Radical Right Reality Check

Cleveland, you may recall, was the person who uttered this statement in support of his proposal to tax international money transfers by undocumented persons:  

"Anyone working in a Western Union I would hope has enough common sense to be able to discern who they should question and who they shouldn’t… If a fella comes in with a pair of shaggy boots on, and jeans and a t-shirt, and he’s got a straw hat on? I mean, come on! Give me a break!

Cleveland’s email offers up 13 numbered sentences (or sentence fragments) – each of which purports to offer a damning statistic on how much “illegal aliens” are costing the United States. His estimated total cost: “a WHOPPING $338.3 BILLION DOLLARS A YEAR!!!”

Fact check

After obtaining Cleveland’s letter early this week, NC Policy Watch attempted to run down each of the internet links contained in the document in order to assess the accuracy of the claims and the trustworthiness of the various sources. Our conclusion is that at least some of Cleveland’s sources can only be described fringe, even extremist, organizations. Here is a summary of what we discovered.

Several of Cleveland’s “statistics” emanate from a pair of anti-immigration organizations, the Federation for American Immigration Reform (FAIR) and the Center for Immigration Studies (CIS). The two groups appear to be closely aligned. Indeed, some of the numbers attributed to FAIR were produced originally by CIS.

In a similar vein, the source listed for six of the 13 claims in the document is the “Lou Dobbs Tonight” television program on CNN. For those not familiar with him, Dobbs is a veteran TV news reader who transformed his nightly business program into a show that focuses almost exclusively on immigration – often under the heading “Broken Borders.” As best as we can determine, most of the “facts” derived from the Dobbs show are also attributable to FAIR or CIS, Dobbs himself, or, in one case, the on air claims of a spokesperson from the right wing Heritage Foundation. 

Without deconstructing each of the 13 claims in detail (that’s a project that will require more time and space than is available here), it’s clear that in many instances, Cleveland’s claims and/or those of his sources are simply sloppy, inaccurate or both.

For example, the very first claim in the document (“$11 Billion to $22 billion is spent on welfare to illegal aliens each year”) is attributed to a page on the FAIR website that says it was last updated in October of 2002. That page, strangely enough, cites a March 2003 CIS report that appears to make no mention of the $11 to 22 billion figure.

Laying aside the inconsistencies in the citation and the huge uncertainty implicit in the figure “$11 to $22 billion,” it should be noted that both FAIR and CIS define “welfare” to include not just the Temporary Assistance for Needy Families (TANF) program (i.e., the successor program to AFDC that was long ago commonly referred to as “welfare”), but at least three other federal assistance programs – Medicaid, food stamps, and Supplementary Security Income (SSI). In addition, it appears that both organizations count aid provided to U.S. citizen children whose parents do not have full or up to date documentation as aid to “illegal aliens.”

And so it goes. According to Cleveland, “$2.2 Billion dollars a year is spent on food assistance programs such as food stamps, WIC, and free school lunches for illegal aliens.” In this case, Cleveland is incorrectly citing another CIS report. The $2.2 billion figure is for what the CIS calls “treatment of the uninsured.” The CIS number for food assistance is $1.9 billion.

At another place, Cleveland claims “30% percent of all Federal Prison inmates are illegal aliens.” According, however, to his source (the transcript of an April 1, 2006 installment of the Lou Dobbs Show) the 30% figure refers to people who “are not U.S. citizens” not “illegal aliens.”

And then things get a little scary

Were Cleveland’s email merely a sloppy and inaccurate compilation of numbers he had culled from a small sample of anti-immigrant research groups, the whole thing might not be worth that much attention. Such documents are a dime a dozen in politics. Indeed, the notion that he had demonstrated the initiative to compile such a data-heavy list (even an inaccurate one) is more than can be said for some elected officials.

Unfortunately, there’s more to the story. A closer look at some of Cleveland’s sources reveals that his 13 point list is not, in fact, his own creation. It is instead excerpted verbatim from a 21 point list on a rather bizarre and troubling website – www.rense.com. That website is the internet home of person identified as Jeff Rense who appears to have some sort of radio program. The website features a number of stories and claims about encounters with UFO’s, ads for various miracle cure products and the several rotating images of political “artwork.” One image features a U.S. aircraft carrier that has been opened to show an Israeli star of David as the apparent source of power. Another shows the Bush family tree superimposed over an image of Nazi storm troopers.           

In the same document from which Cleveland excerpted his 13 points, the following statement is made:

“Look around fellow Americans. You’ve got Muslims swearing-in on the Koran in the United States Congress. That book stands diametrically opposed to the U.S. Constitution. Those who follow the Koran expect to kill Jewish and Christian nations.  The Koran states it emphatically….Islamists expect to wipe Christians off the face of the earth! It’s the prime directive of those who follow the Koran to ‘convert or kill all non-believers.’

Another website in Cleveland’s memo links the reader to a group known as the “National Policy Institute.” Here’s the opening salvo from that group’s site:

 “White Americans have been led to believe that ‘diversity’ and ‘multiculturalism’ are sacred. We’re conditioned to be shy when it comes to standing up for our own beliefs. But doesn’t every race, ethnic subculture, and special interest—from left-handers to lesbians—have all sorts of organizations working for them?  Isn’t it about time someone spoke for us?

The group is chaired by William Regnery II who is described by the group SourceWatch as a “leading advocate of white supremacy….”

Yet another “statistic” uses the website of a sort of freelance criminal profiler and sex crimes chronicler as its source. 

Reality Check

One of the great benefits of modern communications and the internet is the easy accessibility of statistics and data. Today, large segments of the population can access numbers and studies on just about any subject under the sun at the click of a mouse or the entry of a few keystrokes.

The downside to this incredible technological development, of course, is that much of the internet remains a virtual “wild, wild west” – a place in which all kinds of strange characters and misanthropes can, at least initially, appear to be reasonable people distributing plausible information.

For those who work in the public policy arena, either as advocates or analysts or public officials, this reality brings about a special duty of care – especially when it comes to potentially inflammatory issues like immigration policy. Not only should such people do their best to check their sources, they should also be extremely careful when recycling or forwarding information lest they end up like Representative Cleveland, laundering trash generated by crackpots. Let’s hope the next time Cleveland sends out some “interesting statistics,” he thinks twice before he hits the “send” button.     

This entry was posted on Friday, November 16th, 2007 at 4:35 pm and is filed under Radical Right Reality Check. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed.