On the recordMarch 2, 2022
I thank the Resident Commissioner. Madam Speaker, here is my partner in equality in the Resident Commissioner Jenniffer Gonzalez-Colon. And she is not the only one. Florida is in the House tonight in support of you--Representative Demings, Representative Wasserman Schultz, Representative Salazar. We are all here to support our brothers and sisters back in my family's native island. This is a little bit about history today, 105 years of citizenship. You know, I checked on ancestry.com, and the roots of my family back in Puerto Rico go back way further than they could ever tell--on the Soto side and on the Casanova side--with a few coming in the mid-1800s from the Canary Islands, but the rest back further than you can uncover through the internet. When Teddy Roosevelt comes up on that San Juan Hill and you have the Spanish-American War, my relatives, my ancestors, were already there for an unknown and distant amount of time. I also see Representative Wild. Representative Wild, thank you for being here as well from Pennsylvania. Pennsylvania is in the House. When I think about the turn of the 20th century, my ancestors, some of whom I got to meet, like my great-grandmother, Altagracia Casanova, who still farmed by the time I was a little kid in Sabana Hoyos in Puerto Rico, they became citizens by statute. Then my great- grandparents, they had draft cards. They went and served in World War I.…





