Immigrant Notes: "Take Our Jobs" and New Mainstream Pro-Immigrant Coalition

The United Farm Workers have initiated a "Take Our Jobs" campaign, promising to train unemployed Americans to take agricultural field jobs. There's an on-line application. Stephen Colbert is piling on by featuring it on his July 8th show. California's agriculture industry launched a similar campaign in 1998 and three people showed up.

New York City Mayor Bloomberg, Rupert Murdoch of News Corp, Michael Eisner of Disney and a group of other corporate bigwigs and big city Mayors have formed a new coalition - "Partnership for a New American Economy" - for immigration reform. While it calls for better border control and a new social security number verification system, it also calls for more visas and a path to citizenship for the country's undocumented immigrants. This will help the economy, the coalition argues.

Chung-Wha Hong of the pro-immigrant New York Immigration Coalition, welcomed the new coaltion."The set of leaders that the mayor pulled together today will act as a powerful antidote to those others who are wishing to derail reform for short-sighted political gain."