SPLC Report: An ‘American Legion’ booklet, full of anti-immigrant falsehoods

America’s largest veterans organization has launched another campaign — a hard-line attack on undocumented immigrants that’s at odds with the legion’s mainstream image. As part of this effort, the legion, which purports to speak for 2.7 million members, recently issued a booklet that regurgitates discredited and often completely false information about how “illegals” are bringing crime, disease, and terrorism to this country, even as they wreck the economy for natives.

   An American Legion post in East Haven, Conn., opened its doors last year to anti-immigration
   activists including Walter Moore (with sign). (AP)

The legion’s 34-page booklet, A Strategy to Address Illegal Immigration in the United States, asserts that “poverty, political instability, disease and war” are “on our back doorstep” because of porous borders and the failure of the government to stringently enforce immigration laws. But in making its case, the legion repeatedly cites dubious sources, ignores well-known facts and makes baseless claims — such as the false assertion that the undocumented infected more than 7,000 people in America with leprosy during a recent four-year period…..[ more ]

NOTES: CNN’s Resident “Anti-Immigrant Nativist,” anchor Lou Dobbs, repeated and popularized false claims about immigrants and leprosy. When confronted by “60 Minutes” and numerous critics, Dobbs refused to correct his statements, saying his program did not make errors.

Lou Dobbs is a major media Bigot. A Racist, Xenophobic Extortionist of NAZI proportions — in the mode of Dr. Joseph Goebbels — “Minister for Public Enlightenment & Propaganda in Nazi Germany.” Lou Dobbs’s anti-immigrant campaign is very similar to that conducted against Jews in NAZI Germany…..[ more ] [ Lou Dobb's NAZI Propaganda ]

In Their Own Words

Bigots with guns: “[W]e need the National Guard to clean out all our cities and round them up. They are hard-core criminals. They have no problem slitting your throat and taking your money or selling drugs to your kids or raping your daughters, and they are evil people.” — Chris Simcox, co-founder of the Minuteman Project and president of the Minuteman Civil Defense Corps, in a 2003 interview with the SPLC Intelligence Report

Bigots in suits: “We’re not only dealing with the people problem, but we’re dealing with criminal enterprises, we’re dealing with a huge drug problem, and we’re dealing with a potential terrorism problem as well, because the border is not secured.” — Rep. James Sensenbrenner (R-Wis.), at a 2006 press conference

Bigots with guns: “[T]o me, there is a clear and present danger of insurrection, sedition and succession by those who buy into the fact that this really is Mexico’s territory, and doesn’t belong to the United States and should be taken back.” — James Gilchrist, co-founder of the Minuteman Project, in a 2005 interview with the OC Organizer

Bigots in suits: “The threat to the United States comes from two things: the act of immigration combined with the cult of multiculturalism. We will never be able to win in the clash of civilizations if we don’t know who we are.” — Rep. Tom Tancredo (R-Colo.), in a 2006 interview with Right Wing News

Bigots with guns: “You get up there with a rifle and start shooting four or five of them a week, the other four or five thousand behind them are going to think twice about crossing that line.” — A member of the neo-Nazi National Alliance participating in a Minuteman border patrol in Arizona, to the SPLC Intelligence Report in 2005

Bigots in suits: “I think they’ve done a terrific job. It just shows that it works when you go and make an effort and when you work hard. It’s a doable thing. It’s a shame that the private citizen has to go in there and start patrolling our borders.” — Calif. Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger, praising the Minutemen in a 2005 interview with KFI-AM

Related Articles:

1. The two faces of the anti-immigrant bigots in the ReTHUGlican Party
2. CNN’s Lou Dobbs – The Minister of ‘Propaganda and Enlightenment’
3. Texas Vigilante Joe Horn – A Cold-Blooded Murderer!

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