White Nationalists Praise Stephen Miller For Popularizing ‘Chain Migration’
Image by Getty Images
By Sam Kestenbaum February 1, 2018
White nationalist Richard Spencer praised President Trump’s senior advisor Stephen Miller for influencing the president on the issue of immigration and pushing political discourse further to the right.
Speaking on his “Alt-Right” podcast on January 24, Spencer said that Miller “is singularly responsible for the fact that… we’re even talking about chain migration.”
“Chain migration” is a contentious term that immigration advocates see as a pejorative phrase that demeans recent arrivals. Miller and others argue it’s a useful shorthand for the system of family sponsorship of immigrants.
This isn’t the first time white nationalists like Spencer have claimed Miller, who is Jewish, as an ally. Spencer has even said he mentored Miller. The two attended Duke University together in the mid-2000s.
In their time together at Duke, Miller helped Spencer organize an immigration debate on campus featuring white nationalist Peter Brimelow, founder of VDARE.com, a site that the Southern Poverty Law Center calls “a hub for white nationalists and antisemites who decry non-white immigration to the United States.”
Miller gained attention during Trump’s campaign for warming up his rally crowds, often by promising that the candidate would make good on his promise to build a wall on the U.S.-Mexico border.
Email Sam Kestenbaum at kestenbaum@forward.com and follow him on Twitter at @skestenbaum
I hope you appreciated this article. Before you go, I’d like to ask you to please support the Forward’s award-winning, nonprofit journalism during this critical time.
Now more than ever, American Jews need independent news they can trust, with reporting driven by truth, not ideology. We serve you, not any ideological agenda.
At a time when other newsrooms are closing or cutting back, the Forward has removed its paywall and invested additional resources to report on the ground from Israel and around the U.S. on the impact of the war, rising antisemitism and the protests on college campuses.
Readers like you make it all possible. Support our work by becoming a Forward Member and connect with our journalism and your community.
Make a gift of any size and become a Forward member today. You’ll support our mission to tell the American Jewish story fully and fairly.
— Rachel Fishman Feddersen, Publisher and CEO
Join our mission to tell the Jewish story fully and fairly.
