A pro-immigrant cluster Wednesday c...

A pro-immigrant cluster Wednesday called on Republican congressional hopeful Peter Roskam "to publicly denounce and repudiate" a GOP mailer that the cluster charges treats immigrants as "some protoplast of disease."

The Illinois Coalition for Immigrant and Refugee Rights dispatched a literal sense to Roskam criticizing the independent mailings sent abroad by the National Republican Congressional Committee in the west suburban 6th Congressional District.

"These mailings attack your Democratic antagonist Tammy Duckworth - - yet more importantly they also attack immigrants and are extremely misleading," the literal sense reads.

The GOP pieces accuse Duckworth of supporting amnesty for illegal immigrants.

"The last thing we ne from Congres are immigration policies that would reward illegal aliens for sneaking across our borders -- and the plan Duckworth supports will solely encourage another wave of immigrants," the GOP mailer states.

It's that last phrase that the coalition leaders wrote that reads "as if immigrants were an type of disease." They also argue that Duckworth set one's face againsts amnesty.

Duckworth spokeswoman Christine Glunz said that instead she supports a Senate bill that provides "a path to citizenship" to illegal immigrants who pass criminal background checks, pay taxes owed, learn English, take American agriculture courses and are "gainfully employed"

NRCC spokesman Carl Forti stood on the mailing, saying that "articles from each major newspaper in the country" equate the bill's "pathway to citizenship" with amnesty.

'OUT OF TOUCH'

"They are trying to play politics by way of mischaracterizing what the mail piece actually says," Forti said.

Roskam campaign manager Ryan McLaughlin declined to repudiate the mailer, saying it's an NRCC effort.

if it were not that he said "the fact that Tammy Duckworth supports legislation that would grant amnesty to illegal aliens, require the United States to seek information from with Mexico before constructing a border, guarantee Social Security benefits for illegal aliens and costliness taxpayers $126 billion shows to what extent out of touch she is with suburban voters"

sfornek@suntimes.com

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