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?’

This is interesting. Maybe his cousin is the Fiddler on the Roof. LOL

"Let's talk about the Sierra Club. The Sierra Club used to be against immigration to the United States. Why wouldn't they be? More people means more pollution and, if one area of the world is overpopulated and those people leave for another country, well, now there's more room in the other country for it to get overpopulated again. So, prohibiting the free movement of people is probably the most important thing you could do to protect the environment and it's sort of intuitively plausible, given that people are the ones that destroy the environment. But, over time, the Sierra Club changed its tune and came to support Open Borders. They came to put [brown people illegal aliens] over the environment."

[2 Refs. @ 3:06-3:14, New York Times article - 03/16/04: "Bitter Division For Sierra Club On Immigration" and Colorlines article - 05/08/13: "How the Sierra Club Learned to Love Immigration"]

Continued @ 3:14, "We can also look at the AFL-CIO, how they used to be a Labor Union who wanted an Economy built around Labor that didn't just treat Labor as an input to maximize profit but Labor as the end in itself. However, eventually the Unions [which are a big business] came to side with big business [interests] in favor of Open Borders. Big businesses love Open Borders because it makes it so Labor can't organize anywhere. All these Communists and Anarchists are thus useful for the establishment when their energies are directed at Open Borders agitation. The Unions have decided that having [brown people illegal aliens - a minimal wage and tax-free workforce for businesses] in the United States is more important than having organized bargaining power. And, of course, now that they've destroyed their own ability to organize labor by opening the borders, the Labor Unions themselves are basically non-existent [but still collect Union Dues to stay open for business with high-paid administrators; also, to make investments and distribute donations largely to Leftist causes and Leftist political campaigns]."

Olde Abe prolly came here legally.

Yes, he probably did. If the question asked was "What do you think about all of these illegal aliens coming here?" he might have answered differently. Weird that his third-generation relative and so many other Leftists can't seem to speak English correctly enough to distinguish between legal immigrants and illegal aliens. That's a big reason why they and their money, too, should be banned from all sectors of America's govenment and elections as national security risks.

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].

DOES THE SIERRA CLUB BELIEVE IN BORDERS? IT DEPENDS by Leon Kolankiewicz | May 23, 2013

The Sierra Club board of directors recent vote to back amnesty for illegal immigrants and support vastly increased levels of legal immigration is, when all is said and done, a vote for open borders, or no borders at all. At least our nation’s borders, that is.

Can you imagine the Sierra Club board voting to open the borders of Yosemite National Park to any and all comers, or better yet, eliminating Yosemite’s boundaries altogether?

Henceforth, the Board of Directors of the Sierra Club urges that – because all man-made borders and boundaries are unnatural, arbitrary, and un-ecological, mere lines on a map, and not etched on the ground or in nature – Yosemite National Park should welcome not just campers and hikers, but loggers, miners, ranchers, developers, dam builders, off-road-vehicle enthusiasts, hunters, trappers, cabin owners, and land speculators.

It is unfair to exclude these hardworking folks and outdoor recreationists, who after all, provide valuable social and economic products and services to society. They have just as much right to use and enjoy our precious public lands as do all human beings.

Can’t imagine the Sierra Club board ever voting to open Yosemite’s closed boundaries? Could it be that the boundaries of national parks – and national forests, national wildlife refuges, and designated national wilderness areas – are more sacrosanct to club leaders than their own country’s borders? That would indeed appear to be the case, for this organization that prides itself on protecting the planet.

Once, the Sierra Club focused on protecting America’s wild lands and environment, while the global commons – the biosphere, atmosphere, and oceans – was an important but secondary interest. The Club acknowledged that its ability – and Americans’ ability – to effect change on the global scale was limited.

Nowadays at the Sierra Club , any preference for saving U.S. environmental treasures first and foremost is implicitly considered parochial, outmoded, and futile, if not outright exclusionary and xenophobic. This contrasts sharply with the earlier, more patriotic orientation of the Club, when its emphasis was preserving American resources and landscapes for posterity.

The abandoned approach of old was perhaps best exemplified in the 1960s-era book and poster unabashedly entitled “THIS IS THE AMERICAN EARTH.” The poster I remember vividly featured the dramatic and famous Ansel Adams black and white photograph of the Sierra Nevada Range (John Muir’s “Range of Light”) from Lone Pine, California in the Owens Valley. The shining Sierra peaks pierce the heavens behind the brooding Alabama Hills, deep in shadow. The fluted crest of Mt. Whitney, highest point in the Lower 48, soars nearly 14,500 feet skyward.

Setting aside wild places like these rank among the Sierra Club’s greatest achievements. Given the Club leadership’s current priorities and sensibilities, however, they would probably sneer at such small-mindedness. Protecting the planet, after all, means expanding one’s horizons to embrace the Earth’s salvation, and not just the playgrounds of elitist backpackers.

In their quixotic quest to protect the planet, however, Club leadership has thrown the overpopulated, overstressed American landscape under the bus. In spurning U.S. borders while endorsing amnesty and expanded legal immigration – and the virtually unlimited U.S. population growth these portend – the effete Sierra Club leadership has in essence said it doesn’t care about protecting the Central Valley, Sierra foothills, Puget Sound, Chesapeake Bay, the Front Range of the Rockies, the Everglades, and American forests that are falling to make way for population-driven sprawl. More American wildlife species will become endangered and extinct as American environmentalists overlook them in their misguided penchant to save the world.

And the borders the Sierra Club apparently does support – of national parks and the like – will be more and more meaningless as overpopulation besieges them.

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[Author] Leon [Kolankiewicz] is an Advisory Board Member and Senior Writing Fellow with CAPS. A wildlife biologist, and environmental scientist and planner, Leon is the author of Where Salmon Come to Die: An Autumn on Alaska's Raincoast, the essay “Overpopulation versus Biodiversity” in Environment and Society: A Reader and was a contributing writer to Life on the Brink: Environmentalists Confront Overpopulation.

In a career that spans three decades, three countries and more than 30 states, Leon has managed environmental impact statements for many federal agencies on projects ranging from dams and reservoirs to coal-fired power plants, power lines, flood control projects, road expansions, management of Civil War battlefields, NASA's Kennedy Space Center operations and a proposed uranium mine on a national forest. He also has worked with the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service to develop comprehensive conservation plans at more than 40 national wildlife refuges from the Caribbean to Alaska.

The writer's views are his own.

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CAPS blog posts may be republished or reposted only in their entirety. Please credit CAPS as www.capsweb.org. CAPS assumes no responsibility for where blog posts might be republished or reposted. Views expressed in CAPS blog posts do not necessarily reflect the official position of CAPS.

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 !"

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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.

It all goes to show the left/elites/statists don't give a rat's about planet earth, humans, freedom, microagressions, civility, love, hate, or anything else that doesn't advance their control freak agenda.

Right -- their control freak power-agenda, I'd say, and they want mucho money to advance their control freak power-agenda.

It's betrayals every day now.

Soros has financed color revolutions all over. What makes you think he is not doing the same dirt here in the U.S.A.? ;)

So these [expletives] are actually promoting the invasion! It's betrayals every day now.

Yep -- Betrayals with a capital "B".