Powerful Video: “Immigration by the Numbers” (gumball presentation)

Little-Known Group Claims a Win on Immigration

By Robert Pear

WASHINGTON, July 14 — When a comprehensive immigration bill collapsed last month on the Senate floor, it was a victory for a small group that had been lobbying Congress for a decade to reduce the number of immigrants — legal and illegal — in the United States.

The group, Numbers USA, tracked every twist and turn of the bill. Its members flooded the Senate with more than a million faxes, sent through the organization’s Web site. It supplied arguments and information to senators opposing the bill.

“It was a David-and-Goliath struggle,” said Roy H. Beck, the president of Numbers USA, who had been preparing for this moment since 1996, when he wrote a book titled “The Case Against Immigration.”

Supporters of the bill included President Bush, the United States Chamber of Commerce, the high-tech industry, the Roman Catholic Church, many Hispanic organizations, farmers, restaurants, hotels and the construction industry.

“The bill had support from the opinion elite in this country,” Mr. Beck said. “But we built a grass-roots army, consumed with passion for a cause, and used the power of the Internet to go around the elites and defeat a disastrous amnesty bill.”

The measure, which died on June 28, would have offered legal status and a path to citizenship to millions of illegal immigrants and created a new temporary worker program while increasing border security.

“Numbers USA initiated and turbocharged the populist revolt against the immigration reform package,” said Frank Sharry, executive director of the National Immigration Forum, a pro-immigrant advocacy group. “Roy Beck takes people who are upset about illegal immigration for different reasons, including hostility to Latino immigrants, and disciplines them so their message is based on policy rather than race-based arguments or xenophobia.”

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