Founded in 1981 by John Tanton, U.S., Inc. is an umbrella organization that serves as the parent for projects set up by Tanton including ProEnglish, NumbersUSA and the publishing house The Social Contract Press. Based in Tanton’s hometown of Petoskey, Michigan, U.S., Inc. also donates money to state-based anti-immigrant groups each year.
About
- U.S., Inc. is currently run by K.C. McAlpin, who serves as the president of the organization’s board. John Tanton’s wife, Mary Lou, is the vice-chair of the board. The U.S, Inc. website notes, “US has also served as an incubator and umbrella for start-up projects that later spin off to become fully independent organizations, or achieve their purpose.”
- Projects incubated by U.S., Inc. went on to become key cogs in the anti-immigrant movement. NumbersUSA was responsible for scuppering comprehensive immigration reform efforts at the federal level and The Social Contract Press gave a voice to anti-immigrant activists and white nationalists who pushed a litany of anti-immigrant conspiracy theories such as linking immigration and crime, as well as arguing that immigration will “Balkanize” the United States.
- U.S., Inc. has routinely donated to the racist VDARE website founded by white nationalist Peter Brimelow. VDARE’s regular contributors include white nationalists and anti-Semites.
- In 2013, D.A. King of the anti-immigrant group Dustin Inman Society announced that his supporters could make tax-free donations to his organization through U.S., Inc. U.S., Inc. has previously donated money to King’s efforts in Georgia.
- While its mission statement appears benign, U.S., Inc. serves as an anchor of the anti-immigrant movement, not only publishing anti-immigrant conspiracy theories through The Social Contract Press, but providing thousands of dollars in funding for state-based anti-immigrant groups to run campaigns. In 2017, U.S. Inc. donated $100,000 to The Remembrance Project, one of its largest donations to date.
- U.S., Inc. also routinely donates to state-based anti-immigrant groups pushing exclusionary legislation such as anti-sanctuary efforts. While a number of these campaigns were unsuccessful, U.S., Inc. funding for groups in Florida and Oregon resulted in major victories for the anti-immigrant movement in recent years.
- Many of the larger anti-immigrant groups are quick to claim that state-based efforts to promote anti-immigrant legislation have occurred organically and are the work of local grassroots activists. This is an attempt to make the movement seem much broader than it is, but in reality, without funding from larger groups like U.S., Inc., these campaigns would not be possible.
- In a 2000 memo, Tanton went into detail about the projects that U.S., Inc. has founded and funded throughout the years. One project is NumbersUSA, founded in 1996 by Roy Beck whom Tanton saw as his “heir apparent.” Beck made the group independent from U.S., Inc. in 2002. Strangely, there is no mention of NumbersUSA being a project of U.S., Inc. on the U.S., Inc. website.
- A former U.S., Inc. board member was Tanton’s close friend John Rohe. Rohe currently works for the Pittsburgh-based Colcom Foundation, the single largest funder of the anti-immigrant movement. Colcom has donated just under $15 million to U.S., Inc. since 2006.
- In a 2017 op-ed in The Hill, K.C. McAlpin, U.S., Inc.’s head, staunchly defended the racist novel The Camp of the Saints, published in English by The Social Contract Press. McAlpin wrote, “Forty four years and tens of millions of migrants later, refugees and changing demographics are widely viewed as an existential threat to Europe’s historic identity. But while more and more people recognize Raspail’s amazing foresight, establishment liberal opinion attempts to demonize and distort the book’s message more egregiously than ever.” McAlpin went on to call the novel “not racist.”
Anti-Immigrant Views
- In a 1996 letter, Tanton wrote, “Do we leave it to individuals to decide that they are the intelligent ones who should have more kids? And more troublesome, what about the less intelligent, who logically should have less? Who is going to break the bad news [to less intelligent individuals], and how will it be implemented?”
- In a 1986 memo, Tanton wrote, “Will the present majority peaceably hand over its political power to a group that is simply more fertile?” Tanton was forced to resign from U.S. English after the contents of these memos came to light. Tanton later set up another English-only group, ProEnglish, which remains a project of U.S., Inc.
- In 2007, McAlpin spoke at the Dr. Samuel Francis Memorial Forum of the National Capitol Region chapter of the white supremacist group Council of Conservative Citizens (CCC), according to the CCC tabloid the Citizens Informer. The mass shooter who was convicted of murdering nine people at a Charleston AME church in 2015 cited the CCC as his gateway into white nationalism.
- In 2011, McAlpin defended the editor of The Social Contract Press who had called for a ban on all Muslim immigration to the United States, comparing a Muslim ban to a previous ban by Congress barring members of the Nazi party to enter the United States.
- In 2017, U.S., Inc. provided funding for the Washington-state based anti-immigrant group Respect Washington. Respect Washington ran a campaign in 2017 to push the city of Burien, WA, to repeal its “safe city” ordinance. As part of the campaign, Respect Washington sent 3,000 letters to Burien residents that contained a map complete with names, addresses and a list of alleged crimes committed by undocumented immigrants in the city. The fliers prompted a major backlash from residents, law enforcement and immigrant rights activists.
- The U.S., Inc. website has a regularly updated blog, with posts penned by Rick Oltman. Oltman has spoken at a number of CCC events on immigration issues. Oltman is also a former FAIR employee. Oltman’s blog posts are full of racist diatribes. In May of 2019, he wrote, “With all the illegal immigration from Third World countries, although drug resistant bugs are not confined to the Third World or illegal aliens, diseases are surely coming across the border with them. And as many infected illegals travel to crowded American sanctuary cities, the chance for diseases to spread into our population grows dramatically.”
Anti-Immigrant Activity
- In 2014 and 2018, the nativist Oregonians for Immigration Refom (OFIR) ran two ballot iniative campaigns to repeal a law granting drivers licenses to undocumented immigrants and to attempt to overturn Oregon’s decades-old sanctuary law. In 2013 and 2014, U.S., Inc. provided funding to OFIR and for the 2018 ballot initiative campaign, U.S., Inc. donated $3,000 to the effort.
- U.S., Inc. has also funded a number of Florida-based anti-immigrant groups in recent years including Floridians for Immigration Enforcement (FLIMEN) and Protect US Workers. These groups supported the anti-sanctuary bill signed into law in Florida in 2019.
- When ProEnglish launched an English-only campaign in Nashville in 2009, U.S., Inc. donated over $76,000 to the unsuccessful effort.
- Back in 2001, U.S., Inc. donated to a now-defunct anti-immigrant group in New York named Sachem Quality of Life (SQL). SQL members verbally abused day-laborers in Long Island and were partially responsible for a climate of anti-Latino hysteria in Long Island that resulted in a number of violent attacks, including stabbings and arson. A 2000 letter to the editor published in The New York Times from the Program Director of the Central American Refugee Center in Long Island claimed a spokesperson for SQL, Ray Wysolmierski, called for the Army to be deployed to Farmingville, NY, to shoot immigrants if they did not “move on.”