Here are our first lists of congressional candidates who could make a difference

The congressional primary elections -- especially when there is no incumbent -- are where activists have the best chance of influencing significant changes in Congress.

Now at the beginning of a five-month season of state primaries, NumbersUSA has two lists to offer you possibilities for where you might lend your support across the country.

Everything is available from this link for our bi-annual CANDIDATE COMPARISONS.

TRUE REFORMERS

Step 1: On the immigration-elections.com page, you will see a U.S. map and a list of choices in the Filter Races box.

Step 2: To see all the candidates who we rate as TRUE REFORMERS, click on the drop-down arrow for Has True Reformer and then click on YES.

Step 3: Click on the Filter button. Then scroll down and you will see every congressional race in the country that has a candidate who qualifies as a TRUE REFORMER.

Disappointingly, it thus far is a short list of courageous candidates who filled out our survey and put themselves on record as supporting all or nearly all of our 10 priority immigration actions. But we will be continually adding the TRUE REFORMER banner over candidates who you help persuade to take the survey.

(Information on how you can push candidates to take the survey is above the map on the Candidate Comparison web page.)

KEY RACES

This is a list where our staff will be determining that the race is "competitive" and that it includes at least one candidate who is significantly better than others on immigration, even if the best immigration candidate does not qualify for the True Reformer label.

Right now our list of Key Races is dominated by Texas Primary runoff races to be decided mainly on May 24. Before the original Texas Primary occurred in early March, we did multiple emails to our Texas activists containing the comparison charts for the congressional race in their District. We will do the same for every state.

Our staff is working feverishly to identify competitive Key Races in the next Primaries that will take place in May. By "competitive," we mean that the better candidate on immigration has a combination of enough polling and financial support to give him/her a reasonable chance of winning the nomination to run as the Democratic or Republican candidate in the General Election on Nov. 8, or that a challenger in one Party has a reasonable chance of unseating the incumbent of the other Party in the November election.

Step 1: On the immigration-elections.com page, you will see a U.S. map and a list of choices in the Filter Races box.

Step 2: To see all the races that we rate as KEY RACES, click on the drop-down arrow for Key Race and then click on YES.

Step 3: Click on the Filter button. Then scroll down and you will see the upcoming races we've labeled as highly competitive with a chance for the better immigration candidate to win.

You can also click on any state on the map, to check on the races closest to you. But keep in mind, that we will be adding a lot of information to those grids before the elections take place.

Our Deputy Director Chris Chmielenski and his colleague Joe Jenkins are laboring now to provide as much information as possible in the races in the next primaries in Indiana, Ohio and North Carolina.

Even though our CANDIDATE COMPARISONS nationwide are far from complete (we're dealing with more than 500 Primary races with thousands of candidates), I am sending this email to you today to introduce you to them so that you might take a look and get a sense of what is coming.

And we want to alert you to the True Reformers and the Key Races that we have at this early date. We will be letting you know as there are more races to look at.

WHO TO VOTE FOR: NumbersUSA does not endorse candidates, but we do tell you who has the best positions on immigration. Simply, the more green icons that candidates have on the 10-issue grid, the more likely they will be to reduce overall immigration and foreign-worker competition (both illegal and legal). Voters will want to make the usual assessments about a candidate's character and leadership abilities.

Please take a look. If you have news stories or candidate pages that can help us rate candidates in any blank category on their grid, please email the links/hints to Joe ([email protected]).

roy beck, numbersusa founder & president