Thread: Amnesty for illegal immigrants the key obstacle to reducing

Opinion: Amnesty for illegal immigrants may prove to be the key obstacle to reducing CO2 emissions.

Immigration, climate change collide

By GARY BAUER | 6/2/10 5:17 AM EDT


Amnesty for illegal immigrants may prove to be the key obstacle to reducing CO2 emissions. AP

At the nexus of the Democrats’ two most urgent policy priorities — reducing CO2 emissions and immigration reform that includes amnesty for 12 million illegal immigrants — lies an uneasy reality: Enactment of the latter may prove to be the key obstacle to achieving the former.

The economic and national security implications of open borders have been examined in depth. Less study, however, has been devoted to the possible environmental impact of immigration.

People migrate to the United States to improve their standard of living. But the liberal wish of immigration amnesty may have deleterious effects on the environment, as millions of people from developing countries settle down in, or are encouraged to move to, the world’s largest energy-consuming country and quickly embrace all the CO2-causing ways of the world’s richest economy.

This liberal conundrum is illustrated by the events going on today in the Gulf of Mexico, since a demand for fuel sparked the recent chain of events.

According to liberal wisdom, population growth is the primary cause of heavier traffic, urban sprawl, further depletion of natural resources and increased CO2 emissions. And immigration is the principal cause of U.S. population growth today. More than 1 million people become permanent U.S. residents every year, and nearly as many become American citizens.

The U.S. Census Bureau estimates that the population, more than 300 million Americans today, will grow to 400 million as early as 2030 and 420 million by 2050.

Most of this population surge is expected to be because of immigration from less developed countries. A recent Pew study projected that immigration will account for 82 percent of population growth over the next four decades.

When people move from poor countries to America, they quickly adapt in at least one way — their consumption habits. Studies show that recent immigrants’ consumption patterns, including energy use, quickly resemble those of native-born Americans.

But it is important to compare immigrants’ CO2 emissions not with those of native-born Americans but with compatriots who stay home.

In a 2008 report, “Immigration to the United States and World-Wide Greenhouse Gas Emissions,â€

Any and ALL Environmentalists should be against amnesty and migration to developed countries. They are complete sellouts and hypocrits if they are not...