Little-Known Group Claims a Win on Immigration

From The New York Times:

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.”

Numbers USA had fewer than 50,000 members at the end of 2004, but now counts more than 447,000, with an increase of 83 percent since January alone.

Turning to the next phase of the debate, those members will push for enforcement of existing laws and new measures to curb the employment of illegal immigrants.