Today, the Center for American Progress (CAP) released a report entitled “From a “Green Farce” to a Green Future: Refuting False Claims About Immigrants and the Environment.” The report, written by researcher Jorge Madrid, “strikes down many of the false arguments regarding immigrants and the environment, provides a clearer picture of immigrants’ environmental contributions, and outlines real environmental solutions that can cut carbon and curb climate change.”

On a press call on the report’s findings earlier today, Van Jones, who leads CAP’s Green Opportunity Initiative, echoed the warnings issued in the report. “There are other organizations that are trying to drive wedges between communities that are seeking solutions,” stated Jones. More specifically, Jones noted that “there is a greenwashing of hate that is going on in our country.” Anti-immigrant front groups are using “green concerns as a bludgeon against immigrants and low-income communities.” However, Jones points out that it’s possible to “have an America that is green and prosperous and welcoming of newcomers.” In fact, “immigrants are not a problem when it comes to the greening of a America, they are disproportionately part of the solution. Immigrant communities live greener life styles and support greener policies.”

Madrid produced similar findings:

The assumption that immigrant-driven population growth alone drives the U.S. carbon footprint is false. The 10 highest carbon-emitting cities are home to the smallest immigrant populations. The cities with the lowest carbon footprint, on the other hand, have an average immigrant population of 26 percent.

Immigrants, especially recent immigrants, tend to lead “greener” lifestyles than the native-born and are more likely to use public transportation and practice sustainable habits like compact living, conservation, and recycling.

Immigrants, who are largely low income, are also more likely to have their lives disrupted by extreme weather events and other adverse effects of climate change. Immigrants are disproportionately hurt by the dirty energy economy and face unique environmental challenges. Consequently, they fight for greener solutions, including challenging the use of hazardous pesticides in the agricultural fields where many immigrants work.

2010 polls of key electoral states find that immigrant-rich communities overwhelmingly favor policy that will create green jobs and tend to support congressional candidates who back efforts to fight global warming.

I’ve written extensively about the claims made by anti-immigrant “environmental” front groups in the past. Those organizations include NumbersUSA, the Center for Immigration Studies (CIS), the Federation for American Immigration Reform (FAIR), Progressives for Immigration Reform, and others. Most recently, FAIR released “The Environmentalist’s Guide to a Sensible Immigration Policy.” The report connects immigration to “pollution, sprawl, congestion, and ecological degradation,” complaining that “so-called environmentalists pretend as if this connection does not exist.”

On the call, Madrid noted that “It’s important that we not let these kind of false answers go unanswered or unchallenged.” Madrid explained that environmentalists aren’t “ignoring” the connection between immigrants and environmental degradation, rather, evidence actually suggests the contrary. “These organizations are not part of the mainstream environmental movement,” affirmed Madrid. A representative from the Sierra Club who happened to be listening to the call backed Madrid’s claims.

This afternoon, a gunman entered the Discovery Communications building in Silver Spring, MD and appears to have taken at least one person hostage. Among his various bizarre, eco-related demands, one relates directly to immigration. The alleged hostage-taker, James Jay Lee, calls for the elimination of “anchor baby filth” and “immigration pollution”:

Programs must be developed to find solutions to stopping ALL immigration pollution and the anchor baby filth that follows that. Find solutions to stopping it. Call for people in the world to develop solutions to stop it completely and permanently. Find solutions FOR these countries so they stop sending their breeding populations to the US and the world to seek jobs and therefore breed more unwanted pollution babies. FIND SOLUTIONS FOR THEM TO STOP THEIR HUMAN GROWTH AND THE EXPORTATION OF THAT DISGUSTING FILTH! (The first world is feeding the population growth of the Third World and those human families are going to where the food is! They must stop procreating new humans looking for nonexistant jobs!)

