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Immigration
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Title: How the Sierra Club Was Hijacked by Open Borders Radicals
Source: Californians for Population Stabilization (CAPS)
URL Source: https://www.capsweb.org/blog/how-si ... hijacked-open-borders-radicals
Published: Apr 9, 2014
Author: Gene Nelson, Ph.D.
Post Date: 2019-09-29 09:34:16 by GreyLmist
Ping List: *Illegal Immigration*     Subscribe to *Illegal Immigration*
Keywords: Open Borders Advocacy, Environmentalists, Greens, Progressives
Views: 664
Comments: 14

To explore, enjoy, and protect the planet. To practice and promote the responsible use of the Earth’s ecosystems and resources; to educate and enlist humanity to protect and restore the quality of the natural and human environment; and to use all lawful means to carry out those objectives. – Sierra Club mission statement

With the Sierra Club's advocacy for “open borders” procured by multimillionaire David Gelbaum circa 2004, the above mission statement has become a meaningless paragraph of puffery, as the rapidly expanding population of the United States, driven by record numbers of immigrants, causes unprecedented environmental destruction and loss of wild lands.

Here's a fawning profile about Gelbaum from the Los Angeles Times (The West 100 - THE POWER ISSUE - Our list of the most powerful people in Southern California, August 13, 2006):

Under the guidance of politically savvy environmentalist David Myers, Gelbaum's gifts have protected enough mountain and desert land to create another Yosemite National Park ... Crucial tracts of the Mojave National Preserve have been protected, thanks to the Wildlands Conservancy, which Gelbaum cofounded. These days, the conservancy finds itself in the thick of the debate over the development of Tejon Ranch in the Tehachapi Mountains. The Gelbaum- backed group, along with the Sierra Club and others, wants to reduce the amount of the ranch that will be paved and preserve 245,000 acres as wilderness – a tussle that will help define the limits of growth in Southern California.

The Sierra Club's open borders advocacy has become more strident with their support of a Washington, DC demonstration scheduled for today. I would not be surprised to learn that David Gelbaum is bankrolling this event.

To better understand how the Sierra Club has become in large part a proxy organization supporting open borders it is helpful to review a few paragraphs of another Los Angeles Times news story, this one from 2004:

COLUMN ONE - The Man Behind the Land

By Kenneth R. Weiss, Los Angeles Times Staff Writer

October 27, 2004

....In 2001, Gelbaum branched out with two back-to-back anonymous gifts to the Sierra Club Foundation [$101.5 million in donations] that dwarfed all previous individual contributions to the club.

....he said [Carl] Pope [former Executive Director of the Sierra Club; appointed in 1992; served until January 20, 2010; succeeded by Michael Brune] long had known where he stood on the contentious [Proposition 187] issue. ‘I did tell Carl Pope in 1994 or 1995 that if they ever came out anti-immigration, they would never get a dollar from me.’ ... [Gelbaum] donated more than $180,000 to the campaign to oppose Proposition 187. After the measure passed, he said, he donated hundreds of thousands of dollars to civil rights lawyers who ultimately got the measure struck down in court.

Gelbaum, who reads the Spanish-language newspaper La Opinión and is married to a Mexican American, said his views on immigration were shaped long ago by his grandfather, Abraham, a watchmaker who had come to America to escape persecution of Jews in Ukraine before World War I. “I asked [him], ‘Abe, what do you think about all of these Mexicans coming here?’” Gelbaum said. “Abe didn't speak English that well. He said, ‘I came here. How can I tell them not to come?’

“I cannot support an organization that is anti-immigration. It would dishonor the memory of my grandparents.”

An excellent October 2009 Jerry Kammer article [.pdf], “Strategic Negligence: How the Sierra Club’s Distortions on Border and Immigration Policy Are Undermining Its Environmental Legacy,” with 35 references, summarizes how the Sierra Club has been subsequently used as a tool for open borders advocacy.

As a former Sierra Club member, I found this sellout to be repugnant. I hope that the connection between overpopulation and environmental destruction will be restored by the Sierra Club and that they will repudiate the policies procured from 2004 to present by multimillionaire David Gelbaum and his allies.

Poster Comment:

[Author] Gene [Nelson] earned a Ph.D. in Natural Science in 1984. He has written extensively about the harm of large-scale immigration to the U.S. He testified twice in the U.S. House of Representatives and twice to the National Academy of Sciences regarding the the controversial H-1B visa program.

