Bill Berkowitz
August 18, 2005

Immigration politics draws attention of David Horowitz

Catching wind of how hot the politics of immigration has become, Horowitz's Center for the Study of Popular Culture is teaming up with anti-immigration organizations to sponsor an upcoming conference in Beverly Hills

What do New York’s Democratic Senator, Hillary Clinton, New Mexico’s Democratic Governor, Bill Richardson, the only Hispanic governor in the country, and the Center for the Study of Popular Culture’s (CSPC) David Horowitz have in common?

The answer: the politics of immigration.

According to John Fund, writing in his Wall Street Journal column on Monday, August 15, 2005, Governor Richardson recently declared a “’state of emergency’ in four New Mexico border counties due to "a chaotic situation involving illegal alien smuggling and illegal drug shipments." The governor is also “pledg[ing] $1.5 million for stepped-up law enforcement and also asked Chris Simcox, the president of the volunteer border patrol group Minutemen, for a meeting.” According to Media Matters, however, "Richardson ... dismissed Fund's claim as a 'total fabrication,' and Simcox himself refuted Fund, stating it was the Minutemen who reached out to Richardson -- not the other way around."

Senator Clinton recently “made headlines when she embraced high-tech measures to control the border with Mexico and fines for employers who hire illegal aliens,” Fund writes.

While Governor Richardson and Senator Clinton may be seeking to get on board the immigration-issue train as they begin their long trek toward the Democratic Party convention in 2008, David Horowitz, it appears, is looking for another wedge issue to fulfill his ideological and fundraising needs.

Although it’s doubtful that Horowitz will take up a post at the US / Mexico or US / Canada border anytime soon -- as the Minuteman Project is proposing for October -- he apparently feels that he is well enough on his way to cleansing America’s colleges and universities of anti-patriotic liberal academics to test the roiling waters of immigration politics.

To that end, on Friday, August 26, the Center for the Study of Popular Culture (CSPS - website) is co-sponsoring, along with the Washington DC-based Federation for American Immigration Reform (FAIR - website) and the Coalition for Immigration Reform of California, a daylong conference on immigration at the Regent Beverly Wilshire Hotel in Beverly Hills, California.

The conference, which “will focus on the impact of Illegal Immigration on America relating to issues of: national security, the economy, society and politics,” has an all-star line-up that includes:

