Campaign to Blacklist Immigration Dissenters

http://www.jewcy.com/post/no_debate_please_were_jewish_0 ^ | Stephen Steinlight

[Bob017]

Not long ago, I was leading my normal life as a policy analyst for a Washington think tank. I was writing an op-ed I hoped this paper might publish opposing “Progress by Pesach,” a campaign by Jewish organizations promoting amnesty for illegal immigrants and ending worksite immigration enforcement. I argued that legalizing millions of illegal aliens is to be complicit in overthrowing the rule of law, and increasing immigration at a time when the economy is hemorrhaging jobs displays callous disregard for the most vulnerable among us.

But I’ve set that aside. The issue pales in comparison to another: A stealth campaign to blacklist dissenters from the goals of “Progress by Pesach,” starting with my think tank, the Center for Immigration Studies, and me personally. The objective is to silence independent thinkers in the American Jewish community who are trying to promote honest debate over our nation’s immigration policy.

The embodiments of this McCarthyite effort are Gideon Aronoff, President of HIAS, and attack-dog “research” from the Southern Poverty Law Center (SPLC). The first shot in the Jewish community was a secret note from HIAS to the editors of Jewish newspapers starting off with “This note is not for publication” in bold letters and warning them against publishing anything opposing the “Progress by Pesach” campaign. An attempt to kill the First Amendment, the murder weapon, appropriately enough, was fitted with a silencer. Several editors – naturally committed to free speech and robust debate – were so appalled they alerted me to the message.

[Bob017]

Another note, signed by Aronoff himself, embroiders the screed, employing language betraying a conspiratorial mentality. He describes my speeches as efforts “to penetrate” the Jewish community. This mindset underlies Aronoff’s belief in his own press releases, which irrationally allege that my group, CIS, along with two other miniscule organizations, “stopped comprehensive immigration reform in June of 2007.” That bill lost because it was hugely unpopular with the American people, and thus with senators facing re-election in 2008. Yet Aronoff sees a Protocols of the Elders of Zion-like conspiracy.

The poison e-mails were apparently also sent to Jewish organizations, because shortly after the blacklist effort was launched, a New Jersey chapter of Hadassah cancelled my scheduled talk, and my requests for an explanation were met with embarrassed reticence by my hosts. Finally, they confessed they were “ordered to cancel by the Legal Department at Hadassah’s National Office.” Lest you think this paranoid, understand that I have spoken to dozens of Hadassah chapters across America – and at synagogues, Jewish Community Centers, at local chapters of other Jewish organizations, and elsewhere in the community – where my message is enthusiastically received. In fact, that enthusiastic reception is undoubtedly the source of the problem.

The charges against CIS and me are politically motivated lies. HIAS recycles the SPLC’s claim that a retired doctor from northern Michigan, described as a white supremacist, founded and funds CIS. Both assertions are false. This individual has never played any role in CIS, officially or unofficially. End of story.

The allegation that CIS is “white supremacist” is obscene, preposterous, false. Peruse the hundreds of publications on CIS’s website – www.cis.org – none contains an iota of racism. CIS’s board is headed by Peter Nunez, a former U.S. Attorney, and includes the president of the Greater Miami Urban League and the former head of the Congressional Black Caucus Foundation.

Aronoff and SPLC can’t play anything straight. The quote their “research” attributes to me is a misquote twisted out of context. I’m supposed to have said, “Immigration threatens the American people and Western Civilization.” In fact, I was speaking of the Islamization of Western Europe and, potentially, America. The actual comment addresses Muslim immigration in an age of Jihadism, not immigration per se.

The absurdity of the lies lubricating this blacklist campaign is especially apparent considering my own background. After more than 20 years as a professor of English and Victorian Studies, I embarked on a second career in public policy. I was Director of Education at the United States Holocaust Memorial Council, the first-ever Jewish Vice President at the National Conference of Christians and Jews, the National Affairs Director at the American Jewish Committee, then Executive Director of the American Anti-Slavery Group, and finally at CIS.

I’m not a fearful person, but what’s happening is frightening – not for me personally, because I’ll be fine either way, but for our community. The question before us is not about which immigration policies we should support. Rather, this: Will the Jewish community be an open forum for competing ideas, or will we surrender to a new McCarthyism? If this blacklist campaign succeeds, we will have permitted cynical opportunists to destroy the intellectual integrity and vibrancy of debate within our community. We will have succumbed to lies and debased ourselves. It is a categorical imperative to defeat it.

[bcsco]

This is a ping list promoting Immigration Enforcement and Congressional Reform.
If you wish to be added or removed from this ping list, please contact me.

Sheriff Joe Arpaio STRIKES BACK

Arpaio wants investigation of his own (awesome!)

