April 2005 See also:
—	Open Borders Lobby Loves "Reform Lite" Groups-- New Reform Bill Introduced
—	"Dim Lite" Group Undercuts Immigration-Reduction Effort Again

December 2004

Dividing our Home Against Itself: Neo-Conservative Immigration Reform Lite Groups - -Mass Immigration Management the Neo-Conservative way

Well, they have done it yet again -

Another session of Congress has closed without any reduction in the legal immigration flow of over one million per year. And those two Neo-Conservative Immigration Reform Lite Groups we've been talking about for the last few months were again instrumental in impeding any reductions.

So, it's time to name them as a first step toward a solution to the mass immigration problem. But, first, it is important to say why, so we need to go back a bit:

Paradise Lost

Harken back to the 1950s and early 1960s, if you will, to those pre-mass immigration days. Our Home then, our USA, was prosperous and relatively uncrowded with only a bit more than half of the 296 million population we have today. Then we were committed to being internally united as one people - e pluribus unum. We had our problems and challenges - Our Home USA then was not fully paradise. But ours was still a country where, for most Americans, one working parent could make a living wage for an entire family, and take a two-week vacation in the family car.

The Great Flood

But beginning with the 1965 Immigration Act, the doors of our home were opened to a flood of mass immigration. Our Home had begun to be changed forever. It is not too much of an oversimplification to say that those floodgates were opened because some of the inhabitants of the Master Bedrooms (Washington, D.C.) wanted to provide cheap labor and higher profits to please the cheap-labor lobby. And other Master Bedroom inhabitants - - certain professional ethnic group leaders - - got what they wanted: more of their own kind in our home in order to build their power base. Yet, still others had more sinister motives. They didn't like the America of the 1950s and early 1960s: united, prosperous, and free. They saw our Home as a mere house - - a mere "proposition country" populated by two-dimensional economic men and women, devoid of any traditions and institutions worth saving - and they were out to wreck it through mass immigration and multiculturalism. They wanted our United States to become borderless, and cut adrift from its cultural moorings.

So, throughout the 70s, 80s, and 90s the legal immigration floodgates were opened ever wider, and the flood of people from all over the world flowed through the doors and windows of our national home. The "cheap-labor lobby," and the "professional ethnic lobbies", and the "subvert the USA lobbies" all got what they wanted.

Indeed, the gates were opened so wide to legal immigration that, until recently, this flood of legal immigration - averaging over 1.2 million a year -- was nearly two-thirds of the TOTAL immigration flow. Counting legal and many more "intending-to-be-permanent" illegal immigrants and their children, fully 90% of our home country's population growth of 3.2 million a year now results from immigration.

With a growth rate so high that the "doubling time" is about 60 years, the United States population is growing at a faster rate than that of any other industrialized country in the world. Our population is headed for half a billion by 2050, and more than one billion in 2100, if current trends continue.

By the 1970s within our increasingly overflowing home, well-intentioned individuals realized that the great flood was overflowing our home, and that we had to do something to stop it. Several organizations with "immigration reform" as their goal sprang up.

But the flood was ever increasing. By the 1980s, the "open-house open-borders" lobby pushed not just to open the floodgates wider, but used various pretexts to funnel whole rivers of humanity into our home. After all, the people who came wanted jobs and a better way of life, and shouldn't we as (apparently) prosperous people give it to them?

In 1986, the USA enacted the first amnesty of illegal aliens. These first 3.6 million amnestied illegals then wanted to bring their families - who then pressured, along with the cheap-labor lobby and the rest of the open-border lobbies, for even more amnesties and higher levels of admissions for their group. Clever tactic that - - relentlessly pushing for successive big comprehensive amnesty bills, and using the pressure that push generated to get additional amnesties some lucky years, and to get other bills they liked along the way.

Attempting to Shut the Floodgates With A Home Divided

In the mid-to-late 1980s, there began to be a divergence among the immigration "reformers" - - it was almost too subtle to notice at first, but it was the first sign of a "house divided."

