A Latino rights group has come out against the proposed Keystone XL pipeline, claiming that it will disproportionately harm communities living near tar sand refineries in Texas and Louisiana.

The Keystone XL pipeline is a $5.3 billion planned project that would install more than 1,000 miles of pipeline to deliver tar sands from Canada to the Gulf of Mexico, stopping along the way in the Midwest. Supporters have argued that the project would create jobs in the energy industry, from building infrastructure to refining and transporting oil, while increasing energy independence. However, proponents have maintained that the project would have irreversible environmental impacts.  

Presente.org, a 300,000-member national Latino-rights organization, called on President Obama to reject the Keystone XL pipeline because of its investment in a non-renewable resource with emissions that contribute to global climate change, according to the group. Presente.org also argued that the pipeline's refineries in Texas would produce pollution near Latino communities in Harris County, which has the second largest Latino population in the country.

"Latino communities in America are concentrated in the areas most affected by climate change—from the drought-stricken Southwest to coastal cities like Miami which are most threatened by rising sea levels," Executive Director of Presente.org, Arturo Carmona, said. 

According to a survey conducted for environmental advocacy group, National Resources Defense Council, 80 percent of Latinos want President Obama to use executive authority to reduce pollution that leads to climate change. 

James Hansen, director of NASA's Goddard Institute for Space Studies, has been one of the most outspoken critics of the Keystone XL pipelines, arguing that the long-term effects of transporting hundreds of thousands of tar sand barrels would be destruction of natural environment, reduced water quality and negative impacts of human and animal health.

"An overwhelming objection is that exploitation of tar sands would make it implausible to stabilize climate and avoid disastrous global climate impacts," Hansen wrote in an essay about the project.