Mark Zuckerberg’s Pro-Immigration Group Threatens Republicans

Young undocumented immigrants being housed in dog pen like conditions no doubt favored by the GOP base

Today's Republican Party is caught between a rock and a hard place somewhat of its own making.  By welcoming racist Christofascists and white supremacists into its base with open arms , the GOP has made it very hard to maintain support among angry whites while embracing any form of immigration reform.  Meanwhile, all the demographic trends indicate that the aging white population to which the GOP has prostituted itself is headed towards a minority status in the near term with the Hispanic population exploding in relative terms.  The situation has set the stage for a form of slow political suicide.  Now, Facebook billionaire Mark Zuckerberg is funding a pro-immigration group that seeks to increase the pressure on the GOP and to target anti-immigrant Republicans.  Here are highlights from The Daily Beast:

A pro-immigration reform group founded by Mark Zuckerberg is issuing an unsubtle warning to vulnerable Republicans about the possible electoral consequences if no further progress is made on overhauling the immigration system before November.


The Council for American Job Growth, a progressive affiliate of Zuckerberg's nonpartisan FWD.us, released the results of a poll Tuesday they conducted in ten swing districts currently represented by incumbent Republicans that have significant Hispanic and Asian-American voting populations.

The survey simulated the way this fall’s campaign might unfold if a group like Fwd.us launched pro-immigration advertisements in these districts, linking the Republican incumbents to inaction on immigration reform.


After being read a sample negative advertisement linking the Republican incumbent to GOP leadership to, for example, “punishing… young immigrants and taking away their opportunity to make a positive contribution to society” by blocking a bill that aided DREAMers, vote shares for the incumbent dropped from 51 percent to 45 percent.
Among independents, the vote shares of Republican incumbents dropped seven percentage points after these messages were read.


“The data makes clear that there are real electoral consequences for Republicans in these districts, because voters tie them to their party's own failure to take action on passing reform legislation,” FWD.us spokeswoman Kate Hansen said.
Overall, respondents in the 10 GOP swing districts broadly supported immigration reform – 76 percent supported a proposal including a pathway to citizenship and border security, while 19 percent opposed it. And among these same voters, a majority – 58 percent – said that it was personally important to them that Congress fix America’s immigration’s system.