Thread: Anti-immigration groups up against unusual coalition

http://www.thehill.com/thehill/export/T ... ation.html

Anti-immigration groups up against unusual coalition
By Patrick O’Connor

The National Restaurant Association usually does not join forces with the National Council of La Raza, and the U.S. Chamber of Commerce rarely, if ever, aligns itself with the Conference of Catholic Bishops.

But those organizations and many others have come together in support of a comprehensive immigration-reform bill that would expand guest-worker programs and offer undocumented workers already in this country a path to citizenship. They are up against an aggressive cross-section of single-issue organizations that favor increased enforcement of immigration laws and have condemned any legislation that would allow undocumented workers already here eventually to become citizens.

With the Senate Judiciary Committee expected to mark up its version of the immigration bill Thursday, groups on either side of the issue have geared up for a hard fight, and the vehemence and intractability of either side should make compromise particularly difficult for lawmakers on Capitol Hill.

Staff members of many of the organizations involved in this fight stayed up much of last Thursday night poring over details of draft legislation released by Judiciary Committee Chairman Arlen Specter (R-Pa.) in anticipation of this week’s markup. By Friday afternoon, many of those organizations released statements either heralding or deriding Specter’s draft.

Senate Majority Leader Bill Frist (R-Tenn.) has said he would like to move a bill to the floor by the end of March, meaning next month is critical in the years-long debate over immigration reform.

A unique coalition of divergent interest groups have rallied in support of a bill introduced by Sens. John McCain (R-Ariz.) and Edward Kennedy (D-Mass.), with select members of the AFL-CIO teaming up with social-welfare organizations, the Chamber and other business groups that support a temporary-worker program.

“The fact that the Chamber of Commerce needs comprehensive immigration reform is very good,” said Flavia Jimenez, an outreach director for the National Council of La Raza, a Hispanic advocacy organization.

Members of the business community also appreciate working with groups such as La Raza because it allows the overarching coalition to communicate with Republicans and Democrats alike on Capitol Hill.

“It’s nice actually to get to work with these guys,” said John Gay, a senior vice president for government affairs with the National Restaurant Association, which co-chairs the Essential Worker Immigration Coalition (EWIC), a group of more than 40 business and trade associations seeking comprehensive reform.

Because the many groups within this broad coalition have slightly different priorities, they must communicate regularly to push common themes. In the end, these organizations are all fighting for what they consider the best interests of their dues-paying members.

“When push comes to shove, we will all become … forceful advocates for our members,” Gay said. “If we’re at an impasse on something, it’s not through misunderstanding. When we differ, it will be for real reasons.”

Despite the breadth of interest groups advocating an expanded guest-worker program, the enforcement-only crowd makes considerably more noise on Capitol Hill, if the flood of mail, e-mail and phone calls to member offices is any indication.

A handful of single-issue groups opposing the guest-worker program have effectively put the other side on the defensive since President Bush first announced his intentions to push comprehensive immigration reform, as evidenced by the administration’s backtracking since Bush first proposed such a program in January 2004.

One of those groups, Numbers USA, has 135,000 registered activists throughout the country and an e-mail list in excess of 1 million subscribers, all of whom have signed up voluntarily, said Caroline Espinosa, a spokeswoman for the group. A link on the Numbers USA website also allows browsers to fax a personal note to members of Congress in support of increased enforcement of illegal immigration.

Numbers USA also does objective and subjective summaries of each bill introduced on the issue and notifies subscribers in advance of any important actions on Capitol Hill, such as this week’s markup. As such, the group was expected to send an alert asking those supporters living in states represented by members of the Senate Judiciary Committee to call or fax their members in anticipation of that markup.

Unlike their counterparts on the guest-worker side of the debate, these single-issue groups do not coordinate to the extent of their rivals.

“We’re pretty separate,” Espinosa said. “We don’t even share resources, even though we’re all working toward the same goals.”

Battling with groups like Numbers USA is an uncommon experience for many members of the business community because they do not regularly work on such socially sensitive topics.

“We don’t usually end up on the other side of single-issue groups,” Gay said. “That’s unusual for us.”

McCain was scheduled to appear at a union hall in New York City yesterday with a number of these groups as a demonstration of how the expanded guest-worker program is attracting broad, bipartisan support.

The White House has sent signals to Republicans in both chambers that it favors comprehensive reform, which could include an expanded temporary-worker program. House leaders passed an enforcement-only bill under the assumption that the Senate would take up the more politically difficult guest-worker issue.

The anti-immigration crowd has political momentum at this stage in the fight, with congressional Republicans wary to cast any vote that could turn off their conservative base during this critical election year, but members will also have a hard time ignoring such a broad cross-section of business, labor and social groups with their own self-interested constituents.

“We’re not trying to damage America,” Gay said. “We’re just trying to keep our restaurants open.”

"We're not trying to damage America, we just want to keep our restaurants open."

The only way to fight these people, is to stop going to their places of business, to stop buying from China and other countries....it will be hard to do, since we don't make anything anymore, but if we stopped buying for a couple of months, maybe it would help.

What do you think?

Yeah, a National Eat Dinner At Home Day.