Sen. Jon Kyl, one of the architects of the new Senate immigration reform bill, isn’t the only lawmaker taking heat for the measure. (See previous posts.)Rep. Jeff Flake told a group of pro-immigration reform business leaders on Wednesday that his offices in Washington and Mesa received about 500 telephone calls the day after Kyl and Co. went public with their compromise measure.Flake’s aides told him that the calls were overwhelmingly against the proposal."I said, ‘How many positive calls?’ They said, ‘We’re hoping for one soon,’ " Flake recalled.Flake told members of the group Arizona Employers for Immigration Reform that he suspected the surge of telephone calls were the result of phone networks organized by anti-immigration reform advocates.He urged pro-immigration reform forces to create their own phone networks to lobby lawmakers in both the Senate and the House.Arizona Employers for Immigration Reform leaders are doing just that. Furthermore, at the breakfast meeting at the Fiesta Inn Resort in Tempe, the organization’s leaders distributed flyers with the addressess of key lawmakers for a letter-writing campaign. The organization’s Web site is www.azeir.org. Flake, a Republican whose Congressional District is based in Mesa, co-sponsored a different immigration reform bill this year. He said it was too early to get a good read as to whether the House will move forward on his bill or start with a version of Kyl’s Senate bill.Either way, Flake said he thinks there probably is enough support to pass an immigration reform bill in both the Senate and the House. Probably.

This entry was posted on Wednesday, May 30th, 2007 at 5:02 pm and is filed under Jeff Flake. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. Both comments and pings are currently closed.