Mass Immigration Creating "Environmental Degradation" in the USA! -- BALANCE Alert!
- Stabilizing or reducing population size in industrialized nations is essential for achieving sustained Carbon Emissions Reductions and Environmental Protection!!.
Birth rates in industrialized western nations are below replacement level in both the U.S. and Europe. In the United States, the population still grows, however, because of continuing high levels of legal & illegal immigration. Moreover, most immigrants are Economic Migrants and come in order to raise their standard of living, which means raising their personal rate of carbon emissions. The only way to reduce carbon emissions permanently is to limit immigration. The goal must be ZERO NET immigration into the United States i e. reducing Legal from about 1.5 Million /year pre-pandemic to 150,000/year AND stopping virtually all illegal immigration
Zero Net Immigration is also essential to curing a host of other environmental problems: Crowding Housing, Topsoil loss, Potable water availability Safety!! etc
--Understanding the pressure of growing populations on the environment’s carrying capacity is essential for developing sustainable solutions. For example, Professor Pimental et al. (Cornell University) found that for every person added to the United States’ population, one acre of farmland (precious topsoil) or natural habitat (for the critters) was lost, de facto permanently, to development.
The motivation for having larger or smaller families should be taken into account in any program that aspires to be a permanent solution for the Earth’s multiple environmental, social, and political problems.
*Mass immigration typically improves the individual lives of those who immigrate, but not necessarily the lives of those already living in that country. Thus, one expects immigrants to have larger size families than people of comparable beginnings in the country to which they come. This expectation has, in fact, proved out.
Further, *Emigration relieves crowding in the country that migrants leave, so it is expected that the fertility rate in these countries, or areas of these countries, would rise. This expectation has also proved out. Conclusion: allowing mass immigration from countries where population exceeds the carrying capacity impedes their transition to population stabilization and thus to sustainability.
In testimony to Congress, Ms. Axelrod of the Center for Immigration Studies described how Mass Immigration creates "Environmental Degradation" and that the Biden administration
policies encouraging Mass Immigration were Direct Violations of the National Environmental Policy Act
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Testimony of Julie Axelrod Director of Litigation Center for Immigration Studies
To the Subcommittee on Oversight and Investigations of the
Committee on Natural Resources United States House of Representatives
For a Hearing titled “Securing Our Border, Saving Our National Parks”
October 18, 2023, 2 p.m.
1324 Longworth House Office Building, Washington D.C.
Chairman Westerman and members of the subcommittee, thank you for inviting me here today to discuss the environmental impacts of the Biden Administration’s immigration actions. My name is Julie Axelrod and I am the Director of Litigation of the Center for Immigration Studies. I’ve spent the past few years litigating against the Department of Homeland Security for its failures to comply with NEPA.
As discussed in your last hearing, the Biden Administration bypassed their obligations under NEPA before placing migrant camps on park service land. But this failure is only the tip of the iceberg of this Administration’s violation of NEPA. It started in January 2021 when the Administration failed to conduct NEPA on the actions that created the migrant crisis in the first place.
NEPA requires Federal agencies to prepare environmental impact statements and hold public hearings for all “major Federal actions significantly affecting the quality of the human environment”. It has no exceptions for immigration. Indeed, when one goes back and looks at the reasons NEPA became law, it’s clear it never contemplated an exception for actions that bring millions of people into the country. Such actions, by definition, are population growth, and population growth was the very first concern addressed in NEPA’s “Congressional declaration of national environmental policy,” which explained that Congress had decided to pass NEPA, because it recognized, quote “the profound impact of man’s activity on the interrelations of all components of the natural environment, particularly the profound influences of population growth.” Population growth inevitably has impacts like increased traffic congestion, energy consumption, waste management, water use, encroachment on wildlife habitats, urban sprawl, carbon dioxide emissions, degraded soil and air quality, noise pollution, and loss of recreational areas—the bread and butter of routine NEPA analysis.
Upon taking office the Biden Administration carried out a number of policies, halting construction of the border wall, ending Remain in Mexico, and releasing border crossers into the interior, policies described by a district judge in Florida as “akin to posting a flashing ‘Come in, We’re Open” sign on the southern border.” Predictably, a flood of migration followed—by some estimates, 5 to 6 million foreign nationals have entered the country illegally since 2021.
This committee has rightly pointed out that the Administration failed to hold hearings over the National Park Service’s lease to house 2000 of the migrants invited in by the Biden Administration in the Floyd Bennett Field. But all five or six million people who crossed the border need housing and use resources when they get to this country, not just 2000. The Administration equally had the duty to hold hearings before taking the actions that created the crisis.
