Roy H. Beck was one of the nation's first environmental-beat newspaper reporters in the 1960s. After graduating from the University of Missouri School of Journalism, he received more than two-dozen awards for his environmental, business and religion reporting during two decades as a newspaper journalist in Michigan, Ohio, Missouri, Texas, and as a Washington Bureau Chief. He is author of five books and numerous studies and articles on the impact of immigration policies on habitat conservation, population congestion, labor markets, and depression of Black employment and wealth, as well as on ethics, religion and public policy. His article in the Atlantic Monthly on how too much immigration could swamp the physical and social infrastructures of a community was chosen by the Encyclopedia Britannica's Annals of America as one of the most important writings of the 1990s. In 1996, he founded NumbersUSA.com to promote the recommendations of two federal commissions on sustainability and economic justice. That led to his founding in 2002 of the NumbersUSA Education & Research Foundation and NumbersUSA Action; he served as CEO for both until October of 2022. Roy was awarded the U.S. Army Commendation Medal (non-combat service) in 1972. His record of volunteer leadership includes clothing closets for inner city children, Multiple Sclerosis Society, music in nursing homes, United Methodist Sunday school teaching, food/transportation assistance to poor immigrants and others, and 22 years leading annual week-long trips for teenagers, building Habitat for Humanity houses and rehabbing homes of the elderly and handicapped poor.
