If it has seemed for 30 years that powerful forces have intentionally prevented the rule of law in an orderly immigration system, Losing Control is a new book that tells you how it was done.
I know a lot of this story. I've worked on the issue full-time since 1991, and was a reporter covering it before that. But I learned a lot of new details from this book, enough that they kept me from skimming and kept me reading every word for each new revelation.
At times in the descriptions of massive efforts to wipe out restrictionist organizations from the public square altogether, I wondered how NumbersUSA and our members' advocacy have survived at all, let alone continued to wield so much influence.
A retired Pulitzer-Prize-honored investigative reporter, Jerry Kammer is upfront about his biases throughout the book. He is a liberal. He is not disillusioned with liberal goals. But he believes the giant predominantly liberal institutions of philanthropic foundations and the elite mainstream media have betrayed liberal principles and the American public with the way they have manipulated the public policy of immigration.
Now, he is telling the inside story as he experienced it over the last three decades as a reporter and analyst of the issue living and working throughout the Southwest, northern Mexico and Washington D.C.
We're in the hands of a consummate life-long story teller and explainer. And he seems at all times to be like a friend sitting down on our back porch with a glass of tea and telling us how everything worked out as it did, with full candor of what he knows and feels.
LOSING CONTROL: How a Left-Right Coalition Blocked Immigration Reform and Provoked the Backlash That Elected Trump
Book -- $14.99. Kindle -- $1.99
https://www.amazon.com/Losing-Control-Left-Right-Coalition-Immigration-ebook/dp/B08B2ZMW4Z
Kammer names names of institutions and individuals inside them that have distorted American politics and allowed politicians to consistently take the side of law-breaking employers over the interests of vulnerable American workers. Particularly engaging are his descriptions of how major foundations maneuvered media coverage of immigration, which gave politicians the green light to serve their open-borders lobbyist friends.
Responding to the stop-amnesty victory of NumbersUSA and other activist groups in defeating the Bush-Kennedy-McCain bill of 2007, Carnegie helped fund and organize immigration expansionists in a campaign that continues to this day to "insult, defame and defenestrate restrictionists." The foundations dispersed funds to media organizations with encouragement to keep us and other restrictionist groups out of the public eye if possible. When it thought necessary to mention us, the media were provided ways to do so in a negative light. The most obvious example was the decision to have the Southern Poverty Law Center label most restrictionists as "hate groups." (NumbersUSA has always avoided that label but not plenty of other whole-cloth false epithets.)
Kammer doesn't spare our restrictionist movement from his journalist gaze. We may not agree with all of his observations about our organizations and their leaders, but that comes with the territory in which our opponents are so candidly exposed.
The extreme globalist and multi-cultural agenda of the Carnegie, Ford, Atlantic and Soros foundations led to hundreds of millions in gifts to organizations on the left and the right to increase immigration and to advocate for both illegal immigrants and illegal immigration. Ford put $109 million into a campaign to guarantee full "equal rights and opportunities" to illegal aliens.
This week as the Florida legislature gave the governor a toothless E-Verify bill, we saw media stories continuing to quote advocates for illegal hiring telling lies about E-Verify that had been debunked repeatedly in this year and every year of the last 20. How can this happen? One reason may be the generous donations the book tells us that have been made by the foundations through the years to undermine faith in E-Verify.
Remember those years when the streets were filled with marchers for amnesty, blocking traffic and dominating the news? Kammer describes how the Ford Foundation poured millions into that endeavor after a Center for Community Change organizer said comprehensive immigration reform would not be possible without that kind of demonstration of power and threat. The woman who chaired that organization later became Pres. Obama's principle advisor on immigration.
How did the labor movement turn against its century-long position for low immigration and tight labor markets. Kammer has a story.
On the issue of immigration: What about the failure of most Black politicians to represent the interests and the opinions of their Black constituents? Or the environmental movement's about-face on population stability and sustainability? Or the failures of the mainstream media to operate by the professional 20th century journalism codes in their coverage? Or the intentional, internal sabotage of immigration enforcement under each of the Presidents since the 1986 amnesty compromise that was to end most illegal immigration by ending most hiring of illegal aliens?
Kammer has stories for all of those. They aren't pretty. But perhaps they will steel our resolve on this Independence Day weekend to prove that the grassroots of this country can indeed organize well enough to save this country from the powerful forces that have been working so hard against our self-determination as a national community.
ROY BECK is Founder & CEO of NumbersUSA