Lee’s immigration screed bears a troubling resemblance to views and policies espoused by anti-immigrant groups such as NumbersUSA, the Center for Immigration Studies (CIS), the Federation for American Immigration Reform (FAIR), Progressives for Immigration Reform, and others. Just this past month, FAIR released “The Environmentalist’s Guide to a Sensible Immigration Policy.” The report connects immigration to “pollution, sprawl, congestion, and ecological degradation,” complaining that “so-called environmentalists pretend as if this connection does not exist.” As usual, FAIR prescribes an overall reduction in immigration as the solution to the country’s environmental woes (in slightly more diplomatic terms).

Last month, The Nation published a story explaining the history behind the “greenwashing” of “nativism”:

Population stabilization has been taboo for progressive greens since the late 1970s. But anti-immigrationists like FAIR founder John Tanton, a former Sierra Club activist, cut their teeth on the overpopulation anxiety that permeated the environmental movement earlier in that decade. Subsequently, they used the Malthusian lingo of resource scarcity, carrying capacity (the maximum population an environment can sustain indefinitely) and overshoot (when a population exceeds its carrying capacity) to launder the image of the white nationalists with whom they became allies. When climate change became a public issue, it gave fresh impetus to what population specialist Betsy Hartmann has called the “greening of hate.”

CIS and other FAIR spinoffs like NumbersUSA and Population-Environment Balance, along with the sympathetic Carrying Capacity Network, have all touted immigration as the chief reason for the rise in greenhouse gas emissions—as low-carbon immigrants adopted the high-carbon lifestyles of the rich countries to which they had moved.

It’s not a coincidence that many of these are amongst the same groups that have always supported changing the 14th amendment to deny “anchor babies,” or the American-born children of undocumented immigrants, citizenship — long before the debate entered the political mainstream this summer. FAIR’s legal arm, the Immigration Reform Law Institute (IRLI) is also responsible for authoring Arizona’s recently passed immigration law.

Studies by “so-called environmentalists” actually show that “immigrants, in essence, are doing precisely what planners want the rest of us to do.” UCLA professor Ali Modarres recently found that, compared to Americans, more immigrants walk, bike, bus, or metro to work and fewer drive cars in the state of California.

Today, the Center for American Progress (CAP) released a report estimating that a strategy aimed at deporting the nation’s population of undocumented immigrants would total approximately $285 billion over five years. According to the report, a deportation-only policy would amount to $922 in new taxes for “every man, woman, and child in this country”:

The undeniable conclusion from these findings is that the federal price tag to deport all undocumented immigrants currently in the United States is prohibitive. The operational feasibility of such a massive effort is dubious at best. It would require an unprecedented deployment of resources, and the problems currently plaguing our detention system and immigration courts would be exacerbated in the extreme and would likely precipitate widespread human rights and due process violations. Moreover, a mass deportation strategy would have a crippling impact on economic growth. The exorbitant direct costs of such a strategy detailed in this report should be the final nail in the coffin of a moribund idea.

CAP breaks its numbers down to four separate categories: the cost of apprehending millions of undocumented immigrants ($153 billion), the cost of processing their deportations ($7 billion), the necessary cost of temporarily detaining undocumented immigrants before their deportations ($29 billion), and the cost of transporting undocumented immigrants to their home countries ($6 billion). CAP bases its figures on the assumption that there are 10.8 million undocumented immigrants and that 20 percent of them will self-deport before coming in contact with Immigration and Custom Enforcement (ICE). From there, CAP calculates that 8.64 million undocumented immigrants will require processing and detention by immigration authorities and that 6.22 million of them will require government transport.

Groups that support an enforcement-only approach to immigration insist that they do not advocate a policy of mass deportation, but rather support an “attrition through enforcement” strategy — a harsh strategy used to “wear down the will” of undocumented immigrants through increased deportations, detentions, and anti-immigrant ordinances. According to these groups, many immigrants will choose to deport themselves at minimal cost to the U.S. taxpayer. However, research has shown that ramped up enforcement doesn’t drive most immigrants back to their home countries, rather it only pushes them deeper into the shadows.