The writer's views are his own.

[Illegal immigration = illegal alien. More Sierra Club info in next posts]Subscribe to *Illegal Immigration*

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Begin Trace Mode for Comment # 5.

#5. To: All (#0) (Edited)

Sierra Club | Lobbying within the club | Population and immigration | Budget and funding - Wikipedia excerpts:

Immigration was historically among the most divisive issues within the club. In 1996, after years of debate, the Sierra Club adopted a neutral position on immigration levels. As the club has shifted to the left over the years, this position was amended in 2013 to support "an equitable path to citizenship for undocumented immigrants".

Although the position of the Sierra Club has generally been favorable towards immigration [since their 2004 election], some critics of the Sierra Club have charged that the efforts of some club members to restrain immigration, are a continuation of aspects of human population control and the eugenics movement. In 1969, the Sierra Club published Paul R. Ehrlich's book, The Population Bomb, in which he said that population growth was responsible for environmental decline and advocated coercive measures to reduce it.

During the 1980s, some Sierra Club members, including Paul Ehrlich's wife Anne, wanted to take the Club into the contentious field of immigration to the United States. The Club's position was that overpopulation was a significant factor in the degradation of the environment. Accordingly, the Club supported stabilizing and reducing U.S. and world population. Some members argued that, as a practical matter, U.S. population could not be stabilized, let alone reduced, at the then-current levels of immigration. They urged the Club to support immigration reduction. The Club had previously addressed the issue of "mass immigration", and in 1988, the organization's Population Committee and Conservation Coordinating Committee stated that immigration to the U.S. should be limited, so as to achieve population stabilization. Other Sierra Club members thought that the immigration issue was too far from the Club's core environmentalist mission, and were also concerned that involvement would impair the organization's political ability to pursue its other objectives.

In 1996, after the Sierra Club board adopted a neutral position on immigration policy, some members who were advocates of immigration reduction organized themselves as "SUSPS" – a name originally derived from "Sierrans for U.S. Population Stabilization", which now stands for "Support U.S. Population Stabilization." SUSPS advocates a return to the Sierra Club's "traditional" (1970–1996) immigration policy stance. SUSPS has called for fully closing the borders of the United States, and for returning to immigration levels established by the Immigration Act of 1924, which includes strict ethnic quotas.

The controversy resurfaced when a group of three immigration reduction proponents ran in the 2004 Sierra Club Board of Directors election, hoping to move the Club's position away from a neutral stance on immigration, and to restore the stance previously held. Groups outside of the Club became involved, such as the Southern Poverty Law Center and MoveOn. Of the three candidates (Richard Lamm, Frank Morris and David Pimentel) ... two (Richard Lamm and Frank Morris) had also held leadership positions within the NAACP. Their candidacies were denounced by a fourth candidate, Morris Dees of the SPLC, as a "hostile takeover" attempt by "radical anti-immigrant activists." The immigration reduction proponents won 7% of all votes cast in the election. In 2005, members voted 102,455 to 19,898 against a proposed change to "recognize the need to adopt lower limits on migration to the United States."

With the increased number of progressive activists joining the club in recent years, the Sierra Club has dramatically shifted its stance on immigration further towards the affirmative. Today, the Sierra Club supports a path to citizenship for undocumented immigrants, opposes a border wall and works with immigrant groups to promote environmental justice.

The Sierra Club has an affiliated super PAC. It spent $1,000,575 on the 2014 elections, all of it opposing Republican candidates for office. The Sierra Club is a partner of America Votes, an organization that coordinates [coalitions] and promotes progressive issues [to advance progressive policies and increase voter turnout for Democratic Party candidates].

Donors to the Sierra Club have included David Gelbaum, Michael Bloomberg, the William and Flora Hewlett Foundation and the John D. and Catherine T. MacArthur Foundation. The Sierra Club has also received funding from the [George Soros affiliated groups] Democracy Alliance [a network of progressive donors who coordinate their political donations to groups that the Alliance has endorsed] and the Tides Foundation Advocacy Fund [working to advance progressive policy].

