Thread: ALIPAC: NYC mayor, major CEOs lobby for immigration reform

NYC mayor, major CEOs lobby for immigration reform

By SARA KUGLER FRAZIER (AP) – 8 hours ago

NEW YORK — Chief executives of several major corporations, including Hewlett-Packard, Boeing, Disney and News Corp., are joining Mayor Michael Bloomberg to form a coalition advocating for immigration reform — including a path to legal status for all undocumented immigrants now in the United States.

The group includes several other big-city mayors and calls itself the Partnership for a New American Economy. It seeks to reframe immigration reform as the solution to repairing and stimulating the economy.

Bloomberg and Rupert Murdoch, chairman and CEO of News Corp., appeared together Thursday on Fox News to discuss the effort.

"We're just going to keep the pressure on the congressmen," Murdoch said. "I think we can show to the public the benefits of having migrants and the jobs that go with them."

Bloomberg added, "Somebody has to lead and explain to the country why this is in our interest."

The CEOs said Thursday in statements that their companies — and the nation — depend on immigrants.

"It's our great strength as a nation, and it's also critical for continued economic growth," Walt Disney Co. Chairman and CEO Robert Iger said in a statement. "To remain competitive in the 21st century, we need effective immigration reform that invites people to contribute to our shared success by building their own American dream."

The group says it intends to make its point to policymakers by "publishing studies, conducting polls, convening forums and sponsoring public education campaigns."

The tactics are similar to those used by Bloomberg's coalition of mayors who support gun control.

Bloomberg has for years criticized the federal government for its immigration laws, proposing in 2006 a plan that would have established a DNA or fingerprint database to track and verify all legal U.S. workers.

The billionaire mayor, a former CEO of the financial information company Bloomberg LP, also said at the time that all 12 million undocumented immigrants in the United States should be given the opportunity for citizenship, saying that deporting them is impossible and would devastate the economy.

Lawmakers who wanted to deport all illegal immigrants were "living in a fantasy world," he said.

He has recently taken up the fight again, declaring this week that U.S. immigration policy "is national suicide."

"If you want to solve the unemployment prob in America, you have to open the doors to immigrants who will come here, create businesses, because when the tide comes in, everybody's boat rises," Bloomberg told reporters Thursday. "We need more immigrants, not less."

William Gheen, president of the Americans for Legal Immigration Political Action Committee, which supports strict immigration laws, called the CEOs "traitors" and said he and his supporters are discussing a possible boycott of the companies involved.

"What is it with these billionaires who want to betray Americans that have made them who they are?" Gheen said. "This country club doesn't seem to care about anything but their money and power. Millions of Americans are unemployed and underemployed, and they want to turn millions of illegals into voters."

The business and mayoral coalition's main immigration goals are to secure the borders, develop an easy system for employers to verify work eligibility, hold companies accountable for breaking the laws and improve the use of technology to prevent illegal immigration.

It also wants more opportunities for immigrants to join the U.S. work force and a path to legal status for all undocumented immigrants.

ImmigrationWorks USA, a national federation of businesses that support immigration, welcomed Bloomberg's group to the effort. Tamar Jacoby, the organization's president and CEO, said the coalition's main contribution would likely be the extra attention and power it can bring to the debate.

"I don't know that they're going to be in the trenches everyday organizing grass roots, following the policy process," Jacoby said. "It's more a 30,000-foot approach — these big names adding their muscle to the push to get this on the table."

Bloomberg spokesman Jason Post said no money has been spent on the effort yet, and he could not say whether the group will be a standard nonprofit, a political action committee or a group known as a 501(c)4 nonprofit, which can operate outside the more strict limits governing political action committees.

The business leaders in the coalition employ more than 650,000 people and make more than $220 billion in annual sales, combined.

The effort marks Bloomberg's return to national issues after he spent 2009 campaigning for a third term, focusing mostly on New York City's municipal concerns.

The Republican-turned-independent spent about two years testing the waters for an independent 2008 presidential run, but ultimately he gave up the idea.

By recruiting business leaders and mayors into a national-issue coalition, he is highlighting his background in running a city and running a business, which could be seen as an early move to dust off his presidential aspirations.

