Immigration: Who the real extremists are

www.americanthinker.com

As Aristotle once quipped, “when the debate is lost, slander becomes the tool of the loser.”

Anyone who opposes open borders and has met with vilification rather than bona fide arguments from the pro-mass-migration side can vouch for this.

In a recent example, an anti-borders media outlet attempted to smear an international network of organizations that support secure borders, national sovereignty, and immigration policies that benefit their own citizens – including the Federation for American Immigration Reform (FAIR) – as supposed hateful extremists and “white nationalists.” Founded in 1979, FAIR has consistently pushed for immigration policies that benefit Americans, a cardinal sin for anti-borders radicals.

Calling itself the “Global Project Against Hate and Extremism,” the organization vilified FAIR by following the cynical playbook of the infamous and discredited “anti-hate” grifters and witch-hunters from the Southern Poverty Law Center. Not surprisingly, GPAHE was founded by individuals fleeing the SPLC’s sinking ship. But no amount of noise and mud-slinging (in the hope that something – anything – sticks) can distract away from who the real extremists are: the anti-borders crowd.

Entitled “American Anti-Immigrant Organizations Are Building a Network Across Europe,” the hit piece reads like a typical Stalin-era Soviet denunciation of political opponents smearing them as “fascists.” It is telling that the anonymous author wastes no time in attempting to manipulate and mislead the reader already in the title, claiming that FAIR and other organizations that constitute the International Network for Immigration Research (INIR) are “anti-immigrant.” In fact, legal immigrants work for or with FAIR because they understand very well what anti-borders radicals pretend not to understand: that mass illegal migration and a “let ‘em all in” immigration policy is not “pro-immigrant,” but hurts legal immigrants as much as native-born citizens.

In the article, GPAHE leans heavily into woke intersectionality, showing us how radical the organization really is. “The translatlantic anti-immigrant network,” including FAIR, “strengthened by organizations linked to Hungarian conservative institutions follow a pattern similar to anti-woman and anti-LGBTQ+ movements.” Of course these are calumnies that anyone to the right of Marx or the “Squad” has heard thrown around ad nauseam.

As those accusations make clear, anti-borders radicals like GPAHE claim that the opponents of unchecked mass migration are somehow “anti-woman.” However, the irony here is rich given that the anti-borders policies championed by the likes of GPAHE have made Western women fear for their safety in public. Law enforcement and news outlets report on a regular basis new instances of women and young girls on both sides of the Atlantic being assaulted, raped, groomed, or even killed by illegal migrant criminals. In other words, a veritable “war on women” – courtesy of pro-mass-migration politicians and activists. The anti-borders crowd ignores this threat to women and girls, who are apparently acceptable collateral damage in the race to a borderless, globalist paradise.

The same goes for illegal alien crime in general and deeply misguided sanctuary policies that undermine the rule of law and make communities much less safe by releasing dangerous foreign criminals onto the street, sometimes repeatedly, to cause harm to innocent citizens. For anti-borders extremists, this is a problem to be simply ignored and censored away.

Why? The reason is disturbingly cynical but very simple: nothing can be allowed to get in the way of the mass-migration agenda. During the 20th century, communists rationalized the incredible human cost of their policies – mass murder, starvation, poverty, repression, and general misery – by shrugging and quipping that “you have to break some eggs to make an omelet.” The “omelet” was the future utopia envisioned by Marx.

Illegal immigration radicals are aiming for essentially the same utopia, a one-world system without borders and nations. The difference is that for the communists the tool to carry out their world revolution was to be the international proletariat. For today’s extreme left it is migrants, simply because it has long ago sold out working-class Americans, British, and Frenchmen. Thus, more and more citizens on both sides of the Atlantic are coming to the common-sense conclusion that open borders are a much more extreme position than secure borders and the enforcement of immigration laws. The extremists recognize this and are increasingly worried, but they refuse to deviate one iota from their radical agenda.

Smears from GPAHE and its fellow travelers are nothing new. Such tired and recycled tropes have long been flung at FAIR and anyone else defending borders and the rights of citizens. What the attack does show, however, is what anti-borders forces fear most: international cooperation among organizations that support common sense over insanity and chaos.

The reality is that anti-borders radicals have been coordinating across national borders – to the detriment of Western societies – for a long time, but, hypocritically, are triggered by any competition or pushback. If history is any guide, we know that those who believe that they should have the right to freely express themselves and organize, but would deny the same to their political opponents, are not the good guys. In fact, they usually are the real extremists.

Pawel Styrna is director of international relations at the Federation for American Immigration Reform. He is a legal immigrant and holds a Ph.D. in history from American University in Washington, D.C.

Image: Grok, ai-generated illustration