John Tanton
Encyclopedia
Ophthalmology
Ophthalmology is the branch of medicine that deals with the anatomy, physiology and diseases of the eye. An ophthalmologist is a specialist in medical and surgical eye problems...
from Petoskey, Michigan
Petoskey, Michigan
Petoskey is a city and coastal resort community in the U.S. state of Michigan. As of the 2000 census, the city population was 6,080. It is the county seat of Emmet County....
, and an influential activist in efforts aimed at reducing immigration levels
Immigration reduction
Immigration reduction refers to a movement in the United States that advocates a reduction in the amount of immigration allowed into the country. Steps advocated for reducing the numbers of immigrants include advocating stronger action to prevent illegal entry and illegal immigration, and...
in the United States. He was organizer and first chairman of the Federation for American Immigration Reform
Federation for American Immigration Reform
The Federation for American Immigration Reform is a non-profit tax exempt educational organization in the United States that advocates changes in U.S. immigration policy that would result in significant reductions in immigration, both legal and illegal...
(FAIR), a non-profit educational group that advocates for a reduction in the level of immigration into the U.S. He also helped to start two other groups with a similar goal: the Center for Immigration Studies
Center for Immigration Studies
The Center for Immigration Studies is a non-profit research organization that advocates Immigration reduction in the United States. Founded in 1985, its executive director is Mark Krikorian. As a 501 organization, it is subject to limits or absolute prohibitions on engaging in political...
, a non-profit research group; and NumbersUSA
NumbersUSA
NumbersUSA is an immigration reduction organization that seeks to reduce US immigration levels to pre-1965 levels without country of origin quotas as established in the Immigration Act of 1924. It advocates for immigration reduction through user-generated fax, email, and direct mail campaigns...
, a grassroots lobbying group.
Tanton has also been a leader in efforts to make English the official language of government in the U.S. To that end, he was co-founder (1983) and chairman of U.S. English and later (1994) of ProEnglish
ProEnglish
ProEnglish is an American non-profit lobbying organization that supports making English the official language of the United States.-Background:...
, of which he is still a director.
Tanton has also held national positions in environmental
Environmentalism
Environmentalism is a broad philosophy, ideology and social movement regarding concerns for environmental conservation and improvement of the health of the environment, particularly as the measure for this health seeks to incorporate the concerns of non-human elements...
organizations such as the Sierra Club
Sierra Club
The Sierra Club is the oldest, largest, and most influential grassroots environmental organization in the United States. It was founded on May 28, 1892, in San Francisco, California, by the conservationist and preservationist John Muir, who became its first president...
and Zero Population Growth
Zero population growth
Zero population growth, sometimes abbreviated ZPG , is a condition of demographic balance where the number of people in a specified population neither grows nor declines, considered as a social aim....
, and local leadership positions in the Audubon Society and Planned Parenthood
Planned Parenthood
Planned Parenthood Federation of America , commonly shortened to Planned Parenthood, is the U.S. affiliate of the International Planned Parenthood Federation and one of its larger members. PPFA is a non-profit organization providing reproductive health and maternal and child health services. The...
. He is the founder of The Social Contract Press
The Social Contract Press
The Social Contract Press is an American publisher. It is a proponent of immigration reduction and population control, with an emphasis on issues such as culture and the environment...
, which publishes the quarterly journal The Social Contract and other materials on the topics of immigration, population, conservation, and preservation of American culture. He has been the publisher of this journal since its inception in 1990, and he was its editor until 1998. Tanton's wife, Mary Lou Tanton, chairs the U.S. Immigration Reform PAC.
Life
Tanton was born in Detroit, MichiganDetroit, Michigan
Detroit is the major city among the primary cultural, financial, and transportation centers in the Metro Detroit area, a region of 5.2 million people. As the seat of Wayne County, the city of Detroit is the largest city in the U.S. state of Michigan and serves as a major port on the Detroit River...
in 1934. In 1945, he moved with his family to a farm northeast of Bay City, Michigan
Bay City, Michigan
Bay City is a city in the U.S. state of Michigan located near the base of the Saginaw Bay on Lake Huron. As of the 2010 census, the city's population was 34,932, and is the principal city of the Bay City Metropolitan Statistical Area, which is included in the Saginaw-Bay City-Saginaw Township North...
on which his mother had been raised and on which he worked.
He is the son and grandson of immigrants. John's father was John Fitzgerald Tanton, who was born in Ontario, Canada in 1898 and in 1928 emigrated to the United States. His great grandparents, Martin Johann and Carolina Koch, were born in Germany and emigrated to the United States in 1853.
