It’s hard to get respect as a conservative. People generally hate our guts, and even folks on our side tend to disappear when it’s time to defend our own. Our side’s full of chest beaters who insist “I’m tough but fair. I don’t carry water for anyone!”

Therefore if National Review is respected, then they had to do very well to earn that. So it’s with great reluctance that I point out they’re getting one thing completely wrong. So wrong in fact that even the libertarians have made the complete case against them on it.

In fact, not only is National Review wrong, they’re carrying water for some nasty leftists. I’ve written repeatedly on the John Tanton sphere of population control groups, but Reason is hammering NRO for covering for him:

And that brings us to the third major restriction group: the Center for Immigration Studies (CIS), which Tanton spun off when he found himself losing the “battle of ideas.” CIS’s express charge was to promote restrictionism on more acceptable intellectual grounds. This move paid off when the conservative National Review, a perennial immigration opponent, gave CIS executive director Mark Krikorian (whom I have debated) a regular blogging platform. Nor is Krikorian the only one. Other CIS staffers and researchers—including Jason Richwine, whose dissertation recommending IQ tests for immigrants and musings at white nationalist websites forced him to resign from the Heritage Foundation—also write regularly for the the magazine.

Jason Richwine is an awful “alt-right” racist, as I recently explained. But Krikorian is different: he defends Malthusian population control true believers, which isn’t surprising Tanton is one, and so that’s who Krikorian ultimately works for.

John Tanton, mind you, is a Planned Parenthood pro-abort extremist, who creates front groups with the sole purpose of duping conservatives, since the mainstream left decided population control was no longer important post-Roe.

I agree with Shikha Dalmia’s closing words: “However, if the conservative movement dilutes its other core commitments to make questionable alliances in order to push its anti-immigration agenda, it’ll only lose credibility over the long run. In the war on immigration, not all is fair.”

We must not diminish the movement to secure the border, and restore fairness and law-and-order to our immigration policies, by associating with terrible people. Guilt by association may not be fair, but it destroys political movements. As it stands, Donald Trump may be about to give us a full amnesty next year, if he loses badly enough. John Tanton and his minions like Mark Krikorian aren’t as well known for paling around with racists, but it’s starting to come out, and it will help the open borders side if we don’t purge them.

National Review: Dump Krikorian. He and his organization are a Trojan horse.