From Friday, August 9 through September 3, cable and broadcast network viewers in Rep. Paul Ryan's district will be treated to an ad war between the anti-immigration group Federation for American Immigration Reform and Facebook CEO Mark Zuckerberg's pro-reform group FWD.us. According to Politico, FWD.us's conservative arm, Americans for a Conservative Direction, has bought about $350,000 worth of TV time during which it will air a spot defending the Wisconsin representative from the claim that he supports "amnesty" for undocumented immigrants. "Amnesty? Not a chance," the ads say before asserting that Ryan is pursuing a "conservative solution" to immigration reform. It then goes on to point to details in the Senate's comprehensive bill which conservatives are seen to favor, such as bolstering patrolling and surveillance along the nation's border and levying back taxes on undocumented immigrants who are already in the US.
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The ads from Zuckerberg's group come in response to a 30-second TV spot from the Federation, which claims that Rep. Ryan "intensified" his pro-reform efforts in June, a month in which unemployment was on the rise throughout Ryan's home state of Wisconsin, and asks why the representative would welcome more foreign laborers into the country during such a time. Politifact noted that the Federation's claim is not entirely true - unemployment in June increased in 30 of the state's 32 largest cities and in 56 of its 72 counties, but the rate statewide fell from 7.0 percent to 6.8 percent. Watch FAIR's ad below.
Americans for a Conservative Direction has ruffled feathers among many of Zuckerberg's progressive collaborators on FWD.us, his lobby group. The conservative wing of FWD.us takes an unusual tack in trying to rally support for a comprehensive immigration reform: running media campaigns in conservative politicians' districts which try to bolster those politicians' conservative credentials. Some of those ads take conservative positions on divisive issues, such as the construction of the Keystone XL oil pipeline or the opening of the Arctic to drilling. That strategy alienated Tesla Motors CEO Elon Musk enough for him to lead an exodus from FWD.us in May which included environmentalist groups and immigrant-rights organizations.
RELATED: Sen. Chuck Schumer Says He's 'Pleasantly Surprised' With House's Progress On Immigration Reform, Asks Why There Aren't More John McCains
Rep. Ryan himself has gestured toward support for some kind of extended rights to the undocumented, though he has slipped between positions on what those rights should be. According to Politifact, he tends to cast what he supports as "earned legalization", and he has argued that undocumented immigrants would be okay with a legal status which didn't give them a later possibility for citizenship, but on other occasions he has said he supports a path to citizenship with a minimum of 15-year wait.
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