Tanton graduated with a bachelor's degree in chemistry from Michigan State University
Michigan State University
Michigan State University is a public research university in East Lansing, Michigan, USA. Founded in 1855, it was the pioneer land-grant institution and served as a model for future land-grant colleges in the United States under the 1862 Morrill Act.MSU pioneered the studies of packaging,...
in 1956, and received his doctor's degree from the University of Michigan
University of Michigan
The University of Michigan is a public research university located in Ann Arbor, Michigan in the United States. It is the state's oldest university and the flagship campus of the University of Michigan...
in 1960. He received an M.S. in ophthalmology from the University of Michigan
University of Michigan
The University of Michigan is a public research university located in Ann Arbor, Michigan in the United States. It is the state's oldest university and the flagship campus of the University of Michigan...
in 1964.
John Tanton is widely recognized as the leading figure in the anti-immigration and "official English" movements in the United States. Initially, Tanton's public policy advocacy work was driven by his commitment to zero population growth and environmental conservation. By the late 1970s, however, this concern about the environment and population growth evolved into a crusade against immigration flows into the United States, particularly from Latin American and Caribbean nations. At the time that the New Right, Christian Right, and neoconservative political tendencies were mobilizing new constituencies against center-left politics in the United States, Tanton played a central role in mobilizing backlash sentiment against immigrants. Tapping his base in environmental and population control organizations such as the Sierra Club, National Audubon Society, and Zero Population Growth, Tanton in 1979 cofounded what has become the most influential anti-immigrant policy institute in the nation: Federation for American Immigration Reform (FAIR). In 1983, he also cofounded the most influential "official English" or English-only organization, U.S. English.
Tanton is connected to a number of anti-immigrant and official English groups. As the founder and publisher of Social Contract Press, Tanton has published books that have helped shaped a nationalist ideology focused on the threat of immigrants to the white, English-speaking population. Social Contract books also stoke fears about immigrants taking over the United States, with research that highlights the rapid rise of Spanish-speaking residents and related socioeconomic problems, while ignoring research that points to the positive contributions of immigrants. In addition to FAIR, Tanton has been a central player in an array of anti-immigrant, nationalist groups and institutes, including Pro English, U.S. Inc., Center for Immigration Studies (CIS), U.S. English, and Numbers USA. Funding for these and other organizations in which Tanton is a key figure, often flows through the organization, U.S. Inc.
According to Tolerance.org, a project of the Southern Poverty Law Center: "The organized anti-immigration 'movement' is almost entirely the handiwork of one man, Michigan activist John. H. Tanton." In June 2002, it listed thirteen groups that formed part of the "loose-knit Tanton network." The following groups were founded and funded (through U.S. Inc.) by Tanton: Center for Immigration Studies, Federation for American Immigration Reform, NumbersUSA, Pro English, Social Contract Press, U.S. English, and U.S. Inc. Others, such as American Immigration Control Foundation, American Patrol/Voices of Citizens Together, Californians for Population Stabilization, ProjectUSA, are part of the Tanton network because their funding has been channeled through U.S. Inc. Another organization cited by Tolerance.Org, as part of the network is Population-Environment Balance, because Tanton had joined its board.
Professional career
Tanton practiced ophthalmology at the Burns Clinic Medical Center, Petoskey, Michigan, from 1964 to 1998. Tanton stated:
Even though it may be true that nothing more can be done for the eye, it is almost never true that nothing more can be done for the patient.
Tanton was named by the Northern Michigan Medical Society to receive the Michigan State Medical Society
Michigan State Medical Society
The Michigan State Medical Society is the professional organization representing physicians in Michigan. Incorporated on June 5, 1866, the MSMS is a non-profit organization that consists of physicians, medical students, and residents. It is currently based in East Lansing, Michigan, near Michigan...
's Community Service Award. The award was announced in observance of Doctors' Day on March 30, 1995.
Resignation from U.S. English
In 1988, shortly before a referendum in Arizona to make English the state's official language, a private memo written by Tanton was leaked to the media. In this memo, he expressed concerns about the potential political, cultural, environmental, and demographic impacts of continued high levels of Hispanic immigration into the U.S., especially if the Hispanic fertility rate remained higher than that of other ethnic groups. He ended by calling for limiting the flow of immigrants to a rate that would enable them to be assimilatedCultural assimilation
Cultural assimilation is a socio-political response to demographic multi-ethnicity that supports or promotes the assimilation of ethnic minorities into the dominant culture. The term assimilation is often used with regard to immigrants and various ethnic groups who have settled in a new land. New...
