FWD.us Immigration Ad Exposes the Problem with Playing Both Sides
Yesterday, the Council for American Job Growth, the left-leaning arm of FWD.us, released an ad attacking House Republicans for blocking immigration reform. According to TechCrunch, the Council will spend $500,000 to run the ad in all 50 states.
The ad is vague and self-serving, in the way of all political ads:
From the race for the next breakthrough innovation that will push the economy forward to preventing one more American child from wondering why their parent didn't come home to international drug cartels and the need to secure our borders...
But its basic message is hard to argue with: Congress must act on immigration reform now.
Only it's hard to believe the ideals espoused in this TV ad when FWD.us is also behind Americans for a Conservative Direction, another affiliated LLC—the conservative yin to the Council's yang. (Politico says the conservative group, which is registered in Delaware, spent "seven figures to run ads in more than half a dozen states," last spring.)
Where the TV spot for Council for American Job Growth says it doesn't want "one more child" to face their parent being deported or for millions of "DREAMers [undocumented immigrants] who study hard and want to serve our country" to "dream on," this is what you'll find on the "Where We Stand" page for Americans for a Conservative Direction:
END DE FACTO AMNESTY
Right now we have a system of de facto amnesty in this country. Under our current broken immigration system, millions who immigrated here illegally stand in the shadows but still enjoy many of the benefits of living in the United States. This not only presents serious obstacles to law enforcement but it's unfair to the millions of law-abiding individuals who have come to this country legally. We need to fix our broken system and mandate that those who are living in this country illegally go to the back of the line, learn English, pay a fine and undergo a thorough background check to ensure that they have not broken our laws. By putting in place these rigorous requirements, and also mandating that those here illegally do not have access to welfare and other government benefits, we will end de facto amnesty once and for all and uphold the rule of law.
This dissonance might not be as polarizing as some of the other concessions FWD.us has made to get cheap labor for its Silicon Valley backers, like partnering with homophobes or funding ads praising oil drilling in the Arctic. When a corporation gets big enough, like Google, they have to play the odds with their political contributions. But with FWD.us, the agenda started out compromised and, thus far, has proven ineffective as well.
To contact the author of this post, please email nitasha@gawker.com.