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Green Cards
Next week the Sierra Club will ask its members whether to embrace
anti-immigration activists or send them packing. BY PATTY WENTZ
pwentz@wweek.com
Photos: MELISSA GERR
Greg Jacob is a nice guy. He isn't considered mean-spirited, racist or foolish--even by fellow Sierra
Club members who say the Portland State University English professor is being duped by fearmongering subversives.
"I think Greg is a very
good-hearted person," says Ross Williams. "He's always been fair in his dealings with me. I don't think he quite understands what he's
involved in." What Jacob is involved in is a controversy within the genteel ranks of the Sierra Club, the country's oldest and largest
environmental group. Jacob, chairman of the Oregon Sierra Club's population committee, has joined a small group of members around the country who say
the Sierra Club should push to curb immigration into the United States. The Sierra Club has long viewed population control as a means to reduce
demands on natural resources. But in taking on immigration, Jacob and others in the traditionally left-wing group have formed an alliance with
right-wing anti-immigrant activists bent on closing U.S. borders. The immigration debate has been percolating within the national Sierra Club for
years and will culminate next week as ballots are mailed to the country's 550,000 members. The members can vote to retain the current population
policy, which is neutral on immigration, or adopt "Alternative A," which calls for an end to U.S. population growth, including a reduction in
net immigration. Jacob sees immigration as part of an overall population policy that includes worldwide family planning and raising the standard
of living for women. Americans are greedy and wasteful, he says, and as more people come here, they will acquire our super-consumption habits while
continuing to have children at the high birth rates of the developing countries they left. "Some people think it's divisive and racist to
talk about net reduction in immigration," he says. "We are not racist. We are concerned about overpopulation, and that's an environmental
issue." Oregon has 12,220 Sierra Club members. While the immigration issue has caused considerable debate, the state chapter has not taken
an official stand on it. Williams opposes Alternative A and has led the debate within the Oregon Sierra Club. He says it undermines efforts at
global population control. "The Sierra Club is in the business of protecting the entire environment," he says, "not our own private
environment." The debate at the Sierra Club has caught the attention of Ramón Ramirez, the president of PCUN, the farm workers union,
and a member of Causa, an Oregon group that monitors immigrant rights. Ramirez says immigration foes are trying to regain momentum by coopting
environmental groups. "It's an extreme right-wing-orchestrated effort trying to split people who normally would be our allies," he
says. Williams says that while some club members, such as Jacob, have legitimate concerns, he agrees that the internal debate is also pushed by
people whose primary motivation has little to do with conserving natural resources. "At one meeting, someone said to me, 'If you lived in
Hillsboro [which has a large Latino population], you'd understand." Williams says the anti-immigration forces have targeted the Sierra Club
because of its democratic nature. Two years ago the Sierra Club board of directors voted to remain neutral on the issue of immigration. But the
organization allows members to challenge board positions via petitions. Alan S. Kuper, former chairman of the national population committee, did just
that. An advocate for immigration controls, Kuper gathered many more than the 1,300 signatures needed to put the vote before the members. The
ballots will be counted in April, with environmentalists nationwide closely watching. Endorsers of Alternative A include a few old-time greens like
Gaylord Nelson, the founder of Earth Day. Rick Gwynallen of the Ashland environmental group Headwaters says the Sierra Club vote was a hot topic
at a recent conference of statewide activists. "There's a sense that it will be a big deal for environmental groups," he says. "If they
ignore the issue, they run the risk of members being divided...they feel their memberships will be wooed." To prevent being drawn into the debate,
Headwaters recently became the first of these groups to issue a statement saying immigration is not an environmental concern. The Federation for
American Immigration Reform, one of the most notorious immigrant-reform groups, has come out strongly in support of Kuper's initiative in mailings to
its members. The Weeden Foundation, one of the primary funders of FAIR, is financing a mass mailing about the ballot to the national Sierra Club
membership. Other anti-immigration groups have encouraged people to join the Sierra Club in order to vote. Jacob says he's heard that
pro-immigration forces have done the same. In any case, Sierra Club membership, which had been sliding in recent years, has jumped by more than 25,000
during the past few months. What's disturbing to many environmentalists--particularly those who'd like to work more closely with minority
communities--are signs of bigotry in the anti-immigration forces trying to influence the Sierra Club vote.
In a 1988 memo in support of immigration control (never intended to
be made public), FAIR founder John Tanton wrote, "As Whites see their power and control over their lives declining, will they simply go quietly
into the night?" Garrett Hardin, a member of FAIR's board of directors, has been quoted as saying that sending food to Africa encourages people to
overpopulate, and that infanticide is a valid population-control method. Jacob is mystified by such reports. Even though he quoted Hardin to
WW, he says he was unaware of Hardin's extreme views. He believes many members of the Sierra Club support immigration limits for environmental
reasons, and he's angry at reports of outsiders stuffing the membership. "That's too damn political," he says. "I don't like the idea of
people doing that. That goes against what I believe." |
