand and counter-attack what's behind the anti-Latino/anti-Immigrant movement:

It is extremely important that all the organizations and everybody in this country that are fighting against the hate-speech, anti-minorities, and the anti-immigrant/anti-Latino monster, to finally target the head of the snake.
We are never going to accomplish fairness until we get to the head of the snake. The xenophobic snake has always being there, it has managed to infiltrate every important branch of our society, including politics, education, the English Media and shamefully even the SPANISH MEDIA / Univision!
The xenophobic evil snake has manipulatively "conducted" "studies and research" that portrays minorities, specifically Latinos and Blacks as inferior sub-classes. In the last few years, the evil monster has concentrated on attacking, scapegoating and demonizing Hispanics and Latino-Immigrants.
The evil racist monster is John Tanton/FAIR, he has created a web of anti-immigrant organizations, but its HEAD IS The Federation for American Immigration Reform, whom cleverly goes by the initials of "FAIR". Its founder is John Tanton, MD http://www.fairus.org/site/PageNavigator/about/board_of_directors/


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As reported by the great pro-civil, pro-human, pro-immigrant rights and highly respected organization SOUTHERN POVERTY LAW CENTER
http://www.splcenter.org/get-informed/intelligence-files

John Tanton

Ideology:

Anti-Immigrant

"John Tanton is the racist architect of the modern anti-immigrant movement. He created a network of organizations – the Federation for American Immigration Reform (FAIR), the Center for Immigration Studies (CIS) and NumbersUSA – that have profoundly shaped the immigration debate in the United States."

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John Tanton is the "son of Hitler" with a long life dream of anti-Latino/anti-Mexican ethnic cleansing. He is the master-mind of an extensive web of well-funded and cleverly named organizations. John Tanton/FAIR have cleverly and strategically recruited some Blacks, Hispanics, Union members and Environmentalists. He has financially funded such groups as "Choose Black America", "You Don't Speak For Me (Hispanics)", and has managed to become a Board member of respected environmental groups such as the Sierra Club.
To view a graphic of his evil web:
http://www.newcomm.org/pdf/CNC-Tanton_Network_2009.pdf

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FAIR, by cleverly using non-threatening names for its organizations, has managed to create a "moderate non/partisan" image. But in reality they are everything the opposite. In fact they are extremists, nativists, fundamentalists, and white-supremacists. - FAIR has cleverly managed to infiltrate politics, education, and media in order to shape anti-immigrant opinions and legislation:
http://www.fairus.org/site/PageNavigator/about/

"The Federation for American Immigration Reform (FAIR) is a national, nonprofit, public-interest, membership organization of concerned citizens who share a common belief that our nation's immigration policies must be reformed to serve the national interest. FAIR seeks to improve border security, to stop illegal immigration, and to promote immigration levels consistent with the national interest—more traditional rates of about 300,000 a year. With more than 250,000 members and supporters nationwide, FAIR is a non-partisan group whose membership runs the gamut from liberal to conservative.Our grassroots networks help concerned citizens use their voices to speak up for effective, sensible immigration policies that work for America's best interests. FAIR’s publications and research are used by academics and government officials in preparing new legislation.National and international media regularly turn to us to understand the latest immigration developments and to shed light on this complex subject.FAIR has been called to testify on immigration bills before Congress more than any organization in America"

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Friends, Whites, Blacks, Hispanics, and other minorities: Our corporate Media is a joke, every single English network only covers the surface and headlines of the news. Nobody bothers any more to do in-depth investigative reporting.

Shockingly even Univision/Spanish has not bother to investigate its guests and out of ignorance often invites members of FAIR, including John Tranton!!! to voice its "moderate" opinion of the opposition in debates and news of immigration and education.

Out of all the English corporate Media networks and outlets ONLY MSNBC-Investigative Journalist Rachel Maddow has done her job and research and recently on her TV show, exposed FAIR for what they really are and its connections with the racist Arizona law SB-1070.

Presentely NHMC and us HLADC are in the process of trying to contact Univision with the attempt to try to educate them and to urge them to do their research well before they invite such extremists as John Tanton and/or members of FAIR.

It is a huge mistake and extremely dangerous to allow/invite Tanton/FAIR to every single Spanish/English-Media event related to immigration/education/legislation. By mingling with our minorities community and groups, Tanton/FAIR will do its best to also infect and divide our communities - as it has already successfully done by infecting and dividing many members of the White-American community.

