The New York Times published a fascinating story about the heiress who became obsessed with stopping immigration and limiting population, especially in poor countries.
Reporters Nicholas Kulish and Mike McIntire rely on the personal letters and writings of Cordelia Scaife May, the most significant funder of anti-immigration groups, to examine her views.
Cordelia Scaife May, an heiress to the Mellon family’s banking and industrial fortune, was far and away the most important donor to the modern anti-immigration movement during her lifetime. Now, more than a decade after her death, her money still funds the leading organizations fighting to reduce migration.
Her Colcom Foundation has poured $180 million into groups that spent decades agitating for policies now pursued by President Trump: militarizing the border, capping legal immigration and prioritizing skills over family ties for entry. And language she used — about the threat of an “immigrant invasion,” for instance, and environmental strain — echoes in today’s anti-immigration rhetoric, most recently in the words of the killer in the El Paso mass shooting.
May funded not only anti-immigration groups but Planned Parenthood and other groups devoted to population control.
Mrs. May’s efforts on immigration grew out of a progressive interest in protecting the environment and reducing the population through birth control. Long before her views became more radical and took root in the Trump administration, Mrs. May was a nature-loving Roosevelt Republican, and a friend and admirer of the Planned Parenthood founder Margaret Sanger.
In time, however, she became a radical proponent of racist views and stopping immigration became her all-consuming passion. She advocated sealing the border with Mexico.
Mrs. May’s confidence in birth control would give way to abortion advocacy. And she would be among the first, and most financially influential, to set her sights on immigration as an alarming source of population growth in the United States…
In her writings, Mrs. May contended that the country was being “invaded on all fronts by immigrants.” Complaining about the Cubans who arrived in 1980 as part of the Mariel boatlift, she cited their “criminal habits, radical political thought, exotic diseases, neighborhood disruption,” but said their “most dangerous contribution” was their high birthrate, “far higher than that of our native population.”
“They breed like hamsters,” she wrote…
The anti-immigration movement funded by Mrs. May’s money extends far beyond the three best-known groups, the Federation for American Immigration Reform, the Center for Immigration Studies and NumbersUSA. Her fortune has nurtured an entire ecosystem, including more oblique efforts like a movement to make English the nation’s official language, and a publishing house and television productions that advocate limiting immigration.
The sheer number of these groups helped the anti-immigration movement succeed by giving it the appearance of broad-based support.
Since Mr. Trump’s election, former staff members from groups like FAIR and the Center for Immigration Studies have assumed key roles in the administration’s immigration apparatus, working with Stephen Miller, the architect of the president’s immigration agenda…
Diane Ravitch's blog 
Scaife’s heir makes the case for an inheritance tax of 100% on wealth over $2 mil.
Diane I am a capitalist at heart; but this pervasive one-woman-show . . . shows just how toxic capitalism can be to democracy. Also, there is an interesting connection between immigration and abortion here, which exposes (again) the deep-set multi-formed hypocrisy at the core of the Christian evangelical movement. CBK
As a Socialist at heart, I agree that Capitalism can be toxic to Democracy. LOL.
Indeed Socialism can be toxic to democracy, creating an aristocracy of bureaucrats beholden only to each other if there is not universal suffrage and excellence in education, democracy suffers no matter the economic system. Even with universal suffrage, beating back the effect of money in a capitalistic economy, of personal interest where the effect of money is blunted, or of collective tyranny requires the presence of natural checks and balances as envisioned by Montesquieu and other enlightenment thinkers.
Roy Turrentine The below link to a New Yorker article is in response to your note and should be labeled: “Funny You Should Mention It.” CBK
LINK: From the Los Angeles Times— “Big Tech believed its own utopian hype, until it couldn’t anymore. Now, in their crisis of conscience, its machers are heading to places like Esalen, in search of help translating their guilt and emotions into responsible actions. (The New Yorker)”
Bob Shepherd I do struggle with that; however, I also know there are good reasons to keep capitalism alive . . . reasons that have to do with power movements in democracies; but not now . . . . CBK
Yes, that would be a looooong discussion, Catherine. But I suspect that I would enjoy, very much, having it with you. Always appreciate your contributions, here, and Roy’s.
