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Conflicting Priorities:
On Key Issues, Some Want to Have Their Cake and Eat It, Too
A. BARTON HINKLE
TIMES-DISPATCH COLUMNIST
Tuesday, August 30, 2005


Today's question, brought to you courtesy of the Sierra Club, asks: Is Jerry Kilgore the last best hope of the scarlet tanager?

That's putting the matter a trifle facetiously, but the rationale behind it is serious. Many of the sup- posedly enlightened views among the so-called socially conscious run smack into one another. The prime example here in the Commonwealth may concern immigration, transportation, and the environment.

A new report by the Department of Game and Inland Fisheries (DGIF) lists 925 species deemed not just endangered or threatened but also imperiled and in decline. Many common animals, from the Jefferson salamander to the whippoorwill, are slowly diminishing. (One self-proclaimed authority in this office says whippoorwills have just about disappeared.) The DGIF says it makes more sense to try to shore up their populations now than wait until they become threatened or endangered.

It's a fair point. But it runs headlong into other priorities and attitudes embraced by many of those who also embrace environmental stewardship.

A PRINCIPAL cause of species decline is the destruction of wild lands by development. Another is pollution. A third is the fragmentation of wildlife habitat -- fragmentation the DGIF deems "unprecedented" and terms "one of the most frequently identified problems facing wildlife." Yet received wisdom in Virginia says the state faces a transportation crisis that only a massive infusion of new money can address. The more roads that get built, the greater opportunity for development and the greater the fragmentation and destruction of wildlife habitat.

Received wisdom also directs withering scorn at Kilgore for his recent opposition to a tax-funded day-labor center in Northern Virginia, which he contends would reward illegal immigrants. Critics have accused Kilgore of brachiating nativism, racism, and fear-mongering. They have lectured him on the significant economic contribution made by illegal immigrants. The criticism implies that legal immigration cannot provide sufficient labor -- and that raising immigration quotas will not suffice, either. Only a general amnesty for undocumented workers such as President Bush has proposed will do.

Perhaps -- and for the record, this column and this newspaper are wildly enthusiastic about legal immigration. But while Kilgore made a law-and-order case for cracking down on illegal immigration, there also is an environmental case for doing so. Waves of incoming illegal immigrants need places to live. They need cars to get around and roads to drive on. The thousands flocking to Northern Virginia are pouring in to the fastest-growing region in the country. They contribute to the significant pressure the human population puts on the ecosystem.

It was this simple fact that led the Sierra Club into a bitter fight last year over the election of its leadership and the immigration question -- and not for the first time, either. In 1998 the group split 60-40 on whether to remain neutral about immigration (which it did) or to support curbs on immigration for the environment's sake. Carl Pope, Sierra's executive director, blamed the anti-immigration movement among Sierra's membership on -- seriously -- hate. The notion that the 300,000 Sierra Club members in the minority are closet members of the Aryan Nation seems, well, implausible. It seems more likely that many members genuinely believe uncontrolled immigration conflicts with environmental stewardship.

In a recent guest column on this page, former Democratic Delegate George Grayson warned, "Continuing a porous border will see the current flood of illegals become a tidal wave." Grayson -- a former Democratic Delegate in the General Assembly who teaches Latin American studies at William and Mary -- is not exactly anyone's idea of a right-wing troglodyte.

SOMETIMES conflicting priorities divide not just groups but individuals. James W. Hazel, a member of the Game and Inland Fisheries board, said in response to the DGIF report that protecting species will take money, and "funding is probably more important than anything." Hazel -- son of Northern Virginia developer Til Hazel -- also has played a major leadership role in REGION, a group of Northern Virginia businesses and development interests that believes, in the words of The Washington Post, it is "more important to build the roads and transportation systems to support growth than impose restrictions that may threaten it." So is the state supposed to spend massively to stop habitat fragmentation or to accelerate it?

The Roanoke Times has pulled off the trifecta, editorially condemning the decline of species (it blames "greed, indifference, ignorance, parsimony, and blinding ideology" for the problem) as well as Kilgore for "latch[ing] onto nativist resentment toward immigrants" and a "woefully inadequate transportation system" that "can no longer be ignored."

In short, the public is being told that it must embark on a major new road-construction program, welcome unlimited immigration, and stop the ruinous decline in wildlife habitat -- simultaneously. That's a magic trick tough enough to frustrate Gandalf and Harry Potter combined.