When they do the census and reapportion the number of representatives each state gets in Congress, do they count illegal immigrants in their calculations? Should they?
*I realize the second question is more GD, so if that’s where the bulk of the replies go, feel free to move as appropriate.
From the 14th Amendment:
2. 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. But when the right to vote at any election for the choice of electors for President and Vice-President of the United States, Representatives in Congress, the Executive and Judicial officers of a State, or the members of the Legislature thereof, is denied to any of the male inhabitants of such State, being twenty-one years of age, and citizens of the United States, or in any way abridged, except for participation in rebellion, or other crime, the basis of representation therein shall be reduced in the proportion which the number of such male citizens shall bear to the whole number of male citizens twenty-one years of age in such State.
I read this as illegal immigrants should be counted for apportionment but states are allowed to ban them from voting. I’m sure a DOPEy lawyer can give us a case citation.
Yes, they count every person. Including immigrants (legal or illegal), people in prison, people in a coma in hospitals, etc. Everybody!
OF course, illegal immigrants are more likely to fail to return their census forms, so they are likely to be undercounted.
But in highly predictable ways. The experts at the Census Bureau know about this, and would like to make statistical adjustments in the counts to adjust for known undercounts. But Congress has prohibited them from doing this. Apparently, those in control of Congressfeel that a more accurate count of illegal immigrants in the census would shift redistricting in ways they don’t want.
The question as to whether this clause requires that both legal and illegal aliens be included in the basis of apportionment has never been definitively litigated. The issue has occasionally been controversial; you can read one side of the controversy and some background information here.
No one has ever questioned that states have the power to bar non-citizens, both legal and illegal, from voting. All 50 states currently do so. A few local jurisdictions allow non-citizens to vote in local elections.
Actually, Congress authorized the Secretary of Commerce (who oversees the Census Bureau) to make any necessary statistical adjustments awhile back, but the Secretary during the administration of Bush the Wiser (around the time of the 1990 census) decided against it. This led to political recriminations, of course, as many Democrats (probably correctly) believe that those who historically undercounted - immigrants, the homeless, the poor - are by and large Democrats. Since the census determines Congressional reapportionment, this was a big deal.
In 1999, however, the U.S. Supreme Court ruled 5-4 that the Constitution means what it says in requiring an “actual enumeration,” so statistical adjustments are now prohibited:
For more, see: http://www.sciencenews.org/pages/sn_arc99/3_6_99/bob1.htm