The possibility that capitalism self destructs is a different issue than the political spending of oligarchs. Capitalism as a theory assumed profits would be used to improve products and reward suppliers of capital not, turned against labor and government. Anti-trust legislation/enforcement forces capitalism to match the model.
The U.S. is not operating as Adam Smith’s capitalistic economy. Barry Lynn’s Open Markets is attempting to return capitalism to the model that works.
We shouldn’t allow ourselves to forced into an argument in which the conservatives identify and define just two options- totally unfettered markets or socialism/communism.
Linda Totally agree. The reason I remain a “capitalist at heart” is that I don’t want to throw out the baby (capitalism) with the bathwater (the dirt it seems to constantly accumulate around its weaknesses).
My point is that the MISUSE and MISDIRECTION of capitalism (e.g., greed) seems to have ruled the day for a very long time. Nevertheless . . . . it’s as you say. CBK
Linda Post-script to my note below: To your “The possibility that capitalism self destructs is a different issue than the political spending of oligarchs.”
Yes, but the political spending of oligarchs is a fine example of capitalism in its self-destructive mode of operation as it slowly murders its own mother. CBK
We shouldn’t allow ourselves to forced into an argument in which the conservatives identify and define just two options- totally unfettered markets or socialism/communism.
Yes. Emphatically yes. We have the models, before us, of Social Democratic (or Democratic Socialist) states that work well, indeed, for ALL the people. This stuff isn’t hypothetical anymore. There are existence proofs of what works and what doesn’t. But money buys a lot of propaganda in the United States.
I know this all sounds like a conspiracy theory, but is this immigration movement against the Catholic Church/Religion? South American countries and Cuba are Catholic and birth control was against religious practice (may still be?) until recently. Maybe this isn’t about ethnicity at all, but about religious cleansing?
Based on number of political wins, if there’s a successful conspiracy, the victims are socialists, people of color and those who oppose theocracy. The conservative judges on the bench are selected by the Federalist Society, steered by Leonard Leo who is Catholic. ALEC, funded by the Koch’s, promotes privatization with the Koch-linked Manhattan Institute giving a nod to Catholic schools.The founder of ALEC was Catholic. He coined the term moral majority and is referred to as the architect of the religious right.
Lisa, If you could identify a well-funded group who successfully won against the religious right in areas such as (a) reproductive rights for women (b) “In God We Trust” posters on school walls (c) legislatures, executive branches and judgeships with equal gender representation which would break ground from a structure of exclusively male clergy, etc. it would be helpful in understanding the conspiracy idea you float. My view- there’s been an erosion of abortion and birth control rights and less gender representation within the political party with power.
The argument against gay rights appears to have a single foundation- religion- so, given the Constitutional separation of church and state, the fact that it is an issue in legislatures is in itself indicative of a win for the religious right.
The Catholic church has a long standing history of support for capitalism and against socialism. So, on that front, we can agree it’s a win for them as well?
White Catholics voted 60% for Trump so, that election was another win.
The underfunded who want separation of church and state, have difficulty gaining traction in a bought and paid for government. But, there’s the ACLU. How do you think the donations they receive compare to those that Foster Freiss, Rex Siquefielld, Leonard Leo, pony up for the goals of the religious right?.
The Cold Spring Harbor Eugenics Records Office and other pre-Nazi Eugenics activity and legislation in the US was strongly funded by Mary Harriman (widow of railroad baron E. H. Harriman), in the early part of the 20th century.
The more things change, . . .
There is a conservative radio personality who wrote an op ed in our local paper I think I mentioned here a few days ago. He tried to pile the El Paso shooter in with all those who are concerned about environmental issues by explaining the eco part of his thought without the rascist part of his thinking. The result was the appearance that the mainstream media was leaving out the eco part of the thinking as a part of the conspiracy to paint the man as a racist.
This article, among others, shows that the mainstream journalists are still doing some investigating. I cannot wait for the spin on this that paints planned parenthood as evil in a new way.
