Battle over a Census question is more important than you might think

Should illegal aliens have a major influence on who gets elected to Congress?  Most citizens would probably say No.

But illegal alien advocates and open-borders enthusiasts say Yes.

Population figures reported in the decennial Censuses determine apportionment of seats in Congress.  Too, each state’s electoral vote in presidential elections is tied to the number of seats it has in the House of Representatives.  So accurate figures on the number of citizens are very important.

Pres. Trump’s Secretary of Commerce, the agency which directs the Census Bureau, proposes to reinstate a question in the 2020 Census asking whether respondents are U.S. citizens.   Prior decennial census surveys of the U.S. consistently asked citizenship questions up until 1950.  

The 2020 Census would ask: “Is this person a citizen of the United States?”

Oregon’s Attorney General Rosenbaum joined a lawsuit by several states to block inclusion of the question. The lawsuit was announced soon after California had also sued to block inclusion of the question, and needless to say, Rosenbaum did not ask Oregon citizens what they think.

Kansas’ Secretary of State Kris Kobach, a lawyer with expertise in immigration matters, sheds light on the subject in an interesting Breitbart article posted recently.  Two excerpts:

“Counting illegal aliens allows a state with millions of illegal aliens to unfairly inflate the number of congressional seats and electoral votes it has. Indeed, if the leadership of the state has little regard for the rule of law – as is the case in California – it creates a perverse incentive for the lawless state to invite more illegal aliens to come in. …

“ … California’s arguments are weak, and the lawsuit is a loser. The federal government will prevail, if not in the district court, then on appeal. But the ferocity of the backlash from the Left demonstrates just how important the citizenship question is. America’s willful ignorance concerning the number of citizens and the number of aliens in the country must end.”