John Tanton, quiet architect of America's modern-day anti-immigrant movement, dies at 85

For the past two years, Virginia-based immigration attorney Hassan Ahmad has fought the University of Michigan in court to unseal the personal papers of a small-town ophthalmologist named John Tanton so that all Americans can learn about his legacy.

Instead of making his mark in the medical field, Tanton became the unlikely architect of the modern-day anti-immigration movement in the United States through founding and funding propositions, nonprofits, activists and publications on a local and national level over the past 40 years.

The proposals championed by Tanton's network - end birthright citizenship, drastically reduce legal immigration, build a wall on the U.S-Mexico border, criminalize