NumbersUSA’s organizing team is proving itself to be a bit of a one trick pony. Yesterday evening the anti-immigrant organization sent out an email alert asking its membership base to, yet again, inundate elected officials with faxes today and tomorrow in hopes of stopping “amnesty.”
The Senate bill is expected to reach the floor this week. It needs 60 votes to pass the proposal for immigration reform and to “overcome a filibuster.” Senator Rubio, a member of the Gang of Eight that drafted the piece of legislation, reveals that S.744 is currently far from the necessary amount of votes.
Rubio asserts that the support is not yet there because more conservative legislators are, “[…] simply asking that we make sure that the border is secure and that another wave of illegal migration doesn’t take place in the future.”
While Rubio and other legislators in favor of passing comprehensive immigration reform may be concerned about the bill’s ability to win votes, NumbersUSA and its president Roy Beck are clearly fearful that it will pass and wreak havoc on the United States as immigration, or rather, immigrants, supposedly has on the state of California. The email warns that S. 744 will “double authorized immigration to 22 million over the next decade, swamping the 20 million Americans who want a full-time job and can’t find one” and “add millions of less-educated, low-wage immigrants to all the country’s welfare and entitlement programs.”
NumbersUSA, along with the Federation for Immigration Reform (FAIR) and Center for Immigration Studies (CIS), has served as one of the greatest threats to positive immigration reform efforts and immigrant rights.
Electronically mobilizing its supposed 2 million-plus base to demand legislators to “vote NO” has seen success, despite being an often-employed tactic of the Tanton Network. In 2007 as George W. Bush pushed an immigration bill, the organization had members flood legislators with faxes, emails, and phone calls, effectively halting the bill.
That cannot happen again. As more Americans and legislators declare support for immigration reform, understanding that it will enhance the fabric of the country, it is more important than ever to recognize that the patriotic rhetoric and concern for the United States that NumbersUSA spouts simply serves as a red, white, and blue distraction from its nativist agenda.