ACTION: For everybody's benefit and for the sake of our Country's future, safety, civility and harmony we URGE YOU ALL TO be proactive, take action and contact the Network/Networks (English & Spanish), condemn their judgment of inviting extremists and demand for fairness and civility in our Media when it relates to such sensitive issues as race, immigration, education, legislation, etc.

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BELOW YOU WILL FIND SPECIFIC RESEARCH on who is behind Arizona's SB-1070 (yes John Tranton)

From:

IMAGINE 2050 - http://imagine2050.newcomm.org -

Russell Pearce: The Public Face of S.B. 1070

Posted By Stephen Piggott On May 26, 2010

Neo-Nazi J.T. Ready and Russell Pearce

Russell Pearce is the smiling face of S.B. 1070. The Arizona State Senator has reveled in the limelight since the racist bill was signed last month. He earns his living bashing immigrants and is a hero for the anti-immigrant movement in Arizona. Pearce’s history, however, is far from cheerful; it involves Nazis, domestic violence and xenophobia.

Pearce is a member ^[2] of State Legislators for Legal Immigration, a coalition of anti-immigrant state-elected officials. As a partner of the John Tanton Network ^[3], a web of controversial anti-immigrant organizations

Orchestrated by John Tanton, State Legislators for Legal Immigration (SLLI) serves as the local legislative arm of the network. Pearce has many more connections to the Tanton Network. He was the chief sponsor of the racist S.B. 1070 bill in Arizona. The bill was drafted by Kris Kobach of the Immigration Reform Law Institute (IRLI) the legal arm of the Tanton Network. Pearce recently spoke ^[4] at a membership meeting of the Texans for Immigration Reform, a group listed on FAIR’s website as a state contact. ^[5]

Pearce has been accused of violence and apparently enjoys the company of other violent people, including neo-Nazis. According to his 1980 dissolution of marriage petition ^[6], Pearce allegedly, “is possessed with a violent temper, and has from time to time hit and shoved his wife, the last time being on February 3rd, when he grabbed the wife by the throat and threw her down.” Pearce’s wife didn’t end up divorcing him however, and they are still married to this day ^[7].

This ^[8] is a picture of Pearce in 2007 with a man named J.T. Ready. According to the Southern Poverty Law Center, J.T. Ready is an outright neo-Nazi who wrote the following on a white nationalist message board in December 2007,

“The truth is that negroids screw monkeys and rape babies in afreaka [sic]. Then stupid white man who licks kosher jew rear lets negroids in. … Stop Negroid immigration and integration now!!! Nature will take care of the rest.”

Pearce’s connections to neo-Nazis don’t stop with J.T. Ready. In 2006, he forwarded an email to his supporters from a neo-Nazi group ^[9]. The email contained an article that, “criticized the media for promoting multiculturalism and racial equality, and for presenting the Holocaust as fact.”

Shockingly, the connections to neo-Nazis don’t even stop there! On June 5th Pearce will be speaking ^[10] at an anti-immigrant rally in Phoenix. The rally is being organized ^[11] by a man named Daniel Smeriglio who has participated in anti-immigrant rallies ^[12] in his home state of Pennsylvania with former neo-Nazi Steve Smith. Smith belonged to the same neo-Nazi group ^[13], the National Alliance, which Russell Pearce passed on to his supporters via email in 2006.

Looking at his history, it’s no surprise that Pearce happily takes credit for a racist law. The question remains, what other evil plans does he have in store for Arizona?

Article printed from IMAGINE 2050: http://imagine2050.newcomm.org

URL to article: http://imagine2050.newcomm.org/2010/05/26/russell-pearce-the-public-face-of-s-b-1070/

URLs in this post:

[1] Image: http://img708.imageshack.us/img708/6244/readyandrussell.jpg

[2] member: http://statelegislatorsforlegalimmigration.com/arizona.aspx

[3] John Tanton Network: http://www.newcomm.org/pdf/CNC-Tanton_Network_2009.pdf

[4] recently spoke: http://www.chron.com/disp/story.mpl/metropolitan/7015509.html

[5] state contact.: http://www.fairus.org/site/PageNavigator/action/local_group/

[6] his 1980 dissolution of marriage petition: http://vvoice.vo.llnwd.net/e14/2366466.0.pdf

[7] they are still married to this day: http://mesa18.com/candidates/russell_pearce.htm