. However, several of his questions and statements were provocative, such as: "Will Latin American migrants bring with them the tradition of the mordida (bribe), the lack of involvement in public affairs, etc.?", "What are the differences in educability between Hispanics (with their 50% dropout rate) and Asiatics (with their excellent school records and long tradition of scholarship)?", and "On the demographic point: perhaps this is the first instance in which those with their pants up are going to get caught by those with their pants down!"
After the media published the memo, several prominent members of U.S. English cut their ties with the organization, including advisory board member Walter Cronkite
Walter Cronkite
Walter Leland Cronkite, Jr. was an American broadcast journalist, best known as anchorman for the CBS Evening News for 19 years . During the heyday of CBS News in the 1960s and 1970s, he was often cited as "the most trusted man in America" after being so named in an opinion poll...
and its executive director Linda Chavez
Linda Chavez
Linda Chavez is an American author, commentator, and radio talk show host. She is also a Fox News analyst, Chairman of the Center for Equal Opportunity, has a syndicated column that appears in newspapers nationwide each week, and sits on the Board of Directors of two Fortune 1000 companies:...
, a prominent conservative Republican columnist. Tanton himself eventually resigned, although he complained that he had been smeared as a racist.
Funding of FAIR
Under Tanton's leadership FAIR was criticized for taking funding for many years from the Pioneer FundPioneer Fund
The Pioneer Fund is an American non-profit foundation established in 1937 "to advance the scientific study of heredity and human differences." Currently headed by psychology professor J. Philippe Rushton, the fund states that it focuses on projects it perceives will not be easily funded due to...
, a non-profit foundation dedicated to “improving the character of the American people” by, among other things, promoting the practice of eugenics
Eugenics
Eugenics is the "applied science or the bio-social movement which advocates the use of practices aimed at improving the genetic composition of a population", usually referring to human populations. The origins of the concept of eugenics began with certain interpretations of Mendelian inheritance,...
, or selective breeding. FAIR responded to this criticism by asserting that the Fund clearly states that it supports equal opportunity for all Americans, regardless of race, religion, national origin, or ethnicity; that other major organizations, including universities in the United States and other countries, have also accepted grants from the Fund; and that the Fund's contributions to FAIR were used only for the general operation of the organization. In February 2009, after the Southern Poverty Law Center
Southern Poverty Law Center
The Southern Poverty Law Center is an American nonprofit civil rights organization noted for its legal victories against white supremacist groups; legal representation for victims of hate groups; monitoring of alleged hate groups, militias and extremist organizations; and educational programs that...
publicized these allegations against him, Tanton challenged that organization to a public debate at the National Press Club.
Tanton’s environmentalist and immigration-reduction activities are well-documented in 17 file boxes of archives he donated to the Bentley Historical Library at the University of Michigan
University of Michigan
The University of Michigan is a public research university located in Ann Arbor, Michigan in the United States. It is the state's oldest university and the flagship campus of the University of Michigan...
.
SPLC criticism
A February 2009 report by Southern Poverty Law CenterSouthern Poverty Law Center
The Southern Poverty Law Center is an American nonprofit civil rights organization noted for its legal victories against white supremacist groups; legal representation for victims of hate groups; monitoring of alleged hate groups, militias and extremist organizations; and educational programs that...
examined Tanton's written correspondence highlighted alleged connections between Tanton's immigration-reduction efforts and white supremacist, neo-Nazi and pro-eugenics
Eugenics
Eugenics is the "applied science or the bio-social movement which advocates the use of practices aimed at improving the genetic composition of a population", usually referring to human populations. The origins of the concept of eugenics began with certain interpretations of Mendelian inheritance,...
leaders.
The introduction to the report reads:
FAIR, CIS and NumbersUSA are all part of a network of restrictionist organizations conceived and created by John
Tanton, the “puppeteer” of the nativist movement and a man with deep racist roots. As the first article in this report shows,
Tanton has for decades been at the heart of the white nationalist scene. He has met with leading white supremacists, promoted
anti-Semitic ideas, and associated closely with the leaders of a eugenicist foundation once described by a leading newspaper
as a “neo-Nazi organization.” He has made a series of racist statements about Latinos and worried that they were outbreeding
whites. At one point, he wrote candidly that to maintain American culture, “a European-American majority” is required.
Groups started
A 2002 SPLC report listed 13 immigration-restriction groups which they said were founded and/or funded by Tanton.- American Immigration Control FoundationAmerican Immigration Control FoundationAmerican Immigration Control Foundation is an American political group devoted to reducing "uncontrolled immigration." It is a large publisher and distributor of publications dealing with America’s immigration crisis...