GreyLmist  posted on  2019-09-29   18:56:11 ET  Reply   Untrace   Trace   Private Reply  

#8. To: All (#5) (Edited)

In 1969, the Sierra Club published Paul R. Ehrlich's book, The Population Bomb, in which he said that population growth was responsible for environmental decline and advocated coercive measures to reduce it.
>
During the 1980s, some Sierra Club members, including Paul Ehrlich's wife Anne, wanted to take the Club into the contentious field of immigration to the United States. The Club's position was that overpopulation was a significant factor in the degradation of the environment.
>
In 1996, after years of debate, the Sierra Club adopted a neutral position on immigration levels.
>
In 2005, members voted 102,455 to 19,898 against a proposed change to "recognize the need to adopt lower limits on migration to the United States."
>
As the club has shifted to the left over the years, this position was amended in 2013 to support "an equitable path to citizenship for undocumented immigrants".

A Brief Chronology of the Sierra Club's Retreat from the Immigration-Population Connection (Updated) by Matthew Sussis | cis.org Center for Immigration Studies | August 14, 2018

Update of Jerry Kammer's [April 21,] 2016 [cis.org] blog post on the Sierra Club [Chronology printed at that webpage from 1980 through the 2004 election | Excerpt]

2004. In another vote, club membership defeated an effort to elect immigration-limitation advocates to its board. This vote followed a controversial and heated campaign in which [Executive Director Carl] Pope and other club leaders contended that those who wanted to limit immigration were motivated by racist bigotry. "By pulling up the gangplank on immigration, they are tapping into a strand of misanthropy that says human beings are a problem," Pope said.

[Endpoint @ Kammer's article. His chronological list copied @ the Sussis article webpage and continued there through 2018. | Intro w/dated excerpts copied below.]

The Sierra Club, one of America's largest non-profit environmental organizations, once treated the effects of immigration-driven population growth as among the most serious concerns facing America's environment.

However, over the past few decades, the organization has continually retreated from that position toward neutrality — and more recently has openly lobbied for higher levels of immigration into the United States. In fact, the club is now starting to launch partisan attacks on the current administration over everything from family separation and detentions along the border to amnesty for illegal aliens to the border wall.

How did we get here? How did one of America's oldest and most highly respected environmental organizations stray so far from its original outlook? It involves activists, changes in leadership, and big money. Below is a brief chronology of how the Sierra Club retreated from its views on population stabilization and immigration:

[...]

2004. [Continuation w/this Paragraph 2 Addendum.] That same year, the Los Angeles Times reported that David Gelbaum, an American businessman focused on green technology who has donated at least $200 million to the Sierra Club, had warned Carl Pope that his donations were contingent upon how the club handled the issue of immigration. "I did tell Carl Pope in 1994 or 1995 that if they ever came out anti-immigration, they would never get a dollar from me," the Times reported he said.

2010. Michael Brune succeeded Carl Pope as executive director. Brune had previously led the Rainforest Action Network, where he pressured corporations to stop selling wood from endangered forests. Brune largely avoided the topic of immigration in his first several years as director, and the club continued to receive donations from Gelbaum.

2013. The Sierra Club's board adopted a resolution calling for legal status for all illegal aliens living in the country, but said the resolution was "not modifying the underlying policy on immigration" of the organization. In a statement, the Sierra Club defended its decision by saying that many immigrants "live in areas with disproportionate levels of toxic air, water, and soil production" and thus deserved to move to cleaner countries.

2017. In a statement, the club praised DACA, President Obama's executive action that granted deferrals from deportation to some illegal aliens who were brought to the country as children, and condemned President Trump for deciding to terminate it. Executive Director Michael Brune said it was "mean-spirited" of Trump to terminate DACA and that DACA recipients "are making our country better." These remarks were noteworthy in that they were the first time that the club publicized its position on a specific immigration-related policy. Previously, the club had offered general statements supporting "immigrants' rights", but not concrete endorsements.

2018. After the precedent set by its comments on DACA, in 2018 the club began putting out frequent statements condemning a range of immigration-related policies under the Trump administration. For example, in April, Brune said the Sierra Club opposed the construction of a border wall and of the administration's push to speed up deportation proceedings, calling it "xenophobic". In June, in response to the "zero tolerance" policy and family separations at the border, the club attacked the administration for its decision to "jail and cage kids", and Brune called for a stop to "Trump's racist agenda".

From the comments: "so....MONEY !"

============

The Center for Immigration Studies is an independent, non-partisan, non-profit research organization founded in 1985. It is the nation's only think tank devoted exclusively to research and policy analysis of the economic, social, demographic, fiscal, and other impacts of immigration on the United States.

GreyLmist  posted on  2019-09-29 23:29:10 ET  Reply   Untrace   Trace   Private Reply  

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