http://www.newmediajournal.us/guest/slovenski/

Immigration and the Environment
USA Peter Slovenski
May 13, 2006
I oppose illegal immigration and legal immigration because I oppose population growth. Give me a home where the buffalo roam. Give me those amber waves of grain. I like rural life with no traffic and no sprawl. I like wild lands and wild life. How can I vote for them? Which party has the better coalition for rural land, wild animals, and lower traffic?

I'm not a racist. I don't want any more white people here either.

I understand American citizens who agitate for the social services that act like magnets to attract illegal immigrants by the millions from all over the world. I don't agree with the kind of generosity that will lead to overpopulation of the United States, but I understand it. It comes from a counterproductive impulse to help others that ends up being a brain drain from the Third World.

What I cannot understand is the how the environmental movement, which should know better, allows itself to be bought off by the rest of the Democratic Party coalition. The Democratic Party is the party of immigration and population growth, and those are two of the most environmentally destructive forces on earth. Immigration has been degrading North America's environment since 1620. Modern immigration has always been destructive to the environment. Immigrants were encouraged to travel to North America to help beat back the wilderness. Now that the wilderness has been beaten back into relatively small enclaves, we should reconsider the environmental problems that are created by immigration.

Are we a nation of immigrants? We were a nation of racists and chauvinists too but we learned better. Circumstances change, and sometimes people have to revise their standards to free slaves, give women the vote, and save the environment.

Our population has doubled in the past 50 years from roughly 145 million to 290 million. We'll reach 400 million by the middle of the 21st century. Our national fertility rate is very close to zero population growth. Most of our population growth comes from record-high levels of immigration that we have allowed and encouraged in the past 20 years.

Any serious environmentalist believes that population growth is as destructive as anything else we're doing to the environment such as driving cars an hour to get to work. A real environmental movement would work to keep highways from getting wider and work to reduce sprawl by trying to stabilize our population growth. It might make an environmentalist feel good to campaign for better auto mileage, but population growth puts more cars on the road and more emissions into the atmosphere.

Environmentalists are hypocritical when they preach less dependence on foreign oil while supporting population growth through immigration. One sure way to make us more dependent on foreign oil is to increase our population. I'd like to hear some creative suggestions for population control from our environmental leaders such as trading welfare benefits for sterilization, or using immigration only to keep our population from declining.

The modern environmental movement ignores population growth, and concentrates on politically correct forms of environmentalism such as auto emissions and suburban planning. Suburban planning in the face of population growth is futile. The paving over of America has been relentless, and housing density won't stop it in the short run or the long run.

And what about declining ground water levels in our aquifers? We'll have to figure out how to make people who get more miles to the gallon of water.

Our country is roughly the geographical size of China. When China reached a population of one billion, the government prohibited any family from having more than one child. With our current birth rates and levels of immigration, the population of the United States will pass 400 million and then 500 million in this century. Then it's just one more simple leap to double the population with babies, immigrants, illegal immigrants, and their relatives. What will the quality of our environment be with one billion people in the United States?

Modern environmentalists could save our rural areas and wildlife habitat now while the environmental health of the land is still relatively good. Once we have 500 million or a billion people living in the United States, we will basically have a 3000 mile strip mall from coast to coast. The highways will be 20 lanes wide, and we'll need a lot more landfills in our backyards than we have today. In spite of the best efforts of environmentalists, more people will mean more packaging, trash, and waste.

Politically correct environmentalists don't have the guts or the conviction to influence the Democratic Party coalition about the wisdom of using immigration only to sustain a population of 300 million, and not enlarge it. Career environmentalists have been bought off by the Democratic Party. If the environmental movement offends any other parts of the Democratic Party coalition, they might lose some funding for their prestigious and well-financed offices at the Sierra Club.

But true environmentalists need to break from the Democratic coalition over this issue because the political party that has the will to stabilize our population is the coalition in which serious environmentalists belong. I'm not impressed by the lack of respect the Republican Party often gives to environmental issues, but I am impressed that the Republicans have the courage it takes for slowing immigration and population growth. If environmentalists would help, Republicans might even have the nerve for population stabilization.

Environmentalists of the future will look back at 2006 and say, "Why didn't the environmentalists of that time speak up when we had only 300 million people in America? Back then we could have saved it. We could have saved the open spaces from being paved over for houses, roads, and parking lots." They will look back and see that the environmentalists of 2006 sold out to the party that said they agreed with their work while undermining it at the same time.