The Environmental Movement’s Retreat From
Advocating U.S. Population Stabilization (1970-1998):

A First Draft of History

Roy Beck and Leon Kolankiewicz
June 2001

"Causes 5"

 

Cause #5: Immigration —Protected by ‘Political Correctness’—
Became the Chief Cause of U.S. Growth


Immigration emerged in the 1970s as the leading cause of continuing U.S. population growth. Immigration was an issue that none of the environmental groups had ever handled. Almost overnight, the U.S. population growth challenge had changed from being driven by American fertility to federal immigration policy. That forced environmental groups to make a choice to either (a) pursue U.S. stabilization by working for immigration reductions, or (b) abandon U.S. stabilization.

Such a choice surely was a shock to many environmental leaders. Left to future historians is a determination of how many made the choice consciously and how many passively chose option "b" simply by refusing to choose.

When most Americans began to focus on U.S. growth in the 1960s, immigration was an almost insignificant fraction of growth. Over the previous half-century, annual legal immigration had averaged less than 200,000 —below the historical average of around 250,000 a year.108

Modifications in immigration law in 1965 inadvertently started a chain migration through extended family members that began to snowball during the 1970s. Every aspect of population growth in the United States changed, according to voluminous government reports from the National Center for Health Statistics, the Census Bureau, and the Immigration and naturalization Service.

At the very time that American fertility fell to a level that would have allowed population stabilization within a matter of decades, immigration levels were rising rapidly. Father Theodore Hessburgh, then president of Notre Dame University, was the chairman of a federal commission that studied immigration policies and issues in the late 1970s.109 He warned that immigration numbers would continue to rise because of two powerful political interest groups: (1) conservative business interests which pushed for higher immigration to keep American wages down and the consumer market growing, and (2) liberal lobbies intent on increasing the voting power of various ethnic groups. Hesburgh’s conclusions have proved prescient. In the years since, Congress and successive administrations have repeatedly made decisions that caused annual immigration numbers to rise.

By the 1980s, annual immigration had more than doubled over traditional levels and was running above 500,000 a year. By the 1990s, annual average legal immigration had surpassed a million. And that didn’t even include a net addition of 200,000 to 500,000 illegal aliens each year. By the end of the 1990s, immigrants and their offspring were contributing nearly 70% of U.S. population growth.110

Environmental advocates of U.S. population stabilization had to confront this scorecard:

In a developed country like the United States, where mortality rates are low and where they change very slowly, the Population Size factor of the environmental Foundational Formula is influenced overwhelmingly by three subfactors:

(a) fertility of natives;
(b) number of immigrants; and
(c) fertility of immigrants.

A country is on the road to stabilization if all three of those are at a replacement-level rate.

In the United States at the end of the 1990s, government statistics reveal, these were the trends:

(a) Native-born Total Fertility Rate: On target for U.S. stabilization. The native-born rate has been well below the replacement level of 2.1 babies per woman since 1972 and has held steady at about 1.9. If the rate continues this low, native-born fertility will stop adding any population growth once the children of Baby Boom women have gone through their child-bearing years.111

(b) Immigrants: On target for driving U.S. population growth for centuries.112 The number of immigrants is more than 400% above replacement level. (Replacement level is currently estimated to be about 225,000 immigrants a year —equal to the number of emigrants— which is just slightly below the traditional U.S. average for in-migration.)

(c) Immigrant Total Fertility Rate: Far above replacement level and on target to produce ever-larger additions to population growth. Although immigrants are now about 10% of the U.S. population, they account for more than 30% of the fertility-related population growth.113


If immigration and immigrant fertility had been at replacement level rates since 1972 —as has native-born fertility— the United States would never have grown above 250 million.114 Instead, U.S. population passed 273 million before the turn of the century.

And the Census Bureau projects that current immigration and immigrant fertility are powerful enough to contribute to the United States surpassing 400 million soon after the year 2050 —on the way toward a billion or more Americans.

