A new organisation with a supposedly progressive stance on immigration policy, Black America for Immigration Reform, was officially formed last week in Washington, DC.
The white man who founded it. His past comments on racial issues have been highly charged. And the key to his immigration reform plan is limiting it.
The only recognised representative for Black America for Immigration Reform is William W. Chip, who worked as senior counsellor to DHS Secretary under Trump. His D.C. address appears to be the one he used when registering the organisation. Chip, who has practised tax law for decades, regularly writes for the Centre for Immigration Studies, one of the most prominent think tanks advocating for immigration restrictions, on the negative effects of increased immigration on Black Americans.
Critics of the argument claim the charity he helped found is an attempt to mainstream that viewpoint, which is an underhanded, if not dishonest, attempt to disrupt comprehensive reform attempts. Chip explained in an interview that he was just helping T. Willard Fair and Frank Morris, two Black colleagues at the Centre for Immigration Studies, get organised. He indicated that Chip would not be joining Fair and Morris on the board of Black Americans for Immigration Reform, but that three others would.
Whenever studies show that immigration levels should be lowered, “you’re immediately attacked by the mainstream media and the left and all the politically correct people,” Chip remarked in an interview. A credible African-American organisation with a board made up of influential members of the community was thought to have a better chance of being taken seriously.
Fair, who is also the CEO of the Urban League in Miami, was asked where the idea for the new organisation came from. He credited Chip for making the initial suggestion.
Fair has been vocal about this subject for decades, and he has said, “Having experienced the Haitians coming here, I knew how if it was not controlled how it could impact negatively the progress of my constituents, who happen to be Black Miamians.” And then Chip proposed that we should start reacting once more in light of the situation at the southern border and its potential future consequences. Therefore, he proposed, “let’s form a coalition.”
There have been other organisations before to Black America for Immigration Reform. The idea that immigration hurts Black labour has been bolstered by groups like Numbers USA, the Federation for American Immigration, and the Project for Immigration Reform (formerly known as the Institute for Sound Public Policy) to push for immigration restrictions.
The new organisation is still in its infancy, but it hopes to seek for 501(c)(3) status and launch its website in the near future. Chip said the group has no immediate plans to lobby, but does want to draw attention to studies that show low-skilled immigrants hurt their low-skilled native American peers. They believe that Black workers are at particular danger as a result of rising competition for available positions. They hope to use this as justification for enforcing restrictions on legal immigration and other forms of immigration, such as mandating the use of E-Verify, a government website that lets potential employers verify an individual’s eligibility to work in the United States.
Chip’s opinions on race were never hidden in his nearly two decades of work on immigration-related articles for the Centre for Immigration Studies. One of his tweets in 2021, when he was still known as X, questioned whether Derek Chauvin, the Minneapolis police officer who killed George Floyd, was motivated by racism. In another, he addresses the fears of Native Americans towards European colonisation.
I mean, they’re not the only ones that felt that way; maybe some white people are worried about becoming the minority and having other ethnic groups become the main force in society, leaving them essentially at the mercy of the other races. “That’s how the Native Americans felt,” Chip stated to clarify his tweet.
When asked about the goals of his new organisation in an interview with HEADLINESFOREVER, he brought up the impact of immigration on Black men’s access to employment, saying that some of them “leave their wives” as a result.
And there is a lot of solid information out there about that, but it’s not getting the attention it deserves in part because whenever you come out and advise to limit immigration, the first thing the woke left does is accuse you of being a white supremacist, Chip added.
The topic is complex, according to Harry Holzer, labour economist at Georgetown and head economist at the Department of Labour during the Clinton administration. Although he conceded that some groups, especially Black employees in some sectors of the economy, do bear a modest penalty, he claimed that most economists believe immigrants are advantageous to the labour market as a whole and have negligible influence on less-educated, native-born workers.
However, supporters and some immigration policy professionals perceive crass political opportunism at play outside of the economic issue.
According to Muzaffar Chishti, a senior fellow at the Migration Policy Institute, the newly formed charity is part of a larger strategy to divide two key Democratic constituencies. According to him, the work is frequently deceptive.
Chishti cited Republican presidential candidate Vivek Ramaswamy, who, per a recent New York Times article, described an enlightening interaction he had with Black voters at an event in southside Chicago in May. According to Ramaswamy, these people wanted him to send troops to Mexico and shut down the border, and they had many questions regarding immigration. However, the Times claims that they did question the Republican candidate about his stances on affirmative action and systematic racism. An immigration-related queries were then encouraged from the audience by a Ramaswamy campaign worker.
Chishti remarked, “It’s not surprising that the restrictionist movement is trying to find a strong foothold in the Black population,” as this is not the first time the movement has seized on this issue. But alas, it was a failure. We haven’t seen any cracks in the Rainbow Coalition within the Democratic party, and so far, I’m not certain that this strategy will be successful. But I believe this is an effort to sow discord inside that group.