Mexico remittances plunge in worst fall on record

Border births trip up passport requests

US: H-1B workers outnumber unemployed techies

Expired visa nearly costs writer a seat at his own play (muslim alert)

Senator Graham Says Sotomayor Is No Racist

La Raza rooted in Saul Alinsky & funded by Imperialist, George Soros

Mexican Truckers File $6 Billion Claim Against U.S. in Nafta Spat

President Obama: “No Amnesty for Illegal Aliens!(Petition)

[raybbr]

How long before Obama starts building Gulags for dissenters?

[BellStar]

How long O Lord how long? You seem to have turned your back on us your wicked and evil Children. We are sorry for the things we have done and those things we have left undone! Please hear are Prayers and heal our Land!

[freekitty]

Its rough, isn’t it?

I believe the Lord wants us to help ourselves by standing firm on our convictions. We need to continue to follow our foundation and issues more than ever now. Don’t be fooled by the upsurpers who only want control and power with their phony PR.

America and its people must never accept the false promises of those who would willing enslave us.

[BellStar]

"I believe the Lord wants us to help ourselves by standing firm on our convictions."

We very well may be headed to a place where we will have to do much more than stand. Not that we will ever have to take up arms against our Government. I fear that some Nation that thinks we are weakened will wage war against us and invade our land.

[freekitty]

I know what you mean and they did that with 9/11

[lentulusgracchus]

How long O Lord how long?

In the Latin Vulgate translation of the Book of Revelation (Liber Apocalypsis Ioannis), that plaintive cry is rendered as "usquequo, Domine?" That, by the way, is the only and singular recorded use of that word, usquequo, in the entire 2500-year-long corpus of Latinity.

Talk about philological "markedness" ...... it's totally unique, and describes a totally unique distress and exasperation.

[humblegunner]

You seem to have turned your back on us your wicked and evil Children.

I'm not wicked or evil.

[BellStar]

By God’s standerds we all could be at least a bit. Now humblegunner you could be at least a bit by a Higher Standerd.

[wolfcreek]

I don’t know but, if he lurks on this site, he’ll be able to start a large list.

[rmlew]

Please search for articles before reposting them.
No Debate Please, We're Jewish; The Dangers of the Immigration Blacklist
Jewcy ^ | April 3, 2009 | Stephen Steinlight

Posted on Tuesday, April 07, 2009 3:54:51 AM by rmlew

[rmlew]

Also, DON’T CHANGE THE TITLES

[rmlew]

This is kind of sad. At Jewcy, you can make friends. Steinlight has only one fried there, RonL.
http://www.jewcy.com/user/1974/svetistephen

[Bob017]

“Also, DON’T CHANGE THE TITLES”

Ok, will avoid changing titles in the future.

[Bob017]

“This is kind of sad. At Jewcy, you can make friends. Steinlight has only one fried there, RonL.
http://www.jewcy.com/user/1974/svetistephen";

Would it make any difference to your view if he had 1000 friends there? You could argue that having a lot of online friends indicated someone needed to get out more often.

[rmlew]

My comment was more about the unpopularity of his position, although Jewcy is a silly site trying to be hip.

[Bob017]

If he’s unpopular, I guess it’s a case of people shooting the messenger. Steinlight is correct that low skill immigration is not a good thing in the long run (if you look at High School drop out rates for children of low skilled migrant’s you’ll see what I mean).

“The Census Bureau asked CIS to do a projection based on all the models we have now for population growth, mortality rates, where we would be given the current population in 2060. We came up with a 56% increase in population. We’d be half a billion. We’d be 167 million more people, 103 million of them immigrants, that’s the equivalent of 13 cities the size of New York...

Paul Krugman has made the case that we can’t afford this immigration and in 20 years Social Security would be bankrupt. Nicholas Kristoff, the Times’ resident humanitarian, has made the same argument. This is compassion we can’t afford. Mickey Kaus on Slate. It’s hard to find people who will speak out on this. The taboo for being on the wrong side is that people won’t invite you to their next party...

“Even people who feel aggrievement because there is no group in this country more opposed to immigration than blacks, because it is killing them. Zogby did a poll for CIS that found that 77% of hispanics do not want the immigration of any more unskilled labor. That is to say, any more of their own. It threatens their own very tenuous hold on the bottom of the socio-economic ladder.

“Those people who fall over backwards to want to be loved by people of color, by Muslims, by anyone who’s skin tone is darker, who feel fundamentally ashamed to be Americans, who feel we need to apologize for who we are, whether it is because we’re white or because we belong to this culture, those people are all in favor of this because it is some kind of justifiable retribution.

“God spare us all from tikkun olam Jews. The rural white poor in this country, they despise. They no longer particularly like blacks because their self-loathing love was not requited. Right now they think they can patronize hispanics. I’ve got news for them — it ain’t going to be for long.

“I wish they’d stop and think for a minute. Their support of this particular group, someone else is paying the price. You’re not. You’re probably college educated and have a decent job, and if not, mommy and daddy is going to take care of you. But what about folks who work for a living and have no expectations of inherited wealth? Those people are being slaughtered.”

http://lukeford.net/blog/?p=8737