- AICF, 1983, funded - American PatrolAmerican Patrol"American Patrol" is a popular march written by F. W. Meacham in 1885. Written originally for piano, it was then arranged for wind band and published by Carly Discher in 1891. Meacham's widow renewed the copyright in 1912. It was later arranged for Glenn Miller's swing band by Jerry Gray in 1941,...
/Voice of Citizens Together - 1992, funded - California Coalition for Immigration ReformCalifornia Coalition for Immigration ReformCalifornia Coalition for Immigration Reform is a Huntington Beach, California-based political advocacy group devoted to immigration reduction...
- CCIR, 1994, funded - Californians for Population StabilizationCalifornians for Population StabilizationCalifornians for Population Stabilization is a non-profit California organization founded in 1986 which works to "preserve California's future through the stabilization of our state's human population." CAPS was the former branch of the Zero Population Growth organization...
- 1996, funded (founded separately in 1986) - Center for Immigration StudiesCenter for Immigration StudiesThe Center for Immigration Studies is a non-profit research organization that advocates Immigration reduction in the United States. Founded in 1985, its executive director is Mark Krikorian. As a 501 organization, it is subject to limits or absolute prohibitions on engaging in political...
- CIS, 1985, founded and funded - Federation for American Immigration ReformFederation for American Immigration ReformThe Federation for American Immigration Reform is a non-profit tax exempt educational organization in the United States that advocates changes in U.S. immigration policy that would result in significant reductions in immigration, both legal and illegal...
- FAIR, 1979, founded and funded - NumbersUSANumbersUSANumbersUSA is an immigration reduction organization that seeks to reduce US immigration levels to pre-1965 levels without country of origin quotas as established in the Immigration Act of 1924. It advocates for immigration reduction through user-generated fax, email, and direct mail campaigns...
- 1996, founded and funded - Population-Environment Balance - 1973, joined board in 1980
- ProEnglishProEnglishProEnglish is an American non-profit lobbying organization that supports making English the official language of the United States.-Background:...
- 1994, founded and funded - ProjectUSAProjectUSAProjectUSA is an immigration reduction political advocacy group. According to the group's website, it is "a nonprofit social advocacy group based in Washington, DC and dedicated to raising public debate about the important issue of mass immigration...
- 1999, funded - The Social Contract PressThe Social Contract PressThe Social Contract Press is an American publisher. It is a proponent of immigration reduction and population control, with an emphasis on issues such as culture and the environment...
- 1990, founded and funded - U.S. English - 1983, founded and funded
- U.S. Inc. - 1982, founded and funded
External links
- International Relations Center - IRC - People-Centered Policy Alternatives Since 1979
- Southern Poverty Law Center, Intelligence Report, Summer 2002
- Southern Poverty Law Center, article on John H. Tanton
- The Puppeteer Replies, by John Tanton - John Tanton's reply to the Southern Poverty Law Center Puppeteer article
- Teaching Tolerance
- "Vigilante injustice" Salon.com, 2003
- Keeping America Empty: How one small-town conservationist launched today’s anti-immigration movement Christopher Hayes, April 24, 2006, In These TimesIn These TimesIn These Times is a politically progressive monthly magazine of news and opinion published by the Institute for Public Affairs in Chicago...
(Profile of Tanton) - On Immigration, A Theorist Who’s No Fence-Sitter, by Anita Huslin, The Washington PostThe Washington PostThe Washington Post is Washington, D.C.'s largest newspaper and its oldest still-existing paper, founded in 1877. Located in the capital of the United States, The Post has a particular emphasis on national politics. D.C., Maryland, and Virginia editions are printed for daily circulation...
(November 26, 2006) (Profile of Tanton) - Father of Anti-Immigration Movement Awaits History’s Judgment, by Jonathan Tilove, The Grand Rapids Press (April 23, 2006). (© Newhouse News) (Profile of Tanton)
- John Tanton's files, Bentley Historical Library, University of Michigan.
- Common Sense on Mass Immigration, published by John Tanton's The Social Contract is an introductory collection of mini-essays in 40-page softcover pocket-sized booklet.
- The Ethics of Immigration Policy, published by John Tanton's The Social Contract is a downloadable collection of mini-essays, also published in a 40-page softcover pocket-sized booklet.
- DeParle, Jason. 2011 "The Anti-Immigration Crusader," New York Times http://www.nytimes.com/2011/04/17/us/17immig.html?nl=todaysheadlines&emc=tha3