The answer to immigration, for those that view it as a problem, is to make the places people are leaving more desirable to stay: social welfare, sustainable energy, affordable food and housing, and security - both physical and financial. The US has been trying hard to make itself undesirable for immigrants (suddenly, after decades of turning a blind eye in exchange for cheap labor), instead of focusing on helping to make the living situation in south America more tenable.

It’s kind of what we get for completely wrecking the global south tbh - the number of democracies we overthrew, the drug cartels we propped up, the damage we did is finally coming to bear fruit and it’s just as sour as the soil we tilled.

Leaving those climate refugees where they are wouldn't mean they were poor, it would mean they were dead. There are all kinds of irrational extreme positions that would maximize environmental protection. Certainly the best thing we could do for the environment would be to kill ourselves off, but very few people would argue for that. Instead it's better to go for something more balanced and limiting the number of people coming in your country to an amount the land can sustainably support seems pretty reasonable.