Before you know it, we're going to be in the midst of a knock-down fight to reform our nation's immigration laws. As a preliminary effort to gauge where the "no" votes may come from, nativists in the House have introduced a resolution demanding "no amnesty".
While the non-binding resolution has picked up the support of the usual cast of southern Blue Dogs (in addition to xenophobic Republicans), on that list is Philadelphia-area Democrat Patrick Murphy:
The Irish Immigration Center in Philadelphia is urging those who support the undocumented Irish to call their Congressman, Patrick Murphy, to say they oppose his stance on comprehensive immigration reform [...]
The Irish Immigration center says they are "disappointed that Rep. Murphy is taking such a regressive stance on immigration reform. Immigration reform that does not provide a solution for the undocumented is impractical and inhumane."
And they provide the relevant phone numbers to help them call Rep Murphy.
Congressman Murphy's DC office: (202) 225-4276
Congressman Murphy's Doylestown office: (215) 348-1194
Congressman Murphy's Bristol Office: (215) 826-1963
Murphy thinks he can sign on to symbolic resolutions like this one as an easy way to score political points, yet the time to use immigrants as a punching bag is closing. Not only is it cruel, but it's also bad policy and bad politics. While the typical Blue Dog might embrace bad policy and bad politics as a matter of course, Patrick is better than that, especially when representing a district that's almost 20 percent Irish and with a strong immigrant tradition (Italians and Germans as well).