[Congressional Record Volume 165, Number 82 (Thursday, May 16, 2019)]
[House]
[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.

                          ____________________