Founded by Roy Beck in 1998, Numbers USA is a grassroots organization and an influential lobbyist group that concerns itself with immigration reform and the threat of mass amnesty. As the unemployment rate among the citizenry continues to grow, over one million permanent work authorizations are handed out each year to immigrants -- further saturating an already stagnant labor market.
Beck sat down for an interview with MSNBC.com's Jane C. Timm recently, only to find himself labeled as the "Grover Norquist of the immigration debate." With no intention of portraying him in a positive light, Timm argued that the 1.3 million grassroots members of Numbers USA will not allow Republican congressmen to moderate their stance on immigration reform. And rather than consider it an anti-amnesty organization, in predictable fashion she presented the group as "racist" in motivation.
Of course, Timm didn't outright make these claims herself, instead turning to left-wing activists like the Southern Poverty Law Center's Heidi Beirich and Aaron Flanagan from the Center for New Community to do so without substantiation or rebuttal. Timm took issue with Numbers USA's ongoing effort to reduce the massive amount of immigrants who receive permanent work authorizations every year, but gives Beirich and Flanagan credit for the opinion:
Those professions of moderation are what's most striking about Beck and Numbers USA -- and what Beirich and Flanagan say makes them so dangerous.
Following publication on Monday morning, Beck countered with a column of his own in order to set the record straight. He thanked MSNBC for the massive amount of credit it gave his orgnanization for being solely responsible for standing in the way of mass amnesty legislation, but went on to criticize the network for its slanted coverage of immigration reform issues and of Numbers USA in particular, concluding:
The hard-line ideologues are those who insist on continuing to give out another one million permanent work authorizations each year -- and ask for even more -- to compete directly with our own unemployed. Numbers USA is always committed to reminding Americans that they have a choice for a different, more humane, immigration policy.
Prior to his conclusion, Beck noted that nearly every reporter who does a story on his organization is seemingly under the impression that they pluck their goals out of thin air. In fact, he stated that they come from recommendations of the bipartisan Barbara Jordan Commission that found "the renewal of mass immigration over the last 30 years has created great economic injustices against the most vulnerable members of our society." Something Timm and her editors at MSNBC neglected to mention.
