Did Environmentalist Back Arizona's SB1070?

New York-based community groups have taken up a national campaign to fight Arizona's controversial anti-illegal immigration law by targeting a local pro-environment foundation that they say backs groups supporting the law. About 40 protesters gathered in front of a midtown office building on 3rd Avenue last week to draw attention to ties between the Weeden Foundation, a major supporter of global land and wildlife conservation efforts, and the organizations, which the protesters consider racist, anti-immigrant hate groups. Protesters based their allegations on Apply the Brakes a report by the Chicago-based Center for New Community that explores the relationship between certain anti-immigration groups and environmentalists.

In 2010, Weeden made a grant to Californians for Population Stabilization, a group that supports Arizona's new anti-illegal immigration law, SB1070—a law immigration activists said threatened, before a federal judge intervened last week, to subject people of color in Arizona to racial profiling.

Protesters also accuse Weeden of financially supporting the Federation for American Immigration Reform (FAIR), which helped craft SB1070. However, according to Weeden's website, Weeden hasn't given any grants to the Federation for American Immigration Reform (FAIR), in the past ten years.

In 2010, Weeden also made grants to Center for Immigration Studies and NumbersUSA, groups opposed to increasing U.S. immigration.

Protesters said Weeden justifies its opposition to immigration by blaming immigrants for America's rising consumption and pollution levels. “It’s sad that companies like BP can have a huge oil spill, ruin the environment and the focus is still on immigrants,” said protester Adama Foneh, a leader of Sistas and Brothas United (SBU), one of the organizers of the event.

Teresa Andersen, Board President of the Northwest Bronx Community Clergy Coalition (NWBCCC), one of the organizers of the event, echoed Foneh. “It isn’t the immigrants who created the toxic waste and pollutants in this country,” she said. “Those are the corporations. I think it’s actually the opposite. A lot of the immigrant cultures are the ones who live in harmony with nature.”

A Weeden spokesperson said the organization's executive director was traveling abroad and unavailable to comment. Nor did the Center for Immigration Studies respond to requests for comment.

But in interviews with City Limits, FAIR, NumbersUSA and Californians for Population Stabilization deny being anti-immigrant hate groups. “Those comments have been discredited and proven false,” said NumbersUSA media coordinator Peter Robbio. He added that the organization advocates for “immigration reduction” rather than an end to all immigration.

“This is what we’ve descended to in this immigration argument,” said Rick Oltman, national media director of Californians for Population Stabilization. “They cannot say mass-illegal immigration will help the country, they cannot say it will decrease crime, all they can say is that the opposition is racist.”

"That is a tactic used by people who have run out of other arguments in this debate," said Ira Mehlman, national media director for the Federation for American Immigration Reform. "We draw a very clear distinction between immigrants and immigration. Immigrants are people and deserve to be treated with dignity and respect just as much as anyone else. Immigration is a policy."

Weeden was founded in 1963, according to the mission statement on its website, and “embraces the protection of biodiversity as its main priority.” It also focuses on over-consumption and over-population. On the website of an organization called Apply the Brakes, a group that advocates for a halt to “unsustainable U.S. population growth,” Don Weeden, the foundation's executive director, explains the connection he sees between over-consumption, over-population and immigration. "America's ballooning population, unique in the developed world, is largely driven by historically high immigration numbers" he says. "Prescriptions for reaching a population-environment balance need not be anti-immigrant: The U.S can still accept immigrants, just not at the current rate."