On Wednesday, former Rep. Tom Tancredo, R-Colo., joined conservative radio host John DePetro at anti-immigrant hate group Federation for American Immigration Reform’s annual “Hold Their Feet to the Fire” radio row, where Tancredo claimed immigrants degrade the environment and expressed his hope that Donald Trump might help the anti-immigrant movement achieve its long-held goal of winning over the environmentalist movement.
“There’s another area in which we and Donald Trump, I think, has the ability to begin to communicate with another group that we’ve had a difficult time with over the years, and that’s the environmentalists, because if you concentrate on this issue, if you think about it for any length of time, you will recognize that massive immigration, both legal and illegal, has a significant impact on the environment,” Tancredo said.
The anti-immigrant movement has long tried to “greenwash” itself in a so far unsuccessful effort to build alliances with major environmentalist groups.
Tancredo claimed that “everybody coming to Colorado will soon have to actually make reservations to get into the national park. All of the park systems throughout the country are being eroded and degraded by the massive numbers of people, the water supply, you name it.”
“I mean, even Colorado, there’s no way that we can possibly keep up with the infrastructural needs of the state because of the massive number of people coming there from all over, not just from other states but, of course, all over the world,” Tancredo said. “And so there is a degradation of the environment with massive numbers, and a lot of people in that movement understand that.”
Americans, Tancredo said, “can find common ground” on immigration restriction and environmental protection.
“A person like Trump, I think, can actually begin to make inroads where we hadn’t before, and this is one area,” he said.
