On Wednesday, Democratic Rep. Jamie Raskin of Maryland made the mistake of practicing history without a license.
Then again, from Critical Race Theory to other Marxist-inspired madness, Democrats have already spent years butchering American history.
In a clip posted to the social media platform X, Raskin referred to the famed 18th-century revolutionary (and honorary Founding Father) Thomas Paine as an “undocumented immigrant,” prompting a hilarious rebuke from Rep. Jim Jordan, a Republican from Ohio.
“My understanding was Mr. Paine was born in the U.K., came to America, then a British colony, in 1774,” Jordan said after Raskin’s statement. “So I was just struggling to figure out how he was an illegal immigrant.”
Insufficiently embarrassed — Democrats never are — Raskin tried to clarify.
“I didn’t say he was an illegal immigrant,” Raskin replied. “I said he was an undocumented immigrant — just like Thomas Jefferson’s family was. Most of our ancestors did not arrive here with documents.”
Raskin: “Thomas Paine was an undocumented immigrant.”
Jordan: “How was he an illegal immigrant? He was born in the UK and came to America, then a British colony.”
Raskin: “I didn’t say he was an illegal immigrant. He was an undocumented immigrant.” pic.twitter.com/3H6fDV02rf
— Greg Price (@greg_price11) March 18, 2026
Raskin made those asinine comments during a House Judiciary Committee Subcommittee on the Constitution and Limited Government hearing.
Later in the same hearing, Jordan — he couldn’t help himself — returned to the question of Paine as an “undocumented immigrant.”
“Is Thomas Paine an undocumented immigrant or a Founding Father?” Jordan asked the committee’s four witnesses. All four, in their own ways, affirmed that Raskin’s characterization made no sense.
The topic came up again about 45 min later. pic.twitter.com/pb8yOLbRl8
— Hearing Highlights (@hearhighlight) March 18, 2026
Raskin, of course, made an absolute fool of himself.
For one thing, he added Jefferson’s name to his silly catalog of early American “undocumented immigrants.”
In nearly two decades of studying and teaching Jefferson’s life to undergraduate and graduate students, I only came across one reference to the great Founding Father’s “undocumented immigrant” family. It appeared in the second line of Jefferson’s (unfinished) 1821 autobiography.
“The tradition in my father’s family was that their ancestor came to this country from Wales, and from near the mountain of Snowdon, the highest in Gr. Br.,” Jefferson wrote.
In other words, Jefferson himself knew very little about how his own family moved to Virginia from Great Britain. So the sight of Raskin talking confident nonsense about the subject merely added to the scene’s comedic value.
Moreover, Democrats typically marginalize Jefferson as a slaveholding racist because they fear his ideas of natural rights and limited government. To invoke his name in any positive context, therefore, qualifies as hypocrisy.
As for Paine, there is no doubt that the Englishman contributed his powerful pen to the cause of American independence. Paine’s “Common Sense,” published in 1776, made arguments against monarchy that many Americans had never read.
On the other hand, Christians should pause before elevating Paine to the pantheon of American heroes. During and after the French Revolution of the 1790s, Paine published “The Age of Reason,” which ranks as perhaps the most vicious attack on Christianity written in that century.
Above all, however, Raskin’s decision to invoke Paine (and Jefferson) exposed the emptiness of the Democrats’ favorite phrase, “undocumented immigrants.”
“Most of our ancestors did not arrive here with documents,” Raskin said.
Indeed. Then they formed a country with a Constitution. And that Constitution plainly authorizes their representatives to make laws, including naturalization laws.
So the issue isn’t “documents.” It’s law. Illegal immigrants have violated the law. Hence the Democrats’ preference for the word “undocumented,” for it means nothing and effectively obscures the word “illegal,” which means everything.
In the end, of course, it is fitting that Raskin said something idiotic about Paine in particular. The Democrats, after all, have never done well with common sense.
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