House Sham Immigration "hearing" sheduled for Don Mattingly's hometown

Today's sham House "hearing" is scheduled for Evansville, Indiana, hometown of baseball legend Don Mattingly. Of course, Donnie Baseball is above politics.

Unfortunately, House Representative John Hostetler is not above playing politcis with the real lives of the Irish undocumented and the Irish-American community.

Hostetler and the modern day Know-Nothing House leadership passed an unworkable enforcement-only bill (HR 4437) in December 2005.

In May 2006, the Senate passed a comprehensive immigration reform bill that provides for border security and a path to earned legal staus for the 50,000 undocumented Irish living and working in America today.

Instead of working a compromise with the Senate and doing something about immigration, Hostetler and the modern day Know-Nothing House leadership decided to hold unprecedented stall and delay hearings to bash the Senate Bill and blame immigrants for our broken immigration system they refuse to take action to fix.

The modern day Know-Nothings are playing the politics of delay.

Instead of real action, they fly the same group of witnesses around the country so they can read the same prepared testimony to the same members of the House.

One of today's scheduled witnesses has testified at these modern day Know-Nothing junkets at least three times just this summer.

Before today's hearing, the Kentucky's Roman Catholic bishops, Louisville Archbishop Thomas C. Kelly, Covington Bishop Roger J. Foys, Lexington Bishop Ronald W. Gainer and Owensboro Bishop John J. McRaith, issued a statement calling for humane treatment of immigrants and policies that would allow them to gain legal status.

The statement, calls for:

• A program allowing illegal immigrants to gain legal status.
• A "more rational and humane" system to let foreigners to come here for temporary work assignments.
• A reduction in waiting times for reuniting families of immigrants.
• A "restoration of due process for immigrants" in response to what it contends are policies by federal officials that include detention without charges and ethnic profiling.

Support the Irish Lobby for Immigration Reform. Legalize the Irish (and put Donnie in Cooperstown, already).