Democrats Now Reject The Whole Concept Of Citizenship

Democrats celebrated last week after President Trump was forced to wave the white flag over his administration’s effort to include a question about citizenship on the 2020 US Census. But for all the bipartisan bluster over the issue, the immediate stakes were much lower than either Trump or his critics claimed. The cultural symbolism, however, mattered a great deal.

It is unlikely that many illegal immigrants or others who fear the government will participate in the Census — whether the document asks about citizenship or not. Thus, even if Trump had gotten his way, it wouldn’t have significantly affected Census results or the composition of Congress, which the Census results shape.

Yet the cultural question at the heart of the debate, having to do with the meaning of citizenship, is worth arguing about. To wit, by going after Trump’s proposal, his opponents ultimately targeted American sovereignty itself.

Democrats claimed that merely asking about citizenship would have discouraged both legal and illegal immigrants, and even some citizens, from answering the Census. They accused Trump of trying to cook the numbers to undercount the population in immigrant-heavy blue districts and boost Republicans’ chances of controlling Congress.

Nonsense. The Census already probes respondents about their race and whether they are Hispanic. Citizenship status is at least as pertinent. The US Census used to probe citizenship on the short form as recently as the 1950s. As these pages have noted, moreover, other Western countries, including our Canadian neighbors, still ask about citizenship. Immigration and Customs Enforcement, meanwhile, by law can’t use Census data, so immigrants had nothing to fear from responding.

So why did the American left go into Defcon 1 over Trump’s attempts to ask about citizenship in the Census? Part of the answer has to do with liberals’ determination to resist whatever Trump does.

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