May 16, 2019 - Issue: Vol. 165, No. 82 — Daily Edition116th Congress (2019 - 2020) - 1st Session
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IMMIGRATION; Congressional Record Vol. 165, No. 82
(House of Representatives - May 16, 2019)
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[Pages H3920-H3921] From the Congressional Record Online through the Government Publishing Office [www.gpo.gov] IMMIGRATION The SPEAKER pro tempore. Under the Speaker's announced policy of January 3, 2019, the Chair recognizes the gentleman from Wisconsin (Mr. Grothman) for 30 minutes. Mr. GROTHMAN. Madam Speaker, first of all, I would like to thank President Trump for earlier today, one more time, bringing the issue of immigration to the forefront. I think President Trump's speech was an interesting speech and provided a nice starting point for the immigration discussion ahead. I would like to highlight three issues that I hope the President will consider as we move forth on some sort of compromise on this problem. The first issue that I really wish President Trump would have addressed today, but I am sure he will address in the future because he has dealt with it in the past, is birthright citizenship. If we are going to get control over who is in this country, we cannot allow the continuation of something which was certainly not intended by the Constitution, and that is something called birth tourism. I know somebody from California, and they see, on a regular basis, people coming to California to have a child here. Now, I know in the future we want to vet our future immigrants. We want to perhaps have a balance between different countries. We want to make sure that the immigrants who are coming here learn English, the people who are coming here are going to be hardworking people and not become a public charge. Under current law, the United States interprets, wrongly, the 14th Amendment of the Constitution as requiring that, if someone is born here, they will become a citizen here. That, of course, was not the intent of the Amendment, and President Trump, I know, knows it was not the intent of the Amendment. The 14th Amendment of the United States Constitution was solely put in for the purpose of making sure that slaves who were born in the country prior to the Emancipation Proclamation would become citizens. There was a fear at the time that some unethical, particularly Southern, States would say that people who were not citizens prior to the Civil War were not citizens after the Civil War. Obviously, that Amendment was not designed to say somebody who was a tourist here, somebody who was here illegally or whatever, if they had a child, that that child would become a citizen. It is time that President Trump do what he talked about doing in November and October, and I applaud him when he will do it, and that he get rid of the birthright citizenship. I think he can do this as President by himself, though it would be nice if Congress would pass such a law. Right now in this country, we estimate that 7.5 percent of the births in this country are births of people who are here illegally. There are a variety of problems with that. First of all, it encourages illegal immigration, in part because, once somebody is a citizen, under the family laws that we have right now in the United States, the parents, perhaps the siblings, will eventually become citizens outside of the way we want to pick our future citizens and make sure that they are appropriately vetted. Now, we know that there are, I call them devious one worlders on both sides of the aisle who will fight this. The reason this has remained a practice in the United States for several decades is, unfortunately, perhaps even Republican Presidents, for whatever reason, did not want to have our immigration laws be treated seriously. But I do call upon President Trump to stop this policy. I think it is important not only to discourage illegal immigration, but I do not think right now that, when people come here on work visas, it is the intent of Congress that these people's children will automatically become citizens. I think we want to stop the excessive policy of chain migration which follows, as then the parents who broke the law when they came into this country would be able to turn around and become citizens themselves, kind of a reward for breaking the law. So I hope as this immigration law moves through the process and President Trump fine-tunes things, he does what we were all so happy to hear him say he would do last October, and that is end birthright citizenship. The next thing I think we want to look at is the idea of public benefits for illegal immigrants. First of all, under current law, you are not hypothetically supposed to get public benefits if you are here illegally. I would like to thank Housing and Urban Development Secretary Carson for stepping to the plate and making sure that people who broke the law to come here do not take advantage of our generous low-income housing benefits. However, we should go beyond that. We should pass a bill saying, outright, that public benefits are not things that we should give to anybody who is not a citizen. First of all, we are broke. I don't think it has been publicized enough, [[Page H3921]] but about 20 percent of the current Federal spending is borrowed. When you are around $23 trillion in debt, the idea of providing generous public benefits to people who are not citizens is preposterous. Secondly, insofar as efforts are made to increase our citizenship through things like DACA, we do want to make sure that we are not collecting immigrants who are eventually, themselves, going to become a public charge or coming here because of our generosity rather than the opportunities that take place for people who work hard. I have introduced legislation which will say that any local unit of government that gives benefits to people who are not citizens will lose its ability to give those benefits, because we have to crack down on this. Otherwise, the future generations of Americans will no longer be like past generations who came here to take advantage of the opportunity to get through hard work, but we will begin to get some people here who will take advantage of the opportunities that are available from government benefits. I hope President Trump, as he continues to discuss this immigration situation, talks about this. The third thing I think he should talk about, and something that I don't think the mainstream media has highlighted enough, is what we are going to be spending money on in the next budget. So the viewers back home are aware, when we pass our annual spending bills, we break it into 12 separate bills. Now, right now, as we have 100,000 people a month crossing our border illegally, I would say that it is probably the number one concern for the future of the United States. Sadly, the majority party, as they let us know where their priorities lie, told us the percentage of increases in each one of these 12 bills. For example, Labor and HHS was due for a 6 percent increase; Defense for a 3 percent increase; State and Foreign Ops, a 5 percent increase; the Legislative Branch, I think, about a 3 percent increase. Who came along in last place at 1 percent? Homeland Security. In other words, a sign that the least priority in the next budget should be enforcing our borders, this at a time where groups estimate the cost of illegal immigration to our country to be between $50 billion and $100 billion. Not to mention, when we talk about the moral fiber of America, which has kept us going for so long, we begin to have the next wave of immigrants, who will become the next wave of Americans, whose first action coming to this country is breaking the law. {time} 2115 I want to point out that neither I nor President Trump is anti- immigrant. I think it is tremendous that every year in this country we swear in another 700,000 citizens. I think it is wonderful in this country that we have 4 million people here on work visas, and it is possible that number will go up in the future. But there is a difference between people coming here on work visas; there is a difference between people going through the appropriate steps and getting sworn in legally and people who are crossing the border illegally. These are three suggestions of things that I would think would be minimal requirements before an immigration compromise is reached. Again, I emphasize we should get rid of birth right citizenship. The idea of people flying here from other countries or crossing the Rio Grande and saying ``my child automatically becomes a citizen'' must end. I think the practice of having people who are here illegally or anybody who is here who is not a citizen getting public benefits--and frequently those public benefits, particularly in the area of healthcare, are superior benefits to those which the average working American has. As a matter of fact, frequently, public housing today is superior to some of the housing that people who have to pay their own rent can afford. But I hope we step up to the plate and make sure that, with regard to immigration, there are no public benefits. And finally, with so many people flooding across the border, I hope we aggressively fight the idea that the least important part of our upcoming appropriations bills is Homeland Security. Madam Speaker, I yield back the balance of my time. ____________________
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