Anti-Immigrant Hidden Cameras & Neo-Nazi Patrols
The anti-immigrant group Center for Immigration Studies (CIS) released its “hidden camera” documentary film this past July. A ten minute video titled, “Hidden Cameras on the Arizona Border 2: Drugs, Guns and 850 Illegal Aliens,” is the second “hidden camera” video from CIS in the past two years. CIS states that this film “focuses primarily on the environmental destruction caused by illegal activity on federal lands, highlighting in more detail waste and threat to wild animal life.”
This is not the first time CIS has attempted to reach out to environmentalists. Center for Immigration Studies (CIS) was founded in 1985 as a project directly under the control of the Federation for American Immigration Reform (FAIR). CIS is part of a web of controversial anti-immigrant organizations orchestrated by John Tanton, who founded FAIR.
Groups like CIS, that use ungrounded arguments about ecological degradation for their anti-immigrant agenda, are now coming under harsh criticism from environmentalists. Read more
“Apply the Brakes:” Nativists and Naturalists Corrupt the Environment-Population Dialogue
Who would have thought that the renowned Lester Brown of Worldwatch Institute or Roderick Nash of the classic Wilderness and the American Mind would involve themselves in a portion of the environmental movement that dallies with nativists and white nationalists? Or that the Weeden Foundation, a mainstay funder of numerous environmental groups, might “steer the environmental movement toward a course fueled by bigotry and racism?”
With the release today of “Apply the Brakes: Anti-Immigrant Co-optation of the Environmental Movement,” the Center for New Community has laid these unseemly realities bare, and exposed yet another effort by anti-immigrant forces to corrupt the dialogue on the relationship of immigration to population growth to environmental degradation. As well, the report maps the ties between anti-immigrant interests and environmental groups nationwide.
Apply the Brakes (ATB) s a rather innocuous gathering of “long-time conservationists” committed to stopping “unsustainable U.S. population growth.” Having met in 2006 “to discuss the decade-long retreat of U.S. environmental organizations from addressing domestic population growth as a key issue in both domestic and global sustainability,“ the group determined to fill the population gap left by traditional environmental organizations. Flying low over the environment-population-immigration landscape ever since, Apply the Brakes is perhaps the most stealthy of anti-immigrant configurations, with long roots in The John Tanton Network and the contemporary nativist movement in the U.S. Read more
Anti-immigrant Groups and Environmentalists at Odds
Masked is the word that comes to mind when I think of anti-immigrant organizations that claim to be concerned about the environment. As we move into a new month, year, decade and closer to the 30th anniversary of Earth Day, we must be mindful of environmental issues and especially of who are considered legitimate environmental experts. Conscious and informed environmentalism is imperative to solve dire environmental problems.
However, politically extreme organizations that purport to prioritize environmental preservation/conservation are using this alarming issue to promote their anti-immigrant agendas. They are employing several aggressive tactics, some of which are outright attacks on mainstream environmental organizations for not taking an anti-immigrant stance. Other examples include TV and radio advertisements which falsely connect immigrants to environmental degradation. Fear-mongering and bullying are the anti-immigrant movement’s favored tactics. Read more
Will Restricting Immigration Protect the Environment?
This is a pressing question being discussed across the country and an issue that the Center for New Community is taking quite seriously. In fact, I take this issue so seriously that it will be my focus for the next two to three years in my role as Field Organizer for the Center for New Community’s new initiative on Migration, Race and the Environment. I think that the two theories, the Malthusian and nativist theories (described in further detail below), that have been used to argue that immigration should be restricted, lack substance and thus my answer to this question is that immigration should not be restricted.
The Malthusian theory was born when Malthus published “An Essay on the Principle of Population in 1798”, in which he stated that the discrepancy between the rates of population and food growth would lead to a permanent food shortage for humans. Specifically, scholars belonging to the Malthusian tradition claim that populations are constrained by the carrying capacity of the environment and that population growth causes environmental degradation. Read more
Sustaining White America: Population, Environment, and Immigration
Ever since John Tanton launched FAIR three decades ago, the anti-immigrant movement has used population growth and its environment impacts to advance specious arguments for its restrictionist agenda. The Center 
for Immigration Studies’ (CIS) latest report touting “The Environmental Argument for Reducing Immigration to the United States” marks another step in the movement’s ongoing attempts to lay environmental degradation on the backs of the wrong people.
The anti-immigrant movement is deeply rooted in the population control movement of the 1960s/70s—a movement that often wavered between its racially-tinged, eugenics edges and full-bore blame on overly-consumptive “Americans” (i.e., whites) for the environmental crisis of that era. Today the movement has resolutely staked its claim on those old, racially-tinged edges in a disingenuous move to lure environmentalists into its fold. By doing so it has completely abandoned assigning any responsibility for the contemporary environmental crisis on a still-wealthy nation that consumes some forty percent of the world’s resources, regardless of immigration levels. Read more
Fueled by Racism, Opposition to Immigrants is Spanning the Globe
Steeped in fear and contempt and fueled by racism, fierce opposition to migrants, immigrants, and refugees is growing across the globe and is likely to worsen as economic and political turmoil and environmental degradation uproots peoples.
Greece has taken dramatic steps to turn away or detain tens of thousands of refugees and asylum seekers from Iraq, Somalia, Sudan and other war-torn nations. Australia continues its harsh policies aimed at turning away boats packed with refugees. Italy has earned criticism by the UN for its forcible return of Libyans seeking asylum, even as its parliament mapped a path to steep restrictions and fines for undocumented immigrants, and authorization of “citizen patrols” to rein them in. Russia’s ultra-nationalist Movement Against Illegal Immigration is strong in spite of the recent imprisonment of its leader. And the Dutch Freedom Party PVV and its vile anti-Muslim fervor is gaining hold in The Netherlands. The list is long and sobering, particularly as governments bow to the winds of racism in crafting immigration policies. Read more
Sustainability: Thinking Beyond Borders Part Two
When Americans import goods from foreign regions they are often exporting environmental degradation. In the U.S. we import all of our coffee, mostly from Colombia, Brazil and Guatemala. And we import a lot of it. After oil, coffee is the second largest import in the United States.
Luckily, about two thirds of the world’s coffee beans are still classified as arabica. Arabica beans are grown at higher altitudes, require less watering, and need cooler climates. Which means that almost all arabica beans are shade grown, greatly reducing the number of trees being cut down. Shade-grown coffee also grows slower than other varieties, producing a more flavorful, higher quality product. Read more
Ads in California Ask Environmentalists to Consider Racism
Yesterday an organization, called Californians for Population Stabilization (CAPS), began running radio ads in areas of California targeting environmentally-concerned citizens. They want people to know that immigrants are destroying “natural treasures” through over-population. In their press release they state:
“If we want to start healing our environment, we’ve got to slow population growth. More people mean more cars, more sprawl, higher energy demands, more air pollution, more demand for water and more paved-over farmland.”
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