Why an Heiress Spent Her Fortune Trying to Keep Immigrants Out

[turbinetree]

Newly unearthed documents reveal how an environmental-minded socialite became an ardent nativist whose money helped sow the seeds of the Trump anti-immigration agenda

By Nicholas Kulish and Mike McIntire

Aug. 14, 2019

She was an heiress without a cause — an indifferent student, an unhappy young bride, a miscast socialite. Her most enduring passion was for birds.

But Cordelia Scaife May eventually found her life’s purpose: curbing what she perceived as the lethal threat of overpopulation by trying to shut America’s doors to immigrants.

She believed that the United States was “being invaded on all fronts” by foreigners, who “breed like hamsters” and exhaust natural resources. She thought that the border with Mexico should be sealed and that abortions on demand would contain the swelling masses in developing countries.

An heiress to the Mellon banking and industrial fortune with a half-billion dollars at her disposal, Mrs. May helped create what would become the modern anti-immigration movement. She bankrolled the founding and operation of the nation’s three largest restrictionist groups — the Federation for American Immigration Reform, NumbersUSA and the Center for Immigration Studies — as well as dozens of smaller ones, including some that have promulgated white nationalist views.

https://www.nytimes.com/2019/08/14/us/anti-immigration-cordelia-scaife-may.html?utm_source=pocket-newtab

[Bev54]

1. It's a disease

That is the problem with those ignorant and idle minded people who have too much money. They think their money can determine what everyone else should do and think.