Did an anti-immigrant hate group from the fringe “English-only” movement that for years has unsuccessfully sought to squash any bilingualism in the United States recently meet with President Stephen Miller at the White House? This press release from ProEnglish sure makes it sound like it:
ProEnglish Executive Director Stephen Guschov and ProEnglish Director of Government Relations Dan Carter visited the White House to discuss a variety of official English legislation issues with a senior legislative aide to President Donald Trump.
Bannon’s gone, Omarosa is spilling to the talk show circuit, Ivanka and Jared are hiding from Mueller, which doesn’t leave many other possibilities. Plus, the agenda included the white supremacist immigration wish list Miller is trying to usher in as he continues to derail the DREAM Act:
The White House meeting, which occurred in the East Wing, focused on Trump administration support for the English Language Unity Act, the RAISE Act, the COST Act, and also the possibility of President Trump repealing former President Clinton’s onerous Executive Order 13166 with a new Executive Order signed by the President.
That “onerous” order had agencies “develop a plan for delivering their services to people with ‘limited English proficiency.’” And Miller—who as a less follicly challenged teen dumped a childhood pal for being Latino—can’t have that. The truth is groups like ProEnglish have been colluding with white supremacists like Miller for years, except now they have routes to enact their hateful agenda.
ProEnglish is a part of the Tanton network, a series of racist groups founded or funded by retired ophthalmologist and eugenics enthusiast John Tanton, who has “spent decades at the heart of the white nationalist movement.” Over the years, Tanton’s groups have consistently helped derail bipartisan immigration efforts.
Southern Poverty Law Center:
Three Washington, D.C. organizations most responsible for blocking comprehensive immigration reform in 2007 are part of a network of groups created by a man who has been at the heart of the white nationalist movement for decades, according to a report issued today by the Southern Poverty Law Center.
At the heart of those efforts in the Senate was then-member Jefferson Beauregard Sessions III and his then-aide Stephen Miller, who, when a comprehensive immigration reform bill passed the Senate by a massive bipartisan majority, “literally wrote the 23-page handbook that House members were given on how to fight the deal”:
In 2008, NumbersUSA awarded Sen. Sessions their Defender of the Rule of Law award for the Senator’s work in obstructing immigration reform. A year earlier, FAIR honored Sessions with their Franklin Society award for his opposition to immigration legislation in 2007. Sessions was also feted at FAIR’s board of advisors meeting and was the keynote speaker at the advisory board’s dinner. Numerous press releases from NumbersUSA and FAIR have been effusive in their praise for Sessions,applauding Sessions’ stand to “protect American workers in the Senate immigration debate” and calling him their “No. 1 champion for American workers” on immigration issues. After the McCain-Kennedy immigration reform bill was defeated in 2007, a FAIR newsletter thanked Sessions for his leadership and wrote that “no one played a more important and more public role” in defeating the bill.
Following Donald Trump’s nomination, ProEnglish met with and enthusiastically supported his appointments and nominees. ProEnglish met with Mike Pence (no word if Mother was present). After Sessions’s nomination, the group applauded the administration for promoting the “longtime official English supporter”:
President-elect Donald Trump’s victory in November, has given advocates of official English renewed optimism that English could finally be made our official language. Both President-elect Trump and Mike Pence have been outspoken supporters of English language policies, and have tapped numerous cabinet officials, such as Sessions, who have demonstrated their support for making English our official language.
Now Sessions heads the Justice Department and Miller plots in the White House, playing immigration puppeteer in the Oval Office and consistently derailing bipartisan efforts proposed by legislators like Senators Dick Durbin (D-IL) and Lindsey Graham (R-SC) in favor of extreme efforts from Senators John Cornyn (R-TX) and Tom Cotton (R-AR). And ProEnglish couldn’t be happier. From the group’s press release:
When President Trump was campaigning for the White House in 2015 and 2016, he frequently remarked, “We have a country where to assimilate, you have to speak English.”
And “the best words.” Only “the best words.”
