Selling immigration restrictions to the global waming crowd

Two posts about this report by the Center for Immigration Studies that concludes the following:

Overall, our findings indicate that the average immigrant (legal or illegal) in the United States produces somewhat less CO2 than the average native-born American. However, immigrants in the United States produce about four times more CO2 in the United States as they would have in their countries of origin...

When it comes to dealing with global warming, environmentalists in the United States have generally chosen to adopt what might be described as piecemeal efforts to oppose new sources of fossil fuel-based energy, such as the construction of new coal-fired power plants...But they have assiduously avoided the underlying issue of growing energy demand driven by immigration-fueled population growth...

But to simply dismiss the large role that continuing high levels of immigration play in increasing U.S. and worldwide CO2 emissions is not only intellectually dishonest, it is also counter-productive. One must acknowledge a problem before a solution can be found. The effect of immigration is certainly not trivial. If immigrants in the United States were their own country, they would rank seventh in the world in annual CO2 output, ahead of such countries as Canada, France, and Great Britain.

Unless there is a change in immigration policy, 30 million (legal and illegal) immigrants are likely to settle in the United States over the next 20 years. One can still argue for high levels of immigration for any number of reasons. However, one cannot make the argument for high immigration without at least understanding what it means for global efforts to reduce the emission of greenhouse gases.

It's kind of long, but it essentially says that because immigrants emit more CO2 in the U.S. than they would in their home countries, their impact on global warming should be considered in any efforts to increase levels of immigration. Why is it that they emit more CO2 here than at home? Because they are wealthier here than they would otherwise be. One of the big global warming arguments, to me at least, is that globally we're too wealthy and because of that wealth, we're emitting too much carbon into the air that is causing temperature change. Th point of the study seems to be that if we can keep these immigrants from getting richer by coming here, we can slow global warming. Additionally, if we can stop all of us from becoming richer, we can also slow global warming. Unfortunately, though, the second point seems to be the goal of all the climate alarmists.

This first blog post I saw about the study concluded with this by Ronald Bailey:

These figures are likely to be true. But is keeping people poor by depriving us of their labor and skills really the best way to address man-made global warming?

Of all the comments, I like this one best:

Of course, the best way to combat greenhouse gases is to drive American citizens into poverty and adopting the lifestyles the poor illegal immigrants enjoy in their native countries. But who would advocate that? oh, wait...

Dan Griswold adds the following:

What the CIS study is really arguing is that rich people pollute more than poor people, so the world would be better off if more people remained poor. The same argument could be used to oppose economic development in places such as China and India that has lifted hundreds of millions of people out of poverty in the past two decades.

Through the dark lens of CIS, the world is a better place when poor people remain stuck in poor countries, and poor countries remain poor.