Deconstructing the Pseudo-Environmental Objection to Immigration

Tonight I was watching the PBS show "To the Contrary" as pundits flung talking points past each other about the linkages between immigration, population growth, and the environment.  The four chosen voices were Rosemary Jenks from restrictionist outfit NumbersUSA, a spokesperson for Rep. Dana Rohrabacher (R-Crazybaseland), a rep from the National Organization of Women, and a journalist whose name I didn't catch.

By my count, that's two committed restrictionists, one of whom focuses exclusively on immigration, "versus" one activist for an organization only tangentially related to immigration and one nominally objective journalist.  That set the stage for some surgically targeted restrictionist talking points to be delivered virtually unopposed, and that's pretty much what happened.  A sampling:

1. Just because you're opposed to unrestricted illegal immigration doesn't mean you're racist.
2. The U.S. needs to have an honest debate about what immigration levels should be set in the national interest, unmuddied by scurrilous and unfounded charges of race hatred.
3. Population growth is the elephant in the room in any discussion of environmental harm, yet the national environmental orgs repudiated the zero population growth movement in the late 1990s for reasons that remain murky.
4. The argument that the environment doesn't end at the border, that shuffling people from one country to another doesn't have much net environmental impact, is easily defeated when you look at the vastly greater footprint that Americans leave vs. poorer people.

Much of this is hand waving and deflection.  #1 is a strawman.  On #2, I have no problem with an open debate about immigration policy, but I doubt restrictionists will much like where that may lead as immigrant-sympathetic voters grow in number and influence, nativists in the GOP become increasingly isolated, the U.S. continues its long decline in relative power, and a postnational consciousness finds greater expression in each new generation.

The Sierra Club and other groups, to address #3, didn't want to be coopted by nativists less concerned with the environment than with their warped vision of cultural purity.  That would have tarnished the orgs and the movement--booting out the nativists was necessary for survival.

#4 represents a perrenial blind spot of the wealthy and powerful, with a superficial truth used to conceal the deeper lie underneath.  The truth is the implicit justification for #4: "If everyone lived like we do, civilization could not sustain itself."  Americans constitute 4.5% of the world's population but consume 25% of the world's energy and produce about 20% of global carbon emissions.  I accept the premise that if everyone consumed and polluted as much as Americans do, that (more) serious environmental problems would emerge.  I don't accept the argument that only a relatively small number of people can have a high standard of living or the planet is doomed, and that the favored few should be those with the good fortune of being born in a wealthy country.  That is the lie beneath the truth.

The argument in #4 is self-serving and hypocritical, and is plausible only to those who benefit from the grossly unequal status quo.  The moral response to #4 is to reduce America's present per capita environmental footprint through smart public policy, not to throw shut the doors to the country and calcify the current euphemistic "standard of living."  (These arguments apply as well in varying degrees to countries like Italy, China, and Britain, but the U.S. seems to have its head most firmly in the sand, and I happen to live and vote here.)

Eat less meat.  Drive less.  Support legislation to limit carbon emissions.  Ratify the Kyoto Protocol.  Be a conscious consumer.  Promote green technology and energy innovation.  Strengthen the EPA.  Listen to scientists.  These are all more effective, more responsible ways to limit environmental damage than pushing migrants into increasingly more dangerous desert routes, building a physical and psychic scar across the land, and closing our eyes to the problems of our neighbors.

The environment does not end at the border.  The obsession with national targets for population growth that frequently pops up in comments to this blog makes little sense in the context of the slow deterioration of the nation-state and the global effects of environmental damage.  Polar bears, acid rain, and hurricanes don't pay much attention to border walls or immigration bureaucracy.

In essence, immigration restrictionists argue that the poor must remain so for their own good, that rich countries are the only ones fit to stewart the environment, and that existing boundaries between rich and poor must be strengthened to save us all.  I don't buy it, and I very much doubt that your average Chinese, Ghanaian, or Bolivian buys it.