He denied that Thursday, saying he is not running for president.

http://www.google.com/hostednews/ap/art ... QD9GHQ0GG1

There I am once again folks! We've seen it hundreds of times. I get quoted in quadrant three where most readers skip over or are least likely to remember. Of course I have to be surrounded by the elite view and out quoted at least three to one!

W

Every cloud has a silver lining, know that the majority that read this agree with you!

"The group says it intends to make its point to policymakers by "publishing studies, conducting polls, convening forums and sponsoring public education campaigns."

publishing studies=selective omission of facts to push their agenda

conducting polls=more selectivity of facts to push their agenda

convening forums=forums of everyone on their side-not a single person from our side will be invited

public education campaigns=public reeducation/indoctrination through lies and deception.

Added to Homepage:
http://www.alipac.us/article-5393--0-0.html

Just like the self serving greedy Wall Street Banksters, here are more elite criminals wanting a bailout for themselves, and this time also for their foreign criminal employees.

The group includes several other big-city mayors and calls itself the Partnership for a New American Economy.

Either this is a really secret organization, or it is a trial ballon. I couldn't find any info about "Partnership for a New American Economy" on Google.

Remember this gem from Bloomberg from 2006:
---

wnd.com
Bloomberg: Illegals needed to take care of golf courses
New York mayor: Fairways would suffer if undocumented immigrants sent home
--------------------------------------------------------------------------------
Posted: April 02, 2006
1:00 am Eastern

While Congress debates immigration reform, weighing proposals ranging from making it a felony to be in the U.S. illegally, to building a wall along the border with Mexico, to adopting a guest worker program that leads to full citizenship, New York City's billionaire mayor Michael Bloomberg has weighed in against deporting illegal aliens because they are the ones who take care of the golf courses.

Bloomberg, who co-hosts a Friday radio talk show on WABC, was discussing the controversial immigration bills in Congress that have resulted in protests across the nation when he was asked to name a typical menial job an illegal immigrant might do. The mayor, an avid duffer, immediately thought of golf.

"You and I are beneficiaries of these jobs," Bloomberg told his co-host, John Gambling. "You and I both play golf. Who takes care of the greens and the fairways in your golf course?"

"Nobody wants to deport them, in the end, because people need them to take these jobs and do the things that nobody else is doing," Bloomberg said, also claiming 25 percent of illegal aliens are farm workers and many work in home health care.

Bloomberg, who has been criticized in the past for what some see as an elitist image, came under fire for his golf comments from a spokeswoman for the New York Immigration Coalition, an alliance of 150 immigration groups that organized a march of thousands of protesters across the Brooklyn Bridge yesterday.

"It would be smarter for [Bloomberg] to talk about other contributions and other aspects that immigrants contribute to make our culture so rich and vibrant," Chung-Wha Hong told the New York Daily News. "I'd encourage him to talk about more than economic reasons, or simply coming to this [issue] from a corporate viewpoint."

A year ago, the New York Times reported that a "group of power brokers" had privately warned Bloomberg to "erase his image as an elitist billionaire and show that he cares about the concerns of average New Yorkers."

"The perception of Mr. Bloomberg as one of the city's wealthiest men, governing from on high, also obscures his record in office and his true self, as a man coming from nothing to build a communications empire," the advisers said.

Robert Heaney, general manager of Deepdale Golf Club on Long Island, where Bloomberg often plays, said the club "has always been in 100 percent compliance with all immigration laws, and it is absolutely our policy to remain in compliance with all immigration laws."

A spokesman for Bloomberg insisted the mayor stood by his golf comments.

"There are a lot of people taking positions to his left or his right who frankly don't like the mayor's straight talk on immigration policy," he said. "Even when people don't agree with the mayor, they like that he calls it like it is and is free to speak his mind independently."

Bloomberg also voiced support, for the first time, for a proposal to build a wall along the U.S.-Mexico border, a measure denounced by many supporters of illegal immigration.

http://www.wnd.com/news/article.asp?ARTICLE_ID=49550

Originally Posted by Bowman

The group includes several other big-city mayors and calls itself the Partnership for a New American Economy.

Either this is a really secret organization, or it is a trial ballon. I couldn't find any info about "Partnership for a New American Economy" on Google.

Sounds like a front for "Someone's" special interests.../chuckle