Thread: Million dollar plan to push forward Amnesty

Mayority leader, Sen. Harry Reid.

http://www.matt.org/news/view.jsp?id=307

Adman to Pitch Immigrants' Story
By MIRIAM JORDAN -The Wall Street Journal

January 16, 2008
Page B1

Las Vegas -- The nation’s heated debate over immigration is headed to television advertising, in the form of a business-funded campaign that will tout the benefits of legalizing illegal workers and try to counter hardening rhetoric on immigration.

The campaign is spearheaded by Lionel Sosa, a media strategist who is credited with delivering nearly half of the Hispanic vote to President Bush in the previous presidential race.

Yesterday, Mr. Sosa gathered here representatives from the construction, lodging, agricultural and banking sectors, as well as from churches, grass-roots groups and both political parties, to review the ads and finalize their strategy.

Mr. Sosa says he has raised $25 million for the campaign from one group he didn’t identify. His independent nonprofit organization -- Mexicans and Americans Thinking Together, or Matt.org -- plans to match that with other contributions from business interests that benefit from immigrant labor, he says. His long-term goal is to invest $100 million in a national ad campaign, though he acknowledges that is a tall order in a presidential election year.

"The anti-immigrant groups have smashed all of us who back immigration reform. It’s time to respond," Mr. Sosa said in an interview. "Americans have to see why it’s in our interest to make these workers legal."

Taking the group’s immigration message to the airwaves has risks, however -- particularly if it sets off a well-funded, anti-illegal-immigration TV campaign from the other side of the issue. Indeed, on hearing of Mr. Sosa’s initiative, Dan Stein, president of the Federation for American Immigration Reform, which calls for restricting all immigration, said that his group and its partners plan a campaign of their own. FAIR, which has 100,000 paid members, lobbied fiercely to defeat the Senate immigration bill this past spring.

"We are in the process of developing ads to try to educate Americans about the negative impacts that immigration has on wages and working conditions for certain segments of the American labor force," Mr. Stein said. He declined to disclose the timetable or funding sources for such an effort.

Anti-illegal-immigration groups argue that undocumented immigrants are a burden on U.S. social services, education and health care and contend that they undermine U.S. wages and culture.

Mr. Sosa, 68 years old, in 1980 founded the agency Sosa Bromley Aguilar, which specialized in advertising to Hispanic consumers, selling it in 1990. Matt.org -- based in Mr. Sosa’s hometown of San Antonio -- employs three advertising strategists who worked with him at the agency. Among them is Cesar Martinez, who in 2002 created ad campaigns targeting Hispanics for Jeb Bush’s Florida gubernatorial campaign and Rick Perry’s Texas governor’s race.

Mr. Sosa said he plans to launch the immigration ads on TV nationally after the presidential conventions this summer.

Among those at the Las Vegas gathering was J. Allen Carnes, president of the Texas Vegetable Association, who has testified before Congress on immigration issues. In the past two seasons, Mr. Carnes has lost more than $600,000 worth of crops, he says, because he couldn’t secure enough workers. "Every year the shortage becomes worse and worse. If we continue down this path the agricultural industry in Texas as we know it will no longer exist," he said. According to the Texas Produce Association, half of the fruits and vegetables being shipped in Texas are already being grown across the border.

Until now, business interests have mainly lobbied legislators and their staffs in Washington to press for legalizing undocumented workers. But some businesses are reshaping their strategies, responding to the collapse of a Senate bill last spring, the introduction of state ordinances to punish businesses that hire undocumented workers, and emotive rhetoric on immigration during the presidential campaign.

"There’s a lot of anxiety in the business community, and we have come to the point of realizing that something big has to be done," said Eddie Aldrete, a senior vice president of the International Bank of Commerce, a Laredo, Texas, bank that also operates in Oklahoma. The bank has pledged an undisclosed sum to Mr. Sosa’s campaign, he added.

Craig Silvertooth, director of federal affairs at the National Roofers Contracting Association, said he would encourage his members to fund Mr. Sosa’s effort. "The business community was largely missing in action when the bill went through the Senate," he says. "We were outgunned financially and at the grass-roots level by anti-immigrant groups. We will continue to lose until we get our story out there."

Potential donors for Mr. Sosa’s effort include trade groups, such as Western Growers, whose 3,000 members grow, pack and ship half the nation’s fresh produce. "It’s important to communicate to the American public the importance of providing a legal, stable work force for agriculture," says Paul Simonds, communications manager for Western Growers. "We have a work force that is predominantly falsely documented or undocumented. Anything that would further our efforts we will definitely look into."

In the $1.2 trillion construction industry, at least one-third of the work force is undocumented, according to an estimate by the Bureau of Labor Statistics. Industry experts believe the actual figure is much higher: In 2006 alone, nearly half of new construction workers were Hispanics who had arrived in the U.S. since 2000. In agriculture, about 70% of all workers are illegal immigrants, according to independent estimates, and an existing guest-worker program supplies less than 2% of the work force required each year.

Mr. Sosa’s team has created a series of 30-second pilot TV spots that highlight the work of immigrants in several industries and warn of the consequences of losing that labor force. One of the spots, entitled "Drive Them Out," focuses on the New Jersey town of Riverside, which fell on hard times after it passed an anti-illegal-immigrant ordinance last year that prompted thousands of undocumented residents to leave. The spot’s closing statement: "Let’s be careful what we wish for."

