During his first term, President Donald Trump issued an executive order directing the Census Bureau to add a question about citizenship status to the 2020 national survey.
There was good reason for this. The Census is used to count the population. Population numbers are then used to determine how many congressional seats are allocated to each state. Given illegal aliens aren’t citizens and ineligible to vote, they should not have representation in Congress and Democrats shouldn’t benefit from additional congressional seats based on an illegal population.
“If unauthorized immigrants were excluded from the 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 and the Center’s estimates of the unauthorized immigrant population,” Pew research details. “Alabama, Minnesota and Ohio would each hold onto a seat that they would have lost if apportionment were based only on total population change.”
“In addition to these states, 11 more would gain or lose seats based on population change alone, whether unauthorized immigrants are included or excluded. Five states would gain one seat each: Arizona, Colorado, Montana, North Carolina and Oregon. Six states would lose one seat each: Illinois, Michigan, New York, Pennsylvania, Rhode Island and West Virginia,” Pew continues.
Democrats, whose congressional power is threatened by the citizenship question, sued in partnership with their leftist allies and the case made its way to the Supreme Court.
“The court's majority said the government has the right to ask a citizenship question, but that it needs to properly justify changing the long-standing practice of the Census Bureau,” NBC News reported at the time about the 5-4 decision. “The decision makes it difficult for the Commerce Department to justify the question and make it part of the census before the forms have to be printed in only a few weeks. But it leaves the door open for the government to try again, and some legal experts believe the government could succeed.”
The Trump administration complied with the ruling, but didn’t let it pass without pushback or explanation.
“Data on the number of citizens and aliens in the country is needed to help us understand the effects of immigration on our country and to inform policymakers considering basic decisions about immigration policy. The Census Bureau has long maintained that citizenship data is one of the statistics that is ‘essential for agencies and policymakers setting and evaluating immigration policies and laws,’’’ Trump said, disagreeing with the Court’s ruling.
“Today, an accurate understanding of the number of citizens and the number of aliens in the country is central to any effort to reevaluate immigration policy. The United States has not fundamentally restructured its immigration system since 1965. I have explained many times that our outdated immigration laws no longer meet contemporary needs,” he continued. “My Administration is committed to modernizing immigration laws and policies, but the effort to undertake any fundamental reevaluation of immigration policy is hampered when we do not have the most complete data about the number of citizens and non-citizens in the country.”
Now that Trump is back in the White House for a second term, it’s time to try again for the 2030 Census. That work is already underway and started on January 20, 2025. Counting illegal aliens to gain political power through congressional seats is a form of cheating and it must be stopped.