[8] This: http://blogs.phoenixnewtimes.com/bastard/jt.jpg

[9] forwarded an email to his supporters from a neo-Nazi group: http://www.splcenter.org/blog/2010/04/28/hate-group-lawyer-drafted-arizona-anti-immigrant-law/

[10] will be speaking: http://phoenixrally.com/

[11] being organized: http://imagine2050.newcomm.org../2010/05/19/clear-split-between-alipac-and-tanton-network-over-upcoming-anti-immigrant-rally/

[12] has participated in anti-immigrant rallies: http://www.onepeoplesproject.com/index.php?option=com_content&view=article&id=413:daniel-smeriglio&catid=19:s&Itemid=3

[13] Smith belonged to the same neo-Nazi group: http://www.splcenter.org/get-informed/intelligence-files/groups/keystone-state-skinheads

The Last Word: Hatewatch’s 2nd Annual Smackdown Awards

SOURCE: The Southern Poverty Law Center BLOG - (SPLC)

Posted in Year-End by Mark Potok on December 30, 2008

It’s been another sorry year in the world of hate, as knuckle-dragging white supremacists and their fellow travelers did their best to make our country a little worse with each new passing day. Here at Hatewatch, we’ve been hard at work trying to winnow away the garden-variety savagery that habitués of our blog know so well in favor of some of the truly extraordinary examples of asinine activities from the benighted denizens of the radical right. It hasn’t been easy for members of the Hatewatch 2nd Annual Smackdown Awards Committee, who’ve had to struggle heroically as they waded through the sewers and cesspools to produce our list. But now they’ve returned from that underworld, muddied but unbowed, to offer our readers, without further ado, Hatewatch’s year-end countdown of the very, very worst of 2008:

10. Most Creative Tattoo Award
We’ve seen more than our share of those who believe that large tattoos of swastikas and SS lightning bolts are attractive additions to their faces and other body parts, no matter what their mommies and daddies think. But the truth is that this year, there simply was no competition at all in this category once Ron Edwards, imperial wizard of the Kentucky-based Imperial Klans of America, showed up for a February deposition with attorneys of the Southern Poverty Law Center (SPLC). Edwards was there for a lawsuit the SPLC brought against him and his organization after two of his followers beat up a 16-year-old boy, and he wasn’t happy, as evidenced by a new tattoo on the side of his freshly shaven head that read, “Fuck S.P.L.C.” The other side of his head — this one tattooed with “Aryan Justice”— apparently reflected his hopes for the trial’s outcome, but the mostly white jury didn’t agree. In the end, it came back with a $2.5 million judgment for the boy who was beaten, and Edwards’ head was plumb out of space for further commentary on the state of the world.

9. Creepiest Cult Leader Award
After last year’s recognition of neo-Nazi boss Kevin Alfred Strom for his arrest on charges of possession of child pornography — not to mention his version of “Here We Come A-Wassailing,” detailing his interest in marrying a 10-year-old girl — it’s been hard to find real competition in the Icky Sexual Proclivities Department. But just when we were beginning to despair, along came Tony Alamo, the cult leader known for his blistering hatred of Catholics and homosexuals. Turns out that the 72-year-old Alamo allegedly had something in common with Strom, who emerged from prison last fall after serving time on the kiddie porn charges. In truly awful court proceedings this fall, a 14-year-old girl accused Alamo of fondling her in the shower; another said she was about 9 when Alamo “married” her; and a third recounted having sex with him at age 11. According to a confidential source, Alamo, who goes on trial in February on 10 counts related to transporting underage girls across state lines for sex, kept candy and Barbie dolls in his bedroom.

8. Worst International Travel Plan
Jerome Corsi — the insult-spewing WorldNetDaily “reporter” who helped lead the Swift Boat defamation of John Kerry and also wrote a fawning tome glorifying anti-immigrant vigilantes — had a plan. His new target was Barack Obama, and Corsi, who’d just been exposed on this blog for his appearance on a white supremacist radio show, decided in October to go to Kenya to track down “deep dark ties” between the Democratic presidential nominee and various Muslim politicians there, including the prime minister. Corsi apparently forgot that most people in Kenya, where Obama’s father was a well-known economist, thought quite a bit of the man who would be America’s first black president — and he also neglected to get a work permit. So it wasn’t much of a surprise when authorities snatched up Corsi, who likes to call Muslims “Boy-Bumpers” and “RAGHEADS,” and put him on the next plane back to the United States. Not one to be deterred by the facts, Corsi had also just published a book falsely claiming that Obama is secretly a Muslim.

