Some Californians have found a new drought scapegoat: immigration
Some people blame California’s enduring drought on the nut farmers. Others vent against those in Beverly Hills, who keep their estates green while neighbours in the flatlands turn off sprinklers under threat of heavy fines.
Now comes the latest, perhaps inevitable, scapegoat: immigration.
A group called Californians for Population Stabilization, which has courted controversy down the years, says it’s a matter of simple mathematics. The state now has nearly 40 million residents, 10 million or so more than it did 25 years ago, and a lot of the new arrivals are from other countries.
Therefore, they argue, it’s their fault.
“California’s drought could have been prevented with responsible immigration policies and limited population growth,” one of the group’s recent Facebook posts reads.
Another says, more ominously: “The drought has never been just about water.”
No policymaker or environmental scientist is taking this line of argument terribly seriously ...
At one time I thought this was a sort of clueless idealism or utopianism, but it is done so systematically and relentlessly, there is obviously at work another motivation that is far more sinister.
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