Thank you so much for your comments. 

I defend the right of any American speak their opinion, whether I agree with it or not.  My comments are not intended to voice support for FAIR’s position(s) but rather to criticize an organization (the Iowa State Civil Rights Commission) for taking a position that FAIR’s voice should be kept out of Iowa (which somehow seems to be in opposition to their mission).

I am not as familiar with FAIR yet as I would like to be, but I’m inclined to look at what they have to say because they appear (based on what I’ve seen on their web site) to be focused on immigration rules, which I think is the area of the immigration topic that needs significant attention.

The information on Tanton is extremely informative and helps provide some background on the man and will certainly color how I interpret anything he may say.  Thank you for providing it!

- Reader

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ABOUT FAIR’s FOUNDER and CURRENT BOARD MEMBER

TANTON: Well, they were actually taken in 1978, to get ready for 1979. We [Federation for American Immigration Reform] got our tax ruling from the IRS in about August of 1978. We had arranged from some other contributions before that. One of the early contributions went to the ZPG Foundation [Zero Population Growth] and was subsequently re-donated to us when we finally got our IRS ruling. Pg. 29

TANTON: I don’t remember the exact sequence now in which people joined me on the board [Federation for American Immigration Reform], but certainly Sherry Barnes was on of the very first people. Sherry had served with me on the ZPG [Zero Population Growth] executive committee, and I knew her quite well. She worked for Planned Parenthood in New York and was a free thinker who was able to deal with topics like immigration, unlike some of our other colleagues at ZPG. So she was key. Then there was Bill Paddock, who had been on the board at ZPG. He had left it by the time, but he understood our point of view. So that made three of us. Pg. 30

TANTON: Let’s see, the fifth person in that original group was Sidney Swensrud, the former chairman of Gulf Oil. Sherry knew Mr. Swensrud from his work at International Planned Parenthood and the Association for Voluntary Sterilization, and she thought he might be interested. Pg. 30

TANTON: All five of the first board members, along with our executive director, came out of the population and environmental movements. The thing that got us all into this in the first place was the very high-level concern in the 1970s about population growth, and the population arguments were the ones we put forth initially. But we found they didn’t seem to carry as much weight with others as they did with us. Pg. 34

All quotes taken from “A Skirmish in a Wider War: An Oral History of John H. Tanton, Founder of FAIR”
Bentley Historical Library, University of Michigan

JOHN TANTON ON EUGENICS

“As with the euthanasia, active eugenics will deservedly continue to be rejected by most persons, but passive eugenics should elicit their support.”

The Case For Passive Eugenics
April 24, 1975
John H. Tanton, M.D.
Founder and Board member of the Federation for American Immigration Reform