7. Most Septic Politician Award
So many nutty politicians, so little time — and only one winner per category! In the end, we settled on a local (we’re in Montgomery, Ala.), Alabama State Sen. Charles Bishop (R-Jasper). After all, Bishop chose to deliver the keynote speech in June to the “Leadership Conference” put on by the Council of Conservative Citizens, a charming group that has compared a black pop singer to a chimpanzee, called black people “a retrograde species of humanity,” and generally spread racist swill far and wide. Not that Bishop was in any way propelled by his party; on the contrary, as long ago as 1998, Republican National Committee head Jim Nicholson asked GOP party members in the CCC to resign because of that group’s “racist views.” One background fact that helped clinch the award for Bishop: the national infamy he gained in 2007 when he was photographed socking another senator in the Alabama Senate.

6. Weirdest White Supremacist Photo Award
This was another hot category, but it was hard to argue with the entry of Victoria “Vickie” Cahill, who appeared in creepy photographs circulated last fall posing with the corpse of white supremacist David Lane. Cahill, an activist with the neo-Nazi Women for Aryan Unity group, apparently was soaking up the aura of Lane, who is a hero in the racist underworld both for his part in murdering Jewish talk show host Alan Berg and for his authorship of the infamous “14 Words”: “We must secure the existence of our people and a future for White children.” But the picture, and others like it, apparently set off a feud between Cahill and another female neo-Nazi activist, April Gaede, the Lane estate executor who accused Cahill of using the cadaver “to try to show off” at white nationalist events. Of course, Gaede ran into trouble of her own last fall when she bragged at her prowess at getting free merchandise through underhanded means, asking in an Internet posting: “Is it luck or am I a thief?” At press time, Gaede’s question, and her feud with Cahill, remained unresolved.

5. Least Sanitary Nativist Award
This one was very much a judgment call, what with the thousands of truly unpleasant immigrant-bashers who populate the land. But it was hard to resist the indefatigable “Buffalo” Rick Galeener, 58, the former professional singing cowboy who has pledged to defend America against corruption and all manner of other ills from south of the border — in part, apparently, by peeing in front of a Hispanic lady he’d earlier insulted as part of his endless demonstrations against Latino day laborers in Phoenix. In December, after months of fighting the charge, Galeener pleaded guilty to urinating in public (prosecutors had originally charged him with indecent exposure) and was fined $194, according to Phoenix New Times. The director of the day labor center Galeener loves to picket told New Times that it would have been different if Galeener had been Latino and arrested by Joe Arpaio, the local sheriff who is widely accused of racial profiling: “If any day laborer had done that in a white neighborhood, they’d probably be in Arpaio’s jail as a sexual predator.”

4. Cheekiest Self-Proclaimed ‘Historian’ Award
There are historians and then there are “historians” — and David Irving, the writer who has done more than any other to promote denial of the World War II Holocaust, is most certainly one of the latter. That came to the fore once more last year when journalist Max Blumenthal got Irving on videotape at a lecture in New York doing what he could to rehabilitate Adolf Hitler, a man many thought quite beyond saving. “Adolf Hitler,” Irving told his audience, “was being kept out of the loop and was probably not at all anti-Semitic by the time the war began. … He repeatedly held out his hand to stop things happening to the Jews. … [E]vil men were keeping him out of the loop.” Irving went on to say that he was NOT a Holocaust denier and, in fact, that Jews were responsible for their own destruction: “The alpha and the omega of it was, yes, they were,” he said in answer to Blumenthal’s question. Earlier, in a 2000 London libel trial, a judge said, in effect, that the real alpha and omega of Irving’s claims was that the British writer was a “pro-Nazi” ideologue, not a historian.

3. Pushing the Envelope Award
Bill White, the neo-Nazi boss of the Virginia-based American National Socialist Workers Party, spent the last three years testing the limits of the Constitution’s First Amendment protections of free speech. He wrote that a particular Canadian lawyer “must be killed” and published the man’s home address and phone number. He wrote The Miami Herald to say that if someone killed a black columnist based on White’s publication of the man’s address, “I wouldn’t shed a tear.” He wrote that he’d like to kill 20 or so African Americans, then go on to murder the “ridiculous journalists” who staff this blog. And, White crowed, no one could stop him from posting these and other threats, even when accompanied by personal information like the home addresses of his enemies. “Short of killing me, there is nothing the U.S. government can do,” he wrote in July. But Bill White was wrong. Three months later, he was arrested by federal agents for threatening a former juror. He was denied bond based on his lengthy record of threat-making. And he now faces more than half a century in prison if convicted of the charges he faces.