The idea that NEPA mandates discussion of the inevitable consequences of population growth but not the causes of population growth turns the purpose of NEPA on its head—, which is to encourage environmentally enlightened decision making before irrevocable action is taken. Even if the Administration believes opening the floodgates was desirable policy, NEPA requires that agencies must “look before they leap.” The Biden Administration did not. The environmental effects of the open border will continue, and Americans across the interior will continue to feel the effects of overcrowding in their daily lives.
The Administration’s excuse for failing to conduct NEPA, essentially, is that NEPA doesn’t apply to actions whose environmental impacts are unknown. This is nonsense. NEPA’s purpose is to stop federal agencies from taking major actions whose environmental effect they don’t understand, and it’s desperately needed. The very shock expressed in the last hearing at the idea that the “Natural Resources Committee” of all places would seek to talk about “the migrant challenge” is telling. A good question is why would anyone claiming to care about the environment be surprised open borders have profound environmental consequences? An even better question, is why would an Administration that insists it values NEPA spark an environmental crisis without even a modicum of NEPA compliance?
At the same time that President Biden signed executive orders opening the border, he signed orders purporting to strengthen environmental protection that called for the reduction of greenhouse gas emissions across the economy, the conservation of land, water, and biodiversity; transitioning to a clean-energy economy; advancing environmental justice; and investing in disadvantaged communities. Proclaiming we have only a “narrow moment” to avoid the “most catastrophic impacts” of climate change, President Biden instituted “a government wide approach to the climate crisis.”
This government wide approach, apparently, excludes the Department of Homeland Security. Boosting illegal immigration by millions of people, largely economic migrants rather than refugees, directly prevents all of these supposedly urgent policy goals.
The Committee on the Judiciary recently found only six percent of those released into the United States by the Biden Administration were even screened for credible fear — they are not coming to claim asylum but to improve their standard of living — which means their carbon emissions increase when they settle into the United States and they fully intend to use resources, including land and water, while here. Furthermore, economic migrants generally do start at the bottom of the economic ladder — and their social and economic effects are felt disproportionately by disadvantaged communities. The point is not to blame them for using resources, but to recognize that all people do. NEPA compliance would end the Administration's delusion that foreign nationals cease having an ecological footprint the minute they cross the U.S. border. No Administration that truly cared about natural resources, environmental justice, or urgently reducing carbon emissions would flagrantly disregard the environmental degradation that its actions have unleased on the United States.
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Stopping Mass Immigration is Essential to reducing CO2 Emissions.
Recently, 11,000 scientists and others around the world issued their joint conclusions on the causes of "Climate Change." One conclusion stands out — over-population is a major contributing factor to CO2 pollution. Thus, it is not a surprise that the two most over-populated countries in the world — India and China — account for well over 50% of world CO2 Emissions. And since allowing Mass Immigration increases population in the sending countries as well as in the receiving countries, stopping Mass Immigration is essential to reducing CO2 Emissions.
Anthropologist Dr. Anne Brittain of the University of Miami, Coral Gables, has demonstrated this. Conclusions from her studies in the Caribbean include:
“... Those districts with the greatest stability of population had the lowest child-to-woman ratios, suggesting that the anticipated loss of children to migration may be an important factor in maintaining high reproductive rates.”
Anticipated Child Loss to Migration and Sustained High Fertility in an East Caribbean Population, Social Biology, Vol.38, No. 102, Spring Summer 1991, pp 94-112, Brittain
“...Instead, the probability of emigration accounted for 34 percent of the variation in the crude birth rate, which increases in emigration being followed by increases in the birth rate five years later.”
Migration and the Demographic Transition: A West Indian Example, Social and Economic Studies, 39:3, 1990, IBID
A first Giant Step toward Solving the Over-population Problem in these sending countries is to Dramatically reduce Immigration from them. Anthropologist Dr. Virginia Abernethy concurs. Congruent with her hypothesis that fertility rates vary depending upon expectations of future income or wealth, she writes,
“... reducing Immigration keeps pressure on sending countries and increases the likelihood of their reducing their fertility rates."
See The Vanishing American Dream by Dr. V. Abernethy, Professor Emeritus at Vanderbilt University Medical School.
In sum, allowing emigration from a Sending Country provides Opportunity for families, because some of their members emigrate to the USA (where they are able to work and to send back remittances) thus driving up fertility rates in the sending countries (more kids to the USA produce more remittances.
