Conservatives launch Families First on Immigration
So-called 'compromise' calls for end of 14th Amendment citizenship birthright
WorkingForChange
02.08.07
Unlike last year's Evangelical Climate Initiative, an attempt to build bridges to combat global warming that drew
headlines and stunned some longtime "traditional values" conservative evangelicals, the newly formed "Families First on
Immigration" appears to have elicited little support for its grand entrance into the immigration debate.
And, unlike the numerous religious organizations that have consistently supported undocumented workers and their
families, Families First on Immigration is focused more on securing the U.S. borders and eliminating citizenship
birthright than with the human rights of immigrants.
Under the 14th Amendment to the U.S. Constitution, anyone born in the United States is a citizen -- a right Families
First is waging an extremely uphill battle to overturn.
After months of missing the debate on the issue, Christian conservatives are now staking out a position on immigration.
The new group is a coalition that involves such conservative notables as former Republican Party presidential hopeful
Gary Bauer, who heads up a group called American Values, former Bush advisor to Catholic voters, Deal Hudson of the
Morley Institute for Church & Culture, and David Keene of the American Conservative Union, are advancing what they call religiously grounded
positions on immigration.
For quite some time, the religious sector has had contrasting views on immigration. Nowhere was this more in evidence
than during an address Joan Maruskin, the liberal director of the Church World Service Immigration Program, gave at an
immigration conference held last April organized by the Family Research Council, a Washington-based Christian
conservative lobbying group.
Against the backdrop of an FRC-sponsored member poll that found that 90 percent of respondents chose forced deportation
as the appropriate fate for the estimated 11 to 12 million undocumented immigrants here, Maruskin called the Bible "an
immigration handbook" and argued in favour of amnesty -- to what observers said what a decidedly tepid response.
Nearer the other side of the debate is Families First on Immigration, which in January sent letters to President George
W. Bush and to leaders of the new Democratic controlled Congress urging them "to adopt a grand compromise on the
divisive issue that includes strong border security, an amnesty for illegals already here who are relatives of citizens
and an end to birthright citizenship," the Washington Times reported.
"Our position really is consistent with Christian teachings and with the rule of law," said Manuel Miranda, chairman of
the Third Branch Conference, a coalition of over 150 grassroots leaders, who has brought together more than 30 top shelf
conservatives on this issue.
"Out of concern for keeping families together, the religious leaders propose granting citizenship to any illegal aliens
in the country who are related to U.S. citizens. This would include anyone who has had a child born here, often referred
to as an 'anchor baby,'" the Washington Times pointed out.
"In return, the federal government would end birthright citizenship, which automatically grants U.S. citizenship to
anyone born here, regardless of his parents' legal status. The 14th Amendment says 'all persons born or naturalized in
the United States ... are citizens of the United States.'"
"This is a real compromise," Miranda claimed. "On the one hand, there is legalization of a large number of people, but
conservatives get the settlement of the thorniest issue for them in the immigration debate."
"We weren't surprised that leaders of the religious right finally got into the game," Devin Burghart, the program
director of the Building Democracy Initiative at the Chicago, Illinois-based Center for New Community, told me in a
telephone interview. "The organization is trying to stake out a more moderate position than the Minutemen and other
extremist anti-immigration organizations, and it is using a religious frame to try and woo supporters."
"While the language the group is using is more moderate sounding -- touting a compromise solution to the problem -- its
anti-immigrant positions are quite radical," Burghart added. "And although they claim to be in line with traditional
religious teachings, they seem to be ignoring much of the Bible, particularly passages about welcoming strangers."
"It's a disingenuous attempt to appear to be not anti-Latino while at the same time pandering to their right-wing base,"
Mark Potok, the director of the Southern Poverty Law Centre's Intelligence Project, said in a recent telephone
interview. "These leaders are desperately trying to hold their coalition together that very likely cannot stay
together."
Earlier Manuel Miranda, the former judicial nominations counsel to then Senate Majority Leader Bill Frist (R-TN) and to
the Senate Judiciary Committee, and a man who has known his fair share of controversy, told CBN: "Until now, religious
leaders have been criticized for staying uninvolved in the immigration debate ... This coalition gets them involved,
they offer to come to the table and offer ideas they can eventually support. Previously, the White House did not invite
their participation, and they did not offer their help. With certain results, a wider participation may get the
President wider support to allow Republicans and Democrats to obtain a coherent reform. This new coalition is bigger and
broader than the Secure Border Coalition that dominated the debate on the right in the last go round."
Miranda, who is a spokesperson for the coalition, "had one foot in the political graveyard" in 2004, according to a
November 2005 report in The Hill.
