WASHINGTON: As Americans celebrated Thanksgiving on Thursday, an anti-immigration group published names and addresses of Muslims and Muslim sympathisers in a Texas town, urging people to force them out.

On a day when Americans offer thanks for migrating here from the old world, anti-immigration groups blamed President Barack Obama for legalising an “Islamic invasion” of the United States.

Reports posted on various right wing websites claimed that the Obama administration issued 680,000 green cards to migrants from Muslim-majority countries between 2009 and 2013, as part of a conspiracy to “make America Islamic.”

The reports also claimed that since 1980, 1.5 million Muslims settled in the United States.

“To put this five-year tally – 680,000 – in context, it surpasses the total population of Washington, D.C., which is 660,000,” said one such post.

What it did not mention is that many who work in Washington live in its suburbs and that’s why the city has a small population.

The posts also failed to mention that between 2009 and 2013, India topped the list of the countries that sent immigrants to the US, followed by China, South Korea, Canada, Philippines, Mexico, Britain and Taiwan.

Last week, an anti-Islam group staged an armed protest outside the Dallas Islamic Centre, and now it has posted names and addresses of Muslims and “Muslim sympathisers” on its Facebook page. The group, which calls itself the Bureau of American Islamic Relations, said it was “protesting the Islamisation of America.”

And the mayor of a Dallas suburb, Irving, Beth Van Duyne, pledged not to allow area’s Muslims to set up “illegal Sharia courts.” She was referring to a mediation panel that helps local Muslims resolve family disputes.

Published in Dawn, November 27th, 2015