2. Least Likely Multiculturalism Spokesperson Award
It was a nice article about a nice lady — Emilia Fanjul, the wife of sugar baron Jose “Pepe” Fanjul and the founder and chairperson of Glades Academy, a charter school in Florida explicitly designed to lift poor black and Latino kids out of poverty. But the story in Quest, a high-society New York magazine, ended with a note for those seeking more information to call Chloe Black. The shocker, first revealed on this blog, was that Chloe Black is a seasoned white supremacist — the former wife of Klan leader David Duke, the current wife of former Klan leader and Stormfront founder Don Black, and a recent attendee of numerous white supremacist functions. At first, Chloe Black refused to comment, but it wasn’t long before she told the Palm Beach Post, against all the evidence, that she was no white supremacist. Just a few months later, the Black family was at it again. This time, 19-year-old Derek Black, Don and Chloe’s son, had managed to get elected as a local Republican committeeman — but the GOP refused to seat him. When the Palm Beach Post caught up with him, Derek said that he was “not associated” with white supremacy. Like mother, like son.

1. White Supremacist Family Values Award
Adolf Hitler, Heinrich Himmler and the Aryan Nations don’t have the best reputation in civilized society. As a matter of fact, most people would associate the names with pure evil, if not actual sociopathic behavior. But that’s not the way a couple in Hunterdon County, N.J., sees it. In fact, they are simply shocked that the names they gave their three children — Adolf Hitler Campbell, 3, JoyceLynn Aryan Nation Campbell, almost 2, and Honszlynn Hinler Jeannie Campbell, almost 1 — caused a ruckus when The Express-Times published a story about their attempts to get a birthday cake made with their eldest’s name spelled out in icing. The parents, Heath and Deborah Campbell, say they’re not racists (though they do believe in separation of the races) and they are sure their children’s names won’t cause them any problems. “Other kids get their cake,” whined Heath, 35, who lives in an apartment filled with swastikas and denies the Holocaust. “I get a hard time.”

And that wraps up this year’s offering from the fringes of the fringe. We’ll be back next year with a whole new series of Smackdown offerings — and as we’ve seen, there never seems to be a shortage of material. As we sign off for the year, we wish our readers happy holidays and a productive and tolerant new year.

This is a moderated blog. The Southern Poverty Law Center (SPLC) encourages user comments on blog postings, but these comments are the personal opinions of the individuals posting them and do not necessarily reflect the views of the SPLC. SPLC may edit your comments for content or space. SPLC may also choose not to post your comment.

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FAIR Claims Demonizing Rhetoric Unrelated to Anti-Latino Violence

The Federation for American Immigration Reform (FAIR), the most important anti-immigration group in America, recently issued an angry press release denouncing those who suggest that demonizing nativist rhetoric leads to hate violence. FAIR said that this “outrageous behavior” was part of “a calculated strategy” aimed at “silenc[ing] legitimate immigration policy debate” and added that those who suggest such a link between rhetoric and hate crime “provide no proof whatsoever.” FAIR and its leader, Dan Stein, were particularly incensed that Latino rights organizations had “cynically” suggested that the recent murder of Marcelo Lucero on Long Island, N.Y., by white teenagers who had gone hunting for “Mexicans,” was related to the demonization of Latino immigrants that had been particularly heavy there.

FAIR accused the National Council of La Raza, the Mexican American Legal Defense and Educational Fund (MALDEF), and unnamed other organizations of “manipulat[ing] the data” on hate crimes. But the fact is that it is FAIR that dishonestly manipulated data as part of a bid to minimize anti-Latino hate violence.

