Anti-immigrant extremist appointed to powerful state board

Gov. Nathan Deal has appointed a bigoted, anti-immigrant extremist to an important state board. The appointment should be withdrawn immediately.

Phil Kent, named by Deal to the Immigration Enforcement Review Board on Friday, is a former journalist, an author, a national spokesman for American Immigration Control and executive director of the American Immigration Control Foundation. The AIC opposes not just illegal immigration but immigration generally.

“The name of the left’s game is to open the gates to massive Third World immigration and keep the immigrants as ignorant, impoverished and unassimilated as possible,” the AIC warns in a recent anonymous column published on its website. “That way they will be a reliable electorate for ‘progressive’ politics, or perhaps reliable cannon fodder for armed revolution.”

That’s right. It’s a leftist plot to smuggle in cannon fodder for an armed revolution.

Kent himself has written even more inflammatory material. For example, he seems peculiarly concerned about preserving what he calls the “whiteness” of America. In a column last year, he warned that 2010 could be the “tipping point” for America, the year in which minority babies outnumber white babies.

“If this trend is not reversed– and it could be if an immigration moratorium were imposed– what Vassar College author Hua Hsu labels America’s white “centrifugal core” will slowly disappear,” Kent wrote. “This leads to big questions: What will be the values and ideas of a multicultural America? What will it mean to be white after “whiteness” no longer defines the cultural mainstream?

“Television and movies will increasingly have diverse casts– with whites downgraded. New York radio personality Peter Rosenberg gushes that it is ‘now very cool and in to have multicultural friends.’ The advertising world will radically change. Brown Johnson, a Nickelodean executive speaking before the Association of Hispanic Advertising Agencies, touts TV characters who don’t conform to ‘the white, middle class mold.’ Hispanic marketer Rochelle Newman-Carrasco further notes ‘it has become harder for the blond-haired, blue-eyed commercial actor.’

“Many whites ‘will flee into whiteness.’ They will move to where other fair-skinned brethren are to retain their identity — nostalgically yearning for an American authenticity where everyone speaks English. Politically, the country will become more balkanized, with white leaders forming and breaking alliances with their black and Hispanic counterparts. (An example: Gwinnett County — outside of Atlanta, Ga. — will turn into an Hispanic/Muslim enclave if present trends continue. Whites there are already moving to ‘friendlier’ areas.)”

Note the concept that “American authenticity” exists only in areas where the “fair-skinned brethren are able to retain their identity.” In other columns, Kent demands a halt to all humanitarian refugee programs in this country, calls Barack Obama “a dangerous, anti-white multiculturalist” and tells us that Obama’s success in attracting support from younger white Americans is “testimony to the growing number of whites brainwashed by incessant diversity propaganda.”

Kent is a well-known figure in Georgia politics and has kept none of these sentiments secret. The columns cited above can be found at his website, www.philkent.com. Yet Deal appointed him as one of seven members to the Immigration Enforcement Review Board anyway.

That board, created by House Bill 87, the illegal-immigration bill passed earlier this year, has real powers and responsibilities. Any Georgia citizen can now file a complaint with the board alleging that a state or local agency — a sheriff or a social-service agency, for example — has failed to be sufficiently aggressive in enforcing the bill’s harsh provisions.

The review board has subpoena power to force testimony. It will sit, much like a court, in deciding such cases. If it rules against a public agency or employee, the “guilty” party will have 30 days to correct the problem or face sanctions. According to the law, “sanctions may include revocation of qualified local government status, loss of state appropriated funds, and a monetary fine of not less than $1,000 or more than $5,000.” The attorney general would be authorized to implement the sanctions.

Putting that kind of power in the hands of a bigot is grossly irresponsible.

– Jay Bookman