Even if the U.S. didn’t aim to deport every single undocumented immigrant, the costs associated with any large-scale deportation program like the anti-immigration groups propose are significant. CAP estimates that it costs $23,148 for each person to be apprehended, detained, legally processed, and finally transported
out of the country. ICE deported 349,041 immigrants during the 2008 fiscal year ending September 30. Using CAP’s estimates, that means that the government spent approximately $8,079,601,068 last year alone.

Ultimately, anti-immigration groups couldn’t even wish undocumented immigrants away for free. In a paper released in January, UCLA professor Raúl Hinojosa-Ojeda published research which found that if undocumented immigrants were removed from the economy, it would reduce U.S. GDP by $2.6 trillion over ten years. Hinojosa-Ojeda also affirmed that if undocumented immigrants were put on an earned path to legalization as part of a comprehensive immigration reform package, it would result in at least $1.5 trillion in added U.S. gross domestic product over 10 years.

The anti-immigrant group, NumbersUSA, posted a video today of its director, Roy Beck, on Fox & Friends touting recent polling by its unofficial sister group, the Center for Immigration Studies (CIS), which claims to show that religious leaders lobbying for comprehensive immigration reform are out of tune with the people of faith they represent. However, even Fox News religion contributor Father Jonathon Morris seemed to hesitate when it came to agreeing with the polling, despite Alisyn Camerota’s leading questions:

BECK: There’s about 5 billion people who would like to come the United States overall — they’re more impoverished than the average Mexican. And so, it’s just that the leaders have put their priorities on those where the members of those churches — their priority is on compassion within their own community — the 15 million Americans who are unemployed…

MORRIS: I believe there is a natural right of every human person to look for a better life — to emigrate with an “e.” But there’s also a responsibility of every country to control the amount of immigration. To make sure it’s sustainable, to make sure it’s safe — both for the immigrant and the citizens….

CAMEROTA: But is it religious leaders’ responsibility to lead the charge on this?

MORRIS: It’s the responsibility to give principles for decisionmakers and then for politicians to say “we’re going to implement policy that’s good for the human being.”

Watch it:

Morris’ logic echoes that of the Reform Immigration for America Campaign and the strategy he proposes resembles the approach that religious leaders have already adopted. Morris even referred to Kevin Appleby from the United States Conference of Catholic Bishops (USCCB) as the “expert” on the polling. Appleby countered Beck’s claims by citing a “more scientific” survey conducted by the University of Michigan and Stanford University which found that 56 percent of Catholics support a legal path to citizenship and 61 percent say immigration levels should stay the same or increase. Another recent poll by Zogby showed that 69 percent of Catholics polled support a path to citizenship for undocumented immigrants, provided they register with the government. Meanwhile, the poll Beck cites indicates that 69 percent of Catholics think immigration levels are too high with 54 percent opposing a path to legalization.

A recent memo written by Dr. Robert P. Jones, president of Public Religion Research, explains many of the discrepancies by pointing out that the CIS poll “is not based on a scientific random sample of Americans but rather on an opt-in online panel survey.” Though Zogby tries to make their online samples “representative” of the U.S., it’s still a self-selected pool of respondents. Jones also notes that “the question wording is problematic in several places.” Meanwhile, the poll that Zogby conducted for the USCCB used the “tried-and-true” method of a random telephone sample.

The Center for Immigration Studies (CIS), a group identified as part of the anti-immigrant “nativist lobby,” is now targeting soccer fans in a weak attempt at using the ethnic make-up of the US soccer team to somehow prove that immigration isn’t “helping” America. In a blog post, CIS staffer David Seminara wonders why the US men’s soccer team is so “American”:

If soccer is the world’s sport, and America is the world’s leading beacon for immigrants around the globe, why aren’t immigrants making a bigger impact playing soccer for the Stars and Stripes?…Perhaps the issue here is one of assimilation, or lack thereof in a post-American society, or perhaps it’s just the free agency concept spilling over from professional leagues into international competition. Either way, it sure would be nice to see all of our best players representing the Stars and Stripes, and being cheered by the home crowds. An even greater cause for concern than the lack of immigrants on our national side is the fact that some top-notch U.S.-born soccer players are choosing to play for other countries.

