[Congressional Record Volume 172, Number 15 (Thursday, January 22, 2026)]
[House]
[Pages H1346-H1347]
From the Congressional Record Online through the Government Publishing Office [www.gpo.gov]




                   FUNDAMENTALLY CHANGING IMMIGRATION

  (Under the Speaker's announced policy of January 3, 2025, Mr. 
Grothman of Wisconsin was recognized for 30 minutes.)
  Mr. GROTHMAN. Mr. Speaker, we will take about 1\1/2\ weeks off now, 
as we go back to our districts, meet our constituents, and do our 
factory tours.
  Prior to leaving, I think it is important one more time to address 
what I think is the most significant issue this Congress and next 
Congress and that this President and the next President is going to 
have to deal with. How we address this issue will determine whether 
America fundamentally changes or not. That issue is immigration.
  We see it on the TV every night. We see the obnoxiousness going on in 
a church in Minneapolis. We see the horror and unfortunate death of a 
woman who was protesting. There are demonstrations all around the 
country.
  First of all, let's define the current situation. Right now in 
America, every year about 800,000 people are naturalized. We don't talk 
about that enough. We spend all the time talking about people who are 
sneaking into this country. We don't talk about the fact that over 
800,000 people every year become new citizens.
  In addition to that 800,000 new citizens, 500,000 people come here on 
work visas. Another 500,000 come here on student visas. People being 
what they are, many of these people on visas stay in the United States 
anyway.
  In addition to that, the United States is one of the few countries in 
the world in which we have birthright citizenship. We have new 
citizens. If a woman from China flies into San Diego, has a child, and 
comes back, the way we are interpreting the law right now--which, of 
course, is wrong--but the way we interpret it is that child becomes a 
U.S. citizen.
  When you look at all the ways you can become citizens, it is not 
surprising that today over 15 percent of the people in the United 
States of America were born abroad. That is an all-time high. As we 
analyze what we have to do on this situation, we ought to remember: If 
we do nothing, we are already at an all-time high in the number of 
people who are in the United States who were not born here.

                              {time}  1920

  As far as the over 800,000 who were naturalized, that is about four 
times what it was when I was a child in the 1960s. Again, we have 
nobody to apologize to as we are not letting people into the country. 
There are four times as many people being let into the country as when 
I was a child.
  We just got done with President Joe Biden, and, of course, we don't 
keep track of the exact numbers, but he was allowing about 8 to 10 
million people into the country. In addition to all of these other 
people, 8 to 10 million people were being allowed into the country, 
crossing our southern border illegally.
  What do we do about this situation as we are being flooded with 
people from other countries?
  First of all, we have to worry that the people coming here are not 
what John Adams said should be required to come here. They are not 
necessarily a moral and religious people. They may not respect our 
Constitution. When they eventually participate in our elections, will 
they vote for the limited government that our forefathers felt that we 
needed, a limited government that is required?
  Most countries built on elections wind up collapsing, and they 
collapsed because people go to the polls and just say: What can my 
government do for me? I will quote John Kennedy here as far as what he 
felt we needed in this country. He said: ``Ask not what your country 
will do for you--ask what you can do for your country.''
  Those are the type of people we need at the polling booth. 
Unfortunately, over time--and I am including carpet welfare in this as 
much as anything--we have more and more citizens when they vote saying: 
What will you give me? Are you going to give me more food? Are you 
going to give me free medical care? Are you going to give me free 
daycare?
  In other words, what they do is they want the government to give them 
more money that they didn't earn on their own. That would be the end of 
America if these are the type of immigrants we are getting in.
  I also want to point out that when we look at the people coming here, 
some of our inflammatory people talk about racism. I hate it when they 
talk about racism, but I do want to point out that, now, when you look 
at people who are naturalized who come in here, I want to rattle off 
the ten most common countries that citizens become naturalized from: 
One, Mexico; two, India; three, Philippines; four, Dominican Republic; 
five, Cuba; six, Vietnam; seven, China; eight, El Salvador; nine, 
Jamaica; and ten, Colombia.
  Do you notice anything about those ten countries? Not one of those 
countries are sending us immigrants who are primarily European in 
nature. I should maybe qualify that. For whatever reason, the diversity 
bureaucrats have decided to tell us that people, say, from Cuba or the 
Dominican Republic are not European.
  I have always felt it was odd the way they define this. You can have 
a family who moves here from Spain to Cuba, hangs around Cuba for 80 
years. They come to the United States, and they are not considered 
primarily European even though their ancestry is in Europe.
  In any event, the way we consider things now, none of the top ten are 
primarily European. As far as people saying that we have this horribly 
racist country, I think it would be odd for a racist country to let the 
ten most common nationalities to come here, all what our leftwing 
friends would call people of color.
  In any event, we have to ask ourselves: How do we handle this huge 
influx of people coming into the country? If people come here and lie 
and say that they are coming here for asylum, it seems to me that the 
only alternative is to remove them, or we have no immigration law, 
right?
  If the word gets out that you come to the United States and, as long 
as you don't break laws, as long as you are not an armed robber, as 
long as you are not a drug dealer, you can stay here forever, everybody 
will come here. That is like having no immigration law at all.
  In any event, right now, we have the bizarre situation in which 
people are deciding that we don't have to enforce our current 
immigration laws. We have people like--I am from Wisconsin--the 
Governor of Illinois and the Governor of Minnesota, in essence, saying 
that we do not want ICE in our States. Same thing with the ridiculous 
mayor of Minnesota.
  What would happen if the word got out that, if you come illegally 
into the United States, all you have to do is find your way into 
Illinois or Minnesota or perhaps New York or California, and the 
immigration laws will not be enforced?
  I will tell you what would happen. What would happen is, in a given 
period of time, I think we would find ourselves--I am sure it would be 
easy to find 100 million Chinese who would come here; 100 million 
people from

