Anti-amnesty leader: Protecting unemployed, low-wage earners is moral priority

Former journalist and author Roy Beck is the executive director of NumbersUSA, a Washington-D.C-area based organization that works to reduce immigration levels in the country and opposes amnesty. On its website,numbersusa.com, the organization also grades Congress members on issues such as reducing unnecessary worker visas and amnesty enticements. The group bills itself as “the nation's largest grassroots immigration-reduction organization with more than 1 million participants in all 435 congressional districts.”

Q: The pro-immigration reform forces regularly stage rallies, fasts and other events that draw media. Members of your group are not as visible, focusing instead on faxes, letters and phone calls. This seemed to be effective in 2006-2007. Can this lower-key approach work now?

A: Our emphasis on the civic virtue of putting a lot of individual citizens in touch with offices of individual members of Congress on a regular basis still trumps political theatre ...