Congressman Tom Tancredo, a longtime anti-immigration activist who heads up the House Immigration Reform Caucus, that has done more than most elected officials to popularize the anti-immigrant cause within government circles.
Kris Kobach, a University of Missouri-Kansas City law professor and a vocal conservative Republican who barely lost a bid for a Congressional seat last November.
Heather Mac Donald, a John M. Olin fellow at the Manhattan Institute (website), and a contributing editor to the Institute’s publication, City Journal. She is a recipient of 2005 Bradley Prize for Outstanding Intellectual Achievement.
John C. Eastman, a Professor of Law at Chapman University, specializing in Constitutional Law and Legal History. He is also the Director of the Center for Constitutional Jurisprudence, a public interest law firm affiliated with the Claremont Institute for the Study of Statesmanship and Political Philosophy.
Ray Haynes, a California Assemblyman who represents the 66th Assembly District, which includes portions of Western Riverside County and Northern San Diego County. The Riverside Enterprise Press called Haynes “one of the most outspoken conservatives in the legislature.”
Doug McIntyre is the host of McIntyre in the Morning, on Talk Radio 790 KABC.
Congressman Steve King (R-IA) is the former head of the King Construction Company who came to Congress as a “committed fiscal and social conservative,” and is “focused on agribusiness, tax issues, transportation and infrastructure, senior benefits, and an overall vision for the future of Iowans.” Among his other accomplishments, Congressman King claims to have sponsored the English as the Official Language Bill and The God and Country Bill.
Congressman Ed Royce (R-CA) is a strong social conservative who votes consistently against reproductive and gay rights. Under the category of “Civil Rights” on Royce’s website are listed his votes in favor of a constitutional amendment banning same-sex marriage and a constitutional amendment prohibiting flag desecration; a vote to ban gay adoptions in Washington DC, and a vote in favor of an amendment prohibiting burning the US flag.
Erin Adaire Anderson’s name surfaced twice during a Google search: Once for the upcoming conference, and the other for having been a guest discussing “illegal immigration via Mexico” on Conservative Roundtable and Face the Truth (website), public affairs programs of the ultra-right Conservative Caucus (website).
George Borjas, the Robert W. Scrivner Professor of Economics and Social Policy at Kennedy School of Government, Harvard University, is the author of “Heaven’s Door: Immigration Policy and the American Economy” (Princeton University Press, 1999) and “Labor Economics,” whose third edition was published this year.
James Edwards. I received the following email from Edwards, the host of The Political Cesspool Radio Program, aired Monday through Friday, 7pm-9pm Central - AM 1380 WLRM Memphis, Tennessee: “If it is me, this is the first I've heard about it! I have heard I was a confirmed speaker from other activists, but to my knowledge, I have not been contacted.”
Frank Gaffney is the founder and president of the Center for Security Policy (CSP - website) and a longtime advocate of the ultimate in border-watching devices, the Strategic Defense Initiative, aka “Star Wars.” Gaffney has been a frequent guest on cable television’s talking head programs advocating and continuing to defend President Bush’s War on Iraq.
Jim Gilchrist (website) is a co-founder of the Minuteman Project civilian border patrol organization, the group of volunteers/vigilantes who spent April guarding the US / Mexico border. (The Minutemen recently announced plans to organize 15,000 volunteers to guard the US / Mexico and US / Canada borders starting October 1.) As I write this, Gilchrist is considering a run as the candidate of the far right American Independent Party, the “California affiliate of the Constitution Party” (website), for the vacated congressional seat of Christopher Cox, recently confirmed as the new Chairman of the Securities and Exchange Commission.
Otis Graham is Professor Emeritus at the University of California, Santa Barbara, who, according to his website, is currently Visiting Scholar at the University of North Carolina, Chapel Hill. On his website Graham writes that, he “Currently... explore[s] the Population component of the ‘problem-cluster’ of population, resources, and the environment, especially the role of immigration in preventing population stabilization in the United States."
William Hawkins is senior fellow for national security studies at the U.S. Business and Industry Council Education Foundation (website) a sister organization to the U.S. Business and Industry Council (website) in Washington, D.C. According to the its website, Hawkins previously worked as Senior Research Analyst for Rep. Duncan Hunter (R-CA) and “hosted the weekly radio program In the National Interest ... heard nationally on the Information and Entertainment America Network from 1997 to 2000.”
Michael Hethmon, the Staff Counsel for the Federation for American Immigration Reform, recently testified at a hearing on H.R. 2933, the Alien Gang Removal Act of 2005, before the House Judiciary Subcommittee on Immigration, Border Security, and Claims.
Janice Kephart is a former counsel to 9/11 Commission and a senior consultant for The Investigative Project (website) founded and headed by anti-terrorism “expert” Steve Emerson. Kephart is “currently managing and acting as the chief editor and analyst for a grant from the Smith Richardson Foundation on the ‘structure of Al Qaeda and Militant Islamic Terrorist Groups in the United States.’ She has titled the book The Enterprise of Terror in the United States.
Mark Krikorian is the executive director of the Center for Immigration Sudies (CIS - website).
Ira Mehlman is the co-founder of the American Jewish Immigration Policy Institute, and a spokesperson for the Federation for American Immigration Reform.
Glynn Custred is a professor of anthropology at California State University East Bay, and was the co-author and the California Civil Rights Initiative (CCRI), the anti-affirmation action initiative passed by California voters in 1997.

‘Vulnerable on immigration’

The Wall Street Journal’s John Fund believes that President Bush is “vulnerable on immigration,” and that Governor Richardson and Senator Clinton could seize control of the issue.

