Immigration Vote Divides Sierra Club

Provoking cries of racism, prompting a wave of resignations and pitting prominent environmentalists against one another, a Sierra Club ballot measure calling for stricter curbs on U.S. immigration has ignited a bitter battle within the country’s most prominent environmental organization.

Already, at least 1,000 people have quit over the question, which appears on the club’s annual organizational ballot, say officials, who anticipate more resignations no matter which side wins.

Motivating the initiative campaign is the argument that America cannot restrain its consumption of wood or water, put the breaks on urban sprawl, preserve farmland, wetlands or wildlife habitat without stabilizing a population growth rate that is heavily influenced by immigration.

Opponents, who include most of the organization’s leadership, argue that passage of the initiative would worsen the perception many Americans have had of the environmental movement since its inception--that it is anti-democratic, elitist and even xenophobic.

The debate comes as the 550,000-member Sierra Club, founded by Scottish immigrant John Muir, is trying to strengthen its political base by reaching out to poor, nonwhite big city residents--many of whom are immigrants.

Ballots are being mailed to members this month and will be tallied April 18-25.

Passage of the immigration measure would not commit the club to a specific course of action, but it would put the organization on record in favor of a “reduction in net immigration.”

Opponents of the measure insist that managing growth rather than curbing immigration is the key to resource protection.

“The issue is runaway development that is devouring watersheds and unspoiled valleys,” said Robert F. Kennedy Jr., a lawyer, author and environmental activist--and nephew of President John F. Kennedy--best-known for the campaign he has helped lead to clean up New York’s Hudson River.

“The enemy isn’t Mexican immigrants, it’s the real estate lobby and state highway departments determined to pave over the landscape,” Kennedy said.

But supporters argue that immigration is a chief force driving U.S. population growth and the development pressure it brings.

“The last thing we need is a rapidly growing U.S. population that continues to use up a disproportionate share of our own resources and the rest of world’s,” said Rick Oberlink, a Berkeley lawyer who is one of the leaders of the campaign to curb immigration.

Curbing Conspicuous Consumption

Initiative sponsors maintain that although America has only 4% of the world’s population, it is responsible for at least 20% of global environmental damage through the burning of fossil fuels that creates greenhouse gases, deforestation, acid rain and emission of gases that deplete the atmospheric ozone layer.

So far, 26 of 63 Sierra club chapters have taken a position on the initiative, with all 26 recommending that their members oppose it. But that may say little about how people will vote on such a sensitive matter in private.

“It’s easy to be politically correct in public, but when it’s just you alone with the ballot, fear and vindictiveness can dictate your vote,” said Luis Quirarte, a group leader in the 40,000 member Angeles chapter who is campaigning against the initiative.

If the initiative passes, “I plan to quit,” he added. “I am a Chicano and blood is thicker than water.”

Outside the Sierra Club, opponents of the measure include several other major environmental groups, including the Natural Resources Defense Council, the National Audubon Society, Friends of the Earth and the California League of Conservation Voters.

But the initiative campaign boasts its own honor roll of backers, among them former Wisconsin Democratic Sen. Gaylord Nelson, a founder of Earth Day, former Secretary of the Interior Stewart Udall and Dave Foreman, the co-founder of Earth First.

Both sides agree that worldwide population growth is the greatest long-term threat to the environment. The disagreement is whether limiting immigration to the U.S. would have a beneficial impact on the environment at home or abroad.

The initiative campaign cites recent research by the Census Bureau and the National Academy of Sciences that immigrants and their descendants will account for two-thirds of the nation’s population growth over the next 50 years. Largely because of immigration, California’s population is expected to grow by about 30% in the next 15 years.

The bitterly contested election is likely to be the most expensive in the club’s history, costing an estimated $350,000. Some of the money went to printing a lengthy ballot that includes the Sierra Club board of directors’ recommended alternative to the immigration initiative.

