Sierra Club To Vote On Immigration Members Who Fear Overpopulation’s Effect On Environment Put Liberals In An Uncomfortable Position

The Sierra Club, the nation’s most influential environmental group and a voice of progressive ideas, is poised to vote on a policy advocating that the United States drastically reduce its flow of legal immigrants.

If passed by the group’s 550,000 members nationwide, decades of neutrality on immigration would be discarded for a policy calling for 200,000 legal immigrants to be admitted to the United States annually, instead of the current 900,000.

The movement is led by a group of Sierra Club members who say foreign immigration is overpopulating the country and contributing to pollution and a decline of natural resources. The mail-in voting will begin in late January with the results announced in March.

Immigrant advocates fear a restrictionist vote - coming from one of the strongest lobbies in America - could lend weight to those claiming immigrants are a drain on the United States or push sympathetic politicians into the anti-immigrant camp.

“If the Sierra Club says don’t let immigrants in because they will contaminate the environment and those are the progressive voices in America, then that is very damaging,” said Juan Jose Gutierrez, director of One Stop Immigration in Los Angeles, one of the largest immigrant legal and educational resource centers in the nation.

Powerful since 1994 and the passage of Proposition 187 - the voter-approved, court-blocked measure barring undocumented immigrants from public schools and health clinics - the immigration control movement would only grow stronger with the Sierra Club on its side, Gutierrez and others say.

“Ultimately, there is no doubt that the Sierra Club (endorsing immigration controls) will accelerate divisions,” said Arnold Torres, a Sacramento-based immigration and education consultant. “The problem becomes that traditional protectors of immigrants, white liberals, are also strong environmentally. … Some will be heavily influenced by the Sierra Club.”

Observers among both immigrant advocates and within the Sierra Club say passage of the measure is possible, but by no means inevitable. A vote to support strict immigration controls would come over the objections of club leadership and because a growing group of members refused to be silenced.

For the last two years, Sierra Club members in California and across the country had tried and failed to force a vote on immigration, until successfully collecting the 2,200 signatures needed this year.

“What we see when we look ahead is that the population will double again in 70 years, and those numbers are largely based on immigration,” said Alan Kuper, a retired engineering professor from Cleveland who is spearheading the immigration control movement in the Sierra Club.

“What we’re talking about is over-population. Like a family, we are living beyond our environmental means.”

Since 1961, the Sierra Club has sponsored research and released analyses on the adverse effects of over-population on the environment, particularly on water resources. But club leaders have not wanted to jump into such a highly charged political issue as immigration, even as the group became a force on issues such as preserving the wilderness, pollution and endangered species. One reason is that environmental groups already have come under fire for having few minority members.

“The environmental movement has been criticized as being a lily-white movement,” said Charles Kamasaki, vice president of research, advocacy and legislation for the National Council of La Raza in Washington D.C. “While the environmental movement has made progress, it has done precious little work with Latinos.”

While Sierra Club leaders say they are sensitive to Kamasaki’s statements, they do not disagree that their minority membership is low.

“It’s not what it should be,” said Carl Pope, executive director of the Sierra Club. “Two of our 15 directors are African American. In the past we have had Asian directors and we have yet to have a Latino director.

“The last survey of our membership showed 7 percent self-identified as minorities, but that is still too low.”

Because of this and because Sierra Club leaders think focusing on immigration strays too far from the Sierra Club’s mission of protecting the environment, Pope said he and others are distressed by the upcoming vote.

“This comes at a bad time,” Pope said. “This (immigration) debate is not America at its best, it’s America at its worst. And for the Sierra Club to be dragged into this kind of cesspool is very unfortunate.”

To Kuper and others, that position “is not defensible. … This is a problem for the nation and the world, but do you hear anyone talking about overpopulation in Washington?”

Controlling immigration for environmental reasons is a message that resonates with immigration control groups, some of whom have long ties to the environmental movement.

Indeed, the Federation for American Immigration Reform - one of the strongest immigration control groups - was started by John Tanton, a former Sierra Club executive director.

“What kind of heritage are we going to pass down?” said Royce Fincher, communications director for the Sacramento-based Californians for Population Stabilization. “We have to break the chain of migration to this country.”

While it is still too early to know which way the Sierra Club vote will go or how much influence it will have, some say the current debate is representative of how immigration policy focuses mainly on the people and ignores the economic forces luring them to the United States.

“No one is going out and exposing the real culprits, employers (who improperly hire undocumented immigrants)” said Torres, who is also the former director of the League of United Latin American Citizens.

For example, he said, last year Congress approved an immigration reform bill tightening the border and making it harder to bring immigrants to the United States - but avoided legislation that would levy stiff penalties on employers hiring undocumented immigrants. Congress also eliminated previously approved amendments by the House and Senate calling for hiring up to 350 more Labor Department inspectors.

Kuper of the Sierra Club acknowledged that while jobs are a magnet drawing immigrants to the United States, he and others didn’t think it “proper” for the group to include such economic factors in the debate.

If the Sierra Club does endorse more immigration restrictions, there are those who say the group itself may pay the highest price.

“For the Sierra Club to grow in the future it is going to have to be representative of America,” Kamasaki said. “They should not be surprised if they face a backlash in the future.”