[[Page H1347]]

India could come here; or 100 million people from Africa would come 
here. America would permanently change. It would change very quickly if 
we respected the preposterous positions of the Governor of Minnesota.
  In order to preserve our country, we have to limit the number of new 
citizens at 800,000, or maybe even less.
  It is scary that we have so many citizens who are so blind that they 
can't see that we are losing our country. If we allow unlimited 
immigration in the country, that is exactly what would happen.
  I should also point out that things are different than they were 60 
years ago. When I was a child and they showed pictures of countries 
abroad, you would see starving children. You would look at their 
stomachs.
  Nowadays, the amount of poverty in the Third World is a fraction of 
what it used to be. In some of the poorer countries of the world, we 
have the same problem as we do with the poor of this country. They are 
obese.
  Okay. It amazes me sometimes when you look at the TV and they are 
showing other countries around the globe, how they have high-rise 
buildings in the background. I am sure they are not as wealthy as, say, 
New York City, but they clearly are not poor as we thought of poor 
60 years ago. These people frequently have more than enough money.

  So the question is what to do, and that is why I think it is the 
biggest problem that we have in America. If people like the Governor of 
Minnesota or the Governor of Illinois or the Governor of California get 
their way, the America that we are used to is going to disappear, and 
it will be replaced by people who may not be protecting our country or 
keeping the current law or the current Constitution or the attitude of 
less government going.
  We are almost certainly going to get people who turn America into the 
countries they came from, countries in which there is socialism, in 
which you have socialists; countries in which elections become contests 
of who are you going to give to more? America will become not only 
poorer, but America will become much less free.
  We must enforce our immigration laws. It is going to be messy in some 
cases, particularly because we have horrible mayors and horrible 
Governors who want to ignore our laws. They want to fundamentally 
change America, but our President, whoever that President is, has to 
have the courage and the moral steel to stand up to these people and 
remove people who don't belong here.
  Anybody who feels guilty about that, again, I remind you: 800,000 
people a year, almost all what liberals refer to as people of color, 
are coming here already. We have nothing to apologize for if we hold 
the number of people here to those numbers.

                              {time}  1930

  There are some people who feel that we need more people here for our 
farms, more people here for our hotels, more people here for our 
factories. If that is true, Congress can expand the number of work 
visas that are available, but it doesn't mean we open up the floodgates 
of the southern border and whoever can come here should be able to come 
here.
  Part of the problem as well, in addition to bad mayors and bad 
Governors, is bad clergy. I think they are apparently not familiar what 
is in the Bible as far as respecting the law. Every country around the 
world has immigration laws. They have laws that have to be respected. 
Unfortunately, we have some clergy who, I guess, were bored preaching 
about the Gospel, bored preaching about God, and they have decided to 
adopt the leftwing orthodoxies of let everybody come here. They, of 
course, have a lot to answer to as well.
  I challenge Americans at the polls, when you look and see what issues 
your Congressman or, even more, your mayors or Governors are running 
on, are you going to vote for people who are going to keep our America 
great, not people who are going to say no immigrants whatsoever--like I 
said, nationalizing 800,000 a year. Are you going to elect people who 
are not going to be foolish people who let an unlimited number of 
people come here? Because if we do that, America, the America that we 
grew up in, is going to be gone for our children. It is going to be 
gone for our grandchildren.
  In any event, that is, I think, the most important issue today 
because if we don't win on that issue, our country is done.
  Mr. Speaker, I yield back the balance of my time.

                          ____________________