Progressive Group to Launch Environmental Impact Statement on U.S. Immigration Policy
Progressives for Immigration Reform (PFIR) announced a major new project: an Environmental Impact Statement (EIS) on U.S. immigration policy. PFIR also unveiled the website for the new project, and invited public comments on the study.The main policy decision to be evaluated in the new EIS is what level Congress should set for annual immigration into the United States.
According to Dr. Philip Cafaro, a principal investigator in the study: "The EIS will identify a number of plausible alternative immigration scenarios, regarding how many immigrants to allow into the country annually. The study will also develop demographic projections specifying future U.S. populations, based on these different annual immigration rates." This will be followed by detailed analyses examining the likely ecological impacts of different population sizes in areas such as; urban sprawl and farmland loss; water demands and withdrawals from natural systems; greenhouse gas emissions and resultant climate change; habitat loss and impacts on biodiversity; energy demands and national security implications; and the international ecological impacts of U.S. immigration policies.
"The EIS project aims to develop a thorough, objective analysis of the ecological impacts of U.S. immigration policy, so that policy decisions can be made in full knowledge of those impacts," stated Leah Durant, Executive Director of PFIR.
Read the full press release here.