Now that President Trump has fulfilled his campaign pledge to sign executive orders on Inauguration Day to combat illegal immigration, the true fight over his immigration reform will take place in the courts.
While the ACLU and other anti-borders groups are busy filing challenges against the executive orders, a consortium of states has launched a lawsuit to achieve one of Trump’s goals: to prevent illegal immigrants from being counted in the census for apportionment in Congress.
Three days before Trump’s return to the White House, Kansas, Louisiana, Ohio, and West Virginia sued the Department of Commerce to amend the census protocol. While supporters of the program argue that people who live here illegally have the right to be counted, there is a more cynical and self-serving motive at work.
Apportionment is the process of allocating congressional districts and electoral votes to states based on their census population. If the census includes people who are here illegally, like it did in 2020, states with a large population, such as California, will receive additional congressional seats and electoral votes. States with low numbers lose congressional seats and electoral votes.
This is a heinous violation of our democratic principles, which state that only citizens and legitimate permanent residents of our country are eligible for representation in Congress. It also creates a perverse incentive for states to encourage illegal immigration in order to consolidate political power.
The Immigration Reform Law Institute, which is representing the plaintiffs in the lawsuit against the Commerce Department, has been actively involved in this topic for years and makes a solid case against the current approach. When a person, whether a voter or a nonvoter, such as a kid, is tallied in the census for apportionment, they are represented in our national government, including the House of Representatives.
However, no one from outside our national political community, in its broadest sense, should be allowed representation in our national government. And, as the Supreme Court and other federal courts have ruled, persons who are here illegally are not American citizens nor members of our national political community. According to simple reasoning, they should not be counted for apportionment reasons.
According to research, this legislation allows people who are here illegally a tremendous impact over our nation’s voting and representation. According to a recent research, about one in every ten New Jersey citizens came to America illegally.
This means that illegal immigration might account for roughly 10% of New Jersey’s electoral college votes and 10% of its House seats after 2030, despite the fact that the state is not even on the border. Consider the impact illegal immigration could have on census results in states such as California, Arizona, and Texas.
According to a 2020 analysis, Texas, Florida, and California each have one more congressional seat than they would have had illegal immigrants not been counted in the most recent census, while Alabama, Minnesota, and Ohio each have one less member as a result.
In the big picture, states that follow federal immigration laws are penalized, whereas states that break the law and facilitate illegal immigration are rewarded.
Reversing such an egregious policy has proven to be a daunting task.
The initial iteration of the Trump administration attempted to address this issue by adding a citizenship question to the 2020 Census, but were ultimately denied when the Supreme Court, in a 5-4 decision, agreed with anti-border activists in rejecting the question.
This erroneous ruling ensured that illegal immigration will inflate or deflate the number of congressional seats and Electoral College votes in states across the country into the 2020s.
The new Trump administration is flooding the zone with executive orders and other moves to secure our borders, remove criminal aliens, and enforce federal immigration law. A census triumph would be an excellent complement to that endeavor, operating in the best interests of American residents while also bringing common sense to our elections and representation in Washington. Our country’s direction should be determined by legal residents rather than foreigners who have arrived illegally.
