Here, as promised, is my interview with Roy Beck of NumbersUSA, at yesterday's March For America in D.C. Judge for yourself how the exchange went.
A couple of the more interesting exchanges:
Beck: But the fact is, is that the amnesty that's being promoted here allows the people to steal the thing they came to steal. People come here illegally --
Me: So you're calling them thieves.
Beck: They are thieves.
Me: [Laughter]
Beck: Of course they're thieves. No look. What is a thief? A thief is somebody who takes something that does not belong to them. They come here and take jobs that do not belong to them. They take wages from the most vulnerable members of the society.
So the thing is -- I'm not saying -- I think most of them are probably good people. I think most of them don't even think of themselves as thieves. They've been taught since they've been young that that border isn't really that important. I don't blame them, I blame our government. But the fact is, those are people who came to steal a job, and what everybody's lobbying for today is to keep the job that they stole.
This, from a guy who leads off the "About Us" section of the NumbersUSA website proclaiming: "No to Immigrant Bashing."
Dunno about you, but calling 200,000 people -- no, make that 12 million -- "thieves" sure sounds like immigrant-bashing to me.
Also, I got a kick out of this exchange:
Me: Do you guys think you could get 100,000 people out here to rally against amnesty?
Beck: No. See, the trouble is, there's no amassed money to be made from bringing immigration back down to traditional levels. The uh -- I mean, the kind of money it takes to put on one of these things is just gigantic.
There's so many people making money off of high immigration, they can afford to do that. Our people are just unemployed people all up and down the line. And they would have to pay for it all themselves. Now they could get here, but they couldn't do this kind of -- this kind of expensive thing.
Yeah, because those 100,000 and more are drawn from all over the country just because their costs get covered.
