Yesterday, the New York Times published an article written by their reporter Julia Preston, in which she identifies the main funders of the push in recent years for “comprehensive immigration reform”, also known as amnesty.  It is a good article, but it may be behind a paywall for most readers.  Hence my extensive excerpting, beginning with this:

Over the past decade those donors have invested more than $300 million in immigrant organizations, including many fighting for a pathway to citizenship for immigrants here illegally.

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The philanthropies focused on a dozen regional immigrant rights organizations that make up the backbone of the movement.  They also supported Latino service organizations like NCLR, also known as the National Council of La Raza, and legal groups like the Mexican American Legal Defense and Educational Fund, or MALDEF, and the National Immigration Law Center.

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The Ford Foundation already had a decades-long track record of funding nonprofit organizations aiding immigrants.  In 2003 Ford and Carnegie joined with several other donors to create an unusual collaborative fund to augment support for local groups.  Since then, Carnegie has given about $100 million for immigration initiatives, all in conventional charitable donations, including millions to help legal immigrants become American citizens.

The Open Society Foundations of Mr. Soros, an immigrant born in Hungary, have invested about $76 million in the past decade under the rubric of immigrant rights, according to Archana Sahgal, a program officer.

The Atlantic Philanthropies were founded by Charles Feeney, an Irish-American billionaire who built his fortune with a chain of duty-free shops.  Atlantic has given nearly $69 million in 72 immigration grants in the last decade.

By the way, it you click on any of the three links above to the latino immigration support sites (NCLR, MALDEF, National Immigration Law Center), you will probably see where some small portion of that $300M went.  These sites are well designed and pretty slick.

While it is good to know who the opposition is, we should not let these “big money” numbers diminish our committment to blocking any immigration legislation that includes an amnesty.  Remember, the recent election results showed clearly that the big money does not always prevail.