In one camp, one Washington, D.C. based, "inside-the-beltway" ostensible "reform" organization started to emphasize the approach of trying to channel and mop up the flood in each one of the rooms of our gigantic national home. Immigration management increasingly became their emphasis, and that conveniently mirrored the emphasis of Congress and the Administration which they indiscriminately cultivated.

Note that the switch from an immigration reduction to an "immigration management" approach represents an important change in both numbers and principle. Needless to say, no great effort was made to put their members on notice about this crucial shift.

While some activists were engaged primarily in mopping up the floor, trying to manage the flow of mass immigration while not actually stopping it, the others, genuine reduction advocates at the grassroots level, emphasized the approach of trying to shut the floodgates by advocating a moratorium. The real reformers increasingly emphasized halting the flow - shutting the floodgates, turning off the tap.

Many sincere U.S. population stabilization/immigration reduction grassroots activists joined one or both groups of "reformers," not knowing the difference between the two.

By 1990, the open-borders lobby had become so powerful they were able to increase legal immigration by 40%, to what has subsequently averaged over one million new immigrants a year. The rivers flowing into our national home were filled, by then, with flotillas of people, literally boat-people coming in from the Caribbean, across the Rio-Grande, and by other routes. Responding to this flood, in the early 90s, the two Washington, D.C. based "Reform Lite" groups for all practical purposes gave up trying to stop or substantially lessen the flow, and instead adopted the stance of mass-immigration-flow management.

This was the first clear signal that the "Reform Lite" groups had adopted a Neo-Conservative approach to immigration: Don't try to stop the flow - - just manage it. This approach had many benefits for the Neo-Con Lite groups because their strategies -- working hard on peripheral bills relating to the immigration system, tightening visa restrictions, increasing border patrol numbers -- did not seriously inconvenience powerful open-borders interests.

Meanwhile, the moratorium or "shut the floodgates" camp saw that the Neo-Cons "mass immigration management" was not all bad. But it did not reduce the legal flow by one single person! In fact, this legal immigration flow problem could be solved by one act of Congress. But the Neo-Con Lite organizations would not make stopping or even reducing the flow a priority - they only gave lip service to reducing the legal immigration flow.

In sharp contrast, Carrying Capacity Network [CCN] and what was later to become its ASAP! Coalition (Alliance for Stabilizing America's Population) allies worked very hard to shut the mass immigration floodgates. They were able to encourage heroic Congressman Bob Stump (R-Ariz) to actually push hard for his moratorium bill which would have enacted a moratorium on all legal immigration in excess of 300,000 per year. In 1996, over 75 members of the House of Representatives signed on to that bill, mainly as a result of CCN and its allies. Their lobbying plus the media sensation created by CCN's Huddle Studies on the Costs of Mass Immigration and CCN's Diversity Coalition for an Immigration Moratorium were the primary causes in the early 1990s of creating the pressure on Congress and the Clinton Administration to shut the floodgates and dam the flow. Even the Clinton Administration was convinced to take a position that legal immigration should be reduced from approximately a million a year down to about 600,000.

The First Neo-Con Lite Group Betrayal

So, we genuine immigration reductionists (as opposed to the Neo-Con Lite "flow management reform" groups) had the "Big Mo" in 1995 - 1996. We had momentum but, in a great surprise to all of us, the primary Neo-Con Reform Lite organization betrayed both Representative Bob Stump and the 75 (seventy-five!) members of Congress who were co-sponsoring his moratorium bill, as well as the Clinton Administration.

These Neo-Cons did an about-face (from their position of nominally supporting a moratorium early in that Congressional session) and, instead, supported a bill which would only have cut immigration to about 780,000 annually.

This cut the legs out from under both the Stump bill (which would have enacted a moratorium on all immigration in excess of 300,000 per year) and the Clinton Administration's proposed 600,000 annually. And, of course in so doing, that Neo-Con Lite group destroyed all the pressure (that had taken years to achieve) for actual reduction in immigration numbers. [Indeed, one of the benefits of pushing for a moratorium is that it creates pressure to pass other reduction bills, even if the moratorium itself does not pass.]