What is concerning is that immigrants to the United States are historically less concerned about the environment because of their desperate circumstances. Not recalling the country in its more smoke-belching past, they might be less capable of seeing the need for environmental restraint than someone who like my father, who once viewed the bare ground in Copper Basin, Tennessee where the smelting of copper has denuded the ground for over fifty square miles. Education of our new arrivals is important, just as environmental education of those who are growing up without the memory of past environmental disasters need that education.
Right now, curriculum is steering away from environmental education in favor of technical training in chemistry. Of all the crimes perpetrated in the name of educational excellence, the NGSS approach to ignoring the aspect of science education that leads students away from an appreciation of the environment is the most criminal.
Roy Turrentine Two brief comments on the good side: (1) most of my K-12 teachers who were returning to get their masters, had “sections” in their curricula about the environment, science-based ecology, pesticide-free gardens, awareness of animals, etc. Some even wrote plans for developing and maintaining a school garden.
(2) The requirement of U.S. citizenship for newbies requires knowledge of it, the rule of law, the Constitution, etc,. that, in my experience, is much more comprehensive than what many cradle-citizens know. CBK
I’ve seen that, Roy, in Tennessee and in Kentucky. Landscapes of hell, like something out of a Bosch painting. And yes, Roy, that is horrific. In the past 40 years, the average vertebrate species has dropped in numbers, in the wild, by 58 percent. Flying insects are down 75 to 80 percent. These are canaries in the coal mine. Explain to me why these aren’t the leading headlines in every news outlet almost every day? –what’s happening there, and what can be done to fix it. Things are much more serious than people want to believe. Lots of heedlessness and ignorance.
Climate change, loss of topsoil, neonicotinoid pesticides, eutrophication of waterways from nitrogen-filled runoff from agriculture, microplastics, radioactive contamination in war zones, waste of water and calories in animal agriculture–there are many, many issues that require immediate, global-level response. Meanwhile, our president is gutting environmental regulations and agreements. Things are going to get very, very bad for our children and grandchildren unless we do a 180 pretty quickly.
All that said, . . .
In a letter he wrote to the Amherst Student (the student newspaper at Amherst College), Robert Frost wrote that people in all times and places have thought that they were going down under the most powerful forces ever marshaled against humankind. And it’s easy, in the time of Trump and detention centers filled with children and environmental emergencies that are being ignored by heedless politicians to give way to despair. But my friend Brooke Belk, the poet, reminds me, by the example of her own struggle and the breathtaking flowering of her art, and in that art, again and again, that we must muck around in the mess of life as we find it and find courage, for the benefit of the children coming after us. We don’t have a choice. We simply can’t give up, be fearful and cowardly and frustrated and despairing. There are children present. We must show our children, by example, that things can be better. We must be resolute. For them.
Do an act of kindness today. Take it to the streets. Sow love. As does, each day, the owner of this blog.
“May funded not only anti-immigration groups but Planned Parenthood and other groups devoted to population control.” This sentence gives the impression that Planned Parenthood was devoted to population control. That was never one of its goals.
In the beginning it was. This is what the extreme right-wingers have latched onto and won’t let go–that Margaret Sanger was a eugenicist with Malthusian ideas. Of course, none of that ancient history has ANYTHING to do with Planned Parenthood today.
The interesting thing about this is that the modern conservative, especially the social conservative, thinks in a process that demands complete consistency of logic in the literature of the ideas that form a philosophy. Thus scientific errors in some subset of postulates relating to a scientific idea can be discounted by the person who throws out all the ideas because of some tiny flaw in thinking along the way.
Empiricism, by contrast, allows for the revision of truth based on truth. I am more comfortable with that.
While Sanger used some of the eugenecists’ language to advance the cause for women to control their reproduction, she was not a eugeneticist and that was never a goal of PP.
Unfortunately, many progressive people, at the time, were enamored of what they thought of as “scientific” eugenics–George Bernard Shaw, H. G. Wells. Sanger nonetheless brought about a lot of good for poor women. She had a bad theory but a good heart.
I detest eugenics and racist genetic determinism. It’s pseudoscience with horrific consequences. But Sanger is one of my heroes.
Wednesday is the deadline for the Steve Bullock donations to get him into the debate.