Another ad shows "Help Wanted" signs for jobs such as orange-picking and roofing, followed by signs that read "Can’t Hire Immigrants" or "Immigrants Need Not Apply." In the end, a voiceover states: "Today’s immigrants do the work Americans need done. Can’t we find a way to make them legal?"

The ads consciously avoid the term "illegal" because it "connotes a negative," Mr. Martinez says. "We want to concentrate on the positives."

Mr. Sosa, who has worked on several presidential campaigns, says he began thinking about a national ad campaign after the Senate defeated a bipartisan immigration bill last spring. In Mr. Sosa’s view, Senate leaders were cowed by a deluge of calls, emails and faxes from a vocal minority that opposed the bill and, more broadly, promoted negative images of Hispanic immigrants. By contrast, the pro-immigrant proponents didn’t communicate a clear message, Mr. Sosa says.

Mr. Sosa says he has raised $25 million for the campaign from one group he didn’t identify.

Some government???? Mexico? Islamic countries???? We have a right to know who or what made a 25 million contribution to try to brain-wash us.

What's Mr. Sosa's profit on this?

His independent nonprofit organization -- Mexicans and Americans Thinking Together, or Matt.org -- plans to match that with other contributions from business interests that benefit from immigrant labor, he says. His long-term goal is to invest $100 million in a national ad campaign, though he acknowledges that is a tall order in a presidential

Business interests that 'benefit' from immigrant labors are the 21st Century Slave drivers.

Think what a $100 million investment in Mexico could do for the people there.

Instead of using the money for good, they intend to use it to destroy America. And isn't this sedition and treason?

We need to show these advertisers that American's cannot be brain-washed or bought.

"The liberty of a democracy is not safe if the people tolerate the growth of private power to a point where it becomes stronger than their democratic state itself. That, in its essence, is fascism - ownership of government by an individual, by a group, or any controlling private power."
Franklin D. Roosevelt

MyAmerica - Wow, good points indeed!

I'll admit to having a large problem with this:

Mexicans and Americans Thinking Together, or Matt.org

Aside from proximity, the two countries actually have very little in common.
How or why should we be expected to 'think together'???

Are these people living in a dream world ? Do citizens need to be pushed over the edge and do something radical such as not pay their taxes to get these people to understand American citizens are FEDUP with subsidizing Big Business by paying for IA's(who they want to make legal)Health care,food stamps,housing so they can enjoy cheap labor ?

With the unemployment rate steadily climbing and cost of living going through the roof do they really think they are going to convince citizens legalizing people to take their jobs, lower their wages,not to mention the tax burden, is really going to fly ?

Have another glass of your special Kool Aide and blow some more smoke up each others back side !

USPatriot - I think what we're witnessing is the phenomenon of the 'addicted' (IA employers) looking at 'rehabilitation' (stronger enforcement) straight in the eye and then having a knee-jerk reaction which leads to the river of 'DeNial' (inability to deal with the oncoming changing reality)

(All IMO, of course).

Board of Directors

http://corp.matt.org/index.php?option=c ... &Itemid=50


Mr. Alonso Ancira, Chairman
Chairman of the Board, Altos Hornos de Mexico (AHMSA)
President of Mexico's Chamber of Iron and Steel
(1993-1995, 2003-2004, 2006-2007)
Businessman of the Year, by Association of Industrialists in Mexico (1996)


Full Bio

Dr. Louis J. Agnese, Jr.
President of the University of the Incarnate Word
Engineered an enrollment increase of more than 300% including a record increase in minority enrollment during his 21 years of presidency at the university.
One of Five Outstanding Young Americans, One of Ten Outstanding Young Persons of the World (199


Full Bio

Mr. Ernesto Ancira, Jr.
Owner, Ancira Enterprises, Inc.
One of the Top 10 Businesspersons in the U.S. and the first Hispanic dealer/owner to own twelve automotive franchises.
Chairman of United Way Campaign of San Antonio, Texas (2006)


Full Bio

Ms. Hope Andrade
CEO and Co-Founder, OptimaCare, Inc.
Leader in bringing health care to the elderly in Texas
Current Commissioner of the Department of transportation, State of Texas


Full Bio

Ms. Patricia Diaz Dennis
Senior Vice President and Assistant General Counsel, AT&T
Appointed by President George H.W. Bush and confirmed by the Senate to three key federal government positions
Current Chair of Board of Girl Scouts of the USA


Full Bio

Rev. Virgilio Elizondo
Vicar, St. Rose of Lima Church in San Antonio, TX.
Named one of the leading “Spiritual Innovators—New Lights of the Spiritâ€

Originally Posted by PhredE

USPatriot - I think what we're witnessing is the phenomenon of the 'addicted' (IA employers) looking at 'rehabilitation' (stronger enforcement) straight in the eye and then having a knee-jerk reaction which leads to the river of 'DeNial' (inability to deal with the oncoming changing reality)

(All IMO, of course).

Your absolutly right Phred,in fact, I was thinking;Going through slave labor withdrawal is as painful as any other addiction.They are not thinking clearly at all.

and here comes the Bull SH_T once again

Let's make talk radio aware of this so they can rebut it.

We need them more than ever to cut through this propaganda and the MSM pro-illegal alien bias.

Hey Phred,Mexico is in a dripping panick they might have to become responsible for their citizens instead of sponging off their neighbor.So I think they get the "Queen of De nile" award.