Yesterday, the Senate moved one step closer to passing S. 1639, the Comprehensive Immigration Reform Bill, which has been less than popular with the public, and with those on the left, the center left, the center right and the right. Of course, some are supporting the bill, but sadly, lobbying records are no help in determing who might be supporting it.

While the bill’s opponents have been reporting on calls to lawmakers and posting videos on YouTube, the Senate Office of Public Records has posted only 17 lobbyist disclosure forms that list immigration as an issue of interest for 2007. In 2006, by contrast, 611 disclosures were filed, by everyone from the AARP and AFL-CIO to Wal-Mart and the Wine Institute, listing immigration as an issue on which they lobbied. But now, with a bill that would affect agriculture and construction, high tech and universities, food processing and small businesses, we know only that Duke University, Microsoft, and a handful of others are lobbying on the issue of immigration.

Are Gucci-loafered lobbyists whispering in senators’ ears about cloture votes while offering to host posh fundraisers at which employees of their Fortune 500 clients will pony up tens of thousands of dollars in contributions? Are former chiefs of staffs and legislative aides and even senators gladhanding their old colleagues? Don’t look to lobbyist disclosure to find out — under the rules, lobbyists have up to 45 days after they start work to disclose a minimal amount of information–the name of their client and the issues they’ll be addressing. Even then, it can take the Senate Office of Public Records, which at least posts the disclosures online, as much as 44 days to make the form public.

None of this necessary, of course — meaningful lobbyist disclosure would bring their actions out from what Mark Steyn called the “metaphorically smoke-filled room” into the light of day. Wouldn’t that make for a better process, not just on this bill, but on all of them.

Incidentally, here is the list of the immigration lobby as of June 27, 2007; again, I’m guessing this mildly understates K Street’s interest.

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Last night President Bush proposed a National ID card to help identify legal citizens and control illegal immigration. Garance Franke-Ruta at TAPPED asks if Bush’s speechwriters read the New York Times before writing this part of the speech:

Whoever wrote this speech obviously hasn’t been reading The New York Times lately, or he’d have known that the reason we don’t have a tamper-proof card already is because of the self-dealing ways of a certain Kentucky Republican known to his local paper as “The Prince of Pork”.

That “Prince of Pork” happens to be Rep. Hal Rogers (R-KY), notorious for his earmarking:

Instead, the road to delivering this critical antiterrorism tool has taken detours to locations, companies and groups often linked to Representative Harold Rogers, a Kentucky Republican who is the powerful chairman of the House subcommittee that controls the Homeland Security budget.

It is a route that has benefited Mr. Rogers, creating jobs in his home district and profits for companies that are donors to his political causes. The congressman has also taken 11 trips — including six to Hawaii — on the tab of an organization that until this week was to profit from a no-bid contract Mr. Rogers helped arrange. Work has even been set aside for a tiny start-up company in Kentucky that employs John Rogers, the congressman’s son.

“Something stinks in Corbin,” said Jay M. Meier, senior securities analyst at MJSK Equity Research in Minneapolis, which follows the identification card industry, referring to the Kentucky community of 8,000 that has perhaps benefited the most from Mr. Rogers’s interventions. “And it is the sickest example of what is wrong with our homeland security agenda that I can find.”

The Washington Post previously reported on Rogers’ homeland security largesse. The congressman had gotten funds for Reveal Technologies, his largest PAC contributor, to provide small and medium sized explosion-detection scanners to airports through funds in the Transport Security Administration budget. The scanners wound up running at a quarter of the speed of larger machines. So, if you’re upset about the lack of movement on a National ID card (as the President ought to be considering his speech last night) or if you are standing in a long line while somebody’s bags get searched by a slow machine you can always raise your fist and shake it at Rep. Hal Rogers.

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Today’s nationwide immigration boycott – in which untold thousands of legal and illegal immigrants will be taking up position in the streets instead of their accustomed supporting roles in the background – is a rare example of unscripted politics in modern America.

Most political discourse these days is so predictable that insiders can recite the lines of both sides on the Sunday-morning talk shows even if the sound is on mute. Professionals handle these sorts of things: you’ve got your Astroturf campaigns, your grass-tops campaigns, email campaigns, talk radio campaigns – all tuned just so for maximum impact on Capitol Hill. Whole armies of specialists take up position inside the Beltway to manage such campaigns every working day of the year. The hoi polloi is often recruited for these campaigns – every army needs an infantry – but the battle plans tend to be drawn up on K Street.