Most environmental groups by the late 1970s simply turned away from these kind of stark trends and didn’t address them. But a few remained true to the "full-Formula" environmentalism of the 1970-era. They responded directly to the new challenge —at least in their official statements.

The most aggressive was Zero Population Growth —before it shifted away from being primarily an environmental organization. A 1977 Washington Post story revealed the public way ZPG confronted immigration.115 Under the headline, "Anti-Immigration Campaign Begun," the story began: "The Zero Population Growth foundation is launching a nationwide campaign to generate public support for sharp curbs on both legal and illegal immigration to the United States." It quoted Melanie Wirken, ZPG’s Washington lobbyist, saying the group favored a "drastic reduction in legal immigration" from levels which were then averaging about 400,000 a year. The article reported that ZPG was adding another lobbyist so that Wirken could devote all of her time to immigration issues.

The Sierra Club urged the federal government to conduct a thorough examination of U.S. immigration policies and their impact on U.S. population trends and how those trends affected the nation’s environmental resources. "All regions of the world must reach a balance between their populations and resources," the Club added.116 Then in 1980, the Sierra Club testified before Father Hesburgh’s Select Committee on Immigration and Refugee Reform: "It is obvious that the numbers of immigrants the United States accepts affects our population size and growth rate. It is perhaps less well known the extent to which immigration policy, even more than the number of children per family, is the determinant of future numbers of Americans." The Club said it is an "important question how many immigrants the United States wants to accept and the criteria we choose as the basis for answering that question." In 1989, the Sierra National Population Committee confirmed that, "immigration to the U.S. should be no greater than that which will permit achievement of population stabilization in the U.S.," a policy confirmed by the Club’s Conservation Coordinating Committee.117

The immigration-reduction advocacy of the Sierra Club and ZPG beginning in the 1970s was affirmed in the Global 2000 Report to the President in 1981, which stated that the federal government should "develop a U.S. national population policy that includes attention to issues such as population stabilization, and...just, consistent, and workable immigration laws..."118 It was reaffirmed in the 1996 report of the Population and Consumption Task Force of the President’s Council on Sustainable Development.

The task force concluded: "This is a sensitive issue, but reducing immigration levels is a necessary part of population stabilization and the drive toward sustainability."119

But even as that governmental recognition was being announced in 1996, ZPG and the Sierra Club were in the final stage of abandoning immigration reduction and, as a practical result, U.S. population stabilization goals.

Over the previous ten years many of the old "full-Formula" environmentalists had gradually been ousted from many of the Sierra Club’s top leadership positions, with the effect of sharply diminishing the priority attached to U.S. population stabilization. It appears that the shift began to be noticeable as early as 1990. Congress that year held hearings about increasing the already doubled level of immigration, a move that led to the Census Bureau raising its projection of U.S. population in 2050 by nearly 100 million.

Neither the Sierra Club nor any other large environmental group asked to testify about the environmental consequences of such a dramatic boost in population. After the hearings, however, some of the leaders on the national Sierra Population Committee did some personal lobbying against the immigration bill. But they were admonished by others in the Club’s national leadership that they were out of line, even though the official Sierra policy at the time supported their efforts.120

During the early 1990s, the Club considered adopting a more detailed, comprehensive policy on population (including immigration) and consumption. But internal wrangling between pro-stabilization population activists and the emerging "environmental justice" and "immigrants rights" factions led to stalemate.

