Ga. Gov (R) appoints immigration/brown people hater to Immigration Enforcement Review Board.

[CurtEastPoint]

SIX white MEN on this board.

http://blogs.ajc.com/political-insider-jim-galloway/2011/09/07/adl-asks-governor-to-back-off-immigration-panel-appointment/

From the ADL here in ATL, per the AJC, Jim Galloway's column today:

No doubt you’ve read the column by my AJC colleague Jay Bookman, who on Tuesday demanded that Gov. Nathan Deal back off his appointment of conservative pundit Phil Kent to the state Immigration Enforcement Review Board.

The board was mandated under HB 87, and would examine — with the power of subpoena — complaints lodged against local governments accused of employing illegal immigrants. Bill Nigut of the Anti-Defamation League, which opposed the legislation passed this spring, has now joined the fray with a letter to Deal that includes this:

”While ADL recognizes your desire to name to the board appointees who support and will uphold Georgia’s new immigration statute, we are concerned about Mr. Kent’s history of making inflammatory and deeply disturbing comments about immigrants, both legal and undocumented. We believe it is likely that his presence on the board will undermine its authority, suggesting that the board’s agenda will not be simply to assure compliance with the new statute, but rather to pursue an anti-immigrant political agenda.

“Mr. Kent suggests that citizens should fear that America is becoming a multi-cultural nation that will soon see minorities overtake “the white population.” He asks in a column posted to his web site last year: “What will be the values and ideas of a multicultural America? What will it mean to be white after ‘whiteness’ no longer defines the cultural mainstream?” He fears that whites will “flee into whiteness. They will move to where other fair-skinned brethren are to retain their identity – nostalgically yearning for an American authenticity where everyone speaks English.” On other occasions, Mr. Kent has equally disturbing views about minorities. For instance, he often tries to paint all illegal residents with the taint of criminality, perpetuating the dubious contention that “violent criminal aliens are now threatening our cities and suburbs.”

[pampango]

1. Kent is the director of the Americans for Immigration Control Foundation (an SPLC "hate group")

Georgia Gov. Nathan Deal (R) has named the spokesman for a “hate group” who once called African asylum seekers “primitive peoples” to a panel charged with determining if the state’s restrictive new immigration law is being properly enforced.

(Phil) Kent, a former newspaper editorial page editor and spokesman for Sen. Strom Thurmond (R-S.C.), is also the executive director of the Americans for Immigration Control Foundation and serves on the board of ProEnglish, an organization that lobbies to make English the official language of local, state and the federal government.

AIC has been on the Southern Poverty Law Center’s list of “hate groups” since 2001, and since then Kent has been a regular contributor to the organization’s newsletters. SPLC research director Heidi Beirich wrote that Kent also has ties to several other organizations tied to racial extremists.

“These are white supremacist organizations,” said Daniel Werner, the deputy legal director of the Southern Poverty Law Center’s Immigrant Justice Project. “This isn’t an organization that merely takes a restrictionist view on immigration. There are plenty of orgs that take a restrictionist view on immigration that are not hateful."

http://www.politico.com/news/stories/0911/62798.html