Rep Jamie Raskin claims founding fathers were 'undocumented immigrants'—they were British citizens moving to British colonies

In a congressional subcommittee hearing on Wednesday, Rep Jamie Raskin claimed that Thomas Paine, the author of Common Sense and one of America’s Founding Fathers, was an "undocumented immigrant."

In his opening statement at Wednesday’s Subcommittee on Constitution and Limited Government hearing, Raskin said, "I want to start by invoking Tom Paine, who was an undocumented immigrant who came to this land in 1774, two years before the revolution and wrote Common Sense, the pamphlet that ignited the American Revolution. And he said that this land, if it lives up to its ideals and its promise, would become an 'asylum to humanity,' he said. Not an insane asylum, but a place of refuge for people seeking freedom from religious and political, intellectual and economic persecution from all over the world." He also said that Thomas Jefferson descended from "a long line of undocumented immigrants both on his mother’s side and his father’s side to the country."

At the conclusion of Raskin’s opening statement, Rep Jim Jordan said, "I was just curious, Chairman, the ranking member said, I think his opening sentence was Thomas Paine was an illegal immigrant. My understanding was Mr. Paine was born in the UK, came to America, then a British colony, in 1774. So I was just struggling how he was…"

Raskin, who is the ranking member of House Judiciary Committee, which oversees the subcommittee, cut in, "I didn’t say he was an illegal immigrant, I said he was an undocumented immigrant, just like Thomas Jefferson’s family was. Most of our ancestors did not arrive here with documents."

After a pause, Jordan said, "Oh okay, well, ok."

The comments came during a hearing regarding the negative effects of the 1982 Supreme Court ruling in Plyer v Doe, in which the court ruled that states cannot block illegal immigrant children from attending school, saying that such a move violates the Equal Protection Clause of the Fourteenth Amendment.