This Bad Legal Interpretation Allows Democrats To Skew Congress With Illegal Immigration; Counting Illegal Immigration In the Census is a Real Threat to Democracy

This Bad Legal Interpretation Allows Democrats To Skew Congress With Illegal Immigration:

Illegal immigrants enjoy many privileges while unlawfully in the United States — but being counted for apportionment should not be one of them.

In his first 100 days in office, President Donald Trump has ended the crisis at our southern border. Customs and Border Protection declared in March that we now have “the most secure border in history.” As Trump famously quipped at the State of the Union, it turns out we didn’t need new legislation, we just needed a new president.

Why, then, would any president want millions of unvetted illegal immigrants to enter freely into the United States? Why would an entire political party defend, and deny the perils of, the porous border presided over by Joe Biden and Kamala Harris?

The only explanation is the advantages this gives Democrats in the decennial census. It’s not sexy, but it’s the entire point.

The core constitutional purpose of the decennial census is to arrive at the “actual enumeration” of the people of each state so the inhabitants of each state are fairly and adequately represented in Congress and the Electoral College. When Democrat-run sanctuary states and cities induce population growth of illegal immigrants — who can currently be counted in the census — they understand the census will apportion in their favor. As the population of illegal immigrants in a sanctuary state swells, so too does that state’s congressional delegation and its Electoral College effect. The more people in the state, the more seats in Congress and the Electoral College. This means more spending, more representation, and more power for that state. Conversely, this means less of all three for the rest of us living in law-abiding states.

The census is essentially a cascade of delegation from the U.S. Constitution (Section 2 of Article I and the 14th Amendment), to Congress (Census Act), to the executive branch (Census Bureau), to the secretary of commerce (report to the president), to the president’s report to Congress.

So do we have to count illegal immigrants for census apportionment? No, we do not. Illegal immigrants enjoy many rights and privileges while unlawfully in the United States. But being counted for apportionment should not be one of them.

The 14th Amendment requires, “Representatives shall be apportioned among the several states according to their respective numbers, counting the whole number of persons in each state.” It was not until the 1980s that illegal immigration became a significant issue in the United States. In response, Congress asked the Department of Justice for an opinion letter on two bills seeking to exclude illegal aliens from census apportionment. The opinion letter was written by Assistant Attorney General for Legislative Affairs Thomas Boyd (“Boyd Letter”). Unfortunately, Boyd’s response to Congress declared both laws would likely be unconstitutional.

Boyd relied almost exclusively on his interpretation of the 1982 Supreme Court decision in Plyler v. Doe, which was a challenge to a Texas law prohibiting public education for illegal immigrants. The high court based its ruling on Section 1 of the 14th Amendment, affirming that “[n]o State shall deny to any person within its jurisdiction the equal protection of the laws.” Boyd sophomorically surmised that if the Supreme Court protected illegal immigrant “persons” covered by Section 1 of the 14th Amendment, then the “counting the whole number of persons in each state” clause in Section 2 of the 14th Amendment must apply to illegal immigrants as well. This has been the cornerstone of faulty arguments against excluding illegal immigrants from the census for nearly four decades. —>READ MORE HERE

Op-Ed: Counting illegal immigration in the census is a real threat to democracy

Now that President Trump has fulfilled his campaign promise to sign executive orders on his Inauguration Day to crack down on illegal immigration, the real battle over his immigration reform will take place in the courts.

While the ACLU and other anti-borders groups are busy filing lawsuits against the executive orders, a group of states have filed suit to achieve one of Trump’s goals: stopping the counting of people in the country illegally in the census for the purpose of apportionment in Congress.

Three days before Trump returned to the White House, Kansas, Louisiana, Ohio and West Virginia sued the Department of Commerce, seeking to change the census policy. While defenders of the policy make arguments that people here illegally live here and have the right to be counted, there is a more cynical and self-serving agenda at work.

Apportionment is the process in which each state is allotted a number of congressional districts and electoral votes based on its population as measured by the census. If the census includes people here illegally, as the 2020 census did, states with high numbers such as California end up getting extra congressional seats and electoral votes. States with low numbers end up losing congressional seats and electoral votes.

This is a shameless perversion of our democratic foundations, where only citizens and lawful permanent residents of our country are supposed to be counted toward their representation in Congress. It also creates a warped incentive for states to encourage people to come illegally to settle in their state for the consolidation of political power.

The Immigration Reform Law Institute, which is serving as counsel in the suit against the Commerce Department, has been deeply involved in this issue for years and makes a compelling case against the current policy. When a person – whether a voter or a nonvoter, such as a child – is counted in the census for apportionment, that person receives representation in our national government, including the House of Representatives.

But no one outside our national political community, considered in its widest sense, should be given representation in our national government. And people here illegally, as the Supreme Court and other federal courts have held, are neither part of the American people nor members of our national political community. It follows by simple logic that they should not be counted for apportionment purposes. —>READ MORE HERE

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