Opponents of immigration are now trying to hitch their wagon to worries about high oil prices and global warming.

An ad on page A12 of today’s Washington Post asks, “If foreign oil has us over a barrel now, what happens when our population increases by another 100 million?” The text of the ad tries to provide the answer: “With America’s population at a record 300 million today, [oil] supplies are again tight in spite of record high prices. And the U.S. Census Bureau projects that another 110 million people will be added to our population between 2000 and 2040.” So, if we want lower oil prices, we need to reduce America’s population growth and that means reducing immigration. Get it?

The ad is sponsored by five anti-immigration, anti-population-growth groups, including the Federation for American Immigration Reform (FAIR) and Californians for Population Stabilization.

The ad provides no evidence that rising global demand for oil has been driven primarily or even significantly by population growth in the United States. In fact, our total oil consumption has actually declined compared to last year, while demand continues to rise in developing countries. The two previous big spikes in global oil prices, in 1973 and 1979, occurred when the U.S. population was 80 to 90 million LOWER than it is today.

The future direction of oil prices will be determined by such factors as energy efficiency, economic growth in emerging economies, oil production, and development of alternative energy sources. Immigration rates to the United States won’t matter.

As though on cue, the Center for Immigration Studies released a report this morning with the headline, “Immigration to U.S. Increases Global Greenhouse-Gas Emissions.” The report argues that immigration “significantly increases world-wide CO2 emissions because it transfers population from lower-polluting parts of the world to the United States, which is a higher-polluting country.”

What the CIS study is really arguing is that rich people pollute more than poor people, so the world would be better off if more people remained poor. The same argument could be used to oppose economic development in places such as China and India that has lifted hundreds of millions of people out of poverty in the past two decades.

Through the dark lens of CIS, the world is a better place when poor people remain stuck in poor countries, and poor countries remain poor.