After this disaster, this Neo-Con Lite organization based in Washington, D.C., could truly claim to be a "player" on the Hill - - a position to which they had always aspired - - but a position which, to the grassroots activists, seems not quite honorable.

This first Neo-Con Lite group was joined in the mid-1990s by another organization, which CCN referred to one year ago as "Dim Lite." Dim Lite also encouraged the "mop up the floor, but don't shut the flood gates" approach, led by an Executive Director who described himself, more than once (in public yet!), as an "extreme moderate" incrementalist. More recently (on November 10, 2004), speaking on national TV, this Dim Lite group Executive Director stated that the 15 million illegal aliens now in our country should NOT be deported. His response was, predictably, a qualified NO, typical of the Neo-Conservative immigration management position.

Genuine reductionists, like CCN and its ASAP! Coalition allies, were (and are) puzzled by the Neo-con Lite incremental approach since it has never produced any reductions whatsoever. In any event, after the 1996 battle resulted in no reduction of legal immigration, and after Europe started to tighten its immigration laws, some of the flotilla of prospective immigrants to Europe migrated from their positions off the south coast of France, and elsewhere, and descended upon the United States. But, Neo-Con Lite and Dim Lite continued to push their incremental "mass immigration management" approach, and the flood into all the rooms of our homeland USA continued to increase.

Hallmarks of Neo-Conservatism

Just as traditional Conservatives' commitment to Balanced Budgets, Limited Government, Non-Interventionism abroad, and low levels of immigration at Home has succumbed to the Neo-Conservative massive deficits, pre-emptive war, Big Government, and mass immigration, so too have genuine immigration reductionists been battered by the two well-heeled Neo-Con Lite groups that refuse to focus on legal immigration reduction. [Never mind that the Neo-Con Lite groups did not advertise loudly and clearly (or at all, as far as we can tell) to their supporters that immigration management had become their primary goal. After all, giving only lip service to reducing legal immigration is less controversial, makes raising funds from publicity-conscious Foundations easier, and enhances one's "player" status on the Hill, where Congressmen are pleased to be relieved of being pressured to take hard positions.]

For further information on how neo-conservatives have captured two of the largest organizations in the immigration "reform" movement, as well as a more detailed account of the many ways in which these two groups are pushing a Neo-Conservative Agenda, be sure to read CCN's 2003 Alerts which are cited at the end of this article.

In 1998, a courageous reductionist was elected to Congress who recognized the necessity of pushing to shut the floodgates. In 1999, Congressman Tom Tancredo of Colorado introduced the first immigration moratorium bill since Congressman Stump had done it. But, in the 1999-2000 session of Congress, neither Neo-Con Lite nor Dim Lite made any significant effort to push for that moratorium bill.

Instead, Neo-Con Lite and Dim Lite continued to work on the periphery, pushing immigration management bills. Indeed, we have no evidence that either Neo-Con Lite or Dim Lite ever seriously pushed the moratorium bill in the 1999-2000 session of Congress.

By and by, these two "inside-the-beltway" Neo-Con groups grew ever more comfortable schmoozing with politicians, and even more comfortable with their Neo-Conservatism. Indeed, the head of Dim Lite bragged that he had an extra office "right on the Hill." And, as far as genuine immigration reduction was concerned - - that issue was left to the poorly funded, or un-funded, grassroots activist groups - - many of whom were members of the ASAP! Coalition.

This deflection of attention from a goal of central importance, immigration reduction, to a peripheral issue, immigration flow management, is a prime characteristic of neo-conservatism.

Meanwhile, legal immigration into our home the USA increased, year after year, and grassroots immigration reduction activists across the country were getting overwhelmed and finding the Neo-Con groups increasingly unresponsive to their grassroots concerns.

