If you opened a newspaper in Iowa this spring, you might have come across an advertisement stating: “How do you feel about paving over the amber waves of grain, the purple mountain majesties and the fruited plain?”1 If you read the small print, you found not the anticipated environmental message, but a proposal to drastically reduce immigration to the U. S. to 200, 000 people a year. The ad states: “... every year in America we pave an area equal to the state of Delaware... Why?
References
- Federation for American Immigration Reform advertisement, cited in Becky Bohrer, “Anti-Immigration Forces Deluge Iowa, ” The Associated Press, January 15, 2000.
- See the following websites. Negative Population Growth: www.npg.org; Federation for American Immigration Reform: www.fairus.org; ProjectUSA: www.projectusa.org; California Coalition for Immigration Reform: www.ccir.net.
- Pat Buchanan, “Commentary: What Will America be in 2050?” LA Times, 10/28/94.
- Ira Mehlman and Garling Scipio, The Environmentalist’s Guide to a Sensible Immigration Policy, Washington D.C.: Federation for American Immigration Reform, 1999, p.6.
- Ibid, p.22.
- Legal scholar Dorothy Roberts contends that the number is probably inflated due to “county officials’” unscientific survey methods and confusion of legal and illegal immigrants. See Dorothy Roberts, “Who May Give Birth to Citizens?” in Juan F. Perea ed., Immigrants Out!, New York and London: New York University Press, 1997, p.207.
- Micheal Fix and Jeffrey S. Passell, “Trends in Noncitizens’ and Citzens’ Use of Public Benefits: Following Welfare Reform: 1994-1997, ” Washington, D.C.: The Urban Institute, March 1999.
- See Mark W. Nowak, Immigration and U.S. Population Growth: An Environmental Perspective, Negative Population Growth, 1997, p.5.
FURTHER READING AND RESOURCES
- American Friends Service Committee Immigrant and Refugee Rights Project, AFSC National Office, 1501 Cherry St. Philadelphia, PA 19102, Phone 215241-7000, Fax: 215-241-7275. Visit AFSC online at, http://www.afsc.org or write to afscinfo@afsc.org
- Grace Chang, Disposable Domestics: Immigrant Women Workers in the Global Economy, South End Press: Boston, MA, 2000.
- Committee on Women, Population and the Environment (CWPE), c/o Population and Development Program, Hampshire College, Amherst, MA 01002. Visit CWPE on the web at www.cwpe.org or email at cwpe@hampshire.edu.
- National Network for Immigrant and Refugee Rights (NNIRR), Hands that Shape the World: Report on the Conditions of Immigrant Women in the U.S. Five Years after the Beijing Conference, June 2000. National Network for Immigrant and Refugee Rights, 310 8th St., Suite 307, Oakland, CA 94607, Phone: 510-4651984, Fax: 510-465-1885. Visit NNIRR on the web at www.nnirr.org, or email at nnirr@nnirr.org.
- Political Ecology Group (PEG), Campaign to End the Greening of Hate. 965 Mission St., Suite 218, San Francisco, CA 94103, Phone: 415-777-3488, Fax: 415-777-3443. Visit PEG on the web at www.igc.org/peg, or email at peg@p-e-g.org.
