New Report Says Key to Environmental Sustainability in U.S. Is Reduced Immigration

Wed, 2016-09-21 14:28 by admin

(September 20, 2016, Washington, D.C.) – One of the most important factors in achieving environmental sustainability in the U.S. is to reduce immigration, finds a new report, “U.S. Immigration and the Environment,” by the Federation for American Immigration Reform (FAIR). America’s rapidly growing population is one of the biggest impediments to meeting critical environmental goals, and immigration is by far the largest factor driving U.S. population growth.

“It’s completely disingenuous for anyone who is truly concerned about this nation’s sustainability and carrying capacity to continue to ignore the jet engine driving U.S. population growth: immigration,” said FAIR President Dan Stein. “Immigration fueled more than half of U.S. population growth in the last 50 years, and will generate three-quarters of it in the next 50 years,” he added.

The U.S. has the largest ecological footprint in the world, measured by emissions of greenhouse gases and resource consumption. Adding to that footprint is the growing number of human feet, largely a result of mass immigration, which continues to undermine our efforts to minimize America’s impact on the global environment. All of the gains that have been made through conservation and improved efficiency have been wiped out by continued immigration-driven population growth.

“It is simply impossible for the United States to address critical ecological challenges while increasing our population by more than 100 million people by the middle of this century,” said Stein. “A high-immigration, high-population U.S. threatens the future successes of the environmental movement, including efforts to fight global climate change and urban sprawl.”

The report makes five recommendations, noting that any delay reducing immigration will make it increasingly difficult to achieve a political consensus to finally bring immigration back to traditional levels. The recommendations include:

The government should adopt an Environmental Impact Statement (EIS) on U.S. immigration policy. No U.S. government agency has ever produced an EIS assessing the impact of large-scale population growth.

Set a national goal of population stabilization. First recommended nearly 50 years ago and then again under President Clinton, the U.S. should adopt the goal of population stabilization.

End chain migration. Admission to the U.S. should be limited to the immediate nuclear family of immigrants, including spouse and unmarried minor children.

Reduce immigration levels. Immigration should be reduced from its current 1.25 million to roughly 300,000 per year.

Adopt an immigration policy that lives within an immigration “budget.” Living within an immigration budget will inject some much-needed discipline into the system and address the continued use of “temporary” categories that remain in place long after the crisis that created the need ends.

“In recent years, many environmental groups that had previously taken strong, common sense positions in favor of reducing immigration have abandoned their core principles in favor of other political agendas. Given the existential challenges posed by global warming and other threats to the survival of our planet, these groups need to support commonsense population policies now,” said Stein. “The only way to buy some time in the race the save the environment is by acting now on immigration.”

Read the full report here.

ABOUT FAIR
Founded in 1979, FAIR is the country’s largest immigration reform group. With over 250,000 members nationwide, FAIR fights for immigration policies that serve national interests, not special interests. FAIR believes that immigration reform must enhance national security, improve the economy, protect jobs, preserve our environment, and establish a rule of law that is recognized and enforced.

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VivKay (not verified)

Thu, 2016-09-22 19:27

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Nothing can be filled forever!

Malcolm Turnbull will tell his world counterparts the need to build community support for migration has never been clearer at this time of global uncertainty about border control. Now, increasing Border Control is synonymous with increasing immigration. What they mean by "immigration" is also double-talk. While they great bulk of our immigration is due to skilled migration and family reunions etc, what our government means is "refugees"! He said that "Addressing irregular migration by securing borders has been essential in creating confidence that the Australian government can deal with migration that focuses on those who need humanitarian assistance the most." http://www.9news.com.au/world/2016/09/20/00/09/build-community-support-f... So, the idea of Border control is to give the public the impression that our shores and tight and safe, so that they will accept more immigration - similar to the ploy under PM John Howard. The prime minister will talk up the need for strong international co-operation to help refugees migrate, as well as returning those who can go home safely. Just how many actually do return home safely? 'We are indeed an immigration nation and our immigrants are as diverse as the society that they have joined.' He drew on the story of Sydney Swans player Aliir Aliir, whose family fled the bloody civil war in Sudan, as an example of 'successful integration'. 'Aliir is one of the first Sudanese immigrants to play AFL and has become a role model in our multicultural nation,' Mr Turnbull said. On one hand our governments promote Multiculturalism, of keeping unique cultures parallel, while at the same time celebrate individuals' successful "integration"? Surely there's an oxymoron there somewhere? Logic can't be ignored, that while we've developed as a strong nation because of immigration, we can't keep on filling our country with endless numbers of people. It's unscientific and without precedent that nothing can be filled endlessly and that Australia can't be an "immigration nation" forever. Prime Minister Malcolm Turnbull has announced Australia will take refugees from Central America as part of its annual intake, which will remain at the 2018-19 goal of 18,750. This is ABOVE the existing NOM. The US earlier this year announced a plan for Costa Rica to temporarily take refugees fleeing violence in Guatemala, Honduras and El Salvador. Refugees should be protected as the result of war, genocide and conflicts. The problems in Central America are due to crime, gangs, corruption, lack of leadership, and overpopulation. They need to be fixed with strong discipline and control, not by shuffling people across the planet and bulging out our already overloaded welfare budget.

