When this (actually, the fourth video down) came up on the news this morning I could only react, "Oh, my goodness!"
Since I watched it, you don't have to. In it, this Nice Young Man is trying to argue that immigration is dangerous to the environment.
Now, let that soak in for just a moment. He isn't saying "illegal immigration," he's saying "immigration" — as in all immigration. He throws in this bogus statistic about how immigrants (again, not illegal immigrants) produce four times as much carbon as they did in their home countries. Well, of course they do, dingleberry, most of them come from considerably less-industrial societies. What a stupid git.
If you should succumb to the temptation to look at their website, you will quickly perceive that this is not an environmentalist group. It really bothers me that this anti-immigration group (again, anti-all-immigration, not just improper immigration) is using Earth Day to try to make the association between environmental degradation and immigration, like they're trying to seduce the tree-huggers into sharing their somewhat troubling attitude. And as a CCTH (Certified California Tree Hugger) myself, I find it somewhat offensive; I refuse to be associated, even second-hand, with this 100% baloney attitude. (Racist? You judge).
I'm fairly liberal when it comes to the question of people who came to the U.S. over the back fence rather than through the front gate, but I can easily understand the point of view of those more hard-core than I when it comes to "illegal immigration." But that's not what these guys are about.
I don't want to waste my energy, or yours, on a refutation of their argument; it seems obvious to me. If that attitude is informed by the fact that my Mom was born in Poland and my Dad's parents in Ukraine, well, there you go. "We came here from someplace else, but you can't." Sounds infantile, really. This reminds me of , or that bumper sticker you sometimes see up North, "Welcome to Oregon, Now Go Home." But those were meant to be sardonic.
Happy Earth Day.
(1) They're wrong. (See #3) (2) There is a distinction to be made, I think, between an environmental group making a (flawed) argument against immigration and an anti-immigration group using BS statistics in an attempt to cozy up to environmentalists. (Frances had some appropriate snark.) (3) That they called themselves "Malthusians" is telling. Malthus was wrong. Food production can increase exponentially (or close enough) and human populations can restrain their own increase. I think human — including cultural — diversity is exactly analogous to species diversity and habitat diversity. Thanx, Mark.
The point seems to be that some environmentalists oppose all immigration. That's a fact. But I don't believe it's the position of any mainstream group. I think the argument itself is fallacious at its core, and based on a human-phobic assumption. I rely on first principles; to argue that there need to be culverts for turtles to migrate through under border fences preventing human migration seems self-contradictory. For those poor deluded folks, the primary objective is constructive environmental policy. They are arguing against immigration in the employ of that primary objective; they believe that limiting immigration will protect the environment. For the even-more-deluded CAPS folks, however, the primary objective is limiting immigration. If they wanted to *mirror* the environmentalists' argument, they would use an environmental argument in the employ of *their* primary objective. They could argue, for example, that constructive environmental policy contributes to reduced immigration. (And they might have a case to make.) But that's not what they do. They don't mirror the environmentalists' argument, they parrot it back at them. They're trying to say, "We agree with you on the environment, so you should agree with us on immigration." It's the difference between naiveté and mendacity. Thanks, Mark for giving me an excuse to clarify my thoughts.
http://www.colbertnation.com/the-colbert-report-videos/413205/april-25-2012/the-word---united-we-can-t-stand-them