Really?! U.S. Congresswoman asked if she's an American citizen

REP. PRAMILA JAYAPAL, D-WASH.

By Len Patel
ASAM NEWS

Here’s proof there are a lot of ignorant people out there.
Rep. Pramila Jayapal is the first Indian/American women to serve in the U.S. House of Representatives representing Congressional District 7 in Washington (Seattle).

C-Span is a government funded cable channel dedicated to coverage of Congress and politics. You would think viewers would have a basic understanding of our Constitution and of American politics.

Maybe not.

A viewer calling in on the Republican line (Yes, there are different call in numbers for Republicans and Democrats) asked Jayapal, a Democrat, if she was an American citizen.

The first term representative calmly turned it into a teaching moment. She informed the caller that citizenship is a requirement to run for Congress.

Jayapal was born in Chennai, India in 1965 and immigrated to the United States in 1982. Beyond the basic civics lesson, the Congresswoman also talked about the “broken visa system.”

“We’re talking about a DACA fix, but we need a whole fix for comprehensive immigration reform. It keeps getting tossed back and forth and complicated. There are many pieces of the immigration system that include the employment visa system, it includes family reunification which is a cornerstone of U.S. immigration policy. Then, of course, it includes the legalization of undocumented immigrants in this country. Most of whom are picking the food that we eat, cleaning the hotel rooms, doing a lot of work in poultry plants. We haven’t had any kind of system that matches our economic needs for labor to our immigration needs.”

______________________________________________________________________________