For the Next Big Bout, Tune In to Channel 41/2

Immigration's Clothespin Caucus

Corporations have lots of complaints about President Bush's immigration bill: Its new federal database to verify that all workers are in this country legally would be too cumbersome; guest workers would not be allowed to stay in their jobs long enough before they are forced (temporarily) to go back home; and the number of visas for highly skilled workers would be too small.

Nonetheless, top industry lobbyists are urging colleagues to hold their noses and say yes anyway, just to keep the process rolling. At a recent meeting of a broad coalition that wants comprehensive changes in immigration, R. Bruce Josten, executive vice president of the U.S. Chamber of Commerce, warned that unless Congress acts, employers will be hard-pressed to find enough workers and will be harangued by local authorities cracking down on the undocumented.

"The consequence of inaction is that more states and cities will target businesses and property owners," he said. "And failure now would end the process until after the 2008 elections."

Thank You, Aunt Fannie

Robert B. Zoellick, Bush's choice as the next president of the World Bank, will have to worry about only global poverty and not his own. When he turns 55 in July 2008, he will start to receive $91,310 a year from the Fannie Mae pension fund, according to PoliticalMoneyLine.com.

Zoellick's most recent financial disclosure report, covering 2005, also shows that he owned between $1 million and $5 million in Fannie Mae stock, as well as a Fannie Mae-established 401(k) with between $100,000 and $350,000.

Not bad for working as an executive vice president at the mortgage giant for just four years in the 1990s.

Moonlighting Lobbyist of the Week

Lobbyist Jared Genser has what he calls an "odd hobby." He works pro bono to free prisoners of conscience around the world.

The 34-year-old associate at the law firm DLA Piper got involved in this work as a law student at the University of Michigan in 2000, when he learned about a British national, James Mawdsley, who received a 17-year prison sentence in Burma for handing out pro-democracy leaflets. Genser helped secure Mawdsley's release by petitioning the United Nations and drumming up support from Capitol Hill.

"I was in the U.K. for his arrival," Genser said. "He gave me a firm handshake and a grin and said, 'You saved my life.' "

From then on, he was hooked. After he graduated the next year, Genser teamed up with six friends and started an all-volunteer group called Freedom Now, which in the intervening years has gotten half a dozen political prisoners out of jail in places as far flung as Egypt, Pakistan and Vietnam.

He is working to release the world's only imprisoned Nobel Peace Prize laureate, Aung San Suu Kyi of Burma. Although Suu Kyi has been under house arrest for 11 of the past 17 years, Genser is optimistic. "The stakes are too high to relent," he said.

Interim Hires of the Week

Donna A. Harman, a senior vice president of the American Forest & Paper Association, was named acting president, succeeding Juanita D. Duggan, who resigned.

Bill Wasserman, president of M+R Strategic Services, was appointed acting executive director of the Save Darfur Coalition, the lobby that helped make genocide in Sudan a national cause. M+R, which recently hired Susan Roth as a senior vice president, has been a coalition consultant. Wasserman replaces David Rubenstein, who resigned amid complaints that under his leadership the organization struggled to deal with its rapid growth.

Separately, after more than eight years at the Marine Fish Conservation Network, Executive Director Lee Crockett is leaving to join the Pew Environment Group. And Democratic adviser and Washington lobbyist Mark Siegel moved to Locke Liddell Strategies.

Please send e-mail to kstreet@washpost.com.