Obama courts Hispanic business leaders

Hispanic business leaders will descend on Washington this week for an all-day meeting hosted by top administration officials as President Barack Obama seeks to maintain congressional momentum for immigration legislation even while saying little about the issue publicly.

The immigration bill is Obama's best chance of a major legislative victory in his second term. So, he's been choosing his words carefully -- or often, not at all.

Obama has taken just one immigration-focused trip this year, traveling to Las Vegas to outline his views in January. In recent appearances in Baltimore and Austin, Texas, he has not mentioned the topic at all, focusing instead on the economy.

Today's meeting, the inaugural event of the Hispanic Business Leaders Forum, underscores the cautious strategy Obama has adopted to push for his top domestic priority. While Obama remains quiet in public, his staff is escalating a private White House campaign to build support for the bill.

At the same time, the White House is also working to stay close to a constituency that backed Obama by 71 percent in the last election -- no matter what the outcome with the immigration bill on Capitol Hill. While immigration is certainly on the agenda for this week's meeting, White House officials stress that the administration is engaging Latino executives as national business leaders who care about the nation's pressing economic issues.

Obama's approach to the immigration bill is an acknowledgment that support among Republicans, whose votes are crucial to passage, will be weakened if the bill is too closely allied with the Democratic president.

Seventy-five business leaders are expected to attend the event, held in conjunction with the U.S. Hispanic Chamber of Commerce. Attendees will include Joe Echevarria, chief executive of Deloitte LLP; Gustavo Arnavat, executive director of the Inter-American Development Bank; Kimberly Casiano, president of Casiano Communications, the largest Hispanic-owned publisher in the United States; and Linda Alvarado, president of Alvarado Construction and the owner of the Colorado Rockies baseball team.