Roy Beck (top) speaking at the 1997 Council of Conservative Citizens gathering, a group that calls African Americans & Blacks “a retrograde species of humanity”
“Farmers Branch is small locale in the grand scheme of things but its role looms quite large. A victory for Farmers Branch means other cities will follow with similar ordinances.”
That’s Roy Beck of NumbersUSA confirming what we’ve known for some time: anti-immigrant groups are using small American communities as guinea pigs to test the viability of controversial nativist laws. Farmers Branch has been mired in a legal vortex for four years now as anti-immigrant groups continue to push divisive ordinances through the courts. The ordinance itself is similar to others concocted by anti-immigrant legal whiz Kris Kobach in small towns such as Fremont, Nebraska and Hazelton, Pennsylvania.
It is likely that the Farmers Branch ordinance, which aims to ban undocumented immigrants (and essentially anyone perceived as undocumented) from renting housing, will be definitively deemed unconstitutional by the courts. Despite that eventuality, the ordinance has cost the town $6 million so far. NumbersUSA bragged on its website that it was contributing $100,000 to Farmers Branch’s legal defense fund. But that will barely make a dent in the ill-conceived bill’s overall price-tag.
NumbersUSA has been particularly keen on throwing money in Kobach’s direction of late. Last month, Beck announced that NumbersUSA was financing a lawsuit against the Department of Homeland Security, and had hired none other than Kris Kobach to lead the effort.
That NumbersUSA is once again teaming up with Immigration Reform Law Institute’s wonder boy, Kobach, is more evidence that the organizations created by white nationalist John Tanton are still closely aligned.
Kris Kobach has long faced harsh criticism from Kansas constituents for neglecting his duties as their Secretary of State. Still though, he has undertaken yet another massive project—like his work in Arizona, Alabama, and Hazelton, PA, and myriad other locales—that simply fulfills his obsession with immigration policy, but is wholly unrelated to his responsibilities to the people of Kansas.
Kobach’s “home away from home” that continually leads him far from his constituents is the aforementioned Immigration Reform Law Institute (IRLI). IRLI was created in 1985 by John Tanton, the architect of the contemporary anti-immigrant movement. When it comes to immigrant bashing, all roads lead home. In this case, home is firmly rooted in white nationalism.