After House Republican leadership unveiled its immigration reform principles last week, House Speaker John Boehner (R-OH) is not the only one being sharply criticized by anti-immigrant organizations. The anti-immigrant movement is also targeting organizations supportive of the measures Boehner and his colleagues proposed.
Roy Beck of NumbersUSA and Bob Dane of the Federation for American Immigration Reform specifically noted pro-reform group FWD.us and its co-founder Mark Zuckerberg. Beck and Dane targeted Zuckerberg for his organization’s response to the 30-page memo Sen. Jeff Sessions’ (R-AL) distributed to House Republicans last week. Beck told MSNBC that Zuckerberg’s views are “more out of the mainstream than ours [NumbersUSA’s]” and Dane claimed the Facebook founder is “no friend of the American worker” by advocating for reforms.
While Beck and Dane’s criticisms were quite direct, they lack credibility given that the movement they represent has a long-established tradition of opposing immigration reforms by creating smaller front groups. Older groups like the Programmer’s Guild, which was founded by Center for Immigration Studies fellow John Miano, have previously provided the anti-immigrant movement a voice in technology areas where Zuckerberg also works. Other groups that disingenuously claim to speak on behalf of American workers include Americans4Work and the Black American Leadership Alliance – both of which held events last year featuring prominent anti-immigrant activists and lawmakers.
Together these groups continue presenting themselves as being representative of American workers. In actuality, they are created by – and comprised of – representatives of the anti-immigrant movement attempting to make their nativist agenda appear more popular than it truly is.