The Consequences of Not Having a Citizenship Question

Believe it or not, just days remain between now and 2020.  As a leap year, 2020 will bring a lot with it; including the Summer Olympics and a presidential election.  In addition to all of the events normally associated with leap years and even years in United States politics, another notable event will take place in 2020: the decennial census.  The Trump administration caused heads to explode in the mainstream media when it announced that it would include a citizenship question on the 2020 census.  Because of litigation, the administration ultimately abandoned the effort to ask a citizenship question.

The population figures outlined in the census determine the number of seats each state will receive in the United States House of Representatives and the Electoral College.  States with higher population growth rates enjoy more representation in those bodies in the first election following the census while states with lower rates of population growth would see their representation diminish.  If not for the effects of immigration, conservative states would consistently see their representation in Congress and the Electoral College increase because, as Ann Coulter put it, “Christians have lots of children and adopt lots of children; Liberals abort children and encourage the gay lifestyle in anyone with a flair for color.” In a separate column, Coulter noted how “Republican states, such as Utah and Kentucky, have been steadily gaining population, while liberal states, such as New York and Vermont, are consistent demographic losers.” Vermont already has the bare minimum number of seats in Congress (one) while New York has consistently lost representation in Congress throughout the past several censuses. 

Because of the citizenship question’s absence from the 2020 census, non-citizens and illegal immigrants will end up getting counted.  This will inevitably lead to states with high non-citizen and illegal immigrant populations, almost all of which vote Democratic in presidential elections, will have more representation in Congress than states with lower percentages of non-citizens and illegal immigrants.

A study by the Center for Immigration Studies found that Republicans have two dozen fewer seats in the House of Representatives and the Electoral College because illegal immigrants, non-citizens, and even legal immigrants and their children get counted in the census. The study took a look at several different scenarios for reapportionment; from removing only illegal aliens from the count to excluding legal and illegal immigrants and their US-born children.

Congressman Warren Davidson has introduced a remedy to solve this problem: The Fair Representation Amendment. I briefly touched upon this in my last blog post but I came across it after I had written much of the article. Explaining the rationale behind the bill, Davidson explained “American citizens give away a little more sovereignty with every census. With the widespread disregard for the rule of law with regard to immigration, the vision of the founding fathers is in jeopardy. The Fair Representation Amendment would restore fair representation to the states by ensuring each citizen’s vote has equal value. People here illegally are represented by their home country embassies, not by Congress.” Davidson forgot to mention that “people here illegally” also find adequate representation among the activists in the mainstream media as well as the judicial branch.  

According to the press release announcing Davidson’s amendment would “end the practice of counting non-citizens for electoral maps.” One of the scenarios outlined by the Center for Immigration Studies looked at what reapportionment looked like if the census did not count all non-citizens, including illegal aliens.  Not surprisingly, the sanctuary state of California would come out as the biggest loser in this and all other scenarios.  Should Davidson’s amendment become law, the Golden State would have three fewer seats in the House of Representatives.  Texas and Florida, Republican-leaning states with high foreign-born populations, would lose two seats and one seat, respectively.  The blue states of New Jersey and New York would have one fewer seat in the House of Representatives. Alabama and West Virginia, both likely to lose seats following the 2020 census, would not lose seats under this scenario; neither would the swing states of Minnesota, Michigan, and Ohio. Idaho, a conservative state that has seen rapid population growth, would see its representation in Congress increase as would the state of Missouri, which has a high population of evangelicals. Idaho receiving an additional seat in Congress certainly makes sense because the most recent American Community Survey shows that one of the state’s two congressional districts has a population north of 900,000.

In the past, President Trump has brought up the possibility of eliminating birthright citizenship; which enables children of illegal immigrants and non-citizens to automatically become United States citizens.  This has led to the lucrative industry of birth tourism; where expectant mothers come to the United States for the sole purpose of giving birth to their babies here.  Since the current immigration system favors the practice of chain migration, the parents of these “anchor babies” have good reason to expect to become United States citizens themselves down the line.  In response to President Trump’s desire to abolish birthright citizenship, critics have pointed to the Fourteenth Amendment; quite possibly the most misunderstood amendment in the United States Constitution.  Advocates for gay marriage successfully convinced the judicial branch in the United States to point to the amendment as justification for striking down state Constitutional amendments banning same-sex marriage all across the country while the Supreme Court cited the amendment as the justification when striking down parts of the Pennsylvania Abortion Control Act requiring women to notify their husbands and parents of their decision to have an abortion unconstitutional in Planned Parenthood v. Casey.

