Carlos Gutierrez, former secretary of commerce under President George W. Bush, CEO of the Kellogg Company and founder of political action committee Republicans for Immigration Reform, has moved again to harness his high-powered connections to get immigration reform passed. As Congress begins its five-week August recess, more than 100 top GOP donors have signed a letter calling for members of Congress to get moving on the issue. The effort, spearheaded by Gutierrez, marks the start of a month-long campaign by influential Republicans who support comprehensive immigration reform to turn up the heat on House Republicans who have dug in against pressure from their party's senior members and insisted on dealing with the issue through a series of small, conservative-priority bills.
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"We write you to urge you to take action to fix our broken immigration system," begins the letter, and goes on to offer three points of necessary reform.
"To fix our immigration system we need meaningful reforms that will (1) secure our borders, (2) provide a legal way for US-based companies to hire the workers they need while making it impossible to hire workers here illegally, and (3) take control of our undocumented immigration problem by providing a path to legal status for undocumented immigrants who pay penalties and back taxes, pass criminal background checks, and go to the back of the line."
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Among big-gun Republican donor and fundraisers who signed the letter are Karl Rove, a deputy chief of staff under Bush and top Republican strategist whose Super PAC American Crossroads has been funding pro-reform ads; former Vice President Dan Quayle; Tom Stemberg, a founder of Staples; and Frank VanderSloot, the founder of Melaleuca Inc.
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Gutierrez was an influential figure in the Romney campaign but later grew disenchanted with gestures the campaign made to the GOP's far right members. In November 2012, after Romney said President Barack Obama won the presidential election of that year because he had bribed minorities with "gifts", the former advisor to the Massachusetts governor told CNN he was "shocked" by Romney's comments.
"And frankly I don't think that's why Republicans lost the election," Gutierrez said then. "I think we lost the election because the far right of this party has taken the party to a place that it doesn't belong."
Even more recently, in an op-ed on immigration published in The Hill, Gutierrez wrote, "As an immigrant and proud lifelong Republican who came to America in search of opportunity, I can tell you that the only things perhaps more outdated than our immigration system, are the nonsensical and misguided statements espoused by some extremist elements of my own party,"
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