Thread: Sierra Club revisits immigration battle

http://www.abqtrib.com/albq/nw_national ... 15,00.html


Sierra Club revisits immigration battle
By GLEN MARTIN
April 12, 2005

The Sierra Club is once again locked in an internecine battle over immigration, with activists who favor tighter migrant quotas opposing the environmental group's leaders, who want to maintain a neutral position on the issue.

Club members are voting this month on an initiative favoring stricter immigration limits and on five open seats on the group's 15-member board of directors.

The 113-year-old, San Francisco-based organization, with 800,000 members and chapters across the country, is both the largest and most venerable of the nation's activist environmental groups.

The current dust-up follows last year's board election, in which candidates supporting neutrality on immigration matters contested bitterly with members favoring tougher regulations.

Immigration has become a point of schism among environmentalists, threatening to sunder longstanding alliances. The controversy boils down to the impacts of immigration and consequent population growth on the nation's environment and the degree to which environmental groups should become involved in the dispute.

Leah Vanwey, an associate professor of sociology at Indiana University and the acting director of the university's Population Institute for Research and Training, said immigration was the key driving force for environmental change in many countries.

"For many nations, it's much more (relevant) than fertility and mortality trends," Vanwey said. "But that said, the situation in the United States is more complex. We have a more rigorous set of environmental laws here than in many countries, our economic situation is different, and that all may have an effect on ultimate environmental impact. Environmentalists should be careful of taking a stand either way. There's a lot we still don't understand."

Last year, the Sierra Club's neutrality candidates, who won handily, were supported by the club's leaders, most of its past living presidents and Groundswell Sierra, an ad hoc group of members that promotes the organization's current immigration policies, which steadfastly maintain neutrality on the subject.

Sierra Club leaders said any change on immigration policy would threaten international partnerships the group had forged, while doing nothing to address global environmental degradation.

But the battle left a lot of ill feeling in its wake, with supporters of stricter immigration standards claiming they were unfairly outspent and erroneously portrayed as racists and extremists.

"Rather than discussing the real issues - the extreme environmental impacts caused by population growth, which is primarily driven by immigration - they (the club's leaders) attacked us at a personal level," said Ben Zuckerman, a board member elected three years ago and a professor of physics and astronomy at UCLA.

"They demonized us," said Zuckerman. "It's very hard to defend yourself against an onslaught like that."

Generally united as Sierrans for U.S. Population Stabilization, the insurgents say they are promoting the current initiative and a slate of board candidates favoring tough immigration limits because the issue is as germane as ever.

"Most of our environmental problems are a result of population growth, and it is unreasonable to assume the U.S. population will ever stabilize if we don't reduce immigration," said Dick Schneider, a member of the club's consumer governance committee and a co-writer of the immigration initiative.

"According to the U.S. Census Bureau, our current population of 300 million will grow to between 600 and 800 million by the end of this century if the current (immigration) policy remains unchanged," Schneider said. "That kind of growth is not sustainable and will destroy huge swaths of this country."

But Larry Fahn, the club's president, said immigration limits would do nothing to address the root causes of the world's environmental woes.

"Immigration is driven by the free-trade agenda, which is lowering wages, labor standards and environmental protections and driving people to leave their native countries," said Fahn, who links many of the world's environmental problems with Bush administration policies.

"People are coming here to escape the poverty and environmental degradation that (current U.S. policies) cause," Fahn said.

Carl Pope, the club's executive director, said the members had spoken forcefully in support of neutrality in last year's election, and he expects a similar outcome this year.

Ahhh!

I love when they fight among themselves.

"People are coming here to escape the poverty and environmental degradation that (current U.S. policies) cause,"

...and it's always our fault.

I might actually have an opportunity to agree with them about something.
It is ironic that they are infighting.