On Tuesday, October 5, 2021, MIRR Alliance participated in the National Immigrant Inclusion Conference (NIIC), moderating a panel sponsored by UnidosUS titled:
The Modern Anti-Immigrant Movement: The Scope of the Threat & What We Can Do About It
The session exposed the dangers posed by the modern anti-immigrant movement and highlighted exciting new efforts to defeat them. This movement was manifested in an entire ecosystem of influential think tanks, litigating organizations, front groups purportedly representing progressive causes, a powerful media machine, and allied elected officials to undermine support for immigration reform while advancing anti-immigrant policies and inaccurate negative narratives about newcomers. Participants learned about the origins and sources of support for this movement, as well as steps pro-immigrant advocates could take to diminish its effectiveness and reach.
The session explored:
- The then-current state of the anti-immigrant movement: its size, scope, and breadth.
- New research documenting how nearly 200 foundations had provided nearly a quarter of a billion dollars to some 50 501(c)(3) nonprofit anti-immigrant groups.
- The racist and eugenicist origins of the anti-immigrant movement, and ongoing litigation to gain access to archives of the movement’s founder.
- Outreach to GOP moderates and center-right “persuadables” to disassociate themselves from a movement with explicitly racist and white nationalist ties.
- Other steps being planned by an emerging coalition of organizations to delegitimize, defund, and de-couple the anti-immigrant movement from its other sources of power.
Speakers:
- Lola Ibrahim (Moderator)—Executive Director of MIRR Alliance
- Devin Burghart – Executive director of the Institute for Research & Education on Human Rights (IREHR), who had researched the anti-immigrant movement’s path from the margins to the mainstream for nearly three decades.
- Hassan Ahmad – Immigration attorney and plaintiff in Ahmad v. University of Michigan, a Freedom of Information Act lawsuit brought to stop the obfuscation of John Tanton’s sealed papers, and political activist in Virginia.
