A California group persistently propagates the myth that immigrants are to blame for environmental problems. Leon Kolankiewicz, senior writing fellow with Californians for Population Stabilization, (CAPS) was featured in the CAPS spring newsletter with an article titled, American Bigfoot: Immigration, Population Growth, and our Oversized Ecological Footprint.
Californians for Population Stabilization is deeply entangled with the anti-immigrant John Tanton Network, which includes FAIR, the group behind Arizona’s S.B. 1070. CAPS yet again pretends to have ecological interests, but is exposed for continued attacks on communities of color including immigrant populations, its connections to white nationalists, and refusal to blame the real “American Bigfoot.”
CAPS’s national media director Rick Oltman is a member of the Council of Conservative Citizens, formerly known as the White Citizens Council, an openly white supremacist organization. In 1994, when Oltman was working as the Western Regional Coordinator for the Federation for American Immigration Reform (FAIR), he shared the podium with Virginia Abernethy at a Council of Conservative Citizens conference. Virginia Abernethy is a self-described white separatist.
Based on this controversial background, it’s not surprising that CAPS and FAIR share a deep commitment to using environmental problems as an excuse to attack birthright citizenship.
Leon Kolankiewicz reports on CAPS intention to “restore” the 14th amendment, “A constitutional clarification would end the disastrous policy of bestowing birthright citizenship to the millions of children born in America to illegal aliens, often the offspring of foreigners who are cynically gaming our system.”
FAIR and CAPS don’t want to restore the 14th Amendment, they want to destroy it. The 14th Amendment acts as a constitutional guarantee of citizenship rights and also recognizes the fact that every native-born person is automatically a first class citizen. Arizona State Senator Russell Pearce, who helped pass racist law S.B. 1070 that FAIR claims as its own, is also trying to pass legislation that would dismantle the 14th Amendment. He proposed a law to ban birthright citizenship and called the 14th Amendment “unconstitutional.”
CAPS and FAIR remain allies in the struggle for their vision of America – a whiter nation. While communities fight for immigrant rights and oil spill clean ups, it is clear that those masquerading as environmentalists have an agenda: to promote racism by calling for the destruction of the 14th amendment and to focus on reducing the population of those who they don’t consider “American” enough. BP is off the hook as FAIR and CAPS keep their eyes on the prize: attacking immigrants.
Let’s not stand for CAPS or FAIR speaking for environmentalists.