In February, 1996, the Club’s National Board of Directors declared that no one speaking in the Club’s name at the national or local level could call any longer for immigration reduction to reach U.S. population stabilization; henceforth, the Club would "take no position on immigration levels or on policies governing immigration into the United States." In effect, the board had ceased the Club’s work for U.S. stabilization, which, at a practical level, is all but impossible given current immigration levels. For example, the only way to achieve immediate zero population growth without reducing immigration would be to cut the number of U.S. births in half.121 American women on average would have to do away with the two-child family of the last three decades and adapt to a one-child per family scenario —lower than any country in the world. In effect, Americans would be asked to sacrifice their own aspirations to "replace themselves" biologically in the next generation, simply to make way for more immigrants from rapidly-growing countries that had chosen not to make such a sacrifice. Given the patent unfairness of this scenario, and its certain political unpopularity, it is not surprising that not a single environmental or population group —especially those that avoided advocating immigration limits because of their controversy— was willing to seriously propose this as an alternative.

A group of long-time Sierra Club population activists forced a referendum vote by the national membership to return the Club to its full advocacy of population stabilization.122 To fight the referendum, the Club leadership chose as one of its major spokesmen in the referendum campaign the executive director of ZPG, former congressman Peter Kostmayer. Thus, the two organizations that had been the most outspoken for U.S. stabilization and immigration reduction in the 1970s and 1980s teamed up to defeat those same goals in 1998. The decision not to fully confront U.S. stabilization issues prevailed in a 60%-40% vote.123


Notes

108. U.S. Bureau of the Census. 1997. Statistical Abstract of the United States.
109. Select Commission on Immigration Policy and the National Interest. 1981. Washington, D.C.: U.S. Government Printing Office.
110. Steven A. Camarota. 1999. "Immigrants in the United States —1998: A Snapshot of America’s Foreign-born Population." Backgrounder. Washington, D.C.: Center for Immigration Studies.
111. Lindsey Grant and Leon Bouvier. 1992. How Many Americans? San Francisco: Sierra Club Books.
112. Ibid.
113. Ed Lytwak. 1999. "A Tale of Two Futures: Changing Shares of U.S. Population Growth." NPG Forum. March. The National Vital Statistics System in the document "Births: Final Data for 1997," Vol. 47, No. 18, April 29, 1999, lists the U.S. total fertility rate (TFR) for all races in 1997 at 2.03, almost at replacement level. By comparison, the TFR for women of Hispanic origin was 2.99, and those of Mexican origin 3.31, respectively 42% and 58% above replacement level. According to the Census Bureau ("The Foreign-Born Population: 1996," CPS P20-494), about half (49.6%) of all U.S. foreign born came from Mexico (27.2%), Central America (7%), the Caribbean (10.5%), and South America (4.9%).
114. Poster Project for a Sustainable U.S. Environment. 1998. Based on Census Bureau data.
115. Susan Jacoby. 1977. "Anti-Immigration Campaign Begun." The Washington Post. May 8.
116. Sierra Club Board of Directors. 1978. "U.S. Population Policy and Immigration." Adopted May 6-7.
117. Sierra Club Population Report. Spring, 1989.
118. Supra, note 29. p. 11.
119. President’s Council on Sustainable Development. 1996. Population and Consumption Task Force Report. Washington, D.C.; U.S. Government Printing Office. Executive Summary, p. iv.
120. Memos to the authors from Population Committee members.
121. Albert A. Bartlett and Edward P. Lytwak. 1995. "Zero Growth of the Population of the United States." Population and Environment, Vol. 16, No. 5, May.
122. "Population and the Sierra Club: A Discussion of Issues About the Upcoming Referendum." January, 1998. 8 pp. discussion paper authored by Alan Kuper, Dick Schneider, and Ben Zuckerman of Sierrans for U.S. Population Stabilization (SUSPS).
123. John H. Cushman, Jr. 1998. "Sierra Club Rejects Move to Oppose Immigration." The New York Times, April 26; Marvin Baker (Acting Chief Inspector of Election for the Inspectors). "Sierra Club 1998 Election for Board of Directors and Ballot Questions." (As posted on the website of Sierrans for U.S. Population Stabilization, April 24, 1998, at http://www.sni.net/ecofuture/susps/info/votes_980425.html).
______
[Ed. note: Use the "back" key to return to the menu.]
Used with permission of the authors.