The Dim Lite Group's Colossal Betrayal

Worse yet, during the 2001-2002 session, the Executive Director of the Dim Lite group, the self-proclaimed "extreme moderate," engineered a colossal betrayal of the reductionist cause. He sent out an email urging his supporters to not support the Tancredo moratorium bill. Instead, he asked his members to support what he claimed was a "better" bill, the Gekas bill, that was on its way to Committee.

Had the Gekas bill moved through Congress without amendment, it would have achieved, at best, a 20% reduction in legal immigration. Yet Dim Lite claimed this was better than the 75% reduction the Tancredo bill would have achieved! What could better demonstrate the utter bankruptcy of the immigration "incremental flow management" approach? Only the leader of a truly Neo-Conservative group would claim that a 20% reduction bill was better than a 75% reduction bill.

Because the Gekas bill would not have done anything significant about shutting the floodgates, it did not receive significant support. And, perhaps because he gave his constituents no reason to support his "milquetoast" position on immigration, Representative Gekas failed to win re-election to Congress.

Once again, Neo-Con Lite and Dim Lite failed to put any significant energy into pushing any bill which would have actually reduced legal immigration. Instead they pushed hard at the peripheral "immigration management" bills and bills relating to illegal immigration - important, to be sure, but not as important as reducing the legal flow.

Remember, the neo-conservative approach is to deflect a program away from its original goal and over a cliff into ineffectiveness.

The Open Borders Lobby Loves these Neo-Con Lite Groups

So, of course, the Open Borders lobbies love the Neo-Con Lite groups. Indeed, based on their actions, one could reasonably conclude that the Open Borders lobbies have infiltrated the Boards and senior staffs of both these Neo-Con organizations. Is it an accident - or evidence of a cozy relationship - that of the top ten immigration "reform" groups nationally, ranked according to funding, these two are at the very top?

Funny, isn't it, how if you go with the flow, helping manage the mass immigration flow, that is, you are able to raise more money? It must be said that some of the people at Neo-Con Lite and Dim Lite, particularly the mid-level staff, are sincere about U.S. population stabilization and immigration reduction. Some of them haven't been around long enough to see the Big Picture - - that, in spite of their well-intentioned efforts, they are pushing a futile and subversive deflection instead of putting their energy, commitment, and idealism into reducing total immigration.

Meanwhile, the flood continues and the resulting population growth overshoots the carrying capacity of our National Home. If one assumes that approximately half of illegal aliens [or 1.5 million] come planning to stay (and in fact are able to do so), then legal immigration of 1.2 million annually accounts for nearly half of all immigration - - and many more of the 'anchor' or seed immigrants. Illegal immigration thrives on, and is facilitated by, the existence of large communities of legal immigrants, which provide a foothold, safety, and information about both jobs and pulling the ropes of the welfare system.

Bottom line: Neo-Con Lite groups are diverting energy and attention away from the task of reducing mass legal immigration.

A Winning Strategy…If…

CCN and its ASAP! Coalition allies have a different approach which could work if Neo-Con Lite and Dim Lite organizations did not, in effect, veto a moratorium (and, therefore veto significant reduction bills) in every session of Congress by pushing for the peripheral "management" bills that accomplish little or nothing. How so?

Pushing for a moratorium on all immigration in excess of 100,000 a year, and giving the reason - - no higher number can ever result in U.S. population stabilization - - is essential. Otherwise you are just pushing for reductions of some other arbitrary number. Not to mention undercutting those who are pushing for a moratorium. Most important, pushing for a moratorium creates pressure to pass other "good" bills, and to stop "bad" ones, even if a moratorium bill itself does not pass, any time soon.

So the key strategic point is that one must push for a moratorium regardless of the likelihood, at any particular time, of getting one.

And getting a moratorium enacted is not out of the question. Should our National Home fall on seriously hard economic times anytime soon, the pressures to close America's borders and save American jobs would quickly increase enormously. Obtaining a moratorium would then be possible. But we surely won't get one unless we push for it now.

