100 People to Watch This Fall
Roy Beck President of NumbersUSA
Beck was a leading force in the successful push to defeat comprehensive immigration reform under President George W. Bush, and he has not let up as President Obama attempts a similar overhaul this year.
The former journalist — Beck once headed the D.C. bureau for Booth Newspapers — founded NumbersUSA in 1997 out of concern that the inflow of immigrants, both legal and illegal, was damaging the environment, undermining free labor markets and generally eroding the quality of life in a United States he feels is already overpopulated.
“The idea that somehow or another we need more legal immigrants is kind of preposterous,” Beck told The Hill last year.
He has carried those concerns into the current reform debate, taking his hard-line stance to the cable news shows and Capitol Hill, where he has blasted even GOP leaders like Rep. Paul Ryan (Wis.) for what he considers a too-lenient stance on border policy.
Just before the August recess, Beck hosted a teleconference featuring some of Congress’s most vociferous critics of comprehensive immigration reform. The call was designed to rally the opposition.
Beck said his side has the easier task.
“They’ve got to change representatives’ minds; we’re more in a situation of needing to hold people,” he told USA Today. “It’s always better to try to hold people to a position.”
http://thehill.com/business-a-lobbying/315837-100-people-to-watch-this-fall?start=46