Illegal Immigrants Now Being Blamed For Climate Change

[babylonsister]

Ugh. Creative, I'll give them that.

http://washingtonindependent.com/94674/are-illegal-immigrants-to-blame-for-climate-change

Are Illegal Immigrants to Blame for Climate Change?
By Elise Foley 8/12/10 5:44 PM


In the latest issue of The Nation, Andrew Ross looks into the strange allegiance between climate fears and nativism. It’s worth checking out the whole piece, but here’s a general summary: To win support for tougher border control, pro-enforcement groups such as Federation for American Immigration Reform and Center for Immigration Studies are making the argument that illegal immigration is bad for the environment.

The main argument by the groups is that immigration increases the population, which in turn creates urban sprawl, increases carbon emissions, and hurts open spaces, particularly near the border. With titles like CIS’s “The Environmental Argument for Reducing Immigration to the United States” and FAIR’s “How Immigration Hastens Destruction of the Environment,” both groups have extensive reports documenting these claims.

Most of the assertions are dubious at best, Ross reports. Suburban sprawl is generally populated with U.S. natives, and energy use is damaging not due to population size, but how it is produced and consumed.

Still, the effort to frame immigration enforcement around environmental concerns in an interesting one. Rather than building a border fence, Ross argues the key to dealing with these issues is through comprehensive immigration reform and a climate bill:

FAIR’s shadiness aside, there are real connections between clean energy policy and immigration reform—the two bullets Congress is trying its best to dodge. But they will be made only if we swear off single-issue politics and push for decriminalization and decarbonization at one and the same time.

[liberal N proud]

1. Is this the same climate change they deny exists?

I think we should just give the rich another TAX CUT, that would solve everything, global warming, immigration, the deficit, unemployment and more. :sarcasm:

[whistler162]

2. Now I can see his point.....

all those iligal imigrants are causing the worlds axis to tilt more which is probably causing the climte change.

[pampango]

3. But fear of Hispanics may help cause urban sprawl.

While suburban sprawl is almost totally populated by US citizens, it is largely caused by a fear of minorities (including legal and illegal immigrants and American citizens of color) who live in large metropolitan areas.

So you see, FAIR/CIS can still blame immigration for suburban sprawl even if immigrants primarily live in the cities. It's a fear factor which is something they are good at promoting. ;)

[RZM]

4. I've never heard this particular argument

But I have heard others that deal with per capita carbon emissions and immigration. Americans on average emit a lot of carbon, several times more than than the average person in Mexico. So, if someone moves here from Mexico and begins consuming energy at American rates, they will emit more carbon than they would have if they had stayed home. That's their argument, anyway. Of course there are plenty of other mitigating factors -- some immigrants are not able to afford thing like cars and air conditioners and there is a steady stream of remittance money that is sent back home and thus not used to purchase items or use services that increase one's carbon footprint. But there are undoubtedly plenty of immigrants who are successful enough to consume resources at American levels, or at least at higher levels than they previously enjoyed. I do think it's true that one of the motivations of immigrants is to increase their standard of living, which undoubtedly results in higher carbon emissions (nothing's ever free, after all) so there probably is a tendency toward increased consumption built in to existing immigration patterns.

The problem here is that even if immigrants don't contribute a whole lot more carbon, when you're talking about reductions, every little bit counts. So even a small net increase from immigration will mean that individuals will have to make sacrifices just to keep carbon emissions at current levels, which is not the Obama administration's stated goals -- he's calling for a net reduction. Plenty of people will probably be willing to make sacrifices to reduce our emissions, but you're going to hear a lot of complaining when people are told they have to reduce their consumption even more than they would have been asked to without immigration. A lot of people are all for the idea of reduced consumption -- it's quite another thing when faced with the prospect of actually making tangible sacrifices. My guess is we're only seeing the beginning of the intertwining of debates over immigration and climate change.