Club directors are urging members to vote for an alternative measure that is silent on the immigration issue but reaffirms the club’s long-standing commitment to reducing worldwide population growth.

Sierra Club officials fear that the debate will drive away members such as those in Quirarte’s central city group, which is estimated to be about 30% non-Caucasian. The group is a bastion of the new breed of urban environmentalists who, club officials fear, are the ones most likely to leave if the immigration control measure passes.

At the same time, say officials, passage of the proposal would undermine the club’s efforts to promote birth control and family planning in developing nations, where rapid population growth is already taking a heavy toll on natural resources.

“I was in the Peace Corps in India and I know how susceptible people can be to the argument that family planning is nothing but a scheme by the U.S. to keep down other races and relieve pressure on our own borders,” said Sierra Club executive director Carl Pope.

In addition, club leaders accuse initiative backers of taking a provincial view of environmental protection.

“On a global scale, is it better for the environment if people in Guatemala come to Houston,” said Pope, “or is it better if they keep moving into the Peten region, as they have been, and destroying one of the last great rain forests in this hemisphere?

Club Leaders Question Proposal

Moreover, the club’s officials take issue with the argument that restricting immigration will ease pressure on natural resources in this country.

“Working to keep immigrants out is not going to cut down on the number of gas-guzzling sport utility vehicles or stop timber companies from continuing to dismantle our national forests,” said the club’s president, Adam Werbach.

Like the Sierra Club used to do, most environmental groups tiptoe around the issue of immigration. They are afraid of sparking internal strife and summoning up unwanted ghosts from the movement’s past.

“There has clearly been a strand of preservation sentiment that is anti-urban and put immigrants at the center of that focus,” said Robert Gottlieb, Henry R. Luce professor of urban environmental studies at Occidental College.

“From the 1890s to the 1920s, it was not uncommon for leaders of the movement to take positions in favor of immigration restrictions,” he said.

Some of these same leaders, according to Gottlieb and other environmental historians, subscribed to the theory of eugenics, which held that the white races were the most advanced.

More fad than philosophy, eugenics was thoroughly discredited by the horrors of the Third Reich.

But the environmental movement’s mistrust of the masses has been longer lived.

According to Gottlieb, the Wilderness Society once rejected a plan by its founder, Robert Marshall, to make sure that the wilds were accessible to all members of society by offering subsidized transportation to national forests and operating low-cost nature camps for poor people.

Today, the Wilderness Society is one of the only mainstream environmental groups on record in favor of reducing immigration.

Since the early 1990s, many groups, including the Sierra Club, have been focusing more attention than ever before on urban pollution problems as part of efforts to strengthen ties with poor and immigrant communities.

Now, many activists regard the club’s immigration initiative as a betrayal.

They have made comparisons with eugenics and openly referred to supporters of the initiative as racists.

“They have scripted this debate as rich, white environmentalists versus poor nonwhite,” said Ben Zuckerman, a professor of astronomy at UCLA and a spokesman for the initiative campaign.

“The fallacy of that approach,” said Zuckerman, “is that the people who suffer most from the impacts of immigration are the poor. They’re the ones saying overwhelmingly that something ought to be done about immigration.”

Yet, some members say they have grown wary of even talking about the subject.

“It would be one thing if you could have an open, civil discussion,” said San Francisco club member Frank Orem. “But just bringing it up smacks of racism to some people.”

For Orem, immigration control makes sense as part of a strategy that includes reducing birth rates and restraining consumption.

But, he added, “given the negative way the initiative is perceived, its adoption probably would make it harder for the Sierra Club to work with developing countries.”

Orem has received his ballot, but hasn’t decided how he’ll vote.

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Population and Policy

The Sierra Club is considering a call for curbs on U.S. immigration. The proposal asks members whether the organization should take a position that would urge:

“a comprehensive population policy for the United States that continues to advocate an end to U.S. population growth at the earliest possible time through reduction in natural increase . . . but now also through reduction in net immigration.”

Source: Sierra Club