Opponents of immigration reform legislation have been trying to steer clear of white nationalists lately, hoping to keep their opposition to citizenship for undocumented Latino immigrants free from the taint of racism.

But they just can’t seem to run fast enough.

Last week, a major Heritage Foundation report about the supposed costs of illegal immigration was pilloried after the revelation that one of its authors, Heritage Foundation senior fellow Jason Richwine, had earlier claimed that there are deep differences in intelligence among races (with Latinos toward the bottom). Richwine resigned from the conservative think tank amid the outcry.

Now, this week, we discover that ProEnglish, a group with white nationalist ties, has launched an ad campaign against immigration reform. The first target is Republican Sen. Lindsey Graham of South Carolina, according to BuzzFeed. The group’s minute-long radio ad features a Spanish-speaking character, apparently representing an undocumented immigrant, thanking Graham “for not requiring him to learn English in exchange for amnesty.” ( continue to full post… )

Editor’s Note: On Friday, May 10, the Heritage Foundation, which earlier distanced itself from the controversial views of its senior policy analyst Jason Richwine, said Richwine had resigned from the foundation, according to Politico.

Jason Richwine, a fellow at the conservative Heritage Foundation, is attracting attention because of a recently released anti-immigration study that is garnering criticism from fellow conservatives, including U.S. Rep. Marco Rubio (R-Fla.), U.S. Rep. Paul Ryan (R-Wis.), and anti-tax warrior Grover Norquist. The study, co-authored with Heritage fellow Robert Rector, is a reprise of Rector’s 2007 report (which was also criticized) for the foundation. Both studies claim immigration reform will cost the U.S. trillions of dollars, and both were hotly disputed.

The conservative criticism of the new study charges that it ignores immigrants’ upward mobility and suggests that they will always be poor. But in addition to that, a great deal of criticism from other quarters is now focusing personally on Richwine and what he has said over the years about immigrants, race and intelligence. ( continue to full post… )

Editor’s Note: We’ve corrected the attribution of a quote below suggesting that if the attackers were antigovernment they would have attacked a government target, rather than random Americans. The quote actually came from Mike Lackomar of the Southeast Michigan Volunteer Militia. Hatewatch regrets the error, which was the result of an editing mistake.

Who was responsible for the deadly Boston terrorist attack?

The Muslims did it. No, it was an illegal immigrant. Think again – it was a gay guy. Wait, you missed the key signs: Our own government once again pulled off an act of covert terror to promote its nefarious aims.

Fingers have been pointed in all of these directions by conspiracy theory peddlers and professional hatemongers since the bombings Monday.

“It’s a pretty safe bet right now that this attack was carried out by an Islamist,” declared a post on the Tea Party Nation website Tuesday. The obvious cause for the violence? “We have a government that is not committed to protecting America.” Linking Islam with Ronald Reagan’s “evil empire” of Communism, the post warned that the Boston bombings are just another event presaging future violence in “an ideological war” that can only be won if we have tougher, more anti-Islam U.S. political leaders. That, of course, would be the Tea Party cabal.

( continue to full post… )

Federal authorities in New Jersey are ending 2012 with the arrests of two accused white supremacists who allegedly went on a hate-filled assault spree last New Year’s Eve. ( continue to full post… )

Jim Gilchrist, co-founder of the border-watching Minuteman Project, has never been shy about expressing his opinions, especially when it comes to his many critics. But now his pugnaciousness has cost him dearly in a long-running feud with a former Minuteman ally.

Last month, an Orange County, Calif., Superior Court judge issued a summary ruling in a series of small-claims suits, declaring that Gilchrist had indulged in “Big Lie” tactics by publicly smearing a woman named Deborah Courtney — a former key member of the board of directors of Gilchrist’s organization — and ordered him to pay her $42,501. ( continue to full post… )

Kris Kobach, Kansas Secretary of State and the architect of harsh, anti-immigrant laws in several states and cities, made a special trip to Hatewatch’s home state last week to testify in Birmingham before the U.S. Commission on Civil Rights.

The statutes pushed by Kobach – among them Arizona’s SB 1070 and Alabama’s even more draconian HB 56 – were devised to make life so miserable for undocumented immigrants that they give up and “self-deport.” A lawyer with degrees from Harvard, Oxford and Yale, he began crafting anti-immigrant policy while working in John Ashcroft’s Department of Justice. In 2004, he was hired as senior counsel to the Immigration Reform Law Institute (IRLI), where he devised immigration legislation that would later serve as the basis of the laws in Arizona and Alabama. (IRLI is the legal arm of the Federation for American Immigration Reform (FAIR), an anti-immigrant hate group that yearns for a return to the days when immigration policy favored light-skinned northern Europeans over all others.) ( continue to full post… )

Kansas Secretary of State Kris Kobach didn’t leave Birmingham Friday after offering testimony at a contentious U.S. Commission on Civil Rights briefing on the impact of restrictionist immigration laws like those enacted in Alabama and Arizona.

Instead, the nativist lawyer and author of the abovementioned bills, remained in the state to speak Saturday at an event hosted by Alabama’s Eagle Forum, a chapter of Phyllis Schlafly’s ultraconservative national organization.

Strolling in about 30 minutes after his speech was scheduled to start, a grinning Kobach was met with a standing ovation from the crowd of about 60 people – mostly senior citizens, and mostly white – who had assembled at a Marriott hotel near Birmingham to hear their champion speak. ( continue to full post… )

John Kobylt and Ken Chiampou, the immigrant-bashing Los Angeles radio personalities who were suspended earlier this year when they referred to Whitney Houston as a “crack ho” and marveled that the late pop singer “took this long” to die, are back on the air and up to their old tricks.

In the August 3 edition of the “John & Ken Show,” the duo took up for the Federation for American Immigration Reform (FAIR), an anti-immigrant organization that the Southern Poverty Law Center has called a hate group since 2008 because of its virulent and false attacks on non-white immigrants.

“The Federation for American Immigration Reform, I think, has been defined by some of these think tank organizations as a hate group,” Chiampou said. ( continue to full post… )

In mid-2009, nativist leaders scrambled to distance themselves from Minuteman American Defense (MAD) founder Shawna Forde, after the immigrant-bashing former child prostitute was charged with two counts of first-degree murder in connection with the slaying of an Arizona man and his 9-year old daughter.

Few were as adamant in their repudiations of Forde – who now sits on death row for the murder of Raul and Brisenia Flores – as Minuteman Project (MMP) President Jim Gilchrist. Within hours of the announcement of her arrest, he stripped MMP’s website of its many laudatory references to Forde’s group, extended his “condolences” to the victims and “all those who have been affected by the alleged incident,” and wrote, “Jim Gilchrist’s Minuteman Project, Inc. is not affiliated with the Minuteman American Defense or Shawna Forde. The Minuteman American Defense is an independent patriot organization which participates in systematic border observation and reporting operations.” ( continue to full post… )

Loudon County, Va., Board Supervisor Eugene Delgaudio has already been widely called out for his furious attacks on LGBT people — most notably in 2010, when he referred to transgender people as “it” during a public meeting. That brought an official rebuke from five of his colleagues on the county governing board for his comments, given as head of the gay-bashing Public Advocate of America, which the Southern Poverty Law Center has listed as a hate group since last year.

What’s far less known is Delgaudio’s anti-immigrant vitriol. In recent years, Delgaudio has attacked immigrants in a number of extremist venues. ( continue to full post… )