admin

Wed, 2016-10-05 14:07

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Lateline misuses the correct information on immigration numbers

Lateline last night October Tuesday October 4th http://iview.abc.net.au/programs/lateline/NC1625H177S00 Emma Alberici interviews Shen Narayanasamy-The segment was called “The great immigration con” or similar. The guest exposed the huge numbers of immigrants officially entering Australia by air as opposed to the tiny dribble of boat arrivals who are not accommodated. She makes the point that the Australian public is not made aware of this. She quoted numbers in the hundreds of thousands entering- by the front door. These are numbers never normally quoted on ABC TV. So far so good, except that she uses this information not to help the long suffering Australian public but to make the argument that we are easily accommodating large numbers of immigrants and are “all the better for it” so should not have a problem with a few more. Emma Alberici is of course no help at all , describing Australians as fearful . I’m not sure she used the word “xenophobic” but she may as well have.

John Bentley (not verified)

Wed, 2016-10-05 18:53

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Jessica Irvine

The mainstream media must be getting toey regarding the rampant immigration numbers entering Australia. It's the only conclusion I can draw with the number of articles beginning to appear in various programs. Jessica Irvine had a crack at it in Saturday's Age which prompted a good rejoinder from Don Gillies. I believe that the general public is slowly beginning to understand that increasing the population without ensuring the necessary infrastructure is in place, is making us all poorer both economically and environmentally not to mention disenchanted and perhaps even angrier. I also believe that it's this rampant immigration which is causing a rise in Australia's unemployment (including underemployment) the reason behind our rising crime, drug and domestic violence rates we are bearing witness to at present. The mainstream media have a lot to answer for.

VivKay (not verified)

Fri, 2016-10-07 09:01

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The great immigration con

Back in August I (Leith van Onselen) penned an article entitled The great immigration subterfuge, which argued that Australia is running a dishonest immigration program that has cynically scapegoated the small number of refugees arriving into Australia by boat, while secretly opening the floodgates to economic migrants arriving into the country by plane: …it was the sleight of hand by John Howard that originally mislead the Australian people on immigration. Howard effectively performed a ‘bait-and-switch’ on the Australian people whereby he slammed the door shut on the relatively small number of refugees arriving into Australia by boat all the while stealthily shoving open the door to economic migrants arriving here by plane. Howard never explicitly mentioned that he was in favour of high immigration because he knew the electorate would be against it. Instead, he scapegoated refugees to give the impression that he was stemming the migrant inflow while proceeding in secret with his ‘Big Australia’ plan. Harvard economist Lant Pritchett says even if the barriers to immigration were loosened just a bit (enough to boost the US labour force by 1 per cent) global income would grow by more than all the world's official foreign aid combined. US economist Alex Tabarrok, writing in the October issue of the The Atlantic, describes immigration as the greatest anti-poverty program ever devised. One of Australia’s many political ironies is that the national effort to Stop The Boats has disguised an immigration boom. Immigration increased five-fold since the Howard government came to office and with a big increase in births over the past ten years, in part also due to Howard government policies, Australia’s total population growth has doubled and is now about three times that of most other developed countries… Where is the precedent for replacing the mining boom with the immigration boom? Where is our prosperity with congested cities, unaffordable housing, budget shortfalls, unemployment and lowering per capita wealth? Former Prime Minister, John Howard, gave an interview on Radio National where, (2014) at the nine minute mark, he said the following about Australian immigration policy under his watch: “Every country does have the right to decide the composition, the manner, and the timing of the flow of people. And that’s something the Australian people support… One of the reasons why it is so important to maintain that policy is that the more people think our borders are being controlled, the more supportive they are in the long-term of higher levels of immigration. Australia needs a high level of immigration. I’m a high immigration man. I practiced that in Government. And one of the ways that you maintain public support for that is to communicate to the Australian people a capacity to control our borders and decide who and what people and when they come to this country”. So, he used uninvited asylum seekers, the boat-people, to disguise and mask his real intents. He used a few boats to distract the public from the hoards arriving each day at our airports! Macrobusiness- The great immigration con

John Bentley (not verified)

Fri, 2016-10-07 17:45

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Jessica, Jessica......

I'm sorry, I was out of the room. There I was thinking that all those free trade deals had done us over and you know what apparently we're all better off, we're richer, everything has become cheaper, millions liberated from poverty and my name's Peter Pan. For the latest instalment of Jessica's neo-liberal clap-trap go on-line or read today's Age. Actually there's not much to read in The Age these days unless you're a Hillary supporter, Donald is definitely not the flavour of the year!

Olaf (not verified)

Thu, 2016-10-13 11:45

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Stop Press! Teresa May defends British sovereignty

UK politics: May's revolutionary conservatism

8 October 2016

Economist Intelligence Unit

Bagehot: May's revolutionary conservatism

Britain's new prime minister signals a new, illiberal direction for the country

MAINSTREAM politicos in
Britain have long held these truths to be self evident. The left won the
social battles of the past decades. The right won the economic ones.
The resulting consensus combines free-market liberalism with broadly
permissive cultural instincts. But on October 5th Theresa May
strode up to the podium at the Conservative Party conference, awkwardly
waved at the crowd, cleared her throat and unceremoniously drove a
bulldozer through those assumptions.

