Jabin Botsford/The Washington Post
Originally published by The Washington Post
Regarding the Jan. 22 front-page article “White House’s immigration agitator at center of impasse over ‘dreamers’ ”:
While I appreciated The Post’s focus on anti-immigrant zealot Stephen Miller’s role at the center of the debate on Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals, I was disappointed to see the article quote Mark Krikorian defending Mr. Miller without providing context about the extremism of Mr. Krikorian’s organization.
Mr. Krikorian’s group, the Center for Immigration Studies, is a Southern Poverty Law Center-designatedhate group that regularly distorts the facts to demonize immigrant communities. Its founder, John Tanton, is a eugenics proponent whose anti-immigrant activism is explicitly rooted in a desire to keep the United States a majority-white country. The center has distributed the writings of white nationalist authors, and Krikorian claimed in the wake of the crushing earthquake in Haiti that the country is “so screwed up because it wasn’t colonized long enough.”
It is critical that the ideology of figures such as Mr. Krikorian or Mr. Miller not be normalized in the urgent conversation about DACA and “dreamers.” Anti-immigrant vitriol is rooted in an ugly history of white supremacy; Congress should bear that in mind and refuse to cave to their demands.
Lizet Ocampo, Washington
The writer is the political director of
People For the American Way.
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