Congressional Quarterly’s Homeland Security (subscription required) has an interesting story on the move by the Southern Poverty Law Center to label the Federation of American Immigration Reform a “hate group.”

If the leaders of the Federation of American Immigration Reform don’t hate their counterparts on the other side of the immigration debate, it’s probably fair to say they strongly dislike them. The same can surely be said of those on the opposite side. So was it going too far this month when the Southern Poverty Law Center, the civil rights group turned anti-bigotry watchdog, labeled FAIR a “hate group” in its annual report on prejudice in America?

The law center was not referring to the often-charged back-and-forth of the immigration debate in Washington. Instead, it was citing FAIR’s alleged association with purveyors of racial prejudice.

FAIR says it’s all about payback for the group’s success in recent years burying proposals in Congress to create a much more robust guest worker program and to provide a legal “path to citizenship” for the millions of people now in the country illegally.