Unfortunately, in the USA, pending Legislation and Current Law (which allows about 1.6 Million Legal Immigrants per year into the USA, of which about 400,000 per year settle in California (pre and post pandemic) encourage and enable Mass Immigration and thus increase population size and CO2 Emissions. For example, the currently uncapped asylee category enables immigration and incentivizes illegal immigration by providing a way for Illegal Aliens (mostly economic migrants, NOT genuine Asylees or Refugees!) to become legal and (e.g. to traffic Children (to get more taxpayer funded benefits on arrival)
--Most unfortunately legislation introduced very recently would make population stabilization in the USA impossible for years, thus guaranteeing massive CO2 production, continuing environmental degradation, and unsafe conditions for our national and personal environments. For example.....
2/21/2023 - Sellout Senator Lindsey Graham (R-SC) launched a new ""Dream Act of 2023" Amnesty bill in the US Senate (S365) with his fellow open-borders globalist Sen. Dick Durbin (D-IL).
• The bill would automatically grant conditional permanent resident status to some two million Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals (DACA) recipients .
• Conditional permanent resident status can be changed to lawful permanent resident (LPRs or green-card holder) status as soon as they meet certain conditions
This Dream Act Amnesty legislation is a strategy DC Open Borders elites crafted after we defeated the Comprehensive Immigration Reform (CIR) Mass Alien Amnesties several times in Washington 2004-2019. The globalists plan to use younger illegals to pull on American heartstrings to get this Amnesty for 2 million illegals --the DACAS-- who claim they came as kids (many are lying) into law as the stalking horse for a Huge Alien Amnesty. via the CIR Bill
Specifically, when this Dream Act Amnesty is about to pass they will quickly amend/transform it into an Amnesty of over 35 Million Illegal Aliens called the Comprehensive Immigration Reform Bill (CIR), Added to that number would be The numbers of Illegal Aliens crossing the border into the USA -- about 250,000/month, not including the "gotaways"!!
Thus If the Dream Act Amnesty passes this year, the chances the Open Borders Crowd will successfully couple that with the nation-killing CIR amnesty for tens of millions of Illegals is very high, and devastating for our Nation!. For example, EACH Illegal Immigrant costs American taxpayers over $80,000. for health care, welfare, food stamps, education, etc (CIS.org).
Only Mobilization of Balance's and ASAP Coalition Activists in all the States can stop it
That CIR Bill as now drafted would likely not only legalize over 35 Million plus Illegals with green cards and a path to citizenship, but ALSO remove many of the caps on legal immigration resulting in a dramatic increase/doubling of the pre-pandemic level of 1.5 Million per year which included 400,000/year into California alone!
And Most Important to Note:
ONLY pushing BALANCE's all-categories-included zero Net MORATORIUM on Legal Immigration (which would still allow appx. 150,000 legal immigrants/year) plus closing the Border MAXIMIZES the chances of stopping this Horrendous Alien Amnesty Bill.
Pushing any less restrictive number, as the two National Mass Immigration Management Groups do, will likely result in a Compromise Bill reducing the numbers by just a few hundred thousand at most..... a totally unacceptable result.
Indeed, since those two National Mass Immigration Management groups refuse to support any Moratorium Bill (like Rep. Gosar's e.g.)
THEY ARE DE FACTO ENABLERS OF CONTINUING MASS IMMIGRATION!!
URGENT: Contact the Biden Administration and your U.S. Representatives and Senators repeatedly and urge them to oppose any Bill which contains ANY Amnesty Bill provisions, or any increase in legal immigration, and to support a zero-net Moratorium Bill and closing the Border
MULTIPLY your Impact by making a Tax-Deductible Donation to Population-Environment-BALANCE (visit balance.org)
BALANCE can thereby Intensify its Mobilization of its Activists all over the USA to oppose this bill
[BALANCE and its ASAP Coalition Activists were Essential in stopping the December 2019 Alien Amnesty Bill!] And Most Important to Note:
ONLY pushing BALANCE's all-categories-included zero Net MORATORIUM MAXIMIZES the chances of stopping this Horrendous Bill.
Pushing any less restrictive number, as the two National Mass Immigration Management Groups do, will likely result in a Compromise Bill reducing the numbers by just a few Million at most..... a totally unacceptable result.
Also important to note:
BALANCE is pro-Legal Immigrant but anti-Mass Immigration!
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Population-Environment Balance is a national, non-profit membership organization dedicated to maintaining the quality of life in the United States through population stabilization.
BALANCE is the leading National Organization publicizing information regarding the Threat of Mass Immigration-generated population growth to our Environment, Nation, Budgets, and Personal Safety and Mobilizing Activists to Reduce it