06/11/2013
The Senate has “opened debate” on S. 744, the nation-breaking Amnesty/ Immigration Surge bill — the first crucial vote comes at 2.15 pm today, June 11 — but the Main Stream Media knows that the only way it will pass is if debate is closed. Politico did its part with a recent piece cheer-leading the environmentalist movement’s sell-out to the Treason Lobby: Greens move to heal immigration reform rift, By Darren Samuelsohn, June 2, 2013.
Environmentalists are getting off the sidelines and backing immigration reform — but it wasn’t easy.
During the Senate’s last go round on the issue in 2007, greens stayed silent to avoid airing their dirty laundry — an internal dispute that some in the movement feared would be seen as racist.
Their family feud was so rough that it twice nearly ruptured the Sierra Club when a vocal faction — including some of the movement’s leading luminaries — argued too many new immigrants living the American dream could spell doom for the planet.
Fast forward to 2013, and the Sierra Club, BlueGreen Alliance and Greenpeace are among those out publicly in support of the kinds of comprehensive immigration reform measures pursued by President Barack Obama and the Senate’s Gang of Eight. [Links added by VDARE.com]
I was part of that “vocal faction” in 2004 and documented our struggle at VDARE.com in a series of articles. We were merely honest environmentalists who remembered the obvious truth, which had been the Sierra Club’s historical position for 30 years, that more people represent increased strain on America’s natural resources.
But, as it subsequently turned out, the Sierra Club management had been simply (and secretly) bribed to switch sides. Wealthy investor David Gelbaum specified the strings attached to his $100 million donation: “I did tell [Executive Director] Carl Pope in 1994 or 1995 that if they ever came out anti-immigration, they would never get a dollar from me.”[The Man Behind the Land, By Kenneth R. Weiss, Los Angeles Times, Oct 27, 2004).
The Sierra Club obediently fell into line, with a new official policy in 1996 of “neutrality” on immigration and population growth. A group of grassroots members (SUSPS) attempted to overturn the change. But after years of effort, they learned that the fix was in. The Sierra Club’s leadership simply ignored its own democratic processes and demonized its own members as, guess what, “racists.”
Note, however, that the Amnesty/ Immigration Surge cheerleaders still need to smear their opposition. Thus Politico’s Samuelsohn charges that the anti-immigration “faction” said immigrants would “doom the planet.” Absurd. We just pointed out that admitting millions from the Third World would greatly increase their use of natural resources compared to what they would have used at home. Immigrants don’t relocate for the better recycling opportunities; they want to become part of the American consumer economy and buy lots of manufactured stuff.
Even more absurd, Samuelsohn swallows whole the Environmentalist Establishment’s ludicrous rationale:
Atop their list of reasons why: the prospect of 11 million new green-minded voters.
Of course, Illiterate Mexicans from the countryside are not “green” in any sense.
But the “Greens” at least understand what Grover Norquist and company ignore, that most Hispanics prefer big government and the Democratic Party. In fact, a 2012 Pew poll found that Hispanic predilection for welfare-style governance lasts for generations. In the eyes of the Sierra Club and their cronies, “environmentalism” simply means voting for Barack Obama.
The liberal bureaucrats who have captured the Sierra Club once blogged, “Yep, We’re Too White” and claim to see more diversity as a worthwhile goal. But no white leader of the organization has ever volunteered to resign from a well-paid position so a diverse person could take it.
Instead, executive director Michael Brune [ email] appeared in Politico:
“Right now, there are 11 million people who don’t have the tools, who can’t act without fear. They can’t vote. They can’t engage in the public process. They can’t advocate for clean energy without the threat of deportation,” Brune added. “Nobody should live under those circumstances.”
Apparently, we are supposed to believe illegals are longing to hit the streets and “advocate for clean energy.” But in fact, they already demonstrate frequently in public — but with demands for legalization and access to American jobs.
Senate Environment and Public Works Committee Chairwoman Barbara Boxer welcomed the greens’ entry to the debate, noting that illegal immigrants often live and work in places that are more vulnerable than the general population to higher levels of air, water and soil pollution. But they can’t speak up now for fear of deportation.
Illegals “can’t speak up for fear of deportation”? Loudmouth illegal alien Jose Antonio Vargas testified before the Senate Judiciary Committee last February and no officers stepped in to cuff the guy. Apparently, Barbara Boxer doesn’t even notice what goes on in her own workplace.
Environmentalists say their work on the immigration issue also gives them solid ground to stand on as they engage on issues intertwined in this legislative fight.
