Despite having the kind of ideology that elicits support from white supremacists, Youth for Western Civilization (YWC) has actually been accepted in mainstream conservative circles. It was a very visible participant, for example, at the annual gathering of conservative activists and elected officials at the Conservative Political Action Conference (CPAC) in 2009  and 2011.  At the CPAC gathering in Washington, D.C., in February 2011, YWC organized a panel on immigration called, "Will Immigration Kill the GOP?"

The panel on immigration is an example of how YWC was able to use its standing as a conservative student group to host one of the more controversial sessions at CPAC. The panel brought together well-known anti-immigration activists with a record of demonizing immigrants, including Tom Tancredo, the former Congressman from Colorado who is known for his anti-immigrant rhetoric; Bay Buchanan, who is co-chair of Team America PAC, an anti-immigrant PAC co-chaired by Tancredo; Lou Barletta, a Pennsylvania Congressman who passed anti-immigrant legislation as mayor of Hazleton, Pennsylvania, and Virgil Goode, a former Congressman who has written articles for The Social Contract, an anti-immigrant magazine. The panel also gave DeAnna an opportunity to express his own anti-immigrant views.

Tancredo, who is YWC's honorary chairman, demonized immigrants for allegedly "dumbing down" schools. He also asserted, "I'm talking about this cult of multiculturalists that has captured the United States…the world, and unfortunately we see the results of it, in especially Western Europe, and now they're catching on…I'm telling you, it is the dagger point into the heart of western civilization."

DeAnna's own comments highlighted the fact that YWC is not interested merely in stopping illegal immigration, as it has claimed, but rather halting all immigration because they perceive all immigrants as a threat to white America.  On the panel, DeAnna argued, "America is a nation…with a real culture, a real people, worth preserving for its own sake…Even if you could prove to me…that [curtailing illegal immigration] would hurt the economy, I would still be opposed to immigration because it's about our dispossession as a people."