WSJ: Low Sierra (Club hammers immigration)

The Democratic Party's main environmental enforcer, the Sierra Club, is having another revealing scrap over immigration. A year after losing in a rout, a group of anti-immigration insurgents is back this month making a run at five seats on the group's 15-member board.

Sierrans for U.S. Population Stabilization wants the super-green club to endorse immigration limits, with a broader goal of freezing the American population. "The issue of escalating population growth in the United States is the single most important environmental issue in the nation," board member Paul Watson recently told the AP. In its wire-service deadpan, AP noted that Mr. Watson "is a Canadian citizen and U.S. resident." It's an irony of the anti-immigration movement that its most prominent voices, on the right and left, are often immigrants who want to pull up the drawbridge now that they've arrived.

While the Sierra Club insurgents probably lack the votes to prevail, their effort is notable for revealing the zero-population-growth roots of the anti-immigration movement. Their argument isn't about the "rule of law" or "securing our borders"; their main problem is other human beings. They'd prefer fewer of them, the better to preserve America just the way it is, or perhaps was. No offense to Mr. Watson, but if it's a wilderness museum he wants, why did he leave Canada?

The U.S. is so prosperous because it has always embraced the spirit of economic growth and human enterprise. Meanwhile, Republicans tempted to embrace the anti-immigration cause should understand the political and ideological company they are keeping.

I have a theory as to why Democrats are so willing to deny Terri Schiavo due process while ending her life by a cruel and unusual starvation, yet embrace federal intervention on so many other issues like abortion, civil rights, death penalty, etc.

One of the most important constituent groups for Democrats is the extreme environmental lobby which professes that the way to save the planet is by cutting resource use, suburban growth, energy consumption, yada, yada, yada. Witness the Sierra Club.

Underlying the problem is the need to control population growth, which means birth control, abortion, euthanasia, pulling the plug on the disabled or retarded who have no chance of recovery, mass political purges, and even the early release of recidivists who will probably take down a few more people before they receive the ultimate penalty.

Why else would they have supported Communist regimes that killed off 100 million to save the planet for socialism, or pushed for our withdrawal from Vietnam which was followed by another 3 million deaths in Southeast Asia (Vietnam, Laos and Cambodia), or the late entry into Bosnia/Kosovo after 250,000 had already died, or the total ignorance of Rwanda massacre of 900,000? That's before we consider the million plus killed by Saddam Hussein and the ineffectiveness of the U.N. in Sudan and Congo.

Also, how about the irrational ban on DDT which has resulted in millions of deaths from malaria, or the ban on genetically-modified food which would help solve the malnutrition-famine problems that confront so many in the third world? Similarly, why would Dems want to sue vaccine and other wonder-drug manufacturers to bankrupt them or drive them overseas? Every dollar diverted from drug research and clinical trials means more people will be denied a chance to live. New cures will be found eventually, but for many, it is a race against time. Look how Sen. Charles Schumer (D-NY) attacks the drug companies.

In that light, their liberal policies make perfect sense. With regard to Americans, the premier right in the Constitution: the Right to Life, was only supposed to apply to them so they could enjoy the planet without challenge or interference. Is it sarcasm, or is it reality?

Put another way, Democrats don't occupy the high moral ground on many of these issues.

The Sierra Club is funny. Without illegal immigration, the population of America would be stable (ie. births + immigration = deaths + emigration).

In theory, it would mean that not one more farmer's field or forest would be plowed under for condos or a shopping mall.

You would think an environmental group would be all for that. Except the ones that have been taken over by socialists who care not a wit for the environment - they care about power and controlling people...

"...revealing the zero-population-growth roots of the anti-immigration movement. Their argument isn't about the "rule of law" or "securing our borders"; their main problem is other human beings."

My 'problem' with illegal immigration has NOTHING to do with population growth or 'other people'; it has to do with failure to defend both our territory and our social structure in order to prop up a totally corrupt & hypofritical 'neighbor'.

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