John H. Tanton, M.D. is a retired eye surgeon from Petoskey, Michigan, the founder of U.S. English, the founding chairman of ProEnglish, and publisher of The Social Contract Press, serving as editor for its first eight years. He is a graduate of Michigan State University and University of Michigan Medical School.
Tanton considers himself an ardent conservationist and advocate for the environment. His belief that continued human population growth was a large part of world environmental problems led him to chair the National Sierra Club Population Committee (1971-1974), and to the national board of Zero Population Growth (1973-1978, including a term as president, 1975-1977).
In 1979, as immigration became the primary source of U.S. population growth, Tanton organized the Federation for American Immigration Reform (FAIR) based in Washington, D.C. Tanton also founded, along with a few other FAIR board members, an organization called WITAN -- short for the Old English term "witenagemot," meaning "council of wise men."
John Tanton is co-author with Wayne Lutton of The Immigration Invasion, and has written numerous editorials and opinion pieces including "End of the Migration Epoch."
Criticisms of John Tanton
In 1986, Tanton signed a memo that went to WITAN members that some believed highlighted the supremacist bent of Tanton and FAIR.
The memo charged that Latin American immigrants brought a culture of political corruption with them to the United States, and that they were unlikely to involve themselves in civil life. He raised the alarm that they could become the majority group in U.S. society. He asked: "Can homo contraceptivus compete with homo progenativa?"
Answering his own rhetorical question, Tanton wrote that "perhaps this is the first instance in which those with their pants up are going to get caught by those with their pants down!" According to Tanton, "In California 2030, the non-Hispanic Whites and Asians will own the property, have the good jobs and education, speak one language and be mostly Protestant and 'other.' The Blacks and Hispanics will have the poor jobs, will lack education, own little property, speak another language and will be mainly Catholic."
Furthermore, Tanton raised concerns about the "educability" of Hispanics. In 1988, the media published this Tanton memo, which caused a number of former supporters of U.S. English to cut ties with Tanton, including Walter Cronkite and eventually Linda Chavez, a right-wing analyst with the Equal Opportunity Center.