"In the wake of a Washington scandal, he had resigned his congressional post as lawmakers questioned his ethics and
federal authorities investigated him. Most political observers believed that Miranda's days as a player in the
Republican Party were over," The Hill noted.
By 2005, Miranda was once again "a widely respected leader among conservative activists" due to the "leading role" he
played "in thwarting the Harriet Miers Supreme Court nomination." In early January of this year, Miers resigned as White
House Counsel, effective January 31.
According to The Hill, "Miranda's successful behind-the-scenes and public opposition to Miers is the culmination of a
remarkable journey since he resigned his job with Frist because of involvement in a controversy over the publication of
sensitive Democratic documents known as 'Memogate.'"
In 2004, Democrats "accused Miranda of stealing internal Democratic memos off a Judiciary Committee computer server," an
act that several Republican senators called "improper after [Miranda] admitted to reading the memos, which a junior
Republican Judiciary aide downloaded from the unsecured server."
He claimed "that he had neither broken the law nor Senate rules by reading the memos, but key Republican Senators did
not back him," The Hill reported.
Although it was reported that Miranda felt he had been "betrayed by Republicans," there were conservatives who stood by
him, and "the American Conservative Union dubbed him 'an American hero' for bringing the memos to light."
Miranda formed the National Coalition to End Judicial Filibusters, a group that actively worked to have the Republican
Senate leadership invoke the so-called "nuclear option," a parliamentary tactic aimed at stripping Senate Democrats of
the right to filibuster judicial nominees. Miranda's coalition eventually grew to encompass some 200 conservative
groups; later changing its name to the Third Branch Conference.
His work derailing the Miers nomination and advocating the "nuclear option" in the Senate won him near universal
approval from conservative lobbying groups. It is curious that such a controversial ideologue would be the spokesperson
for a group that claims to represent conciliation and compromise.
Miranda told me in a telephone interview that, "We are asking the president to reopen the debate. We have been
circulating a policy paper for comment and review called 'Good Stewards Good Neighbors.'"
The policy paper will definitely "add something to the debate," he said, but lamented that the "Democratic-controlled
congress doesn't seem eager to address immigration."
Miranda said that the Minutemen, a vigilante group that patrols the U.S.-Mexico border, was not currently a "part of the
coalition," but "if they agreed to our fundamental principles, they could join on."
At the heart of the Families First on Immigration proposal is the elimination of birthright citizenship which
conservative columnist and radio talk show host Jane Chastain has termed the United States' "dirty little secret."
"Illegal immigration is a human tragedy that disrupts lives and separates families," Families First on Immigration wrote
in the letter to Bush, a letter that also places blame for the problem on officials in Mexico. "It is a failure of two
governments: the one that fails its people and the one that invites their departure for cheap labor's sake."
In its letter to Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid of Nevada and Speaker of the House Nancy Pelosi of California, the
group said that it "believe [s] that there is a need for such oversight [on immigration]as soon as possible. Our hope is
that such oversight will lead to a better considered reform and a cohesive immigration policy that goes well beyond
Band-Aid politics."
Others conservatives that have joined the coalition include longtime conservative direct-mail guru Richard A. Viguerie,
the Rev. Donald Wildmon of American Family Association, the Rev. Louis Sheldon of Traditional Values Coalition and Rabbi
Aryeh Spero of Caucus for America, and Paul Weyrich, widely considered one of the founding fathers of the modern
conservative movement and the head of the Free Congress Foundation.
The most abhorrent aspect of Families First on Immigration's agenda is the removal of birthright citizenship, said Devin
Burghart. "It is an attack on civil rights in general and on the 14th amendment specifically, which is a cornerstone of
our democracy."
According to Burghart, an activist/researcher who has been tracking developments around immigration for several years,
Families First on Immigration "is hungry for new members and hopes to tap into a new funding stream. They saw how
successful the Minuteman Political Action Committee was in raising money and they hope to strike while the iron is hot."
The organization appears to be a "bridge group' said Burghart, "aimed at bridging the gap between the hard core
anti-immigration movement and the religious right."
In terms of the issues that it is raising, the Southern Poverty Law Center's Mark Potek believes that it is unlikely
that the group will have any "chance in a Democratic controlled congress."
However, while the group may not have an immediate impact visa via legislation, it will no doubt try to "inject
immigration issues into the heart of 2008 presidential campaign," said Burghart. If it is able to accomplish that, it
will be seen as a success."
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For more please see the Bill Berkowitz archive.
Bill Berkowitz is a longtime observer of the conservative movement. His WorkingForChange column Conservative Watch
documents the strategies, players, institutions, victories and defeats of the American Right.