Greenwashing Racism

And you thought you'd seen the worst of the immigrant-bashing. No, the anti-immigrant mother lode is such a rich, deep vein of hate and fear that it can be used to attack anyone, anytime, for anything.

Now the frightwingers are using environmentalism to justify and strengthen anti-immigrant racism. When that's done, they'll turn around and acuse environmentalists of being racists.

Andrew Ross at The Nation:

Most recently, the Center for Immigration Studies (CIS), a spinoff of FAIR, has focused on the damage done by the traffic of coyotes and their border-crossing clients to Organ Pipe Cactus National Monument, the Huachuca Mountains and Coronado National Forest in southeastern Arizona. "How long will these beautiful lands remain unspoiled if the border is not secured?" a CIS press release asked.

Meanwhile, the Sierra Club and Defenders of Wildlife have argued that most of the ecological mayhem in these areas is a result of the construction and maintenance of the border fence's "tactical infrastructure," which was exempted from all environmental and historic preservation laws by the Bush administration. But CIS is more interested in tapping a deep vein of public anxiety that connects the defense of pristine resources to the defense of racial purity. In a grotesque but telling offshoot, a number of humanitarian volunteers from Tucson-based No More Deaths, who leave plastic containers of water on migrant trails in the desert, have been arrested on charges of "littering." Meanwhile, the containers have been slashed repeatedly by Minutemen vigilantes and Border Patrol guards, who then leave the useless plastic on the desert floor.

The connection FAIR makes between immigration and sprawl is equally specious. Low-wage immigrants are much more likely to live lightly in central-city neighborhoods than the US-born population, who are more likely to settle in suburban subdivisions with high-carbon footprints. Nor is there any necessary correlation between population size or density and abuse of resources. How we produce and consume energy is a much more important determinant of pollution than our numbers. But FAIR's shady reasoning is typical of the way it has pushed xenophobia as green wisdom in order to win mainstream acceptance and divide its critics.

SNIP

Is there an alternative to a future of racially fueled climate conflicts? At the World People's Conference on Climate Change at Cochabamba in April, the subject of environmental migration—how global warming affects migration (but not vice versa)—was high on the agenda. An estimated 50 million people have already been displaced by the impact of climate change, and the numbers will escalate in years to come. In northern Mexico, a primary source of migrants to Arizona, soil is eroding rapidly from the decline in precipitation, and studies predict that regional rainfall could decrease by 70 percent by the century's end. Are the emissions pumped into the desert air above central Arizona's sprawl already responsible, however indirectly, for some portion of the 500,000 undocumented migrants in the state?

If so, the evolving principles of climate justice point to a very different conclusion than the war on immigrants urged by FAIR. At the very least, those displaced by climate change have a right to sanctuary if their path of flight takes them northward. Sanctuary is the most minimal of the debts incurred, but other forms of recompense may be appropriate. Since these migrants are victims of the high-carbon policies enjoyed by industrialized nations, they may also be entitled to reparations. Either way, climate migrants will have their own carbon-conscious version of the retort offered by postcolonials when they settled in cities like London and Paris: "We are here because you were there."

Cochabamba ended with a call for international recognition of the rights of climate migrants. The risk of pursuing this path is that official identification may create yet another class of immigrant to be held in the limbo of refugee camps and detention centers, or lost in the maze of temporary visa categories. Besides, how easy is it to distinguish between border-crossers displaced by neoliberal trade policies and those set in motion by climate change? As long as the former are treated like invaders and felons, is it likely (or even just) that the latter would earn a special status? These are tough questions, even for movement people, but they are not going away. FAIR's shadiness aside, there are real connections between clean energy policy and immigration reform—the two bullets Congress is trying its best to dodge. But they will be made only if we swear off single-issue politics and push for decriminalization and decarbonization at one and the same time.

Read the whole thing.