WASHINGTON - Evangelical pastors, corporate leaders, elected Republican officials and small-government activists arrive in Washington on Monday to lobby lawmakers to revamp U.S. immigration policies before the year’s end.
The “conservative fly-in” will involve about 600 people and include personal meetings with at least 80 Republican members of Congress, said Ali Noorani, an organizer of the event and executive director of the National Immigration Forum.
“When was the last time that you saw the conservative movement calling for something? Most of the time it’s ‘Stop this,’” Noorani said. “No Republican member really wants to do this, but they’re going to be hearing from constituents demanding that they do it, and do it this year.”
The Republican-to-Republican appeal is the latest tactic of immigration lobby groups that want to jar loose a Senate plan that passed in June and has been foundering in the other chamber. House Speaker John Boehner has said he won’t act on the Senate’s plan, with his caucus preferring instead to pass smaller bills.
The Democrat-led Senate and President Barack Obama have called for a comprehensive approach that includes a path to citizenship for an estimated 11 million illegal aliens already living in the U.S.
Terry Boose, a state representative from Norwalk, Ohio, who is flying in for the effort, wants to talk to Boehner, one Republican lawmaker from Ohio to another.
“I’d like to tell him, and anyone else from Ohio who will listen, to think of immigration in terms of jobs, especially for our state’s agricultural industry,” he said. “Immigration is all about the economy. I think many of my fellow conservatives get that.”
The fly-in is sponsored and paid for by Noorani’s National Immigration Forum, the Partnership for a New American Economy, the U.S. Chamber of Commerce and FWD.us, a technology group formed by Facebook Inc. Chief Executive Officer Mark Zuckerberg.
The Partnership for a New American Economy is an association of mayors and business leaders formed by New York Mayor Michael Bloomberg.
None of those groups is required by law to disclose donors or expenses, and representatives from the groups declined to say how much the fly-in will cost.
Marriott International Chief Executive Officer Arne Sorenson will welcome the group at a reception Monday night.Marriott’s chairman and former CEO Bill Marriott Jr. is one of eight co-leaders of the Partnership for a New American Economy, along with fellow Republican donor Rupert Murdoch, founder of media company News Corp., now called Twenty-First Century Fox Inc.
On Tuesday, the group will go to the U.S. Chamber of Commerce building across from the White House to listen to economists, religious leaders and Republican strategists make the case for comprehensive immigration revisions.
Among the scheduled speakers are Barrett Duke, a vice president of the Southern Baptist Convention; Al Cardenas, chairman of the American Conservative Union; and Grover Norquist, founder and president of Americans for Tax Reform.
Afterward, participants will head to Capitol Hill, where they had more than 120 meetings confirmed as of this week, including at least 80 with lawmakers. Participants come from about 30 states and include a mix of local religious leaders, business owners and politicians.
Jeremy Robbins, director of the Partnership for a New American Economy, said the idea is to flood the Hill with “right-of-center” voices who favor changes in immigration law that reflect the Senate’s plan.
“We just feel that the lesser-told story of all this is the conservatives who embrace immigration,” he said. “We are seeing stories all over the country and wanted to bring them to Washington.”
House Republican leaders, including Boehner and Rep. Eric Cantor of Virginia, the majority leader, support taking up their own immigration legislation this year.
But privately, some House Republican officials said they do not expect any major legislation to move through the House this year, or perhaps not even until 2015, in advance of the next presidential election.
A core group of hard-line conservatives said in interviews this week that they would not be intimidated by pressure from corporate America or other outside parties.
“I care about the sovereignty of the United States of America and what it stands for, and not an open-door policy,” said Rep. Ted Yoho, R-Fla., one of several conservatives opposing all of the bills the House is currently considering.
Backers of the fly-in effort estimated that about 30 House Republicans, like Yoho, will not support immigration legislation under almost any condition. But they believe they can piece together a majority of the Republican caucus to pass certain bills, moving the debate to a committee of House and Senate negotiators, who could try to agree on a comprehensive package.
Information for this article was contributed by Julie Bykowicz of Bloomberg News and by Eric Lipton and Ashley Parker of The New York Times.
Front Section, Pages 4 on 10/26/2013