The deceptively named anti-immigrant front group, Progressives for Immigration Reform (PFIR), released a set of counter-intuitive polling data today suggesting that while over half of 600 polled liberals support a pathway to citizenship for the 12 million undocumented immigrants currently living in the US, they also see immigration as an economic, social, and environmental liability.

The anti-immigration movement has long been trying to woo progressives by exploiting pro-labor and environmental arguments to make the case against immigrants. The Center for New Community’s (CNC) Eric Ward warns:

“PFIR is simply another addition to a growing list of anti-immigrant groups being set up under the Tanton Network to give the illusion that the anti-immigrant movement is broader than it really is. This network of organizations is named after white nationalist John Tanton the founder and key leader in a network of anti-immigrant organizations, spin-offs and front groups. Key entities include Center for Immigration Studies, Social Contract Press, and the Coalition for the Future American Worker.”

PFIR’s Executive Director Leah Durant is listed as the Federation for American Immigration Reform’s (FAIR) Legal Analyst. Frank Morris, PFIR’s vice president, is also a board member of the Center for Immigration Studies and sits on FAIR’s national board of advisors. According to the CNC, PFIR’s “sister group,” the House Immigration Reform Caucus, chaired by Republican Rep. Brian Bilbray (CA), has an abominable voting record on environmental and labor issues.

According to the poll, 67% of liberals/progressives feel that immigration causes population growth which “negatively impacts the quality of life.” 58% feel that immigration is environmentally harmful and 63% think immigration hurts American workers. Yet over half support a pathway to citizenship.

PFIR’s confusing findings might also have something to do with their polling company, “Pulse Opinion Research,” the favored pollster of the Center for Immigration Studies (CIS), a group which was recently pinned for fueling hate crimes with its anti-immigrant rhetoric and the Eagle Forum, a “pro-family” organization that opposes the “liberal agenda,” “radical feminists,” and supports “American identity.” The pollster has also been used to promote the presidential bids of Libertarian candidates Bob Barr and George Phillies. Yet, while Pulse Opinion Research’s findings were used to predict the relative success of Barr and Phillies, Phillies lost his bid for the Libertarian Party’s nomination to Barr who only won 0.4% of the national vote — compared to the 7% win that Pulse Opinion Research predicted.

Most immigration polling backs the claim that the majority of Americans support a legalization program for undocumented immigrants. Yet, it’s hard to find any polling that shows the same respondents holding immigrants responsible for the nation’s woes. According to a Benenson Strategy Group poll, 71% of 1,000 likely voters said that immigrants are not responsible for taking American jobs. A poll conducted by Bendixon and Associates for the progressive think tank, the New Democratic Network (NDN), found that 60% of voters in four battleground states echoed similar views. Both surveys were bi-partisan polls that consistently showed Democrats leaning towards pro-immigrant views and solutions. None of polls connected immigration to environmental or population growth concerns, however the progressive Green Party itself specifically condemns scapegoating immigrants for social and environmental problems:

“While we recognize that there must be some controls on immigration, if only for the sake of national security, the Green Party would endorse a friendlier (less intimidating) attitude towards immigration in all nations within certain guidelines…We oppose those who seek to divide us for political gain by raising ethnic and racial hatreds, and by blaming immigrants for social and economic problems.”

Polling data aside, US government scientists say there’s insufficient evidence to draw any clear conclusion on immigration’s impact on the environment.

Last week, Ali Gharib made the important point that what’s happening in Iran is thus far not a rejection of the Islamic republic, but a struggle over its founding principles. Reviewing Moussavi’s formal statement Saturday, Gary Sick described it as diagnosis of “a revolution gone wrong,” writing that Moussavi has “issued a manifesto for a new vision of the Islamic republic.”

In an especially good post, Spencer Ackerman flagged a key passage from Moussavi’s statement:

If the large volume of cheating and vote rigging, which has set fire to the hays of people’s anger, is expressed as the evidence of fairness, the republican nature of the state will be killed and in practice, the ideology that Islam and Republicanism are incompatible will be proven.

This outcome will make two groups happy: One, those who since the beginning of revolution stood against Imam and called the Islamic state a dictatorship of the elite who want to take people to heaven by force; and the other, those who in defending the human rights, consider religion and Islam against republicanism.

As Spencer notes, that last bit is a pretty clear rebuke to those Western critics who, in criticizing the brutality of the Iranian regime, have tried to present Islam and democracy as irreconcilable.

Speaking of which, conservative scholar-activist Martin Kramer, in a comically mendacious (and, as usual, Rashid Khalidi-obsessed) dispatch, tries to argue that the “events in Iran have left Obama’s simplistic mental map of the Middle East, first learned from a few Palestinian activists and an old Hyde Park rabbi, in shreds.”

But, in fact, what is in shreds is the representation of Islamism — peddled for years by Kramer, Daniel Pipes, and ideologically affiliated think tanks and publications — as wholly and irretrievably hostile to modernity, to human rights, and to democracy. Having spent years vilifying the Islamist discourse of struggle and sacrifice as deployed by Iran, Hamas and Hezbollah, these pundits have now been pantsed by the Iranian demonstrators deploying the very same discourse on behalf of freedom and reform. Moussavi has declared himself “ready for martyrdom” — will conservatives now condemn his “death cult“?

The point here is not to call out those whose skewed analysis of the Middle East strongly informed America’s disastrous and costly attempt to implant democracy there by force. Okay, that’s part of the point. But the larger part is to note how significant it is that the Iranian clerical-dictatorial regime is being challenged from within Islam, and that a very credible scholarly-religious critique that has long been suppressed by the regime now seems to have found a vehicle in Moussavi and the movement around him.

Even in the best outcome, I think it’s likely that the Iranian government will continue to be, in key respects, Islamist-controlled (matching the Islamist-controlled government in neighboring Iraq.) But it’s important to understand that this, much more so than any Western-imported concept of “secularism,” has the potential to really spur the already vigorous debate in the region over the arrangement of a fair and just society, by underscoring Islamism’s contribution to that debate. As with President Obama’s wise caution in regard to the demonstrations, the most productive thing the U.S. do, while continuing to voice support for human rights, is to get out of the way and make space for the debate to occur.