Several progressive and green groups pulled their ads off of Facebook in early May to protest pro-oil, anti-Obamacare ads sponsored by a subsidiary of Mark Zuckerberg’s immigration reform campaign.
It can be challenging to keep up with enviros’ relationship to industry. Previous Executive Director Carl Pope stirred up controversy when he partnered with Clorox to give it the Sierra Club endorsement with a seal of approval on products, aka Green Works. In return, Clorox “donated” $470,000 to the Club in 2009 to help with its environmental issues.
When the Florida chapter of the Club had a problem with the unprecedented product endorsement, the head office in San Francisco suspended the entire state chapter of 35,000 members for four years.
Resistance Is Futile! to anyone threatening the Sierra Club’s connection with a wealthy donor.
In 1997-98, the Sierra Club faced a mutiny from within its own ranks over whether to end a long-standing position of neutrality on immigration. The question: whether to back a new stance favoring “an end to U.S. population growth at the earliest possible time through reduction in natural increase (births minus deaths)” and “through reduction in net immigration.”
Several environmental heavyweights, including former Kennedy and Johnson administration Interior Secretary Stewart Udall, Earth Day founder and former Wisconsin Democratic Sen. Gaylord Nelson, Harvard biologist E.O. Wilson and Earth First co-founder Dave Foreman, spoke up for the ballot initiative.
This is often forgotten, several years after the fact. Many serious conservationists were endorsers of the immigration limitation reformers, despite pressure from Sierra Club bureaucrats, who were focused on liberal loyalties and future donations. Additional endorsers included: Prof. Al Bartlett (famous for his arithmetic, population, energy lecture), Lester Brown (the environment author and founder of Worldwatch Institute), California Congressman Tony Beilenson, the late, iconic nature photographer Galen Rowell and many others.
But it went down by a 60 percent to 40 percent margin.
Some greens tried again in 2004, this time by pushing a slate of anti-immigrant [sic] candidates, including former Colorado Democratic Gov. Richard Lamm, to serve on the Sierra Club’s board of directors. After more heated debate, Lamm and his allies were rejected in one of the largest turnouts for board voting in the club’s more than 100-year old history.
It was a relatively large voter turnout — 22.67 percent of the membership. However, Politico’s Samuelsohn doesn’t report what was really behind the “heated debate.” The Soros-funded organization MoveOn.org sent anti-reform messages to its 2.3 million email recipients. The MSM readily printed diatribes against reformers from corporate Sierra HQ, successfully repeating the idea that “racist” anti-immigrant forces were plotting a takeover of the Sierra Club.
Both votes raised difficult questions about race. The Los Angeles Times reported before the final 1998 vote that some greens worried that the Sierra Club taking an anti-immigration position “would expose the club to charges of racism and elitism and alienate politicians who have been friends on such issues as logging and wetlands protection.”
“Concerns about perception were well founded,” explained a former Sierra Club official active in the 2004 fight. “And I think they still haunt the organization.”
Elite Sierrans flogged the race issue endlessly to beat up its reformist members, so if the bogus accusation still sticks to the Clubbers, they deserve it.
Finally, Politico’s Samuelsohn quotes some critics:
The Sierra Club’s critics say the environmental group has skirted population issues because it doesn’t want to anger some of its largest donors. They say the group now is just shilling to win more Democratic voters.
“I believe they have morphed from environmentalist into politicians,” Lamm said in an email, noting that population remains “an indispensable part of any environment program.”
Gov. Lamm — a Democrat, remember — is correct, albeit polite, in calling the Sierra Club “politicians.” They are more like multicultural socialists with hiking boots.
An environmentalist not connected to the Sierra Club said the group’s new position favoring immigration reform helps in “exorcising” itself from its past battles. “Internally, it’s been viewed as an embarrassment,” the source said.
In other words, the Sierra Club management sees its top priority as proving it is not “racist,” rather than protecting the environment. It’s just so embarrassing at cocktail parties!
“I think it has shown a maturity with the groups. That’s my assessment anyway,” said Sen. Tom Udall, the New Mexico Democrat whose late father Stewart often spoke publicly about the connection between immigration and population issues. After Stewart Udall left the Johnson Cabinet, he cut an ad for free for Planned Parenthood …
Tom Udall, who is in favor of the Senate moving an immigration reform package, said his father’s perspective [on population control] still deserves to be part of the debate. “I think we should have a discussion about where we’re headed on population because every single one of the pressing issues we face has a population component,” he said.
