ECO-WARRIORS HAVEN’T WARMED TO IMMIGRATION
They argue West should help developing countries, not steal their best, brightest
One of the first signs that North American environmentalists were uneasy about high immigration rates came from one of the best-known eco-warriors, David Suzuki.
The Vancouver-based founder of the influential Suzuki Foundation was quoted in a French magazine in 2013 as saying Canada’s immigration policy was disgusting because “we plunder southern countries by depriving them of future leaders, and we want to increase our population to support economic growth. … It’s crazy!”
Like some European environmentalists, Suzuki maintained “Canada is full” because most population growth occurs in congested cities. While praising Canadian multiculturalism and supporting welcoming more refugees, Suzuki’s main arguments zeroed in on how Canada is contributing to the brain drain from developing countries and that population growth is an environmentally destructive way to prop up Western economies.
The public reaction in Canada to Suzuki’s reflections was vociferous, focusing on shaming him. The Conservative government and corporate leaders seized on the remarks to try to humiliate the troublesome environmentalist. Then-immigration minister Jason Kenney was among those labelling him “xenophobic” and worse.
Suzuki was upbraided again after he spoke off the cuff to a Vancouver Sun reporter, saying North American “politicians make the quick assumption they have to keep the economy growing by keeping the population growing.” Suzuki called it disgraceful that Canada was “selectively going after very highly trained people from Pakistan, India and South Africa, like doctors. Now why would one of the richest countries be ripping off the developing world for the people they desperately need?”
Since 2013, as far as I am aware, Suzuki has given up trying to raise the ethical issues inherent in immigration. He didn’t return my calls for an interview and, when he gave a speech on multiculturalism and migration at the Chan Centre in 2014, he pulled his punches, pleasing the crowd with his customary denunciation of economic globalization.
Another noted Canadian environmentalist, however, is picking up where Suzuki left off. John Erik Meyer has been filling in the details of a conservationists’ view of how high immigration rates complicate the fight against population growth, climate change, resource depletion, over-consumption and what it takes to truly assist people in developing countries.
Meyer’s extensive analysis was this year published in The Humanist Perspective. It’s a noted Canadian publication devoted to atheism, “rationalism,” “the cultivation of ethical and creative living ” and to fostering “well-reasoned discussions of important human issues.”
As with Suzuki’s critique of Canada’s immigration policy, Meyer’s green reasoning is sure to offend many.
But some of his radical analysis of class and power may appeal to those open to unconventional, big-concept responses to looming environmental disaster.
In the month in which the UN’s climate-change panel warned humanity has only 12 years to cut the risk of extreme heat, drought, floods and poverty, Meyer said in an interview he believes his perspective could soon gain more momentum. At the least his eight-page essay offers a provocative thought experiment, which there is no good reason to ban from the marketplace of ideas.
Throughout history, desperate people have often emigrated for a better life, Meyer argues — just as Europeans fled to North America in the 18th and 19th centuries when their continent was rife with war, persecution, inequality and poverty. Their arrival in North America, however, crushed Indigenous cultures.
Europeans stopped coming en masse to Canada and the U.S. after their home countries became stable.
The lesson Meyer draws is that the most responsible thing for the West is to improve the lot of people in struggling countries instead of offering a lifeline to the relative few who win the immigration lottery.
“Although migration does indeed represent salvation for many migrants, it exacerbates existing problems in the receiving nations and, on a planetary basis, is the literal equivalent of throwing gasoline on the fire of environmental decline,” says Meyer, president of Canadians for a Sustainable Society.
One of Meyer’s central warnings is that when people move from developed countries to high-consumption ones, they create a larger ecological footprint.
A typical immigrant to Canada, he says, ends up emitting 4.2 times the carbon emissions that they did in their country of origin.
Even though migration is now occurring on an “unprecedented scale,” Meyer also says the mass movement of people will make no dent on the disastrous population explosions occurring in Africa and the Middle East.
Meyer cites a long list of problems that high migration also causes Western host nations (most Eastern countries generally don’t accept immigrants). They include greater energy use, increased pollution, suppression of wages, urban congestion, higher social-service costs and elevated housing prices.
Meyer wryly observes much of the support for Canadian immigration, which is triple that of the U.S. on a per-capita basis, comes from those who directly or indirectly gain from it. The boosters, he says, invariably stake out “the moral high ground” by claiming immigration lifts up the disadvantaged.
Meyer argues there are more effective ways to help people in struggling countries.
“In terms of genuinely saving the world, Canada’s rate of foreign aid to GDP is about one-fifth that of Sweden. It’s actually dropped by four per cent under the Liberal government. Why this very weak performance, despite the rhetoric? The most powerful interests in Canada do not profit from foreign aid. They profit from growth in the domestic commercial economy and asset inflation.”
The main policy goals of advanced countries, he says, should be to help poorer countries reduce population growth and, generally, to eliminate the problems that cause people to want to migrate.
“In order to save themselves from the chaos of growing and endless migration, developed countries are going to have to make it their business to establish better living conditions and sustainability in the poorest areas of the world.”
As if these arguments weren’t irritating enough, Meyer knows many in the West will not like to hear another environmental message about the need for self-restraint. “It is necessary to address the root causes of migration by drastically reducing consumption levels in more developed countries via very strong conservation measures,” he says. “This can well be seen as painful and extremely politically difficult, but the alternatives are vastly more destructive.”