Crazy NYT Ad Week con­tin­ues here at dig­i­tal emu­nc­tion. Today’s install­ment: a group billing itself as America’s Lead­er­ship Team for Long Range Population-Immigration-Resource Plan­ning has an ad on page A15 of today’s Times that lays the blame for America’s envi­ron­men­tal trou­bles at the feet of ille­gal immigrants.

Huh? you say.

Check it out:

[T]he bull­doz­ers keep on coming, rip­ping up some of the most beau­ti­ful farms and forests in the world and turn­ing them into con­crete and asphalt sub­urbs. But with U.S. census pro­jec­tions indi­cat­ing our pop­u­la­tion will explode from 300 mil­lion today to 400 mil­lion in thirty years and 600 mil­lion before 2100, bull­dozer sales should keep on boom­ing. Unless we take action today. The Pew His­panic Research Center projects 82% of the country’s mas­sive pop­u­la­tion increase, between 2005 and 2050 will result from immigration.

Accord­ing to the South­ern Poverty Law Center, the ALTL­R­PIRP is a front for five anti-​immigration groups funded by John Tanton, whom the SPLC and other have called “the puppeteer” behind the modern anti-​immigrant cru­sade. SPLC has named three of these groups as hate groups “for their links to white suprema­cists and pub­li­ca­tion of big­oted materials.”

What’s scary is that a rap­proche­ment between the anti-​immigrant right and the green left is less unlikely than it sounds. Back in 1998 a group call­ing itself SUSPS tried to change the Sierra Club’s neu­tral­ity policy on immi­gra­tion, argu­ing that the club should sup­port (anti-)immigration poli­cies that would guar­an­tee zero pop­u­la­tion growth within the United States. As the SUSPS web page puts it:

The facts are clear. To pre­serve and pro­tect our envi­ron­ment, the Sierra Club must, in addi­tion to focus­ing on fer­til­ity and con­sump­tion, acknowl­edge the large part that cur­rent immi­gra­tion num­bers play in U.S. pop­u­la­tion growth and acknowl­edge the need for lower levels of immi­gra­tion into the U.S.*

Though that cam­paign failed, in 2002 and again in 2003 SUSPS-​supported can­di­dates were elected to the Sierra Club’s board of direc­tors. In 2004 a slate of sig­nif­i­cantly more dis­turb­ing anti-​immigration candidates—including Richard Lamm, a former gov­er­nor of Col­orado who sits on the board of advi­sors of one of the orga­ni­za­tions behind today’s NYT ad–ran for the board but was defeated.

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*Note: To be fair, I should men­tion that the SUSPS argu­ment is based on the fact that people in devel­oped coun­tries use more resources than people in poor or devel­op­ing coun­tries. So immi­gra­tion from devel­op­ing to devel­oped coun­tries, the argu­ment goes, actu­ally increases net global resource depletion.

What’s more, the SUSPS dec­la­ra­tion of prin­ci­ples explic­itly states:

Our con­cern is with total num­bers, not with any group or coun­try of origin. We argue for an end to U.S. growth in num­bers and con­sump­tion simply based on envi­ron­men­tal limits. We advo­cate any rea­son­able com­bi­na­tion of nat­ural increase and immi­gra­tion that can achieve a sus­tain­able U.S. pop­u­la­tion. We repu­di­ate any sup­port from people who have racial motives for reduc­ing pop­u­la­tion or immi­gra­tion. Racists and their offen­sive ideas and actions have no place in modern civ­i­lized society.

But obvi­ous ques­tions remain: First, why not advo­cate a policy of emi­gra­tion from devel­oped to devel­op­ing coun­tries? And second, what’s the jus­ti­fi­ca­tion for focus­ing so nar­rowly on the United States as a unit of eco­log­i­cal concern?