With international migration a constant feature of today's globalized economy, the contention over the issue of population, immigration and the environment is bound to be a constant debate in the U.S. and elsewhere. For the immigrant rights movement in the U.S., a better understanding of the threads of this debate is needed in order to challenge its flawed logic, and to build a strategy in which immigrants are part of fighting for solutions to environmental degradation and not stigmatized as its cause.

The basic argument asserts that immigration is the largest contribution to population growth, which is the main source of environmental degradation. Therefore, immigration is bad for the environment. Interwoven in this scenario is the question of race. Over the last decade, the population-immigration argument has been forcefully and purposely made as part of a bigger agenda by anti-immigration, anti-immigrant organizations such as the Federation for American Immigration Reform (FAIR), and has become a focus of population control advocates such as Population-Environmental Balance (PEB).

The Population Framework

Population control advocates (who have adopted the term "population stabilization" to disassociate themselves from earlier, coercive forms of birth control) often cloak themselves in the mantle of environmentalism to argue their message of population reduction. This is an enticing view in popular culture influenced by the population growth scare. Overpopulation has been widely touted as the main threat to the finite resources of the planet, particularly through such books as Paul and Anne Ehrlich's "The Population Bomb," published in 1968.

Many environmentalists point out that the "numbers" emphasis of these population control advocates fails to consider all of the other significant factors impacting the environment, including the role of market forces that often govern the human relationship to the natural environment. While population may have an environmental impact, there are several dominant causes of environmental degradation-such as the corporate pillaging of resources, rampant overconsumption, destructive technologies, and so forth. Finally, migration represents the movement of people between various areas-not an overall increase in global population growth.

Nonetheless, "population-first" theorists promote the notion of national population limits within a framework of a country's "carrying capacity"-described as the number of people "who can be supported without degrading the natural, cultural and social environment." The term was popularized by Garrett Hardin, a biologist and Board member emeritus of the FAIR. Hardin adopted the theory of carrying capacity, originally used to determine the number of insects a given ecosystem could support, and applied it to the human population.

These views are historically rooted in the ideas of Reverend Thomas Malthus, an eighteenth century theorist who stirred fears that population growth would deplete the world's food supply. Ironically, Malthus actively opposed early environmentalists who campaigned against the negative health impacts of industrialization. He believed the poor should be forced to live in diseased situations to control their population, that they should not be allowed to reproduce, and that the wealthy were genetically superior. He also advocated raising the already high death rate among the poor in order to ensure ample resources to the wealthy such as himself.

Garrett Hardin echoed this philosophy when he wrote in the Carrying Capacity Network's newsletter in May, 1994: "Many Americans can be shamed into sending food to the starving ...Tragically, flights of food that save lives increase fertility-which increases the mistreatment of the environment."

Another big problem in the idea of "carrying capacity" is that life in the U.S. is hardly dependent on the resources only within U.S. borders. With just 5% of the world's population, the U.S. consumes some 30% of the world's resources. Certainly a consequence of globalization-the restructuring of the world economy-is that the U.S. and many other countries will be able to more readily absorb the resources of other parts of the world.

This absorption of resources further fuels even higher levels of corporate and individual consumption. The "high standard of living" enjoyed in this country also generates levels of waste not directly tied to population levels. Already, the U.S., with about one sixth of the population, produces more solid waste than China and India combined (1.5 billion people).

A Persistent Issue of Race

However, population control advocates ignore such evidence and instead focus on immigrants as the main contributors to environmental degradation in the U.S. Obviously, this is the "flawed logic" that has sparked charges of racism against these proponents.

Michael Dorsey, a member of the Sierra Club's Board of Directors and an African-American, put it this way in a recent article: "The problem with the immigration issue in a 'population and environment' discussion is that despite the claims of objectivity, neutrality and the use of slippery-slope terms like 'carrying capacity' and 'quality of life,' the fact remains: population control always comes down to which population and by whom?"

And more often than not, immigrants have been identified as the population to control. Historically, immigrants were also the target of environmentalists, some of whom linked with the eugenics movement earlier in this century to successfully advocate for immigration controls. (The eugenics movement considered immigrants and people of other non-white races to be biologically inferior to whites.)

The race issue also emerges because the present discourse has been influenced by the anti-immigrant movement-particularly in the form of FAIR and its founder, John Tanton, who has made race a factor in his strategy to win environmental support for FAIR's agenda of immigration restriction.

Back in 1986, the Sierra Club was even mentioned by name in a series of "strategy" memos within FAIR. In one of the memos, Tanton (who left Zero Population Growth to found FAIR) questioned, "As the people that groups like the Sierra Club represent go into opposition (minority political status), will many of the things they've worked for be lost because the new majority holds other values?" He also noted, "The Sierra Club may not want to touch the immigration issue, but the immigration issue is going to touch the Sierra Club!" He also questioned, "Will the present majority peaceably hand over its political power to a group that is simply more fertile?"

It's no wonder that the challenge to immigration brought by population control advocates has attracted the likes of white supremacists such as David Duke, whose web site proclaims: "I will fight to limit overpopulation and protect our environment by stopping illegal immigration and almost all legal immigration into America."

Driving a Wedge

Aside from projecting misinformation and prejudice, the proponents of population/immigration control are driving a wedge between the environmental movement and immigrant communities. While there has been some progress in breaking down the barriers between the predominantly white traditional environmental movement and communities of color, the debate over immigration threatens a potential and necessary alliance to address serious environmental issues in immigrant-based communities.

Nor does the population/immigration control position even begin to address the global dimensions of population. Even organizations such as Zero Population Growth, which supports an overall immigration goal as part of a national population policy, has determined that a number of conditions based in equity and human rights must also be met. The organization recently reaffirmed its policy on immigration, which in part states that "immigration pressures on the U.S. population are best relieved by addressing factors which compel people to leave their homes and families and emigrate to the United States. Foremost among these are population growth, economic stagnation, environmental degradation, poverty and political repression..."

Even the current Sierra Club position (at least prior to immigration referendum) is not a bad starting place in beginning to address the global context of population and migration. The Sierra Club advocated the need to "champion the right of all families to maternal and reproductive health care, and the empowerment and equity of women" and to address to "root causes of migration by encouraging sustainability, economic security, health and nutrition, human rights and environmentally responsible consumption."

A commitment to social justice-the need to bring about an equal and just society-is also needed to improve the world's environment and create a safe and healthy planet. We need to recognize that historical inequities-whether based on race, religion, ethnicity, nationality or even immigration status-have led to longterm problems of social and economic instability. Environmental problems affecting the poor and disenfranchised cannot be solved without also addressing the fundamental problems of poverty and inequality. Immigrants and other communities of color on the frontlines of local environmental struggles show the potential of a more inclusive and vigorous environmental movement.

Cathi Tactaquin is NNIRR's Director. She also sits on the National Population Committee of the Sierra Club.