澳彩开奖

(PFIR) held its inaugural conference Tuesday at the National Press Club in Washington, D.C. The small, invitation-only, one-day conference was entitled, 鈥淭he First National Conference on Immigration, Conservation, and the Environment.鈥� The conclave is just another example of PFIR鈥檚 cynical greenwashing campaign to recruit environmentalists to the anti-immigrant cause by blaming them for urban sprawl, overconsumption and a host of other environmental problems.

Many speakers at PFIR鈥檚 event had links to , the racist of the modern anti-immigration movement. Representatives from and the 鈥攇roups founded by Tanton鈥攑articipated. The incestuous nature of the Tanton network was embodied in the person of PFIR Executive Director Leah Durant, who formerly was employed by the (FAIR) legal arm, the Immigration Reform Law Institute. FAIR, which the 澳彩开奖 lists as a , was founded by Tanton, who still serves on the group鈥檚 board. For a time, Durant also was part of , a FAIR front group supposedly representing the interests of African Americans concerned with high levels of immigration. The group disintegrated not long after its first press conference, which was paid for and stage-managed by FAIR.

According to the , Tuesday鈥檚 conference discussions addressed the topics that have long consumed Tanton-linked pseudo-environmental front groups: 鈥渢he population taboo;鈥� 鈥渢he impact of immigration on population size;鈥� and 鈥渉ow U.S. immigration policy impedes the economic progress of developing nations and sustainability of other species.鈥� The conclusions reached were, of course, preordained by the bigotry that has always guided Tanton鈥檚 30-year . Conference participants blamed immigrants for being responsible for everything from increased traffic to high gas prices to looming resource scarcity.

There is nothing new about this tactic. As early as 1986, Tanton was writing in private to his colleagues, 鈥淭he Sierra Club may not want to touch the immigration issue, but the immigration issue is going to touch the Sierra Club!鈥� For several years, Tanton and his allies made concerted efforts to turn the Sierra Club into an anti-immigrant organization. They came very close in 2004, when anti-immigrant candidates nearly secured a majority of the club鈥檚 board. The 澳彩开奖 played a pivotal role in pushing back against those efforts, writing a to the club鈥檚 board warning of the impending takeover and running its co-founder Morris Dees for the club鈥檚 board so that his candidate鈥檚 statement could warn environmentalists about the anti-immigrant campaign.