How Dems Are Using Border Census to Control House Majority

It’s no coincidence that in 2021, soon after taking office and reversing all Trump border policies, President Joe Biden signed an executive order reversing another one by the former president and requiring the Census Bureau to determine the population of each state without regard to respondents’ lawful immigration status.

Nor should there be any wonder why Senate Democrats recently voted unanimously to defeat an amendment by Sen. Bill Hagerty, R-Tenn, to bar illegal immigrants from being counted along with lawful citizens.

The Hagerty proposal would have also banned those holding temporary visas and green cards from ballots for congressional district and Electoral College appointments.

By way of background, census counts including both citizens and noncitizens dating back to 1790 have been used to apportion seats in the House of Representatives, with states gaining or losing based on population changes over the previous decade since survey data is collected every 10 years.

States registering large numbers of illegal aliens and other non-citizens therefore obviously gain additional representation in Congress at the expense of those with fewer since the overall total number was fixed by law following the 1910 census at 435 members.

Each state gets one seat, and the remainder are assigned according to a complex formula based on relative population size.

The strongly Democratic-leaning District of Columbia and Puerto Rico are excluded from the apportionment total because they have no voting representation in Congress, a condition that their congressional party affiliates are eager to change by granting them statehood.

Total state census counts also influence federal funding they receive from we taxpayers for foreign residents, i.e., emergency medical care, incarceration and English language learning.

Open borders drive these populations and costs up, also overwhelming vital health services and school programs available for resident citizens who pay for them with state and local taxes.

More than 100 federal programs use census data as part of their formulas to distribute billions of dollars, including Medicaid, Medicare Part B, the Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program, highway planning and construction, and Title 1 grants to local education agencies.

The number and identity of noncitizen users of these services is typically collected by the provider and submitted to the federal government for compensation.

The census also serves as a roadmap for distributing state funds ranging from early childhood programs to community development, including where grocery stores are built and whether schools will be large enough to host students.

And In addition to determining how many seats a state is awarded in Congress along with its count of Electoral College votes, census data is used to determine apportionment regarding how people are distributed into political districts.

Herein lies a top-level political calculation by the party in power: namely whether potential counting of illegal migrants in the census will on balance add or subtract congressional seats to swing legislative and Electoral College votes along with risks that high costs of doing so will alienate their prevalent population support base.

For reference, an estimated 18.5 million more people were counted in the 2000 Census than the number of known U.S. citizens.

According to a Pew Research Center analysis based on government records, if unauthorized immigrants are ultimately excluded from the previous 2020 apportionment count, California, Florida and Texas would each end up with one less congressional seat than they would have been awarded based on population change alone.

California would lose two seats instead of one, Florida would gain one instead of two, and Texas would gain two instead of three, according to analysis based on projections of Census Bureau 2019 population estimates including estimates of the unauthorized immigrant population.

Democrats apparently believe that many millions of grateful illegal border crossers will eventually be awarded amnesty and turn Texas and other red border states blue by sheer voting numbers, while already bankrupt stronghold states like California and cities like Chicago and Manhattan will receive additional federal taxpayer bailouts.

So far, it’s a losing strategy for everyone.

First and foremost, illegal aliens by their very definition shouldn’t even be in the country, nor should nonimmigrants such as foreign students and guest workers who are here only temporarily influence distributions of congressional seats as if they deserved the same representation as American citizens.

It follows that granting states and municipalities with the largest illegal and resident nonimmigrant populations additional influence over the lawmaking process is also perversely unfair to their own legal citizens, imposing major fiscal and social burdens.

Citizen taxpayer rights are recognized in the U.S. Constitution.

Section 2 of the 14^th Amendment states: “Representatives shall be apportioned among the several states according to their respective numbers, counting the whole number of persons in each state, excluding Indians not taxed.”

Section 1 of the same Amendment also provides that, “All persons born or naturalized in the United States, and subject to the jurisdiction thereof, are citizens of the United States and of the state wherein they reside.”

Taken together, the order of these two sections implies that congressional representative apportionment determinations are to be based upon numbers of persons born or naturalized in the United States.

We can expect not to have heard the last reversal in this important debate if Donald Trump re-enters the Oval Office and the GOP takes the Senate.

Let’s hope so.