Sierra Club takes millions to avoid immigration-population connection

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OK, let's say we evict all the illegals, close the door on both legals and illegals of the future, and also stabilize the American population at exactly its current level minus most aliens, which might be around 270 million persons.

Are we done? Have we saved our environment? As a technical for-instance, how much would we be accomplishing in meeting our putative commitments to the Kyoto protocol? 5% of the way there? 50%? What? If the answer is, Not very much ...

Is there a risk that successfully smiting immigrants would lead us real Americans to conclude, erroneously, that we're off the hook for a while? If we care about the environment, would we not be better off to begin addressing the bigger part of the problem: the lifestyle reforms required of most American households?

Is there any chance we're opportunistically using the environment to bonk immigrants, rather than using immigration management to save the planet?

RPD / Cambridge Facts can be your friends if you treat them right.

Unfortunately, it appears you have been smitten - with the disease of Political Correctness and the inability to see where our future is

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Well, OK, let's think about wilderness. I go to the West with some regularity, and have hiked through most everything from Glacier to Zion, backpacked down the Paria, and so on.

And whom do I see out there, cluttering up my American wilderness? Actually, once I get a couple hours away from the parking lot, not much of anyone. But, back at the parking lot, whom do I see? Wetback farm labor? No, those folks are off picking lettuce somewhere else. I see ... foreign tourists! Japanese tourists! German tourists! British tourists! Those are the aliens who threaten to ruin my wilderness experience.

Have you noticed the same thing? And would you therefore conclude that a good way to preserve rapidly dwindling wild spaces in our country would be to keep foreign tourists out? (I myself would first try to lower the boom, not on tourists, but on ATVs and ORVs ...)

RPD / Cambridge Facts can be your friends if you treat them right.

But of course. I got to 270 +/- by deporting millions of illegal aliens, yes? Didn't I say that?

In general, Yes, I think we do ... IF we can rise to the challenge of major lifestyle change, and IF we working successfully around the world to help contain total world population growth.

I think if we succeed in stabilizing Fortress America, while ignoring what's going on with international development and world population as a whole, we will not escape the consequences of population growth.

You and I agree on the substance and seriousness of the challenge, and on the woe that seems to lie in our future, but not what constitutes an effective solution.

RPD / Cambridge Facts can be your friends if you treat them right.

All countries have not only a right, but an obligation, to reduce and then stabilize their population.

Fred Elbel

Disagree. I was responding to a party who sought to maintain that immigration was a threat to our wilderness, and making the point (snipped by you) that foreign tourists, not wetbacks, seemed like the most clear and present danger.

Disagree. My home town, Cambridge, MA, is chock-a-block full of transient aliens. Many or most of them have no intention of living in the US forever, but there are thousands of them

Fred Elbel

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Although world tourism was somewhat diminished by 9/11, the US has about 50 million foreign tourists each year (NYT Almanac, 2004). If we presume the average visit lasts about 2 weeks, and ignore the effects of seasonality, that means at any point in time, there are about 2 million foreign tourists knocking around America. (One can safely presume that they are concentrated at places like Washington DC and the Grand Canyon, and not much seen in places like Dallas or the Great Plains.)

Your math works when aliens never die. In any event, it's time to get more specific about kinds of non-citizens impacting America's population and environment. As I see it, there are at least four major non-citizen subsets which may warrant consideration:

(1) ILLEGAL ALIENS: Some come to work hard, build a better life, and/or send money back to their families. Some come to join up with their legally immigrant relatives. Some come to rip us off, sell us drugs, or peddle their asses. Some start out one way, and end up another; some do it all at once. Some go away voluntarily, some persist indefinitely. But they all 'sneak' in, and linger, undocumented, or improperly documented. (2) LEGAL ALIENS: These are the individuals and households whose applications for entrance, permanent residency and/or eventual citizenship are treated favorably. (Question: Are those who gain citizenship American citizens in full standing, with all the rights and responsibilities thereof? Or, are they still immigrants, and part of the immigrant problem?) (3) TRANSIENT ALIENS: Foreign tourists leap to mind, of course, and I just 'conceded' that in any given week we host maybe 2 million of these. But also in this group are the foreign students who come for four years, the foreign professors who come for a term, the foreign scientists who come for a project, the foreign diplomatic attache´s who come for a while. They are all documented, but they mostly do not expect to become permanent residents of the US, and eventually they mostly leave. (To be replaced in the next cycle, of course, by an even larger group of transients.) (4) FAST-TRACK CITIZENS: Including babies born to alien Moms on American soil (I think this is still in effect, yes?), alien paramours who marry citizens, and alien children adopted by US parents.

So: In terms of the total number of non-citizens or quasi-citizens hopping and bopping in the US, de-stabilizing the population and stressing out the environment, which of these groups may be safely ignored, and which are appropriately targeted for more stringent management? Once you've offered your answer, we'll continue from there ...

RPD / Cambridge Facts can be your friends if you treat them right.

When you can tell me why we should double the population of the United States - with the most liberal immigration policy in the world - we can go from there.

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But ... a couple of posts back, I already agreed (for the sake of debate) that we should set 270 million people as the limit of the US population, at least for now. Question is, how? Who gets a pass, who takes a hit? What will it cost, both monetarily and morally?

To further pursue this challenge, I repost the query you snipped away:

<BEGIN REPOST>

As I see it, there are at least four major non-citizen subsets which may warrant consideration:

(1) ILLEGAL ALIENS: Some come to work hard, build a better life, and/or send money back to their families. Some come to join up with their legally immigrant relatives. Some come to rip us off, sell us drugs, or peddle their asses. Some start out one way, and end up another; some do it all at once. Some go away voluntarily, some persist indefinitely. But they all 'sneak' in, and linger, undocumented, or improperly documented. (2) LEGAL ALIENS: These are the individuals and households whose applications for entrance, permanent residency and/or eventual citizenship are treated favorably. (Question: Are those who gain citizenship American citizens in full standing, with all the rights and responsibilities thereof? Or, are they still immigrants, and part of the immigrant problem?) (3) TRANSIENT ALIENS: Foreign tourists leap to mind, of course, and I just 'conceded' that in any given week we host maybe 2 million of these. But also in this group are the foreign students who come for four years, the foreign professors who come for a term, the foreign scientists who come for a project, the foreign diplomatic attache´s who come for a while. They are all documented, but they mostly do not expect to become permanent residents of the US, and eventually they mostly leave. (To be replaced in the next cycle, of course, by an even larger group of transients.) (4) FAST-TRACK CITIZENS: Including babies born to alien Moms on American soil (I think this is still in effect, yes?), alien paramours who marry citizens, and alien children adopted by US parents.

So: In terms of the total number of non-citizens or quasi-citizens hopping and bopping in the US, de-stabilizing the population and stressing out the environment, which of these groups may be safely ignored, and which are appropriately targeted for more stringent management? Once you've offered your answer, we'll continue from there ...

RPD / Cambridge Facts can be your friends if you treat them right.