Petoskey and Ann Arbor, Michigan
All photos by Carly Goodman.
The architect of the contemporary anti-immigration movement comes from Petoskey, a tiny resort town on the northern edge of Michigan. John Tanton, who died this summer, was an eye doctor whose vision extended far beyond his patients and his small town. He was an environmentalist and activist whose interest in conservation eventually morphed into advocacy for population control, abortion, eugenics, and immigration restriction. He founded the Federation for American Immigration Reform (FAIR), Center for Immigration Studies (CIS), U.S. English, and a long list of the most effective restrictionist organizations operating in the past 40 years. These organizations have helped frame the immigration debate, providing talking points, policy ideas, and a respectable face for an immensely violent and racist anti-immigrant ideology. Many alumni from his organizations staff the Trump administration.
Thanks to the generous support of the Bordin-Gillette Fellowship I was able to spend a week at the Bentley Historical Library in Ann Arbor, Michigan, researching in the unsealed portion of Tanton’s papers.
Tanton’s stationary featured a beehive. He was a beekeeper in his spare time, and often sent jars of honey to his correspondents and friends in town.
Among his papers was a 1985 memo suggesting the threat of an INS workplace raid would terrify immigrant workers, creating a politically useful image for the “evening news.”
On my last day in Michigan, I drove four hours north to Tanton’s home town, just days after his passing. Though its numbers swell during the tourist season, Petoskey’s year-round population is under 6,000. Boasting the motto “Light of the North,” the town has a cute downtown with fresh flower pots, and a breezy waterfront with lots of boats, walking trails, and a lighthouse (Tanton loved lighthouses, which is perhaps fitting for an ophthalmologist). Nearly the whole town is white.
Little Traverse Historical Museum.
The tranquility of the place—and the seeming gentleness of Tanton’s life there—is at stark odds with the white nationalist ideas he helped bring to U.S. immigration policy, about the waning birthrates of whites, the specter of an immigrant “invasion,” and the superiority of white, “Western” civilization.
Carly Goodman (@car1ygoodman) is a visiting assistant professor at La Salle University. She is working on a book about the contemporary immigration restrictionist movement launched by John Tanton.
