Rebecca Poswolsky

Anti-immigrant groups are eyeing America’s environmental movement in the hopes that it will serve their controversial agenda.

Immigration and climate change might not seem to have much in common, but a bitter battle has been waging between the anti-immigrant movement and mainstream environmental groups for decades. The John Tanton Network is, as usual, deeply involved in this conflict.

The latest example of anti-immigrant attacks on environmentalists comes from Center for Immigration Studies, a controversial anti-immigrant group founded by John Tanton, who also founded the Federation for American Immigration Reform (FAIR).

Spearheading the effort is Jerry Kammer, senior research fellow at the Center for Immigration Studies with his memo entitled, “Strategic Negligence: How the Sierra Club’s Distortion on Border and Immigration Policy Are Undermining Its Environmental Legacy”.

Jerry Kammer isn’t just writing about the Sierra Club, he’s also taking his attacks to the Breakdown the Walls conference in Phoenix, Arizona. He intends to speak on a panel today titled, “The Politics of the Environment in the Modern World.” Jerry Kammer and Center for Immigration studies are trying once again to divide and conquer environmentalists in the hopes of bringing climate-concerned activists into their anti-immigrant fold.

Leaders in the John Tanton Network may seem to have a genuine interest in environmental issues, but it is important to remember that John Tanton built his network in part from the $1.2 million he received from the Pioneer Fund. The Pioneer Fund is a foundation that has a history of promoting the genetic superiority of white, European-Americans.

Organizations founded by or in connection with Tanton should not be considered legitimate environmental voices. While Tanton has a long history in environmental organizations, including the Sierra Club, his increasing dissatisfaction in the 1970’s with progressive environmentalists led him down an extreme path. He eventually created groups like FAIR and CIS to focus on U.S population control, and forged troubling ties with white nationalists.

In the 1990s, Tanton helped with an effort to pressure the Sierra Club to officially take an anti-immigration position. A major battle ensued, with many Sierra Club members seeing the proposed stance as fundamentally racist. Tanton later wrote that “the Sierra Club may not want to touch the immigration issue, but the immigration issue is going to touch the Sierra Club!”

At the time, Carl Pope, current Sierra Club chairman, considered it a hostile takeover attempt, “The whole idea of people trying to hijack an organization to advance their cause was outrageous,” Pope told a Washington Times Reporter in 2006. “And I found many of the things he [Tanton] had said since I had known him deplorable and unconscionable.”

Jerry Kammer is trying to continue what Tanton started; he is attempting to green hate and force an anti-immigrant voice onto the environmental movement.

Kammer has attacked Carl Pope for trying to protect the integrity of the Sierra Club. Pope said if the Sierra Club comes out in favor of lower immigration levels, “we would be perceived as assisting people whose motivations are racist.” Kammer referred to it as a “smear campaign”.

The only ‘smear’ that is evident here is the one anti-immigrant groups are trying to pull on legitimate environmentalists.