Case in point would be the Sierra Club. In the late 1990s some members of Sierra wanted the club to reinstate it’s previous policy linking the issues. Although the Sierra Club has tried to rewrite the history of that time by saying they merely wanted the club to take no position on the issue, the fact is that the leadership charged that taking the position of immigration restriction was helping racists.

Sierra Executive Director Carl Pope stated that it “would be perceived as assisting people whose motivations are racist”. A vote of the membership was held and the measure was defeated, and some members left to form the group Sierrans for Population Stabilization, which was immediately cast as racist.

A couple months ago Huffington Post carried a blog about “the bizarre charge that California’s water crisis was caused by immigrants”. Nothing bizarre about the obvious fact that immigration has increased the population of that state and that puts more pressure on water supplies. Every extra person has an “environmental footprint”, meaning they consume a certain amount of natural resources. The only thing “bizarre” is that people can deny there’s a connection.