FAIR says that anti-Hispanic hate crime incidents went up by just 3.3% between 2006 and 2007, and it is right. But it completely ignores the fact — which is what La Raza, MALDEF and the Southern Poverty Law Center (publisher of this blog) have been pointing out — that that figure is only the latest rise of many. In fact, the very same FBI hate crime statistics cited by FAIR to make its case show that anti-Latino hate crimes have risen a total of 40% between 2003 and 2007 (see chart below). While the FBI statistics are not conclusive, they indicate a trend that parallels the rise in anti-immigration groups and their often-vicious anti-Latino rhetoric. As Jack Levin, the Brudnick professor of sociology and criminology at Northeastern University and a national expert on hate crime, told Hatewatch: “It’s not just the most recent numbers. It’s the trend over a number of years that lends credibility to the notion that we’re seeing a very real and possibly dramatic rise in anti-Latino hate incidents.”

FAIR also suggests, based on the number of incidents reported by the FBI, that the prevalence of anti-Latino hate crimes is very low — 1.3 attacks per 100,000 Latinos. It ignores the important, 2005 Justice Department study (pdf) that concluded that the real level of hate-motivated attacks on Latinos (this at a time before the anti-immigration movement and its rhetoric had really exploded) was vastly higher — 90 per 100,000 Latinos. The study, considered by criminologists to be far more accurate that the annual hate crime statistics, found that huge numbers of hate crimes are not reported to police or don’t find their way into the FBI’s statistics for various other reasons. The underreporting problem is even more severe among undocumented immigrants, who rarely report crimes to police because they are afraid they will be deported.

FAIR takes the remarkable position that hate speech directed against Latinos — allegations that they are secretly planning to hand the American Southwest over to Mexico, that they are far more criminal than others, that they are bringing dread diseases to the United States, and so on — has no relationship at all to hate crime. In addition to defying common sense, that head-in-the-sand approach completely ignores the statements that are typically made by hate criminals during their crimes. In the Long Island case, for instance, prosecutors said the suspects told police that they were “specifically targeting Hispanic males.” “Let’s go find some Mexicans to [expletive deleted] up,” they said, according to Newsday. They told detectives they were going “beaner-jumping” and they used racial epithets during their attack. The facts are similar in most such cases. “Racist rhetoric and dehumanizing images inspire violence perpetrated against innocent human beings,” Levin concluded.

Hate criminals’ sentiments come from somewhere. Just because it’s not possible to pinpoint the exact source of the Long Island attackers’ racial anger — rhetoric from their parents, nativist groups in the area, politicians, pundits or even FAIR itself — does not mean it magically popped into the assailants’ minds. But FAIR uses the fact that we don’t know precisely where their anger started to claim that the angry and demonizing rhetoric FAIR and others promote is unrelated to criminal violence.

Finally, FAIR keys in hard on the idea that those who criticize the authors of demonizing propaganda are attempting to suppress free speech. But the fact that hateful things can be said and enjoy First Amendment protection does not mean that hateful rhetoric doesn’t promote violence and it does not absolve groups like FAIR from moral responsibility for such rhetoric. In reality, as the Chicago-based human rights group Center for New Community (CNC) points out, FAIR has been active in the Long Island county where Lucero was murdered for some 10 years now. In 2001, not long after FAIR began work in the area, two young men tried to beat two immigrant laborers to death with hammers; in a later case, a Mexican family escaped with their lives after their home was firebombed in a hate attack. Perhaps, given its history, it’s no surprise that FAIR, started by Michigan nativist John Tanton in 1979, is working so hard to convince us that demonizing rhetoric — including its own — has no relationship to criminal violence.

Hot rhetoric fuels Latino hate crimes

SOURCE:



OPINION

Commentary By Raul Reyes

Seven teenagers have been charged in the tragic death last month of Marcelo Lucero, a 38-year-old immigrant who worked at a dry cleaner. Police say Lucero was on his way to a friend's house in Patchogue, N.Y., when a gang of drunken high schoolers out to jump "a Mexican" surrounded him. Lucero was attacked and then fatally stabbed in the chest.

I suppose it doesn't matter that Patchogue is a comfortable, relatively crime-free suburb on Long Island. Or that Lucero wasn't even Mexican; he was from Ecuador. The sad truth is that Lucero's death is part of a national trend of violence against Latinos. According to new statistics from the FBI, we are the No. 1 target of hate crimes motivated by ethnicity or national origin. In 2007, 62% of such victims were Hispanic.

Yet these statistics might not show the full picture. A 2005 Justice Department report asserted that the actual number of hate crimes exceeded the FBI's numbers.The Southern Poverty Law Center, a civil rights group, confirms that many hate crimes are not reported. Many illegal immigrants, no doubt fearing deportation, would be reluctant to contact law enforcement.

