Anti-immigration
May opposed immigration. She argued the United States was "being invaded on all fronts" by immigrants who "breed like hamsters" and exhaust America's resources. Her anti-immigration activism began in the 1970s.
May's contributions, both directly and through her foundations, have principally funded anti-immigrant initiatives, including the Federation for American Immigration Reform (FAIR), the Center for Immigration Studies, the American Immigration Control Foundation, Californians for Population Stabilization, the California Coalition for Immigration Reform, and Numbers USA. The Center for Immigration Studies is listed as a hate group by the Southern Poverty Law Center. The Los Angeles Times reported that Scaife May was the single largest donor to anti-immigrant causes and "An ardent environmentalist more comfortable with books and birds than with high-society galas, May believed nature was under siege from runaway population growth. Before her death in 2005, she devoted much of her wealth to rolling back the tide--backing birth control and curbing immigration, both legal and illegal." The Times also wrote that May donated $200,000 to conservative columnist Samuel T. Francis, who called for a halt to all immigration and who opposes the mixing of the races.
May also supported English-only movements, guided by John Tanton. Originally that was through the group U.S. English, which successfully lobbied for an Arizona ballot proposition to conduct all state business in English. After Tanton was kicked out of the group for memos that endorsed eugenics and denounced a "Latin onslaught", Tanton founded a new group, ProEnglish. May was a prominent funder for ProEnglish, in keeping with Tanton. According to Roger Conner, the first chairman of FAIR, "John [Tanton] became the one who would carry her legacy forward the way a son or a daughter would... John assured her what she believed in her life would carry on.
She also funded the republication and distribution of the dystopian novel The Camp of the Saints in 1983, a novel popular among the far right and widely described as racist by critics; the Southern Poverty Law Center has compared it to The Turner Diaries.
