Immigration Opponent Withdraws From Group

 

But when did it happen and what does it mean?

Dr. Tanton, a Michigan ophthalmologist, has been a magnet for criticism since the 1980s, for writings that appear to disparage minorities and for accepting money from a foundation that promoted theories of white superiority. Hoping to discredit his broader movement, immigrant groups intensified their attacks in recent years, in what Dr. Tanton’s friends call a campaign of vilification.

Yet the Federation of Americans for Immigration Reform, or FAIR, the influential group he started in 1979, kept him on the board of directors. Two years ago, Dan Stein, the group’s president, hailed him as a “renaissance man.”

On April 17, The New York Times published an article examining Dr. Tanton’s racial views. Soon after, his name disappeared from the list of board members on the FAIR Web site.

Critics crowed. “FAIR needed to finally distance itself from someone who had brought such a bad reputation to the organization,” said Heidi Beirich of the Southern Poverty Law Center, a long-time nemesis.

But the story may be more subtle — and revealing about immigration politics. Inside the movement, Dr. Tanton has been a giant, helping to start all three major national groups that seek to reduce immigration, legal and illegal. The others are the Center for Immigration Studies and Numbers USA.

An environmentalist and an advocate of population control, Dr. Tanton started with vows to build bridges with the left. But he attracted more support on the populist right, with warnings about the “Latin onslaught” and assertions that American society needs “a European-American majority, and a clear one at that.”

Now 77 and with Parkinson’s disease, he has been withdrawing from public life.

In a brief telephone interview, Mr. Stein said Dr. Tanton left the board two months before the Times article. He forwarded an e-mail from Feb. 3, in which Dr. Tanton told the board that his term was expiring and he would not seek re-election.

Yet the FAIR Web site continued to list him on the board. In an interview on March 9, Mr. Stein simply described Dr. Tanton as “relatively inactive.” After the Times article appeared, FAIR issued a long statement, but did not say Dr. Tanton had severed his ties.

The next day, Julie Kirchner, FAIR’s director, canceled a scheduled talk to a class at Princeton, saying she did not want to discuss Dr. Tanton. But she, too, did not say he had left the board, nor did Dr. Tanton himself, in a letter to The Times. Then suddenly he vanished from the roster on the Web.

Why the delicate choreography? One theory is that neither FAIR nor Dr. Tanton wanted to appear that they were reacting to what they regard as unfair attacks by unscrupulous enemies.

“I had heard for months that John was leaving the board,” said one friend, speaking on the condition of anonymity to avoid entering the dispute over Dr. Tanton’s views. “I really think it’s purely his health. He’s been such a target forever, it wouldn’t be the attacks.”

Mr. Stein said he had not called attention to Dr. Tanton’s departure because he did not find it newsworthy. “I would certainly object strenuously if you characterized this somehow as a byproduct of external pressures,” he said.

Told that Dr. Tanton had resigned in February, Ms. Beirich said she found it “mystifying” that FAIR had not announced it. “Perhaps they didn’t want to draw any more attention to him and his views,” she said.

Julia Preston contributed reporting from New York.