The pro-immigration-reform lobby group FWD.us, founded by Facebook CEO Mark Zuckerberg, has bought a mid-six-figure, English and Spanish-language ad on national cable television which sees the group expressing frustration with the failure of Congress to pass a comprehensive immigration reform law. The ad, entitled "Why We Wait", features comments from Republican and Democratic leaders acknowledging the need for legislation, but stops short of pointing the finger at individual lawmakers or either of the two political parties. Scroll down to the bottom of the page to watch the new FWD.us ad.
"Why We Wait" features clips from speeches by President Barack Obama and House Democratic Whip Steny Hoyer (D-Md.) as well as House Speaker John Boehner (R-Ohio) and House Majority Leader Eric Cantor (R-Va.), as these lawmakers point to substantial public support and political will for the passage of comprehensive immigration reform. "And yet, we wait," the ad's narrator says. "Americans are tired of empty rhetoric. It's time for every leader to come through on their promise and fix our broken immigration system. Tell Congress the time is now. Fix America's broken immigration system."
According to Politico, different versions of the ad - the Spanish-language one and another to be aired solely in California - highlight House Majority Whip Rep. Kevin McCarthy (R-Calif.). McCarthy has been the object of intense pressure from immigrant advocates, as the representative's Southern California district's population is about one-third Hispanic. He says he does not support a path to citizenship for the undocumented - the most important tenet of immigration reform for Democrats - before the Department of Homeland Security establishes near-total surveillance and control over traffic across the US-Mexico border.
The ads come after House Speaker John Boehner (R-Ohio) said last week that the House's Republican majority would not conference its small, single-issue immigration bills with the comprehensive bill passed by the Senate in June. The announcement effectively kills the chance of immigration reform in 2013 and complicates the fight for a bipartisan compromise which would grant the nation's estimated 11.7 million undocumented immigrants a path to citizenship.
FWD.us president Joe Green told Politico in a statement, "Americans of diverse backgrounds and beliefs have made it clear that the time is now to fix our broken immigration system and take action on meaningful reforms. Immigration reform will grow our economy, create American jobs, and do right by American families; with this new round of ads, we want to make clear to Washington that delay on critical immigration reforms is unacceptable. We expect every one of our leaders to fulfill the promise they made to pass immigration reform."
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