Been feeling a little unsettled today after yesterday's posting - not sure why. Maybe because I had such a strong reaction to Jose Antonio Vargas' story, the human side of it, and for me maybe, the humanistic side of it, without really having a lot of knowledge about some of the things I was talking about - factual knowledge. Has that ever happened to you? I mean, how much do I really know?

What I know - or think I know...

• First, I need to learn more about immigration and immigration policy.
• Immigration - documented or undocumented - is a complicated subject.
• Our nation was built on the backs and with the minds and hearts of immigrants. We often forget that white Europeans who settled the US were originally immigrants.
• Sometimes it feels like the brouhaha about immigration now is related at least in part to the reality that many of the people who want to enter our country and become citizens have dark skin.
• It also feels like the tension is related to fear about the future, about the economy, about what might be ahead. We often react with fear when faced with the unknown.
• Immigrants, of both types, contribute to our economy - as workers, consumers, and often taxpayers.
• Whether or not we want to acknowledge it, our economy depends upon the labor of immigrants, of both types.
• Immigrants of both types also use public services.
• We have policies that are supposed to support and oversee legal immigration.
• These policies are far from perfect, and are cumbersome, costly, and confusing.
• There are passionate arguments on both sides, some carefully researched, some rising from strong feelings ... browse through these three web-sites:
•         Drum Major Institute for Public Policy - Contributions of Immigrants
•         US Illegal Aliens - The Dark Side
•         Pappy's Ponderings - Illegal Immigration

If you have been reading my blog, you might know that I have biases - arising from a combination of my values, ethics, experiences, profession, politics, faith, and education. I have a world-view that some, but certainly not all, share. The lens through which I view the world is that it is a world of abundance, not scarcity. There is more than enough for all, though that might mean that for all to have enough, things might have to level out a bit. I know that others may have had experiences, terrible experiences, that have led them to view life through the lens of scarcity. Yet I have known people who have had terrible experiences, lives of devastating unfairness and fathomless losses, who are still able to view the world as abundant, who are still able to hold out hope and to act with generosity. What allows this to happen? I don't know. Most of the time, I believe that we have a choice about our lens, but I don't really know.

When I think about Jose Antonio Vargas and others like him, I see adults, but I also see the children within the adults - who they used to be - the kids whose parents wanted them to have lives better than theirs. I have children - I get this.

When I read Pappy's Ponderings and the site US Illegal Aliens, tears come to my eyes - I sense so much anger and fear in those words. It makes me sad. I believe that listening to, understanding, getting along with people who are different from us is important. We need to do this for the good of all of us who share this home called earth. 

It is complicated, and I want to learn more.

Why have I not thought about this before? Why have I not ever thought about how sustainability and immigration issues might be related?

So, according to the IPCC (the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change), the APA Climate Change Task Force, and other reports, human behaviors over the last two centuries, particularly in the last 75 years, have contributed significantly to global climate change. Particular aspects of human functioning that have contributed to climate change - known as human drivers - include patterns of increased consumption/materialism and increased population. These two primary drivers result in an increase in emission of green house gases, which then leads to global warming and other kinds of climate change. Climate change is currently viewed by many as the biggest threat, on a global level, to health and security.

Unless climate change trends are reversed, or its effects significantly mitigated, there will be several negative consequences across the world. Among these are increased severe weather events, food and water insecurity, increased spread of disease, and patterns of mass migration with the goal of obtaining access to decreasing resources.

Migration trends are changing as more and more people try to gain access to the good life -- in the US, for example, we have many residents from poorer countries who have immigrated, who have crossed our borders with or without documentation, for a chance of access to better health care, better education, safer living conditions. This trend obviously affects our nation's population size -- as have migration/immigration trends from the time that our nation was born.

Immigration - in particular, what to do about individuals who have moved to and established lives in the US without documentation - has long been a hot issue in the US. In the last few years, it has been intensely debated at state levels. Arizona is one state that has been in the news related to its efforts to deal with "illegal" immigration by seeking out those who are here without documentation and finding ways to deport them.

What does this have to do with "sustainability," with learning to live today with the needs of future generations in mind? I had not connected the two ideas - sustainability and immigration - until today. Stay with me - I am getting there.

