Are immigrants in America fighting against climate change?

Immigrants have always found success in America. This is the land of opportunities. The hype is real. Immigrants too have always added to American culture, especially progress in science and business. Google, WhatsApp, Tesla, SpaceX, PayPal and many other life and business changing companies were founded by immigrants who came to the American shores in search of better lives for themselves. But they ended up making the lives of hundreds of millions of people better. The credit doesn’t entirely go to the immigrants. America is a marketplace of ideas where disruption and new thought are encouraged and rewarded. America is not afraid to rethink and redesign. That is what makes America unique.

But these celebrity immigrants are not the only immigrants in America. And they certainly do not reflect the mindset and business practices of all immigrants. Will get to that momentarily. The threat of climate change is with us because the wealthy nations, primarily the United States of America, have been busy burning fossil fuel and adding carbon dioxide to the atmosphere. Some of the celebrity immigrant entrepreneurs today want to solve the climate change problem. Making electric cars and sending humans to other worlds in the vastness of space to safeguard them from the ravages of a warming planet is the brainchild of an African immigrant named Elon Musk. Others are suggesting ways to suck out the carbon from the atmosphere in order to reduce and slow down the warming of the planet.

But as mentioned above, there are immigrants in America that are part of the problem rather than the solution. I do not have the figures in front of me but from personal experience, of living for about 14 years in America and traveling to various parts of the country, I can safely say that most of the gas stations in America are owned or operated by Pakistani and Indian immigrants (also called desi people). A gas station is the same thing that is called a petrol pump in Pakistan. They sell fuel that our vehicles burn and create carbon dioxide. And that is one of the chief sources of planetary warming.

When these desi people go to the banks asking for loans to build or buy more gas stations or improve on the one already, they add more to the problem of climate change. The bank giving loans has the money usually invested in the fossil fuel industry. When banks start making the loan process difficult by asking for environmental insurance to be added to the business establishment, the desi business owners frown at the extra expense thinking of it as mere waste of money. They rather employ what is called the jugaarr method to tackle the problem. Jugaarr is a cheap and temporary solution to problems that require comprehensive solutions.

When desi owners go to the government office asking for permits to run restaurants, they are instructed to install a grease trap outside the business establishment in order to intercept the grease so as to avoid damaging the city sewer and hence the environment. That is also frowned upon by the desi immigrant restaurant owner. They call up their master plumber to find a jugaarr for that too. If their gas station has a car wash facility, they do not want to deal with the soapy chemicals damaging the environment.

These desi immigrants favour the Democrats because the Democrats are immigrant friendly, at least on paper. But when they run into these obstacles in running their businesses, they shift to favouring the Republicans, who are assumed to be business friendly and keep the environmental concerns on a tight leash.

When you analyse the role that these immigrants play regarding climate change, you will see that while America is treating far flung countries as a battlefield to fight off their rival, these immigrants treat America as a battlefield balancing the fight surrounding climate change.

Published in The Express Tribune, June 6^th, 2023.

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