Renegade national conservative leader Grover Norquist is heading to Lincoln to promote immigration reform. Norquist, who supports reform largely for economic reasons, is president and founder of the advocacy group Americans for Tax Reform, which has the aim of limiting the cost and size of government and is opposed to higher taxes at all levels.
Norquist is an undoubted conservative and sits on the board of both the American Conservative Union and the National Rifle Association of America. He has been quoted as saying that he would like to see the US government shrink “to the size where we can drown it in the bathtub”; however, the issue of immigration is where Norquist differs from many of his fellow conservatives.
“People are an asset, not a liability,” he wrote in the Guardian last year. “The United States is the most immigrant-friendly nation in the world and the richest country in the world. This is not a coincidence. Those voices that would make us less immigrant friendly would make us less successful, less prosperous, and certainly less American.”
Norquist will be speaking at a reception and dinner at Lincoln Station on February 2nd, which is being hosted by a coalition of individuals, lawyers, interest groups and businesses including the Nebraska Restaurant Association, the Nebraska Cattlemen Association and the Omaha non-profit organization Justice for our Neighbors of Nebraska. Jim Partington, the restaurant group’s executive director, says he hopes Norquist will be able to open a few eyes to the fact that immigration reform should not be divided on bipartisan lines.