Since its founding in 1996 NumbersUSA has sought to make immigration one of the leading culprits for environmental loss and urban sprawl. Its latest promotional video is called, “What’s Causing All the Traffic?”

In collaboration with the Center for Immigration Studies, Numbers USA published a series of reports linking immigration-fueled population growth with urban sprawl.

Authored by Beck and NumbersUSA analyst Leon Kolankiewicz, the reports contend the immigrants cause sprawl in the following four ways: 1) Direct settlement by immigrants in the suburbs; 2) High fertility creates larger second generation of households, and children of immigrants desert urban cores by higher margins; 3) Immigrants facilitate movement of natives to outer edges; 4) Natives flee immigrant concentrations.” Not mentioned is the fact that most immigrants settle in urban centers, where in many cities they have been central to urban revitalization in abandoned downtown districts.

Like other restrictionist groups and their counterparts in the right-wing policy community, NumbersUSA benefits from clear and focused messaging. The view promoted by NumbersUSA is that environmental degradation and the conditions of urban sprawl are the result of out-of-control numbers. In other words, if we control the numbers – immigration-fed population growth – then we are addressing the root of the problems of environmental degration, traffic congestion, endless suburbia, and carbon pollution.

Sticking to interpreting the “numbers” gives NumbersUSA a rational and reasonable gloss that other restrictionist groups lack because of their often extreme rhetoric. And seeing immigration and most other economic and social problems through a numbers prism also makes for a tight and persuasive package to take to U.S. citizens looking for solutions.

However, NumbersUSA’s exclusive focus on numbers and its attempt to explain the problems of 21^st century America solely through a numbers framework undermines its credibility as an organization dedicated to environmental preservation. By attributing traffic jams and damaged ecological systems to immigration alone leaves the impression that NumbersUSA is at its core a dogmatic and ideological organization that puts it own political agenda ahead of pragmatic policy solutions.