Earlier today, the Arizona Chamber of Commerce (chief executive: Glenn Hamer), hosted a press conference where they announced an ad campaign in support of immigration "reform", presumably including some form of "guest" worker scheme (link). The ads will run in Phoenix, Albuquerque, Denver and Las Vegas and they're spending "hundreds of thousands of dollars" on it. One of their guests at the announcement is the former president of the National Council of La Raza, Raul Yzaguirre. He's also a former co-chair of this year's Hillary Clinton campaign.

The ads are from MATT.org ("Mexicans and Americans Thinking Together"), a group headed by Lionel Sosa, someone who's working for John McCain. Earlier in the year he hinted that the Mexican government was going to give him money to conduct an ad campaign, and a very good question would be whether this is what he was refering to. Needless to say, it's one that Craig Harris of the Arizona Republic doesn't ask.

Others there were:

Phoenix Mayor Phil Gordon, former Congressman Henry Bonilla [a spokesman for MATT]... Tucson Electric Power Chief Executive Jim Pignatelli and Ironco Enterprises president Sheridan Bailey.

UPDATE: On the midnight immediately before the press conference, the Arizona Republic printed the editorial "Arizona must lead" (link) promoting the effort. Needless to say, it reads like a hand-out from the AZ Chamber of Commerce.

UPDATE 2: From March comes this:

On January 16, 2008, the Wall Street Journal reported the following: "Mr. Sosa says he has raised $25 million for the campaign from one group he didn't identify." This massive donation concerns me and it should trouble every American during a presidential year. I'm all for political activism and free speech, but I want to know who is bankrolling efforts to alter our immigration laws.

More recently from the same paper comes this:

Although Sosa left the corporation [presumably MATT] to work with McCain, the organization's entanglements with Sosa and Cesar Martinez - a video producer who has created Spanish-language TV ads for McCain (notably, one that depicts Barack Obama as a naïve fool willing to hang out with Venezuelan leader Hugo Chavez) — have created the appearance of a 501 organization that is acting more like a 527 political action committee... QueQue paid a visit to MATT.org's downtown limestone-and-log-cabin offices this week and was told by staffers that Martinez maintains a video-production office at MATT.org and keeps his equipment there. With Sosa and Martinez working together to create Latino-targeting ads for McCain, and Martinez using MATT.org facilities to do his production work, this doesn't pass the smell taste as defined in the organization's Certificate of Formation, filed with the Texas Secretary of State... The issue is further complicated by the fact that new Texas Secretary of State Hope Andrade, the person whose office accepts corporate filings, formerly served as executive director for MATT.org...