Vogel's views on immigration reveal conflict

Posted in Jill Holtzman Vogel on 09/26/07

Vogel’s views on immigration reveal conflict

Candidate fights against illegals, but husband’s law firm was on other side

By Garren Shipley

(Daily Staff Writer)

WINCHESTER — Republican state Senate candidate Jill Holtzman Vogel has made fighting illegal immigration a centerpiece of her campaign.

But as recently as last year, her husband’s law firm was on the other side of the issue, lobbying Congress for more immigrant-friendly policies.

“Washington has completely failed to secure our border and enforce our immigration laws,” the candidate says in a recent mailer to 27th District voters. “Now Virginia is faced with getting tough on illegal aliens. I remain the only candidate for senate in our district with a serious plan to crack down on illegal immigration.”

Holtzman Vogel said recently that she’s a strong supporter of an anti-illegal immigration platform put forward by the Republican leadership of the Virginia General Assembly.

That package of legislation includes provisions that would prevent illegal immigrants from attending Virginia’s public colleges and universities and would revoke the business licenses of any firm convicted in federal court of hiring illegal immigrants.

While Holtzman Vogel has clearly staked out her territory on immigration, her husband Alex Vogel’s firm — Mehlman Vogel Castagnetti — has been on the other side. The firm took $63,000 to lobby on behalf of the American Immigration Lawyers Association, a group that generally supports immigrant-friendly policies, in 2005 and 2006.

The association announced Friday that it supports the DREAM Act of 2007, a bill that among other things would allow illegal immigrants who entered the country before age 16 and graduated from U.S. high schools to stay in the country for six years legally while they pursue higher education and grant them permanent resident alien status after they graduate.

It also would allow states to offer in-state tuition rates to illegal immigrants. Federal law currently prohibits the practice.

“It seems like the height of hypocrisy that Jill Vogel, who worked for the Bush administration that supports amnesty and has a husband who is actively lobbying for amnesty for illegal immigrants, is now trying to tell our part of Virginia a different story,” said Julie Petrick, campaign manager for Karen Schultz, Holtzman Vogel’s Democratic opponent.

But it was the firm, not Vogel personally, that represented the immigration group, said Tommy Hopper, a spokesman for the Holtzman Vogel campaign.

“Alex has never represented the group in question. They have a lot of lawyers in that firm, a lot of lobbyists in that firm,” Hopper said.

Mehlman Vogel Castagnetti had one lobbyist on staff who handled the immigration lawyers, he added. That staffer left the firm about a year and a half ago and “took his clients with him.”

But lobbying disclosures filed with the Secretary of the Senate’s office seem to contradict the campaign’s claims.

A report filed in August 2006, when the immigration group took its lobbying business elsewhere, does show that Vogel wasn’t the primary lobbyist at Mehlman Vogel Castagnetti for the immigration group, but it does list him as a “previously reported individual who is no longer expected to act as a lobbyist for the client.”

That’s not an accurate picture of the situation, Hopper said. The lobbying firm’s practice is to include all of its lobbyists on disclosure forms as having lobbied for clients, he said.

“There’s full disclosure,” he said. “If you look, there’ll be a lot of other names there, too.” Five other names do appear in the same box as Vogel’s.

“Alex didn’t know about it. Alex didn’t meet with any of those people, he doesn’t know what their position is, and I can assure you that Jill doesn’t know what their position is,” Hopper said.

While $63,000 isn’t chump change, it’s hardly walking-around money in the world of Washington lobbyists.

In 2006, the firm took in more than $7.3 million for its services on Capitol Hill, according to data compiled by The Center for Responsive Politics, a nonpartisan watchdog group.

Vogel’s firm has been paid $3.57 million so far this year, according to data compiled by the center. The highest-paid lobbying group in Washington, Patton Boggs, has raked in $19 million in 2007.

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