However, the fact that there are few immigrants on the US Men’s and Women’s National Soccer team says a lot more about what’s wrong with the country’s immigration system than what’s wrong with immigrants. In order to play for the US soccer team, players have to be US citizens and the process of legal immigration and naturalization in the US is not easy. To begin with, there are overly restrictive and limited avenues for obtaining legal immigration status in the US. Green cards are only distributed to foreigners who have family members already legally present in the US, political refugees, foreign workers with certain job skills and education-levels that can find an employer to sponsor their visa, and the lucky winners of the annual Diversity “lottery” Visa program which makes green cards available only to persons from countries with low rates of immigration to the US. All of these legal avenues are subject to stringent restrictions that cap visas, irrespective of the supply or demand for workers.

Once here, the process of becoming a US citizen is no walk in the park either. In order to become a US citizen, most individuals must be 18 years-old, have had legal permanent resident status (a green card) for at least 5 years, demonstrate continuous residency and “good moral character,” pass English and U.S. history and civics exams, and pay an application fee. At this point, application fees are so high that citizenship applications are down 62%.

Seminara lists off three US-born children of immigrants who chose to play for the national teams of their parents’ countries to argue that immigration isn’t helping the US in terms of soccer. Meanwhile, Stephen Piggott of the Center for New Community points out that five of the starting 11 players who recently played and won a game against Spain — the number one ranked team in the world — Tim Howard, Carlos Bocanegra, Oguchi Onyewu, Ricardo Clark, and Jozy Altidore are the sons of Hungarian, Mexican, Nigerian, Trinidad, Tobagonian and Haitian immigrants. According to the International Federation of Association of Football (FIFA) world rankings, the US is currently ranked #11 out of 203 other countries.

Seminara also doesn’t name all the talented immigrant soccer players who want to play for the US team, but are ineligible. The US National Soccer team has expressed interest in Costa Rican immigrant Rodney Wallace, however, since he is only 20 years-old and didn’t start the process to attain citizenship until a few years ago, it’s going to be a while until he’s eligible to play. Sengalese immigrant and soccer player Macoumba Kandji wants to play for the US team, but he was only recently granted asylum status in the US, has no green card, and is years away from being granted citizenship. In Orange County, three high school soccer superstars caught the eye of college recruiters, but the fact that they are undocumented immigrants means that they have no chance of getting a sports scholarship, let alone playing for the national team despite the fact that they “were coached and groomed in the US.” Meanwhile, at the local level, a nationwide crackdown on immigration has shrunk some area’s “entrenched Hispanic soccer leagues.” In Prince William County, VA, immigrant players and fans stopped coming to games out of fear of being picked up or intimidated by local police who have been granted the power to enforce immigration laws through a controversial program known as 287(g).

CIS actually promotes even tighter restrictions on legal immigration and has proposed policies that support the deportation of the 12 million undocumented immigrants currently living in the US.

Our guest blogger is Allison Johnson, Campaign Coordinator for Christians for Comprehensive Immigration Reform (CCIR) at Sojourners.

Earlier this week, the Center for Immigration Studies (CIS) released two reports, one titled “A Biblical Perspective on Immigration Policy” and another “No ‘Progress by Pesach’: The Jewish Establishment’s Usurpation of American-Jewish Opinion on Immigration.” It is clear that the anti-immigrant group which the Southern Poverty Law Center describes as having “never found any aspect of immigration it likes” is deeply concerned about an emerging trend: people of faith seeking guidance from their respective traditions in grappling with the issue of immigration reform. CIS’ lengthy reports seem to have one goal in mind: to delegitimize the role faith plays for millions of Americans who see their moral values in alignment with just and humane immigration reform.

