WASHINGTON — While Republicans may have shut the door against an immigration overhaul this year, advocates who want a new law have stepped up their lobbying efforts in an almost mad dash to reignite negotiations before next spring – when, they fear, time completely runs out as the 2014 campaign season kicks into high gear.
This week, a group of activists, faith leaders and union organizers is fasting and sleeping in a tent outside the U.S. Capitol. President Barack Obama earlier asked church and business leaders to send a “clarion call” to leaders in the House of Representatives. And dozens of children knocked on the office door of House Speaker John Boehner, R-Ohio, last Thursday morning.
“Politicians are human. He’s a father,” said Jennifer Martinez, a 16-year-old from Redmond, Wash., who approached Boehner when he was having breakfast at a Capitol Hill diner and told him her story of being separated from her father for several months. “Yeah, in politics, people do things that benefit them. But at the end of the day when they go to sleep at night, is it really going to fulfill them? I really doubt that.”
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