Driving home from work, I listened to an NPR interview with Jose Antonio Vargas, a Pulitzer Prize winning journalist who just this week "came out" as an "illegal immigrant" in an essay in the New York Times Magazine. Read Jose's essay for yourself. Draw your own conclusions about his life in the US, his decisions about how to portray himself throughout his life, his contributions to his adopted country.

My interest was piqued as I listened to Jose speak about his efforts to become an open activist who can foster recognition of contributions of undocumented workers to our country's well-being. I had recently come across information about a group in Minnesota called "Minnesotans for Sustainability" - the group defines a sustainable society as one that "balances the environment, other life forms, and human interactions over an indefinite time period." Good definition. The group accurately describes population growth as a contributor to problems with sustainability. One of the strongest recommendations made by the group to deal with population growth, however, is to deport "illegal aliens" who are using valuable resources that are needed by legal citizens - the presence of the "illegal aliens" threatens sustainability of Minnesota and the US.

My first reaction to this is - I hate, hate, hate the term "illegal aliens" - the term is so derogatory, and calls to mind a bizarre image of criminals from Mars. When I listened to Jose Antonio Vargas, and learned more about his contributions as a working journalist who pays taxes (though under an illegal SSN), I felt so frustrated. He had come here at age 12 from the Philippines, sent here by his mother to her parents with the hope that his life would be better in the US. He described loving the US - school, music, culture - he described his efforts to learn to speak English without an accent by watching Golden Girls and other sitcoms over and over again. He didn't even know that he was not here legally, that his documents had been falsified, until he was 16 and tried to get a learner's permit to drive. His story is compelling, and his courage great - his coming out this week threatens his livelihood and well-being, but he did so as an effort to support the millions of undocumented workers in the US who want to become citizens. Hard to envision him as a Martian criminal...

My second and stronger reaction -- Well. I think a lot about what "sustainability" and "sustainable health and well-being" mean - about what we need to do to ensure the health and safety of us and other species and of our earth. Last time I looked, these issues involve the whole world. Even when we are talking about sustainability of the economy - we live on imported goods, and send goods elsewhere. 

To my understanding, if we are talking about sustainability in terms of the environment, climate change is a global issue, and the threats to sustainability know no borders. Air is air - dirty air is dirty air - it drifts across the globe with no regard for human made borders. Temperature, water, weather, birds, butterflies, seeds, soil -- no borders. If the wind picks up the sand from a desert in one nation in the middle east, and carries it to a nation in Asia -- well, can't do anything about it. Our control of things like this is quite limited.  Similarly, when the economy hits the skids in another nation - we are affected.

Is it even possible to have one part of the world (like Minnesota) be "sustainable" by moving some people out, without affecting other parts of the world? It is complicated - while decisions to live sustainably are made by individual and communities, in the end these multiple decisions have ripple effects all over the world.

It is pretty well documented (see sources above) that the per capita consumption of energy of residents of the US and Europe is much much greater than the per capita energy consumption of the rest of the world. We are consuming more than our share of what the earth has to offer, and thus we are contributing more than others to global climate change. Our choices may be negatively affecting other parts of the world. As I have said before, I do not say this in an unappreciative voice, nor do I speak from an unpatriotic position. My stance is that, as one of the wealthiest nations in the world, we have much to gain, as do others, if we would take the lead in trying to reduce our consumption and energy use. What would happen if the US loudly and visibly embarked upon a journey toward more sustainable living, which would require international and intergovernmental collaboration and community-building? Would the BRIC nations - Brazil, Russia, India, and China - emerging economic and technological leaders - follow suit? Could all of these wonderful and creative and innovative nation-forces move together toward healthier and more sustainable living?

Jose Antonio Vargas made a decision at some point, when applying for a job, to lie. He had to choose - check the box that indicated he was a documented immigrant or check the box that indicated he was a citizen. He says that he thought about this and, as he made the decision to lie by claiming to be a citizen, he also made the decision to live his life in a way that would earn the right to that title - to be a hard worker who contributed economically, socially, and culturally to what he thought of as his home country, to be a grateful person who could do his part to help those who did not have his advantages. Yes, he lied, and each of us will need to decide what to think about this. I have to think about it as well.

And each of us may have to think, if times do indeed worsen in the future due to the effects of climate change, about whether or not the value of one person's life can be seen as greater than that of another - if one person, or nation, is deserving of greater resources and access to resources needed to live, than any other person or nation.