But not today. Certainly the immigration issue has its own collection of political players – see “It Came from Beyond the Beltway” – but the real power in the movement isn’t coming from lobbyists, PR consultants, or PAC directors. It’s coming from outsiders who usually don’t rate, and it will be most interesting indeed to watch the inside-the-Beltway reaction.

Can you imagine the scene at one of Washington’s power-lunch restaurants if the crew in the back suddenly marched out of the kitchen into the dining room, banging pots against pans and belting out the national anthem in Spanish? That’s something like what’s happening today. For once, the insiders are on the sidelines and the outcome is anything but sure.

Days like this are such a rarity any more. We’re so used to the faux politics, the managed politics, the money politics, that a dose of the real thing hits us like an unexpected blast of cold wind on a sunny day. Huh? Where’d that come from? What’s going on here? Who are these guys banging those pots and pans, and when will they stop?

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Despite the inability of a deeply-split Congress to pass any kind of immigration bill before heading off for their Easter recess, the surprisingly large and widespread turnouts of marchers around the country – largely Hispanic – are keeping this issue very much alive.

That’s making a lot of politicians nervous, and for good reason. Unlike most issues dealt with in Washington, this one isn’t being carefully stage-managed solely by the usual inside-the-Beltway operatives: lobbyists, PR companies, and money men. In fact, looked at through the lens of money in politics, the immigration issue is almost invisible.

A search of the Center for Responsive Politics’ OpenSecrets website shows eight PACs with “immigration” in their names:

• Americans Against Illegal Immigration
• Americans for Legal Immigration

• Equitable Immigration

• Immigration PAC

• Michigan Immigration PAC

• Pro-Immigration PAC

• United States Immigration PAC

• US Immigration Reform PAC

Congressman Tom Tancredo’s (R-CA) Team America PAC is actually the biggest player in the field. They’ve already raised more than half a million dollars in the current election cycle – nearly as much as all the others combined. Still, this is pretty small potatoes by Washington standards – less than $1.4 million in contributions since the 2000 election cycle. Dentists, for instance, raised nearly $20 million over the same period.

The biggest hitters with an interest in immigration are business groups – meat packers, restaurants, farm groups and the like – that employ large numbers of immigrants and would like to see them legal. Likewise, the issue is hot among some labor unions, especially the Service Employees International Union. But all those groups also have dozens of other items on their agenda besides immigration.

All of which makes this issue a fascinating case study for Washington watchers. For once we can’t predict the outcome of a congressional battle simply by checking the campaign and lobby expenditures of both sides. This one’s a true wild card with the two things that DC politicos dread the most: a highly visible, contentious issue that requires them to take a stand one way or the other.

When I took off last spring on a 50-day road trip across US Route 50 to find out what voters were thinking in the wake of the 2004 elections, not a single one of the 55 questions on my questionnaire was about immigration. Yet it came up spontaneously almost everywhere I went – usually when I got to the question about what are the biggest problems facing the country today.

That was especially true in small towns that had meat packing plants nearby. In places like Garden City, Kansas – where one of this week’s marches took place – the flood of immigrants is seen by most of the old-time residents as nothing less than an invasion.

Before Spanish-speaking immigrants started showing up to take the tough and sometimes dangerous low-paying jobs that locals used to do, everybody here spoke English. Most people were more or less in the same boat, or at least felt themselves to be. Now there’s a new language on the streets, new foods in the supermarkets, even new radio stations on the air. The newcomers are speaking Spanish in patches of the country where even English, spoken in the wrong accent, used to be suspect. Add to that the fact that these newcomers put enormous burdens on local school districts, hospitals and social services, and you have the makings of a cultural powder keg.

Helen Trahern, who I met at the Farm Bureau office in Cimarron, Kansas, summed up the views that were typical of her neighbors:

I have no problem with them doing the work. My problem is, if they’re not legal I don’t want to pay for their schooling, their taxes, their medical bills, their everything…. I want them to have to abide by everything we have to abide by. I don’t want to be paying for them and not taking care of our own.

While Helen was a dyed-in-the-wool Republican, I heard almost exactly the same words from Democrats as well who lived in the small towns along Route 50 where the immigrants have arrived en masse.

Washington is full of hot potato issues that members of Congress would rather shunt aside than face full-on. On this one, however, the political insiders are not in control, and the issue shows no signs whatever of leaving center stage.

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