The Patchogue killing reminds me of an incident this summer in Shenandoah, Pa., in which four teens were charged in the death of an illegal Mexican immigrant.

What do these two communities have in common? An increase in the Latino population and a corresponding rise in anti-immigrant sentiments.

Today, the national anti-immigration fervor has subsided as the economy has cooled, but it's fair to assume that some violence against Latinos is a byproduct of the xenophobic debate of previous years. Hate crimes directed at Latinos rose 40% during the past four years — a time frame that roughly corresponds to the failure of attempts at comprehensive reform. Some politicians and activists who oppose illegal immigration often have engaged in or encouraged anti-Hispanic rhetoric. They don't seem to realize that inflammatory language can incite inflammatory acts.

It saddens and angers me that Latinos must still live with the threat of violence simply because of their ethnicity. I am worried, too, that in these tough economic times, fear and anxiety will be directed at the wrong targets. Hate speech can hurt, and sometimes kill.

If and when this country revisits the immigration issue under an Obama administration, we should engage in a debate that is good for all of us — rather than one that vilifies and endangers some of us.

Raul Reyes is an attorney in New York and a member of USA TODAY's board of contributors.

Posted at 12:16 AM/ET, December 05, 2008 in Forum commentary, Race Issues/Civil rights - Forum | Permalink

USA TODAY welcomes your views and encourages lively -- but civil -- discussions. Comments are unedited, but submissions reported as abusive may be removed. By posting a comment, you affirm that you are 13 years of age or older.

Hate Crimes: Anti-Latino Hate Crime Up for Fourth Year

Hate Crimes Anti-Latino Hate Crime Up for Fourth Year

Intelligence Report
Winter 2008

Brandon Piekarsky, a 16-year-old
honors student, allegedly struck
the first blow in the attack that left
Luis Ramirez, an undocumented
Mexican immigrant, dead.

Hate crimes targeting Latinos increased again in 2007, capping a 40% rise in the four years since 2003, according to FBI statistics released this fall.

As anti-immigrant propaganda has increased on both the margins and in the mainstream of society — where pundits and politicians have routinely vilified undocumented Latino immigrants with a series of defamatory falsehoods — hate violence has risen against perceived "illegal aliens." Each year since 2003, the number of FBI-reported anti-Latino hate crime incidents has risen, even as a swelling nativist movement has become larger and more vitriolic.

The FBI statistics, which are simply compilations of state statistics as mandated by federal law, are notoriously sketchy. Because of a variety of problems in the voluntary reporting system, including the failure of many victims to report crimes to police, the FBI figures have long been suspected of being far lower than the actual level of such crimes. And that turns out to be true. The FBI has reported national hate crime totals of between about 6,000 and about 10,000 since it began publishing the numbers in 1992, depending on the year (the new report counts 7,264 incidents in 2007). But a definitive 2005 study by the Department of Justice's Bureau of Justice Statistics, based on detailed and highly accurate National Crime Victimization Surveys, found that the real annual level of hate crime in America averaged some 191,000 incidents — in other words, about 20 to 30 times higher than the numbers annually reported by the FBI.

Although the numbers of FBI-reported anti-Latino hate crime attacks are small — from 426 incidents in 2003 to 595 incidents in 2007 — the trend they suggest is almost certainly a real one. California, which does a better job of reporting hate crimes than most states, has also seen a major uptick in anti-Latino violence, and the growth of hate groups has been most dramatic in Southern border states like California, Arizona and Texas, the front lines of the immigration controversy.

At the same time as anti-Latino violence has risen, the Southern Poverty Law Center has reported a major increase in hate groups — from 602 in 2000 to 888 in 2007, a 48% jump — and said that the growth has been almost entirely driven by the immigration debate. White supremacist groups that normally target African Americans and Jews have focused heavily for the last several years on the "threat" of Latino immigrants, exploiting the issue successfully in order to recruit more and more members, especially in the border states. That has only begun to change recently, as hate groups increasingly turn their attention to the subprime crisis (which they blame on minorities) and the prospect of a black president.