Fund charged Clinton with wanting “to have it both ways” on the issue of immigration: “Despite her noises about beefing up enforcement, she did not talk about immigration, temporary-worker programs or border enforcement when she addressed the National Council of La Raza, the largest Hispanic civil rights group in the country."

According to Fund, Clinton “pandered to the liberal crowd and received a standing ovation when she announced a new bill that would guarantee in-state college tuition rates for the children of illegal immigrants as well as amnesty to some 65,000 illegal immigrant students who graduate from U.S. high schools each year.”

Clinton “won 85% of the Hispanic vote in New York for Senate in 2000," said former adviser turned adversary Dick Morris. "She thinks she can outbid the Republicans for Hispanic votes in 2008 while bringing Reagan Democrats home with vague rhetoric about getting tough and employer sanctions she has no intention of implementing."

“In New Mexico,” Fund wrote, “Governor Richardson ... blasts the federal government for not showing ‘the commitment or the leadership to deal with border issues’ ... [and at the same time] is demanding that officials on the Mexican side bulldoze an abandoned town on the border that serves ‘as a staging area for illegal drugs and illegal aliens.’” According to Fund, Richardson has reversed his position on these issues from as recently as late 2003, “when he showed up at a rally for the ‘Immigrant Workers Freedom Ride’ and told them, ‘Viva la raza! Thank you for coming to Santa Fe. Know that New Mexico is your home. We will protect you. You have rights here."

"Democrats clearly sense frustration on immigration among Bush's base voters and are trying to outflank him rhetorically on the right," Martha Montelongo, a talk-show hostess in California, told Fund.

Neoconservatives and immigration

Attitudes on immigration among neoconservatives and Jews appear to be changing dramatically, Tom Barry, the policy director of the International Relations Center (website), recently wrote in a piece for Inter Press Service:

Before the Sep. 11, 2001 terrorist attacks, the neo-conservative political camp and U.S. Jews were dependable allies against the restrictionist immigration policies of such organizations as the Center for Immigration Studies (CIS) and the Federation for American Immigration Reform.

Today, however, neocon institutes and synagogues are increasingly the forums for the type of nationalist immigration policies that were previously regarded as emblematic of the populist right-wing and the paleoconservatives in the United States.

Barry pointed out that the Center for Immigration Studies’ Mark Krikorian, a speaker at the CSPC conference, is ”the most high-profile lobbyist for restrictionist legislation,” and that he is happy to see “such leading neoconservatives as Daniel Pipes, director of the pro-Likud Middle East Forum, are now regularly raising alarms about immigration.

Shortly after 9/11, Krikorian’s CIS colleague, Stephen Steinlight, who used to be national affairs director for the pro-immigration American Jewish Committee and its representative in the pro-immigration National Immigration Forum, wrote, “We should give serious, immediate consideration to terminating our alliance with the advocates of open borders -- we do not belong in their coalitions.”

Ira Mehlman, another conference attendee said recently that ”American Jews need to look out for their own self-interest,” including the diverse threats from Muslim and Latino immigration.

”This is not about right-left politics,” said Mehlman, but ”about excessive numbers of immigrants coming here and placing a burden on our communities, our schools, and our economy.”

Barry concluded that, “The broadening anti-immigration coalition is yet another sign that the new intensity of the immigration debate is not so much a factor of macroeconomic cycles ... [but] is more a product of the politics of fear and nationalism now sweeping the United States, and a dimension of the cultural wars that are increasingly dividing the country and pitting the U.S. against foreign societies and nations.”

“I don’t recall Horowitz’s name popping up before around immigration issues,” Devin Burghart, who monitors anti-immigrant movements with the Illinois-based human rights group, the Center for New Community's Building Democracy Initiative, told Media Transparency in a telephone interview. “And he is politically savvy and smart enough to know that immigration is the hottest issue inside the GOP these days.”

Bush’s immigration plan appears to be going nowhere in Congress so “I think we’ll see a lot more opportunists like Horowitz stepping forward and trying to grab hold of the issue as time goes by,” Burghart added.