The Sierra Club, one of the nation’s oldest environmental organizations, has announced that early next year it will conduct a referendum of its members on the issue of US immigration policy. Members will vote on whether the organization will take a position on immigration policy or remain neutral on the subject. The organization’s board position is that it is neutral on the immigration question. The organization’s leadership has indicated that it is “clearly not possible to develop a policy on immigration that would command support from a sufficiently broad spectrum of Club leaders, activists and members. However, enough members have signed a petition requesting a vote to force the board to offer the question to the members. The board announced that essays on both sides of the issue will be presented in Sierra Magazine. If you are a Sierra Club member and would like to make your views known, you are requested to contact your local chapter and group and get involved in the debate by attending meetings where the issue will be discussed, by writing letters for chapter newsletters and, of course, by voting on the issue.
Another lesser-known environmental organization, Negative Population Growth, issued a report late last month stating that immigration poses a serious threat to the environment. The press release announcing the report specifically mentioned the Sierra Club vote. Whether the release of the report was timed to influence the Sierra Club debate was not specifically addressed.
But the views of Negative Population Growth do not reflect the opinions of all environmental groups. For example, the San Francisco-based Political Ecology Group (“PEG”), is actively fighting what it terms the “greening of hate.” The group specifically states one of its missions as “bringing the immigrant rights and environmental movements together to defend the environment, health and human rights of our communities.” PEG’s web site can be found at http://www.igc.org/peg/.
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