The author of “A Biblical Perspective on Immigration Policy” describes the proactive advocacy and involvement of national denominations in the immigration debate, naming the Catholic Church, the National Association of Evangelicals, and the Southern Baptist Convention as being “out of touch” with people in the pews. It states:

“Yet such self-described ‘compassion’ among religious elites differs from the perspective of most rank-and-file Christians. The laity generally opposes legalization and supports enforcement of immigration laws.”

Meanwhile, Stephen Steinlight berates “American Jewish leaders” for waging a “counterfeit ‘civil rights’ campaign for illegal aliens,” and proceeds to scold them for not being “better educated, or at least chastened, contemporaries.” Steinlight focuses on criticizing “Progress by Pesach,” a campaign for humane immigration reform launched on behalf of a coalition of Jewish organizations from “various Jewish traditions” which includes the Hebrew Immigrant Aid Society, Jewish Council for Public Affairs, Anti-Defamation League, American Jewish Committee, National Council of Jewish Women, and Union for Reform Judaism. Though Steinlight himself admits that “every constituent part of the American-Jewish Establishment engaged in domestic public policy signed onto this effort,” he refers to the alliance as “politically correct McCarthyists” with a “a putatively moral premise” that doesn’t resonate with most American Jews.

Quite the contrary, a new report released yesterday by the Center for American Progress points out that “the plight of an immigrant is as old as humanity” and “the response of people of faith remains constant.” The report documents grassroots-led social activism on behalf of faith communities that are neither “coordinated or part of one network.” “They are people who have just become fed up and have reached out to undocumented immigrants because of their faith commitments to caring for the neighbor,” explains former president of Chicago Theological Seminary, Susan Brooks Thistlethwaite. Between January and July of this year more than 25,000 mostly “rank-and-file Christians” gathered in churches to call for immigration reform and an end to the separation of immigrant families as part of the Families United Tour. The Interfaith Immigration Coalition, a network of religious groups working on immigration reform, gathered people of faith at 167 events in 133 cities for prayer vigils to protect immigrants and their families and to persuade congressional members to enact comprehensive reform in February alone.

Each person interprets scripture through a particular cultural, historical and social context. It is ingrained in the overarching narrative of the Judeo-Christian story that God’s people are to care for the widow, the orphan and the stranger. The actions of a growing faith-driven movement should demonstrate to the rest of the country that not only are people of faith preaching from the pulpit but are living out the call in Hebrew scriptures:

“The stranger who resides with you shall be as one of your citizens; you shall love him as yourself, for you were strangers in the land of Egypt.” (Leviticus 19:34)

Rep. Joe Wilson (R-SC) has received a lot of attention for calling President Obama a liar last night when he asserted that undocumented immigrants will not benefit from health care reform. Most commentators and politicians have denounced Wilson’s unruly behavior, though not enough have bothered to highlight the inherent fallacy of his accusations. Undocumented immigrants are in fact explicitly barred from receiving any health care benefits under both the House and Senate bills and a closer look at all those who restlessly suggest otherwise sheds some light on the radical nativist underpinnings of their anti-health care reform crusade.

To begin with, Wilson is a member of the Southern heritage group, Sons of Confederate Veterans, which favors secession and defends slavery is stock full of white supremecists and right-wing extremists. Crooks and Liars further reports that, as a state legislator, Wilson went against his own party and voted with seven lone right-wingers to keep the Dixie Rebel flag flying over the South Carolina state capitol building.

As a federal lawmaker, Wilson became a member of the House Immigration Reform Caucus (HIRC), a group of (mostly Republican) representatives founded by former Rep. Tom Tancredo (R-CO) with the mission of stopping “the explosive growth in illegal immigration,” “reversing the growth in legal immigration,” and halting “amnesties.” Other notoriously anti-immigrant members of HIRC include Steve King (R-IA), who described immigration as a “slow-motion Holocaust,” and Lamar Smith (R-TX), who equates undocumented immigrants with “terrorist weapons.” HIRC members Rep. Michele Bachmann (R-MN), Rep. Paul Broun (R-GA), Rep. Todd Akin (R-MO), and King all proclaimed that undocumented immigrants would receive health care benefits long before Wilson’s outburst. The two Republican representatives, Rep. Nathan Deal (R-GA) and Rep. Dean Heller (R-NV), who proposed amendments to the House health care bill that would’ve added stringent citizenship verification mechanisms are active members of the HIRC as well. Heller and Deal also lead the fight to overturn the 14th Amendment and end the policy of automatically granting anyone who is born in the country US citizenship.

