Founding Fathers Were ‘Illegal’ Immigrants, Democrat Says

Democratic Representative Jamie Raskin said during a House markup session Wednesday that the Founding Fathers were the only “illegals” at the time the Constitution was written.

Raskin, his party’s ranking member on the House Oversight Committee, made the remarks as lawmakers discussed House Resolution 7109, also known as the Equal Representation Act, which if enacted would include a citizenship question starting with the 2030 Census and every decennial census afterward.

Respondents via questionnaire would have to check a box as to whether they are U.S. citizens, U.S. nationals but not citizens, or aliens lawfully or unlawfully residing in the country.

In February, House Republicans impeached Department of Homeland Security Alejandro Mayorkas by a 214-213 vote for what they deemed “high crimes and misdemeanors” associated with annually rising numbers of illegal immigrants crossing the U.S.-Mexico border and flooding the asylum system. The Senate has yet to take up the proceedings.

“Our colleagues, I’m afraid to say, are evincing no familiarity with any of the relevant materials in this field,” Raskin said. “The Supreme Court has been very clear about this, and the Founders were very clear: There are lots of people who are not voters who get counted in the Census.

“One of our colleagues said that the Founders never anticipated that you would have huge numbers of people who couldn’t vote who were being counted. Of course they did. The vast majority of Americans couldn’t vote when the country started.”

Louisiana Representative Clay Higgins, a Republican, countered and corrected Raskin by saying that a committee member never said the Founders “never anticipated this volume of illegals.”

“Don’t twist my colleague’s words,” Higgins said.

“There was no immigration law when the Constitution was adopted at all,” Raskin said in response. “In fact, the only illegals in the country, at least according to the native population, were the people writing the Constitution.”

“There was no federal law, and the ranking member knows this,” Higgins interjected, to which Raskin responded, “Exactly!”

“He is being cute,” Higgins said before another member took the floor.

Newsweek reached out to Higgins via email for comment.

A spokesperson for House Oversight Democrats declined to comment to Newsweek.

House Oversight Committee Chairman James Comer said the resolution would accurately collect the makeup of the general U.S. population, saying that data utilized by the Census Bureau is based on surveys and estimates that pose “large margins of error.”

“My amendment, in the nature of a substitute, does not require respondents to indicate what immigration status they have, or other demographic information,” Comer said. “We just want to know very simply: Are you a citizen or are you a non-citizen? It’s an easy question, it isn’t confusing, and it doesn’t reveal anything about an individual’s specific immigration status.”

The session was described by one Democratic member as Republicans pushing an agenda.

“I’m in an Oversight Hearing listening to House Republicans talk about the great replacement theory and wanting to destroy the Census,” California Representative Robert Garcia wrote on X, formerly Twitter. “But I’m about to push back on these lies. These arguments are nuts.”