Of course, Udall is hopelessly confused — or mindful of current political realities within the Democratic caucus.
But let’s start the “debate” about population that Udall claims to favor right now!
Genuine environmentalists would like to know the plan.
As the late Senator Gaylord Nelson remarked in a 2000 speech, “With twice the population, will there be any wilderness left? Any quiet place? Any habitat for song birds? Waterfalls? Other wild creatures? Not much.”
Back to the Politico puff piece:
Former Interior Secretary Ken Salazar called the Sierra Club’s stance “an awesome statement” that can sway lawmakers because the group is echoing the stance of business interests, civil rights groups and religious organizations including the Catholic Church…
The former Colorado Democratic senator also took issue with Sierra Club critics like Lamm by noting that U.S. population has grown over the last 30 years while still making big strides on the environment.
Of course legislation like the Clean Water Act has helped palliate excessive population growth. But other symptoms cannot be easily fixed — like the loss of food-producing agricultural land to housing and general development.
Bill McKibben, the founder of 350.org, is among the big names in the green brigade who once pushed population issues in tandem with immigration. But in a March op-ed in the Los Angeles Times, [Immigration reform — for the climate, March 14, 2013]he wrote that he no longer viewed the two issues in the same prism like he did in the late 1990s, when he wrote a book urging Americans to have only one child.
That’s right, Billy, it does no good for white Americans to limit the number of children, because if citizens don’t plop out enough future spenders to satisfy the US Chamber of Commerce, it will lobby to import millions of foreigners to fill the stores.
McKibben really could care less about the environment, but he does want to make sure American whites are politically disenfranchised.
“But there’s a higher math that matters much more here,” McKibben wrote, noting the struggle in Congress to move a climate bill. “And that’s precisely where white America has fallen short. Election after election, native-born and long-standing citizens pull the lever for climate deniers, for people who want to shut down the Environmental Protection Agency, for the politicians who take huge quantities of cash from the Koch brothers and other oil barons.”
Give illegal immigrants a pathway to citizenship, he said, and they’re likely to be green voters. Here, he cited a 2012 survey from the Sierra Club and the National Council of La Raza showing 77 percent of Latino voters think climate change is already happening, versus 52 percent of the general population.
Of course, Amnesty is no guarantee of future “green” voting behavior or even naturalization. Only 40 percent of the 1986 amnesty cohort became naturalized as of 2009, according to a DHS study. Once they got their all-important work permits, they were satisfied because their goal of successfully stealing American jobs had been achieved.
Legalization, meaning an immediate work permit, IS the amnesty.
Marty Hayden, vice president of policy and legislation at Earthjustice, said his group backed immigration reform because of its work with long-standing clients like the United Farm Workers and the Farm Labor Organizing Committee. Often, they are the ones fighting the hardest against exposure to toxic pollution and pesticides.
“We know first hand they’re denied justice,” Hayden said.
How are foreign pickers denied justice? They chose to come and nobody is holding them by force. Hayden’s comment is a perfect summation of many opinions in this piece united by a fanatical desire to build a society around an ever expanding helot class. And of course, those disgusting American citizens foot the bill.
The bottom line: the Senate Amnesty/ Immigration Surge bill would dramatically increase the number of immigrants in the country. A tripling of legal immigration is one unwelcome aspect. On June 5, CIS released analysis showing the legislation would roughly double the number of temporary workers admitted each year. Those temps aren’t counted as immigrants, but it’s unclear whether they would ever be required to leave.
Nothing would please La Raza more than 100 million additional Hispanics turning this country into Marxico del Norte. Business wants both cheap workers and consumers, and since the newbies are mostly low-skilled it will take several foreigners to equal the shopping power of one retiring boomer (who must be replaced as a spender). From the CEO viewpoint, that’s a swell plan for the American future.
But nature doesn’t listen to business plans. Droughts, floods, storms, earthquakes and heat waves continue to affect human life. In medieval times, California suffered two massive droughts, each lasting more than a century, yet no consideration is given to the vital subject of water supply in today’s mass immigration schemes.
An overpopulated future in a nation with unsustainable natural resources is dystopian, overregulated and less secure.
Regrettably, today’s “environmental” organizations are all singing from the same Liberal Coalition hymnbook — showing no interest in protecting America’s air, water, farmland and wilderness.
Brenda Walker lives in northern California and blogs about immigration and culture in LimitsToGrowth.org. A disgusted Democrat, she thinks preserving the environment is a better idea than overpopulating America.
This is a content archive of VDARE.com, which Letitia James forced off of the Internet using lawfare.