Wilson’s reaction last night was certainly out of line, but his indefensible fit of temper was illustrative of a larger discussion taking place amongst HIRC members and anti-immigrant groups who see the health care debate as yet another opportunity to promote their nativist agenda by advancing illogical fears, misplaced anger, and calculated misinformation. HIRC is now headed by Brian Bilbray (R-CA) — a former lobbyist for the anti-immigrant hate group, Federation for American Immigration Reform (FAIR). The Center for New Community reports that FAIR paid him almost $300,000 for work on its behalf between May 2002 and July 2005. Since then, Bilbray has announced his intentions to “work closely” with groups such as FAIR and the Center for Immigration Studies (CIS), another “FAIR spin-off group” that has been identified as part of the “nativist lobby.” It comes as no surprise that HIRC’s health care reform haters have regularly relied on the shoddy “expertise” of FAIR, CIS, and their sister-group, NumbersUSA, to promote the myth that undocumented immigrants will be covered under the bill. Another anti-immigrant group, Americans for Legal Immigration (ALIPAC), has gone as far to call Wilson a “brave Congressmen” for calling Obama out on his “lie” and have advised their membership to personally thank him.

Wilson has co-sponsored several pieces of English-only legislation and supported efforts to report undocumented immigrants who seek emergency medical care. In 2006, he declared “it is time to curtail the invasion of illegal aliens.”

View this post en Español.

Today, the Center for Immigration Studies (CIS) — known as the “nativist lobby’s supposedly ‘independent’ think tank” — held a panel on immigration’s impact on health care reform. As usual, the group which has been regularly characterized as having “never found any aspect of immigration it likes,” used the current health care debate as an opportunity to argue that immigration is bad for America.

According to CIS, immigrants account for 27.1% of the uninsured and 64% of undocumented immigrants were uninsured in 2006. However, it’s puzzling that CIS can reach any conclusion about the undocumented population when its analysis is supposedly based on data from the Current Population Survey (CPS), which doesn’t ask questions about its respondents’ immigration status. They also don’t mention that the majority of uninsured people — 78% — are US citizens. All of this data is weakly tied to the point that most of these immigrants will be covered by health care legislation and that will pave the way for rabid reform that gives undocumented immigrants access to all government benefits. Panelist Robert Rector of the Heritage Foundation explains:

“We have a complete open door for every illegal immigrant current and in the future to simply enroll and receive benefits under this program. We will not only not check them at the door, we will not check them once they begin to receive the benefits. If you’re going to do that with respect to health care, why would you not also establish the same precedent with respect to food stamps, public housing, earned income taxed credit and so forth. And I believe that that is in fact the direction that Congress wants to go to to allow all welfare benefits to be fully available to all illegal immigrants...we will begin to draw the seriously ill from all over the world to begin to come here to receive free medical treatment…it is an absolutely mind boggling precedent.”

Both the Senate and House proposed health care bills explicitly state that undocumented immigrants will not be eligible for any federal health care insurance, but Rector is all worked up because there aren’t any harsh immigration enforcement mechanisms built into the bill. There’s actually a good reason for that. An article in the Hoefstra Law Review points out that when Colorado passed a series of controversial measures requiring applicants for most state benefits to prove their immigration status, the effect on US citizens was devastating. It cost the state $2 million in its first year alone and, despite having promised to eliminate 50,000 undocumented immigrants from the state’s public benefit rolls, as of October 2008 state officials could not identify how many, if any, undocumented immigrants were being denied public services. Another study by the Government Accountability Office found that documentation requirements used to prove medicaid eligibility caused thousands of eligible U.S. citizens to lose Medicaid coverage without saving taxpayers any money: for every $100 spent by taxpayers to implement documentation requirements in six states, only 14 cents were saved.

