Stating the Obvious: Reports indicate Hate Groups on the Rise in America!

Although most of us participating in the Immigration Debates already know this, new reports indicate the growth of Hate Groups in America are on the rise. This corrolates with the increase in Hate Crimes Against Latinos in America.

NEWSOK.com reports:

Growth of hate
In 2007, the Southern Poverty Law Center, a civil rights advocacy group, counted 888 hate groups in its latest tally, up from 844 in 2006 and 602 in 2000.
That growth, according to McBride, has been well pronounced in the heartland. The National Socialist Movement's Oklahoma City chapter opened about four years ago, at the same time the state's Hispanic population began to grow. The vast majority of new recruits point to immigration, said Ken Sponburg, the chapter's founder. “There's a lot of people that are tired of it, but they don't know where to find like-minded people,” Sponburg said. “This issue is going to come down to one thing: And that's going to be race.”
Marilyn Mayo, co-director of the Anti-Defamation League's Center on Extremism, expressed deep concern over extremist groups using FAIR's statistics and analysis. But she stopped short of calling FAIR extremists. “We've seen an increase in rhetoric against immigrants. We're seeing a certain kind of environment that's negative against immigrants, and we are seeing a rise of crimes against immigrants,” Mayo said. “The most extreme hate groups are changing their focus from Jews and African-Americans, and they are focusing more on Latinos, in a way that they really haven't before.”
The FBI cited a 25 percent increase in hate crimes targeting Hispanics in 2007. It reported that 819 people were victimized by anti-Hispanic hate crimes in 2006, compared with 595 in 2003. About 62 percent of ethnicity-targeted crimes were anti-Hispanic in nature, according to the FBI. Experts say hate crimes are historically underreported.
The National Socialist Movement saw a noticeable bump in membership shortly after immigrant groups staged protest across the nation. Before that, the movement got very few phone calls from Oklahoma. Since then, there's been a marked increase. But even more troubling than membership increases in the National Socialist Movement and the Ku Klux Klan has been the resurgence in “racist skinhead groups,” which are less organized and much more underground and that have a greater tendency for violence, Mayo said.
“That rhetoric about how immigrants are threatening American culture and identity, we're seeing that filter down to the nightly news,” Mayo said. “It's an environment of fear, and people are reacting.”