Neo-Cons Rebuff CCN's Rational Approach

Several years ago, we started privately sharing these observations about their flawed strategy with the leaders of these two "inside the beltway cocktail party circuit" Neo-Con Lite and Dim Lite groups. They had no counterargument to pushing for a moratorium then, nor do they have any such argument today. Their only retort is that pushing for a moratorium is unrealistic and that "you'll never get one." That is a self-fulfilling prophecy so long as they just keep raising more money from unknowing activists, putting their energy into "immigration management" bills, and very little energy, if any, into bills that would reduce mass immigration.

Our attempts to reason with the leaders of these groups have been to no avail. We've politely made the arguments, identified the flaws in their approach - - we even did it systematically last year (politely refusing to reveal their identities) after their refusal to push the moratorium bills.

Wanting only to change their policies, we decided over a year ago not to name them, but to critique their policies through our widely applauded Neo-Con Lite and Dim Lite Alerts so the focus would be on policy alone. Still, nothing changed, and we have another year with no reductions, and no prospect of reductions. All that money and support that comes from schmoozing inside the beltway must be comforting, but these two Neo-Con Lite groups have understandably infuriated grassroots activists, and have undercut their efforts as well (see below).

After 35 years (combined) of Neo-Con Lite's and Dim Lite's reform effort, resulting in no reductions, don't you think that a different approach is essential? We do!

So, it's time to name these groups. If you are not part of the solution, you are part of the problem.

We've got a flood going here - we need to shut the floodgates - not merely manage the flow. Just one more thing (before naming them) since genuine reductionists need to know what the problem is. It is important to see how they fit into the overall context of neo-conservative organizations - a part of the larger neo-conservative movement, which has transformed the traditional conservative movement (characterized decades ago by its commitment to very low levels of immigration). So, consider the following.

Compelling Evidence about Neo-Cons in Last Year's Alerts

The nature of Neo-conservatism and the immigration reduction movement is described in detail in the Neo-Con Lite and Dim Lite Alerts we sent out over a year ago. We made the case very effectively last year. These organizations, wittingly or not, are at the very least, not helpful, and, at the very worst, impeding genuine immigration reduction efforts. So, it is important to re-read these Alerts reprinted from a year ago so that you will have the background information which supports our position that they are obstacles to real reductions.

Perhaps now they will adopt a different approach. Surely, if they do not adopt a different approach, getting mass immigration reductions will be much harder. The flood will continue to over-flowing - - our Home will have more than half-a-billion by 2050, and a billion by 2100. The USA may then no longer be a country in which any of us would want to live.

The "Defining Moments" of the Neo-Con Lite Groups

So, we proceed to name these groups by recounting their "Defining Moments":

I. FAIR
1) In 1996, FAIR, the Federation for American Immigration Reform, undercut Representative Bob Stump, seventy-five members of Congress, and the Clinton Administration who, respectively, were pushing a moratorium on immigration in excess of 300,000 and an immigration level of 600,000. FAIR pushed, instead, a bill that would have allowed about 780,000 into the United States annually. This action fatally undercut both the conservative Representative Stump and his supporters, and the "liberal" Clinton Administration. And,

2) In the 2001 - 2002 session, Congressman Tancredo introduced his "Moratorium" bill. FAIR not only did not push it, but we can find no evidence that they even mentioned it! Indeed, NONE of FAIR's listed goals for the year 2003 (published in FAIR's Immigration Report, February, 2003, advocated any bill reducing legal immigration.

II. NumbersUSA
1) In the 2001-2002 session of Congress, NumbersUSA sent out an Email encouraging its members not to support Congressman Tancredo's moratorium bill, but, instead, to support what they called, incredibly, a "better bill" - - the Gekas bill which would at best have reduced immigration, rather arbitrarily, by only about 20% a year. To add insult to injury, they sent out this email at a time when CCN and its ASAP! Coalition allies were successfully garnering increasing Congressional co-sponsorship for Congressman Tancredo's moratorium bill. Their push for the pathetic Gekas bill successfully undercut our efforts to gain support for the moratorium bill - truly a "defining moment" for the neo-conservative NumbersUSA. And,

2) On November 10, 2004, the NumbersUSA Executive Director stated on national television he was NOT in favor of deporting the millions of illegal aliens in the USA.