It is however true that the US needs to do something about its broken immigration system — which brings CIS to it’s main point and motivation for talking about health care in the first place. CIS Research Director Steven Camarota explains:

“If we want to reduce the uninsured population and avoid large costs for taxpayers in the health care system we need to enforce immigration laws and reduce illegal immigrants. And on legal immigration, moving forward in the future, we would need to allow in many fewer immigrants who have little education.”

Watch it:

CIS and Rector aren’t likely to admit it, but the Congressional Budget Office estimates that, had the US legalized undocumented immigrants under the 2007 immigration bill, it would have generated $48 billion in new revenue from administrative fees and income and payroll taxes alone.

Treehugger.com recently posted a piece positing that immigration is “at odds” with sustainability. The post is about an essay by Joseph Chamie which recently appeared in YaleGlobal and was largely discredited by the Economist shortly thereafter.

Treehugger.com blogger David Friedlander recaps Chamie’s argument that the US should rethink its “pro-growth immigration policies” and consider the “demographic realities, future population projections and likely environmental costs” of immigration. Friedlander cites US energy consumption and suggests that immigration-fueled population growth could “be disastrous for the planet.” According to Chamie, reducing immigration would magically solve “domestic problems as well as many of those abroad, especially energy and resource consumption, climate change and environmental sustainability.” Chamie also randomly injects race and ethnicity into his assessment — a point that has little bearing on his overall argument other than to severely weaken it:

“Immigration is also altering America’s ethnic composition and culture, i.e., less European and more Latin American, Asian and African. Throughout the 19th century and most of the 20th, the US foreign born population was predominately from European countries, e.g., Germany, Ireland, Italy and the United Kingdom. Today the top five countries are no longer of European origin but are Mexico, China, Philippines, India and Vietnam, with Mexico accounting for a third of the foreign born. As a result, America will increasingly look, sound and act differently over the coming decades – which is neither good nor bad but different.“

Essentially, Chamie’s whole argument is based on the ill-conceived notion that we live in a “lifeboat with limited resources” and that immigration will sink the boat. However, immigration isn’t really the problem — American consumption patterns and energy use are. According to the World Resources Institute, the U.S. is home to 23% fewer people than the European nations of the EU-15, yet still produces 70% more greenhouse gases. Along those lines, the McKinsey Global Institute offers an alternative solution to Chamie’s immigration policy prescriptions: promoting policies that boost energy productivity — the level of output achieved from the energy consumed — such as building shells, compact fluorescent lighting, and high-efficiency water heating. A recent study meanwhile suggests that immigrants are actually “greening our cities” due to the widespread use of sustainable public transportation by the immigrant population.

After anti-immigrant nativists attempted to take over the Sierra Club in 2004, environmental groups have been careful not to conflate immigration levels with environmental woes — but that didn’t stop Chamie or Friedlander from what Imagine2050 blogger Katie Bezrouch describes as falling “right into the well-laid plans of anti-immigrant groups trying to create fear around immigration in the minds of environmentalists.” Well-known anti-immigrant groups like the Center for Immigration Studies and NumbersUSA, along with hate group Federation for American Immigration Reform, have long been using flawed logic to invoke green-friendly arguments that scapegoat immigrants and ignore the complex problems at hand. The Economist explains:

“America’s domestic problems aren’t going to go away if immigration is restricted, but millions of people will lose the opportunity to better their lives and the lives of their family members. And the earth’s environmental challenges won’t go away if would-be immigrants are prevented from migrating. And the world will be utterly unable to solve its significant challenges so longer as problems of global import are viewed through a narrowly nationalistic lens. There is no such thing as ‘American Warming’.”