Published: May 26, 2007 12:30 AM
Modified: May 26, 2007 03:47 AM

Immigration bill has vocal friends, foes

By Barbara Barrett and Kristin Collins, Staff Writers
WASHINGTON - The office phone lines stay busy all day and the voice mailbox fills up every night.

In the week since the Senate proposed new immigration rules, 6,000 phone calls have swamped U.S. Sen. Elizabeth Dole's offices -- the largest volume of constituent calls in one week on a single issue. Thousands of others have dialed up U.S. Sen. Richard Burr.

E-mail "action alerts" urging people to contact lawmakers appeared on Web sites for El Pueblo in Raleigh and a talk-radio host in Charlotte. The N.C. Farm Bureau asked its members to get involved, as did Eastern North Carolina's new Catholic bishop.

"People are rabid about this stuff," said U.S. Rep. Mel Watt, a Charlotte Democrat who sits on the House Judiciary Committee, which oversees immigration. "There's a lot of myopic, blinders-on response to this."

The U.S. Senate took up a sweeping reform package this week that would legalize an estimated 12 million immigrants, create guest worker programs, beef up the border and crack down on illegal hiring practices. Several amendments have been debated and voted on as interest groups try to shape the delicate deal forged by the White House and top senators from both sides of the aisle.

The issue resonates in North Carolina, one of the fastest-growing destinations for illegal immigrants in the country. An estimated 300,000 immigrants are here illegally, many working in industries ranging from agriculture to construction.

Interest groups representing those industries are closely following the bill. After a week-long break for Memorial Day, the debate will pick back up in June. But no one expects fast action. Those who have watched previous immigration bills work through Congress know they crawl at the pace of a springtime caterpillar and can evolve just as radically.

No 'call to arms yet'

"I don't sense we're at a call to arms yet," said Stephen Gennett, president of Carolinas AGC, the advocacy group for general contractors. Members of his group are big employers of immigrant labor. "What we're looking at now is not what we're going to see in two or three weeks."

A week ago, retired business owner Ken Scheffel, 71, sat down at his home computer in Chapel Hill and popped off an e-mail message to Dole and Burr. Scheffel said he wonders how reform might affect the education, health care and Social Security system. He wrote again Thursday, telling the senators to get rid of illegal immigrants by enforcing the laws on the books.

"Those guys in Washington have a tendency to lose touch with reality," Scheffel said.

Across the divide is Father Paul Brant, a priest in Newton Grove who works with Hispanics and has seen the hardships they face to give their families better lives.

Brant has already mailed the first of many letters he plans to send to Dole and Burr, asking them to move forward with the debate. Now, he is glued to C-SPAN, watching the debate, trying to figure out what issues he needs to nudge them on.

A recent statewide survey shows residents are passionate about immigration, with 65 percent labeling the issue "very important," according to an Elon University poll conducted in April.

Dole, who opposes the current bill because its includes opportunities for citizenship for people here illegally, said she senses strong emotions from callers worried that illegal immigration increases incidents of drug dealing and drunken driving.

"They want to secure their communities, you know?" Dole said. "You get a real sense of the problems people are facing in their lives."

Compromise likely

Watt said he's spoken with a handful of constituent callers personally this week, warning them that the bill's final form is unsettled and that any outcome requires compromise.

"Our role is take all these strong feelings and put them into a package," Watt said.

U.S. Rep. David Price, a Chapel Hill Democrat, said he's met with faith groups, Latino advocates, business organizations and more, and he expects the contacts to continue. Many are making their pitches in person. Young farmers from across the state visited congressional offices on Capitol Hill this week to talk about the need for more immigrant labor, along with immigration advocates from Charlotte to press the cause of foreign workers and their families.

Christopher Simmons, vice president for federal relations at Duke University, said he'll try to humanize his contacts with members of Congress by having students or professors who are personally affected by the immigration bill go to Washington.

The university wants to ensure that it can bring in the types of skilled workers and graduate students it needs, and Simmons said the current bill might not do that.

Marisol Jimenez McGee, advocacy director at El Pueblo in Raleigh, was in Washington a week ago and has a return trip planned in June. Recently, she has been in almost daily conference calls with other groups, planning ways to get their messages to lawmakers.

Jimenez McGee said that in the next few weeks, when lawmakers are back in their home districts, she will pull together groups of Latinos to talk about immigration reform and organize public action days to draw attention to immigrant workers.

For those residents who haven't contacted Congress personally, Father Brant has other ideas: "I've told my people what they can do is pray like crazy this week."

Washington correspondent Barbara Barrett can be reached at (202) 383-0012 or bbarrett@mcclatchydc.com.