These were, indeed, the defining moments in the efforts of FAIR and NumbersUSA ostensible effort to reduce mass immigration, but were by no means the only evidence of their Neo-Con mass immigration management approach. The evidence (which bolsters the case that these organizations are mass immigration management organizations - managing the flood - rather than grassroots organizations that are trying to shut the floodgates) is in the CCN Alerts from Fall 2003. You can access the following Carrying Capacity Network Alerts on our website at www.carryingcapacity.org, or you may obtain them by emailing us at carryingcapacity@covad.net:

• Unique Opportunity For Immigration Reduction: If We Push in the Right Direction"
• "Reform Lite Sell-Out, "Dim Lite Group Undercuts Immigration Reduction Effort, Again"
• "Neo-Con Reform Lite Group Undermines Immigration Reduction Efforts - Again!"

Addendum Regarding the 2003-2004 Session of Congress
FAIR and NumbersUSA Effort on HR10 and S-2845.

HR 10 and its Senate companion bill S-2845 (which failed to pass before Congress adjourned for Thanksgiving) were a mixed bag.

FAIR and NumbersUSA made a considerable effort to keep the immigration management provisions - - e.g., tighter visa controls, and greater ability to deport illegal aliens - - from being stripped from the bill: worthwhile goals in themselves [Note: As we go to press on this Alert, the ultimate outcome of these bills is still uncertain. But however the issues are resolved in Congress, the following observations are meritorious.]

But, we have to agree with Congressman Ron Paul's "The Liberty Committee" that the harm which could be done by the other provisions of the bill - - the enactment of a National I.D. Card and a National Database (for U.S. Citizens, yet!) far outweighed the "good" provisions of the bill.

In any event, Representative Paul's group is certainly correct when it says "…we ALREADY HAVE all the laws on the books necessary to close the borders, end illegal immigration, and deport every illegal alien… And, yet, it is not happening…"

We note, of course, it is not happening because:

1) These two Neo-Con groups refuse to push a moratorium on legal immigration which would generate pressure to enforce laws against illegal immigration. Indeed "The Liberty Committee's" essential point cannot be overemphasized: we already have all the laws on the books necessary to close the borders…" Thus, FAIR and NumbersUSA's overwhelmingly primary focus of tinkering with these laws is misplaced. What we really need is an incentive for the Administration to enforce those laws - that incentive would be a serious push to enact a moratorium on legal immigration in excess of 100,000 per year. When faced with a cut in their legal flow of "cheap labor," the cheap labor lobby will again try to deflect attention onto the need to reduce the illegal flow, and the Administration would be encouraged to oblige.

2) Because FAIR and NumbersUSA focus on these and other immigration management provisions, there is little incentive for grassroots activists to get behind them since these provisions would not do anything to lessen the flow, and

3) Organizations like FAIR have long favored a National I.D. Card, a position which is a typical Neo-Conservative "Big Intrusive Government" policy position. FAIR simply has no problem with the Big Government, flow-management approach.

The hour is late. The mass immigration flotilla has received increasing resistance in Europe, and has moved from the south coast of France to off the coast and borders of the United States. The Neo-Con groups that we have named have most assuredly facilitated this development. The boat people are arriving in increasing numbers, and it is time to focus, almost exclusively, on shutting the floodgates through a moratorium. In that way, we might actually get a few reductions.

We encourage you to support CCN and its ASAP! Coalition allies - all the organizations which have signed on to a 4-point platform where the primary emphasis is on advocating a moratorium.

What Successful Grassroots Activist Leaders Have Said About FAIR and NumbersUSA

Mr. Joe McCutchen is a lifelong immigration reduction leader and activist. In 1999 he founded, and partially funded with his own money, Michimpac, a Political Action Committee (PAC) designed to defeat pro open-borders advocate, Senator Spencer Abraham of Michigan. That PAC led the successful fight to unseat Senator Abraham. Joe has spent over 40 years actively involved in the immigration reduction cause.