Mrs May began with a
short tribute to David Cameron. Her predecessor had presided over rising
employment, improving schools and falling crime, she noted, before
adding: "But now we need to change again." And then came the tornado.
Britain's vote to leave the EU in June
was about much more than Brexit. It was a "quiet revolution", a "turning
point", a "once in a generation" revolt by millions of ignored citizens
sick of immigration, sick of footloose elites, sick of the
laissez-faire consensus. "A change has got to come," she said, four
times.

The nation state is back:
"Time to reject the ideological templates provided by the socialist
left and the libertarian right and to embrace a new centre ground in
which government steps up," Mrs May declared. So borders will be
strengthened, foreign workers kept out, patriotism respected, order and
discipline imposed, belonging and rootedness enshrined. "If you believe
you're a citizen of the world, you're a citizen of nowhere. You don't
understand what the very word citizenship means," she said.

On the economy, the
Conservatives are moving left. Parts of Mrs May's speech recalled Ed
Miliband, Labour's previous leader, whose market interventionism earned
him an anti-business reputation. She went on about bosses who do not
look after their staff, companies that do not pay enough tax and utility
firms that rip off consumers (even hinting at the sort of meddling in
energy markets that won Mr Miliband particular barbs). Her government,
she said, would identify the industries that are of "strategic value to
our economy" and boost them "through policies on trade, tax,
infrastructure, skills, training, and research and development." At one
point she even questioned the independent Bank of England's low interest rates.

Socially, meanwhile, Mrs
May is taking her party rightward and at moments sounded more like Nigel
Farage, the doyen of the populist UK Independence Party. She took aim
at liberal politicians and commentators who "find your patriotism
distasteful, your concerns about immigration parochial, your views about
crime illiberal" and "left wing, activist human-rights lawyers".
Companies will be made to declare how many of their staff are
foreigners, to shame those who do not hire natives.

It remains to be seen
precisely what will come of all this. The almost comically small-bore
policies announced so far--including cadet forces in two-dozen state
schools and a review into labour conditions--hardly correspond to the
daring rhetoric. Every new prime minister since Thatcher has arrived in
office promising to revive manufacturing, lubricate social mobility and
do more for hacked-off, hard-pressed strivers. Still, the sheer
intellectual swagger of its authoritarianism sets Mrs May's speech
apart. It is worrying: a systematic rejection of the way the country has
been governed, for worse and mostly better, for decades. Like it or
not, Britain's strengths are its open, flexible, mostly urban service
economy and its uncommonly mobile and international workforce. That fact
cannot simply be wished or legislated away.

Mrs May makes it clear
that liberal London should not take precedence over post-industrial
areas. Yet the citizens of that great deracinated, metrosexual Babylon
pay more in work taxes than do those of the next 36 cities combined.
Brexit, it is true, was partly a vote against the aloofness of the
capital and its arrogant captains of finance. But it was not a vote for a
poorer country, higher unemployment or shabbier public services. The
prime minister's speech does not fill Bagehot with confidence about her ability, or even willingness, to find the right balance as she sets the country's post-Brexit course.

Au revoir, laissez-faire

Yet it will resonate with
the public and may propel the Tories to a landslide at the next
election. Its premise--that the vote for Brexit was a revolt against
globalisation--was sound. Touring pro-Leave events during the referendum
campaign, Bagehot heard again and again that the cards were
stacked in favour of fat cats and foreigners. One can disapprove of Mrs
May's prospectus without denying that it speaks to these concerns, and
to the pathology that has emerged with each recent tale of elite
complacency, corporate malfeasance and political corruption; from the
MPs' expenses scandal of 2009 to the shoddy treatment of workers at BHS,
a collapsed retail giant, this spring.

So it is not enough for
liberals to shake their heads at Mrs May's populism. They have to
grapple with the reasons for its appeal. Areas with fast-rising migrant
populations do not receive corresponding resources fast enough. The
country's infrastructure is patchy, the health service is at breaking
point and jobs are plentiful but low-paying. It is not illiberal to
recognise that London and the rest of Britain can feel like different
countries.

Those who resent the
prime minister's protectionist, authoritarian gloom must, then, do more
than hyperventilate and pearl-clutch. They should cheer Mrs May when she
gets things right; perhaps on house-building, where her government has
declared war on NIMBYs who oppose new construction projects. And when
they disagree, they should come up with better solutions: better ways to
reform corporate governance, increase competition, improve public
services and adapt the workforce to change. No one can accuse the prime
minister of being vague about the course she wants Britain to take. At
the very least, opponents must rise to the same standard--and offer an
alternative.

New Report Says Key to Environmental Sustainability in U.S. Is Reduced Immigration

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Comments

Nothing can be filled forever!

Lateline misuses the correct information on immigration numbers

Jessica Irvine

The great immigration con

Jessica, Jessica......

Stop Press! Teresa May defends British sovereignty

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