FUNDAMENTALLY CHANGING IMMIGRATION

On 2026-01-22, Representative Glenn Grothman (R-WI-6) delivered a floor speech titled "FUNDAMENTALLY CHANGING IMMIGRATION" in the House. The speech addressed immigration and also covered taxes, foreign policy.

FUNDAMENTALLY CHANGING IMMIGRATION

Congressional Record, Volume 172 Issue 15 (Thursday, January 22, 2026) [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 tru