As VDARE.com Editor Peter Brimelow noted in his roundup of the current Amnesty push, the most important thing to keep in mind is that “We’ve been here before—several times.” Thus the Main Stream Media (MSM) has recently been hyping as news the attempts of La Raza Republicans to con gullible pro-lifers into thinking that supporting immigration control means you support eugenic sterilization and China’s policy of forced abortions. But this is simply an old smear recycled.

In fact, pro-amnesty Conservatism Inc. types have repeatedly tried to claim immigration patriots have a secret abortion/eugenics agenda:

• In 2004, Jason Riley who would later author Let Them In: The Case for Open Borders, published a hysterical Op Ed attacking FAIR and Center for Immigration Studies of, among other things, being a “big fan of China's one-child policy” who have “made common cause with radical environmentalists and zero-population-growth fanatics on the leftist fringe.”[ GOP Nativists Tarnish Reagan's 'Shining City', Wall Street Journal, March 15, 2004]
• In 2006, La Raza Republican Chris Cannon faced an immigration patriot challenger in the Republican Primary. And, in addition to pretending to oppose amnesty, he also accused his opponent of having “connections to people and organizations that advocate anti-life measures such as euthanasia, sterilization, population control and abortion.” INFORMATION ABOUT ANTI-IMMIGRATION GROUPS, Chris Cannon website, Archive.org link, captured August 2, 2006.
• In 2007, when Tom Tancredo was about to enter the presidential race, the American Spectator published an anonymous blog stating “it’s not clear Tancredo is in line with the mainstream, social conservative wing of the GOP he seeks to align himself with” because of his ties to FAIR and other groups that are tied to people who support abortion rights.[Tancredo’s Dubious Allies, By The Prowler, January 16, 2007] The extraordinary mendacity of this charge can be judged from the fact that Tancredo had a 100% voting record from the National Right to Life committee.

Now, Mario H. Lopez of the Republican Hispanic Leadership Fund has written (or more likely put his name on) a lengthy piece in the Human Life Review, entitled “Hijacking Immigration.”

To give Lopez (or his ghostwriter) his due, this attack, with 197 footnotes and nearly 10,000 words, is much more comprehensive than the previous attacks. But while Lopez has more documentation, his argument basically the same guilt-by-association trick: many board members, former board members and/or donors involved in FAIR, CIS, and Numbers USA, including VDARE.com writer Don Collins, Sally Epstein, Governor Richard Lamm, and—the ultimate bogeyman of them all—John Tanton!!! have supported environmental conservation and abortion rights in addition to their support of patriotic immigration reform.

Nowhere in Lopez’ entire piece does he even suggest that any of these organizations have ever promoted legalized abortion and birth control—or any indeed other policy other than limiting immigration.

However, the MSM, which usually presents the Religious Right and Grover Norquist as the root of all evil in America, has done its job in hyping this supposed controversy. The Washington Post published a front page story[Effort to change immigration law sparks internal battle within GOP, By Peter Walsten, February 13, 2013 ]about the controversy noting that Norquist, Rubio, along with the US Conference of Catholic Bishops, and the Latino Partnership for Conservative Principles are promoting the meme.

And POLITICO ran an op-ed [The anti-immigration cabal , February 12, 2013] that argued “Conservatives, regardless of their view on immigration, should not work hand in hand with groups like FAIR, NumbersUSA and CIS that are part of the Planned Parenthood family and whose beliefs are based on an anti-life platform.”  

The article was credited to Frank Cannon and Jeffrey Bell who list themselves as staffers of the American Principles Project, a Christian Right group. There was no mention that Bell is also a corporate lobbyist.

These accusations barely merit a response. Again, no one has actually alleged that FAIR, Numbers, or CIS have actually promote abortion or birth control. Rather they are just allegedly connected to those who do.

Hypocritically, the very people making these accusations have no problem working with pro-choice leaders. Grover Norquist has even said the GOP should welcome supporters of legalized abortion. [Grover Norquist Gives Religious Conservatives Tough Love, By Dan Gilgoff, US News, June 11, 2009]

One of the groups leading this smear is the leftist National Immigration Forum, which summarized Lopez’s article into a two page flyer which Lopez passed out both at Grover Norquist’s Wednesday Morning Meeting and to congressional staff with the assistance of Rubio.

Interestingly enough, the National Immigration Forum receives millions of dollars from George Soros’ Open Society Foundation and the Ford Foundation—both of which also provide millions to Planned Parenthood.

And I have two thoughts that go beyond just rebutting Lopez and his friends.

• The latest push for amnesty is almost solely premised on the (absurd) idea that GOP needs to pass it to win future election. But the pro-life movement is no position to make that argument.

Having worked in immigration politics, I have frequently discussed the issue with friends and acquaintances. Never has anyone told me that they would vote GOP, except that they perceive the party as hostile to immigration.

In contrast, I almost never discuss abortion with anyone. Nonetheless, I can think of scores of occasions when someone has volunteered to me that the only reason they vote Democratic because they favor birth control and abortion.

We can point to two Senate races in this last election, Richard Mourdock in Indiana and Todd Akin in Missouri, where the GOP lost safe seats apparently because of statements on abortion. Similarly, Rush Limbaugh’s comment that Sandra Fluke was a “slut” cost the GOP hundreds of thousands of young, white, female voters.

Yes, it was because the way these candidates stated their position, not just the fact that they were pro-life. However, if an immigration patriot candidate made an immigration-related gaffe that cost them the election, we would never hear the end of it.

• Some immigration patriots obviously feel that left-wing arguments against immigration (environment, impact on blacks) are somehow more respectable than conservative arguments (rule of law, national security), and much more respectable than arguments from demographics or culture.

For example, The Center for Immigration Studies’ Jerry Kammer wrote a long backgrounder praising John Tanton’s support of environmental and family planning organizations—but insisting that he has a "tin ear" for the “sensitivities of immigration” a.k.a. the danger of being accused of “racism”. Thus, for example, Tanton allows Wayne Lutton to edit the Social Contract Magazine although he was once associated with the Council of Conservative Citizens. And, notoriously, Tanton has observed that Mexicans have different ideas about family size than Americans.

But in fact, as this latest smear campaign obviously understands, there are a great number of pro-lifers who find connections to Planned Parenthood more troubling than connections to the Council of Conservative Citizens.

That said, the real lesson of this latest smear is that the pro-amnesty lobby has already given up on actually winning the policy argument. It’s worth noting that both Lopez’s study and the POLITICO Op Ed both went out of their way to acknowledge that there are reasons to oppose immigration. But they made no effort to grapple with these reasons. Instead, they simply appealed to conservatives to shun immigration patriot groups because their alleged connections to the pro-choice movement.

Peter Brimelow once famously quipped that a “racist” is someone “who is winning an argument with a liberal. Or, too often, a libertarian. And, on the immigration issue, even some confused conservatives." [Alien Nation , 1995, page 10]

Similarly, we can now say that an “anti-life” immigration patriot is someone who is winning an argument with one of the all too many pro-amnesty lobbyists infesting Conservatism. Inc.