Ad pitch to defend immigrant labor role It will tout benefits of legalization, battle negative rheto

[Omaha Steve]

http://origin.sltrib.com/business/ci_8020397

It will tout benefits of legalization, battle negative rhetoric
By Miriam Jordan
The Wall Street Journal
Article Last Updated: 01/19/2008 01:06:33 PM MST

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.


Immigrants such as these United Farm Workers members at a Los Angeles rally are the focus of an ad campaign. (Associated Press file photo )


The campaign is spearheaded by Lionel Sosa, a media strategist who is credited with delivering nearly half of the Latino vote to President Bush in the previous presidential race.
Last week, Sosa gathered in Las Vegas representatives from the construction, lodging, agricultural and banking sectors, as well as from churches, grassroots groups and both political parties, to review the ads and finalize their strategy.
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,'' Sosa said. ''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. On hearing of 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.

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