Don’t Leave Immigration Out of Our Environmental Laws
By Julie Axelrod on September 24, 2018
In 2016, for the first time in decades, immigration control took center stage in a populist election. The last few years have been an era of polarization, not only between Republican and Democratic partisans, but between populism and elitism, with environmentalism as an "elitist" issue and immigration control as a "populist" issue. Those who care about the environment have been lining up on the opposite side of the partisan divide from those who care about immigration control.
This divide has been as unfortunate as it is misguided: The reality is that the two are intimately linked. In fact, mass immigration, because it artificially drives American population growth, intensifies every environmental problem, from carbon emissions to mass extinction. But the general public has no idea of this basic reality, even though the connection is obvious. The irony of the current debate is heightened by the fact that our very first environmentalist president was Teddy Roosevelt, the great populist and believer in immigration control. President Teddy Roosevelt, the founder of the conservation movement, certainly saw no contradiction between populism and the preservation of our natural and cultural heritage.
https://www.cis.org/Report/Dont-Leave-Immigration-Out-Our-Environmental-Laws
