Earlier in the year the Trump administration abandoned an effort to include a citizenship question on the 2020 Census amid challenges from the courts.
It all had to do with representation, as the differing populations of the states will change how many representatives each has. Instead of including just citizens, America’s population total includes non-citizen legal residents and illegal immigrants too. While neither of the latter two groups can vote, they’re still included when it come to determining how much representatives each state receives. Trump wanted to include the citizenship question so that illegals wouldn’t unfairly boost the representation of some states (by deterring them from answering it).
Since illegal aliens tend to reside in a select few states that have more “sanctuary” type policies, it’s Blue States that get their representation amplified at the expense of Red States.
According to Conservative Review’s Daniel Horowitz:
The Center for Immigration Studies published new estimates of the 2020 census that show states won by President Trump wind up losing 24 seats in the House, corresponding with a loss of 24 electoral votes, thanks to mass migration and our policy of counting immigrants for reapportionment. In total, 26 seats are transferred as a result of factoring in total immigration, which includes those who became naturalized.
Bear in mind that these are the overall effects – not the changes in seats specifically attributable to the 2020 census.
Overall, 19 of the total 26 seats transferred in reapportionment due to immigration will be awarded to “solid” Democrat states: California, New York, New Jersey, Massachusetts, and Illinois. Texas is the only red state that stands to gain seats from immigration.
Those are the figures including the impact of legal nonresidents too, mind you. The merits of their inclusion for the purpose of representation is up for debate, but including illegals should not be. Looking solely at illegal immigrants, Horowitz notes that:
What is perhaps the most insidious element of this is that illegal immigrants alone cause a transfer of five seats, three of them the result of this new census. “Illegal immigrants alone in 2020 will redistribute three seats, with Ohio, Alabama, and Minnesota each having one fewer seat than they otherwise would have had, while California, New York, and Texas will have one additional seat,” note the authors. This is how blue states get bigger and Texas becomes more liberal. Thus, as we continue to debate the prevalence of illegal aliens voting in our elections, this is a reminder that even those who don’t vote are essentially voting by redistributing and distorting our representation.
For as much as Democrats made a stink about alleged “Russian interference” in the 2016 election, they don’t mind foreign interference in elections when its illegal immigrants boosting their representation.
