Mark Zuckerberg, Facebook CEO, Launches Another Immigration Lobby Group

Fusion reported on Wednesday that associates of Facebook CEO Mark Zuckerberg are set to announce the creation of a new immigration-related group, Welcome.us. The group won’t be actively pushing for specific policies -- unlike Zuckerberg’s immigration lobby, FWD.us, it has non-profit status, meaning it’s prohibited from political activity. Instead, the group’s directors say, it’ll focus on shaping public perceptions about immigrants. Its first major drive, Immigrant Heritage Month, begins this June, when the group will work with corporations, media outlets, celebrities, organizations and leaders of various types to “share inspiration stories about immigration in America."

The move comes as immigrant advocates, who in recent months have appealed strenuously to President Obama to bring an end to deportations -- in the process shifting their energies away from efforts to pressure House Republicans to consider legislation -- may soon return to that focus on the House GOP. Politico reports that advocates met with key Democratic allies in the Senate on Tuesday, where senators urged them to bring the full bore of their lobbying upon House Republicans until the August Congressional recess, in hopes that a legislative fix could obviate executive action on deportations.

Zuckerberg’s FWD.us had long pursued a strategy by which Republican proponents of comprehensive immigration reform saw their conservative bona fides praised in ads paid for by the lobby and run in the lawmakers’ home districts, in an apparent attempt to sell reform as consistent with conservative principles. That strategy didn’t sit well with many of Zuckerberg’s liberal collaborators, several of whom left the group after an ad lauding Sen. Lindsey Graham (R-S.C.) for his Keystone XL oil-pipeline boosting. More recently, the group has reversed course, blasting House Republicans for inaction on the issue in a March ad.