There are other problems in the FBI hate crime statistics, as is reflected in the new report for 2007. Mississippi, for instance, reported zero hate crimes last year, while Alaska reported one and Georgia had three. If there are more than 190,000 hate crimes nationally each year, it is obviously utterly implausible that the number of hate crimes in those states could be so low. A part of the problem has been the reluctance of some police departments and states to report hate crimes (one reason may be fear of bad publicity), along with reporting errors by various local and state officials. The 2005 Department of Justice study also pointed to another huge problem, finding that fully 56% of hate crime victimizations were never reported to police at all. That problem is exacerbated in the undocumented community, whose members are typically afraid to report crimes to police for fear of deportation.

The FBI's latest report also found, as it has in most years, that schools and colleges were the third largest venue for hate crimes (with 11.3% of the total reported on campuses), after "in or near residences or homes" (30.5%) and "on highways, roads, alleys, or streets" (18.9%). Although many think of campuses as being bastions of open-mindedness, in fact they suffer the same pathologies as the rest of society. They also hold concentrations of young people, who are more crime-prone than other segments of the population.

The definitive 2005 government study also highlighted several other key facts about hate crimes, including that per capita rates of victimization "varied little by race or ethnicity: about 0.9 per 1,000 whites, 0.7 per 1,000 blacks, and 0.9 per 1,000 Hispanics." Perhaps more importantly, the study concluded that hate crimes were vastly more violent than others — almost 84% of hate crimes included violence ranging from rape to assault, while only 23% of non-hate crimes did.

New SPLC Report: Documents Reveal History of Racial Extremism by Architect of Anti-Immigration Movement

Southern Poverty Law Center
09/22/2008

The leaders of the anti-immigration movement in the United States have long claimed that they are not motivated by racism.

But a new report by the Southern Poverty Law Center reveals that John Tanton, the architect of the movement and founder of the Federation for American Immigration Reform (FAIR), has a more than 30-year history of racial extremism. FAIR is listed as a hate group by the SPLC.

Based on Tanton's personal correspondence, preserved at the University of Michigan's Bentley Historical Library, the report shows that Tanton has been in the midst of the white nationalist scene for decades. He has corresponded frequently with leading white nationalist thinkers, race scientists and Holocaust deniers. He encouraged a major donor to read the work of a radical anti-Semitic professor to "give you a new understanding of the Jewish outlook on life." And he suggested that the board of FAIR, on which he sits, discuss the professor's theories on the Jews.

Tanton's organizations have long been high-profile players in the immigration debate. FAIR, for example, helped defeat federal immigration reform legislation in 2007 and has played a key role in fueling the fierce, anti-immigrant backlash in the United States. FAIR boasts on its website that it has been called on to testify about immigration more than any other organization.

In addition to FAIR, Tanton founded or co-founded the Center for Immigration Studies, NumbersUSA, Pro English, the Social Contract Press, U.S. English and U.S. Inc.

U.S. Inc. is a foundation created and headed by Tanton. It has funded all of the groups founded by Tanton in addition to the American Immigration Control Foundation, the American Patrol/Voice of Citizens Together, Californians for Population Stabilization, the California Coalition for Immigration Reform and ProjectUSA.

The SPLC designated FAIR a hate group in December 2007, citing the organization's ties to white supremacy and its long track record of bigotry. The SPLC also lists Tanton's Social Contract Press as a hate group because of its anti-Latino and white supremacist writings.

Organizations founded by Tanton, who has compared immigrants to "bacteria," have helped fuel a rising anti-immigrant, anti-Latino furor in the United States. The SPLC has documented a staggering 48 percent increase in the number of hate groups operating in the country since 2000 — from 602 to 888. The border states of California, Arizona and Texas experienced the greatest growth in hate groups during that period.

At the same time, FBI statistics suggest a 35 percent rise in hate crimes against Latinos between 2003 and 2006. Experts believe such crimes are normally committed by people who think they are attacking immigrants.

Despite the veneer of respectability presented by FAIR and other Tanton groups, their founder's own words suggest his campaign against immigration is mainly about race.

In a Dec. 10, 1993, letter to Garrett Hardin, a controversial ecology professor, Tanton wrote: "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."

On Jan. 26, 1996, he wrote Roy Beck, head of NumbersUSA (and then an employee of Tanton's foundation U.S. Inc.), questioning the ability of Latinos to govern California.

Tanton wondered "whether the minorities who are going to inherit California (85% of the lower-grade school children are now 'minorities' — demography is destiny) can run an advanced society?"

Read more quotes from John Tanton and FAIR officials.

Southern Poverty Law Center
400 Washington Ave.
Montgomery, AL 36104

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