FAIR to file Formal Complaint with the IRS over the SPLC’s Pre-election Political Activity

November 22, 2016

“The SPLC is not a credible organization,” said FAIR President Dan Stein

(November 22, 2016, Washington, D.C.) -The Federation for American Immigration Reform (FAIR) today sharply pushed back at the Southern Poverty Law Center’s (SPLC’s) repeated mischaracterizations of the nation’s leading immigration reform advocacy group, calling the SPLC a “basket of partisan propaganda artists masquerading as public policy advocates.”

FAIR has argued for years that the SPLC is not a legitimate charity – it is a partisan organization engaged in illegal political activity. Moreover, says FAIR, it has repeatedly mischaracterized the purposes, intent, and motives underlying the organization and its leadership: “The SPLC continues to state that FAIR has ties to people it has no ties to, is interested in things it’s not interested in, and is working for ends it’s not working toward,” said Dan Stein, president of FAIR. “The SPLC’s attacks have been refuted and effectively dismissed by the media, government agencies, and others who continue to rely on FAIR for information and commentary,” Stein noted.

FAIR cautioned journalists, and advocates clothed in journalistic garb, to refrain from parroting SPLC talking points: “Reporters and others who lift verbatim SPLC mischaracterizations aren’t adhering to journalistic standards and expose themselves to ridicule as hacks and biased advocates uninterested in real truth,” said Stein. “The SPLC is deeply invested in promoting mass immigration, bullying political opponents into silence, and is nothing more than a daily smear machine uninterested in the free exchange of ideas. It uses the same ad hominem tactics year in and year out to try to manage political speech in the interests of its own agenda. The SPLC is simply not a credible source of accurate or truthful information,” he said.

Stein announced that FAIR and its legal affiliate, the Immigration Reform Law Institute (IRLI), will be soon filing a huge tax complaint with the Internal Revenue Service (IRS) documenting the degree to which the SPLC engaged in illegal political activity prior to the November election. “This document with exhibits runs over 100 pages, and spells out in laborious detail how the SPLC operates as a campaign operation for one political party and nothing more. For a huge range of reasons, the SPLC deserves to lose its tax status as a 501(c)(3) operation.”

ABOUT FAIR

Founded in 1979, FAIR is the country’s largest immigration reform group. With over 500,000 members nationwide, FAIR fights for immigration policies that serve national interests, not special interests. FAIR believes that immigration reform must enhance national security, improve the economy, protect jobs, preserve our environment, and establish a rule of law that is recognized and enforced.