Supporters of birthright citizenship point to the first sentence of the amendment declaring 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” applies to the children of illegal immigrants born in the United States. Apparently, those who believe the Fourteenth Amendment requires automatic citizenship for the children of illegal immigrants forgot that its drafter, Senator Jacob Howard (R-MI), made it perfectly clear that the protections of the Fourteenth Amendment did not apply to “persons born in the United States who are foreigners, aliens, who belong to the families of ambassadors or foreign ministers.” The Fourteenth Amendment, like the other two “Reconstruction Amendments” added to the Constitution following the Civil War, exist for the sole purpose of ratifying the wrong of slavery.

As the report compiled by the Center for Immigration Studies pointed out, the reapportionment scenario excluding “non-citizens and their U.S.-born minor children” from the census, the likely result of the passage of the Fair Representation Amendment and the abolition of birthright citizenship would closely mirror the reapportionment figures excluding all “non-citizens” from the census count with minimal exceptions. The abolition of birthright cause California to lose an additional seat in the House of Representatives while Pennsylvania would gain a seat. 

While Davidson’s amendment seems like common sense, keep in mind that common sense finds itself on short supply inside the beltway.  As a proposed constitutional amendment, Davidson’s legislation has an even higher threshold for passage than most other bills.  In order for it to become part of the Constitution, it would need to secure the approval of two-thirds of the members of both Houses of Congress as well as the support of three-fourths of the states.  Absent a red wave of epic proportions, the passage of Davidson’s logical Fair Representation Amendment seems unlikely; especially because most of the Democrats in Congress come from states who have seen their representation on Capitol Hill inflated because illegal immigrants and non-citizens get counted in the census.  They will certainly have no desire to give up their power.  Still, Davidson deserves a lot of credit for putting America first more so than most of his Republican colleagues on Capitol Hill.  In addition to introducing the Fair Representation Amendment, Davidson voted against the Fairness for High Skilled Immigrants Act and a resolution condemning President Trump’s decision to withdraw troops from Syria; despite the fact that a majority of his GOP colleagues voted with Democrats in both cases.

Under the status quo, four states that voted for Trump in 2016 (Alabama, Michigan, Pennsylvania, and West Virginia) will lose one seat apiece following the 2020 census while four states that voted for Hillary Clinton (California, Minnesota, New York, and Rhode Island) will also lose one seat.  Meanwhile, only two Trump states (Arizona and Montana) will see their representation in Congress increase.  At the same time, the blue states of Colorado and Oregon will each receive an additional seat in the House of Representatives.  Check out the table below, an abbreviated version of the table presented in the Center for Immigration Studies report that takes a look at how the Electoral College would look under the two different scenarios I have discussed. All of the data matches the figures in the Center for Immigration Studies report but keep in mind that this table features electoral vote totals while the data used by the Center for Immigration Studies looks at the number of seats in Congress; which always adds up to two less than the number of electoral votes.

State	Projected Electoral Votes Under the Status Quo	Projected Electoral Votes w/o Non-Citizens and Their US-born children	Projected Electoral Votes w/o Non-Citizens
Alabama	8	9	9
Alaska	3	3	3
Arizona	12	12	12
Arkansas	6	6	6
California	54	50	51
Colorado	10	10	10
Connecticut	7	7	7
Delaware	3	3	3
District of Columbia	3	3	3
Florida	31	30	30
Georgia	16	16	16
Hawaii	4	4	4
Idaho	4	5	5
Illinois	19	19	19
Indiana	11	11	11
Iowa	6	6	6
Kansas	6	6	6
Kentucky	8	8	8
Louisiana	8	8	8
Maine	4	4	4
Maryland	10	10	10
Massachusetts	11	11	11
Michigan	15	16	16
Minnesota	9	10	10
Mississippi	6	6	6
Missouri	10	11	11
Montana	4	4	4
Nebraska	5	5	5
Nevada	6	6	6
New Hampshire	4	4	4
New Jersey	14	13	13
New Mexico	5	5	5
New York	28	27	27
North Carolina	16	16	16
North Dakota	3	3	3
Ohio	17	18	18
Oklahoma	7	7	7
Oregon	8	8	8
Pennsylvania	19	20	19
Rhode Island	3	4	4
South Carolina	9	9	9
South Dakota	3	3	3
Tennessee	11	11	11
Texas	41	38	39
Utah	6	6	6
Vermont	3	3	3
Virginia	13	13	13
Washington	12	12	12
West Virginia	4	5	5
Wisconsin	10	10	10
Wyoming	3	3	3

Since this whole blog post probably triggers the left beyond belief, I have decided to say something else that triggers the left: Merry Christmas!  Just this past week, the left went wild when Supreme Court Justice Neil Gorsuch dared to use the “GOP talking point” of Merry Christmas and comedian Whitney Cummings explained that she had a confrontation with human resources because an intern complained about her decision to use what Fox News’s Raymond Arroyo described as “the holiday greeting” that “dare not speak its name.” The left really needs to lighten up.  However, because they feel emboldened by the cushion of illegal immigrants and non-citizens giving them extra representation in Congress and the Electoral College, they don’t really see a need to.