'Extremist' label surprises immigration activist group

VIRGINIA BEACH

Belinda Dexter was more than a little surprised to learn that her immigration activism group - Help Save Hampton Roads - is among dozens of groups labeled "extremist" in a new report by the Southern Poverty Law Center.

The law center defines extremists as just a notch below hate groups, although some on the list have been accused of committing violent acts, including the murder of a 9-year-old Latino immigrant in Arizona.

These "nativist extremist groups," part of the radical right, typify "the most volatile elements on the American political landscape," writes Mark Potok, in an editorial in the new issue of the law center's Intelligence Report magazine.

There on the cover is a caricature of one of the so-called nativist extremists next to two hooded Ku Klux Klansmen and two neo-Nazis.

"That's not nice," Dexter said. "It is absolutely not true. There's no extremism."

Dexter says all she does is push for legislative reforms. She even served on a Virginia State Crime Commission immigration subcommittee.

"I'm real surprised that they used those terms so loosely with people who care about their state and the nation," Dexter said. "That's unfortunate that they would publish something that sounds more like hatred-related scare tactics."

The Web site for Help Save Hampton Roads says it is "a grassroots organization dedicated to helping preserve our communities and to protect them from the negative effects related to the presence of illegal aliens."

Heidi Beirich, director of research for the annual Intelligence Report, said groups are labeled extremist if they tend to be confrontational with illegal immigrants "where they gather and protest right in their face and scream at them."

Dexter and others in affiliated immigration organizations in Virginia said they have never used those tactics. They gather signatures on petitions and lobby for legislative changes.

Greg Letiecq, executive director for Save the Old Dominion, based in Northern Virginia, said the thousands of members in his group and about eight affiliates will be offended by their inclusion on that list.

"The thing that really struck me about it is their information collection is sloppy at best," Letiecq said.

He said he was not contacted by the group before publication but was called only after his group appeared on the list. He said he declined to be interviewed.

"They seem to be nothing more than trying to raise boat loads of money by scaring people with threats that don't exist," Letiecq said.

He said he believes the law center has "broad-brushed" everyone within the immigration debate as "an unrepentant racist."

Beirich said her organization, based in Montgomery, Ala., put the list out in part to draw a "distinction from what we consider legitimate political concerns."

Hate groups, like the KKK and neo-Nazis, are a "huge step up" from extremists, she said. The extremists, she said, don't have the inherent racism of hate groups.

Included on the hate list, however, are a dozen groups listed under the "general hate" category of anti-immigration. One of them is the Washington-based Federation for American Immigration Reform, long a target of the law center.

FAIR is considered one of the largest such immigration groups in the country. Its leaders have testified before Congress and are frequently quoted in the mainstream media. It is even quoted on the Save the Old Dominion Web site.

The law center's Beirich said FAIR and the other groups on the hate list believe that minority immigrants "are lesser in some way, subhuman compared to white people."

The law center says FAIR itself has links to neo-Nazis and white supremacists and has accepted a $1 million donation from the Pioneer Fund, which the center calls a racist organization. FAIR calls the allegations "absurd and unsubstantiated."

"Why would anybody take this stuff seriously?" FAIR spokesman Ira Mehlman said.

"This is how they fund-raise - by creating the sense that the nation is under siege. They've been discredited by the left and the right."

Tim McGlone, (757) 446-2343, tim.mcglone@pilotonline.com