Top GOP donors tell party to legalize illegals...

Nearly a hundred top Republican donors and Bush administration officials sent a letter to the House GOP on Tuesday urging lawmakers to pass a bill that legalizes illegal immigrants, arguing that the current system is already allowing them to stay and so it makes sense to register them and bring them into the system.

The donors, led by former Bush administration Cabinet officials Carlos Gutierrez and Spencer Abraham, also said that immigrants are potential Republican voters who can be won over — if the party can be seen as welcoming to immigrants.

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Both the business leaders and donors appeared to be sensing the momentum for immigration legislation slipping away, little more than a month after the Senate passed its version on a bipartisan 68-32 vote.
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Mr. Gutierrez, a former secretary of commerce who led Tuesday’s donor letter, was point man on the 2007 effort, which failed in a stunning bipartisan filibuster on the Senate floor.

Also signing Tuesday’s donor letter were Karl Rove, who was Mr. Bush’s political adviser; a number of ambassadors who served Mr. Bush; former Homeland Security Secretary Tom Ridge; former Vice President Dan Quayle; and several former governors