Sunday, December 21, 2008

“The Immigration Encyclopedia” Needs Your Support


By Nicholas Stix

(As part of my annual, Christmas fundraising drive for VDARE.com, it has become my custom to re-run classic fundraising pitches of yore, going all the way back to the Dark Ages of 2004. This was my 2007 fundraising letter, first published on December 18 of last year.)

Bewildered former Arkansas governor and GOP presidential candidate, Mike Huckabee, recently told the New Yorker’s Ryan Lizza that everywhere he goes, voters’ number one concern is immigration.

It does appear to be the issue out here wherever we are. Nobody’s asked about Iraq—doesn’t ever come up. The first question out of the box, everywhere I go—Iowa, New Hampshire, South Carolina, Florida, Texas, it doesn’t matter—is immigration. It’s just red hot, and I don’t fully understand it.


Welcome to America, Mike!

Here’s the problem. With the help of the MSM, Huckabee has conned millions of voters into thinking that he supports enforcing America’s immigration laws, when in fact he is a confirmed supporter of abolishing America through open borders.

What if I told you that there is an online encyclopedia – though its editor/publisher doesn’t use that term – devoted (though not limited) to immigration, which is vastly superior in factual reliability (unlike the New York Times, it has its own house fact-checker) to any daily newspaper, but which at the same time has more scholarly rigor than you’ll find from tenured professors? (With the notable exception of immigration economist George Borjas.) And what if I told you it has an archive of eight years’ worth of thousands of such articles? And what if I told you it’s free?

Readers of The Immigration Encyclopedia know all about Mike Huckabee’s chameleon routine, because TIE’s dogged researcher-writers have scrutinized the Governor every step of the way.

Keeping track of presidential aspirants’ flip-flops is just one of the many services that TIE provides on a daily basis through its articles and blogs.

And while it costs nothing to read TIE, it does cost money to produce and maintain it. Not just due to Web servers and bandwidth, but because TIE pays its writers and its fact-checker, which is how it can provide you such top-notch reporting, scholarship, and commentary. (Full disclosure: I am proud to say that I am one of those writers.)

The site isn’t actually known as The Immigration Encyclopedia. I gave it that title, because it is the most encyclopedic source on legal and illegal immigration into America on the Web, and to mock a certain pretend Web encyclopedia that has just collected so many millions of dollars in donations that it is embarrassed to even cite the figures. The pretend encyclopedia pays contributors nothing, and nothing is what it provides—but at a cost of millions! By contrast, The Immigration Encyclopedia is a priceless resource that is run for mere tens of thousands of dollars per year in tax-deductible donations. But that relatively small sum is essential.

TIE’s official name is VDARE.com. The reason I didn’t name it earlier was to be coy, to stress what I believe is VDARE’s true character, and to fool Google. Since this is my third fundraising post this month, had I stated its purpose at the top, Google’s blogsearch would have seen this as a repetitious post, and not listed it.

Please hit this link to support VDARE with a tax-deductible donation. (Did I mention that your contribution is tax-deductible?)

Thank you.

With best holiday wishes,

Nicholas Stix

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