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With No Final Say, Trump Wants To Change Who Counts For Dividing Up Congress' Seats:
President Trump released a memorandum Tuesday that calls for an unprecedented change to the constitutionally mandated count of every person living in the country — the exclusion of unauthorized immigrants from the numbers used to divide up seats in Congress among the states.
The memo instructs Commerce Secretary Wilbur Ross, who oversees the Commerce Department, to include in the legally required report of census results to the president "information permitting the President, to the extent practicable" to leave out the number of immigrants living in the U.S. without authorization from the apportionment count.
But the move by the president, who does not have final authority over the census, is more likely to spur legal challenges and political spectacle in the last months before this year's presidential election than a transformation of the once-a-decade head count, which has been disrupted by the coronavirus pandemic.
[...] Since the first U.S. census in 1790, both U.S. citizens and noncitizens — regardless of immigration status — have been included in the country's official population counts.
The fifth sentence of the Constitution specifies that "persons" residing in the states should be counted every 10 years to determine each state's share of seats in the House of Representatives. The 14th Amendment, which ended the counting of an enslaved person as "three fifths" of a free person, goes further to require the counting of the "whole number of persons in each state."
It is Congress — not the president — that Article 1, Section 2 of the country's founding document empowers to carry out the "actual enumeration" of the country's population in "such manner as they shall by law direct."
In Title 2 of the U.S. Code, Congress detailed its instructions for the president to report to lawmakers the tally of the "whole number of persons" living in each state for the reapportionment of House seats. In Title 13, Congress established additional key dates for the "tabulation of total population."
(Score: 5, Insightful) by Anonymous Coward on Friday July 24 2020, @11:12AM (55 children)
Disclaimer: I'm not a U.S. citizen or resident, and I'm not particularly well acquainted with U.S. law regarding elections. Also, I don't engage in politics at all.
But... isn't the entire article just the weirdest example of sophistry you've ever seen?
First, the premise of the story is that the U.S. President seems to be of the opinion that only legal residents of the country should be considered in the political process, and that this is something we should all be up in arms about. I'm sorry, but isn't that how it works in every country? Isn't that the only sane way for the system to work??
Second, the author seems to believe that using the word "unauthorized" is appropriate when it comes to people who refuse to follow lawful procedures, in this case for entering a country. Surely, the correct word would be"criminal", or perhaps "illegal?"
This is nothing but a blatant attempt at manipulating the reader by using clearly inappropriate terms to describe reality. How about we turn bank robbers into "unauthorized lenders"? And violent rioters into "protesters?" Oh, wait...
Now, the author may have a point with regards to who is and isn't authorized to validate a state census (the President vs. Congress), but again, is seems the President has just repeated what is already written in the U.S. constitution.
The crux of the matter is whether the term "persons residing in" should be interpreted to include "persons obtaining illegal access to." I would think the answer to that would be pretty obvious, but then I'm not an American.
(Score: 3, Interesting) by looorg on Friday July 24 2020, @11:45AM (7 children)
When I was reading this I was thinking the same. But there could be local differences between different types of elections, there are in some other countries. Such as you don't need to be a citizen to vote in local elections, just national elections. Just living in the place for a long enough period of time might be enough for local elections -- that said they are still, most likely, required to be legal or have the right to be there, they just don't have to be citizens.
That said if this is a normal census of the population you would want to know everybody, or have as much data as possible, you just want to separate the numbers into a legal residence/citizens and another column (or whatever) for the non-legal residence. But it would be odd to go through the trouble of performing a complete census of the population and then just ignore to count a significant part of the population, at least in certain states. Since the census will be used for other things then just dividing up political seats. For the municipalities etc it's important to know how many people there are since that in turn would impact things like infrastructure and services provided to be scaled to how many people are around -- not just legal people.
(Score: 5, Informative) by Anonymous Coward on Friday July 24 2020, @12:45PM (6 children)
As you talk about in your second paragraph, this is about the census count, not who can vote, which affects the distributions of seats in the House of Representatives and the Electoral College votes across the states. Cities tend to both have more immigrants and prefer the Democratic Party (i.e. the party currently out of power), so this would effectively decrease the political power of cities and thereby the Democratic Party. The US Constitution is very explicit about the count not being limited to voters, in that it explicitly lays out how to count slaves [wikipedia.org].
Non-citizen voting in the United States [wikipedia.org] is currently very rare. Around the late 1910s to early 1920s, there was a major anti-immigrant backlash in the United States; the most well-known effect is the Immigration Act of 1924 [wikipedia.org] better known as the "Asian Exclusion Act" as it basically banned immigration from Asia. But around the same time is when most states stopped allowing non-citizens to vote.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Friday July 24 2020, @01:42PM
You're missing a signficant historical component. All persons residing in the US at it's founding were considered to be citizens unless they declared otherwise, including slaves, hence the apportionment compromise.
However, several laws that were found to be Constitutional and have established precedent have determined that not all persons residing the US have access to all rights. Also the Supreme Court has ruled on multiple occasion that the President may control who is counted, unless it specifically goes against the letter of the Constitution (US citizens). Even in rejecting the addition of the citizenship question to the 2020 Census the SCOTUS unanimous opinion basically says that you probably have the ability to do what you want to do, but your legal premise was crap. We can't establish precedent on that. Please go back and use these references to construct a proper case.
Essentially, what you're proposing is that it is both legally and morally right that urban centers should import a ton of human capital, depress wages, lower quality of life, and increase taxation on the remaining polity while increasing their ability to vote themselves benefits (which, by the way would not have been permissible under original Constitutional law) from the overwhelming mass of voters who oppose such a premise.
Your argument is specious, fallacious, mean spirited and tyrannical hidden under a veneer of sophistry. Please, go do some underling task for your oligarchs and leave the rest of us alone.
(Score: 1, Interesting) by Anonymous Coward on Friday July 24 2020, @01:44PM
The irony in bringing up the 3/5s compromise is that the slave owners wanted slaves to be counted fully and equally. You are incentivizing those cities at states to import as many aliens as possible for as much power as possible to maintain the structures of cheap labor that do not follow the laws passed. Labor laws and immigration laws are being ignored to satisfy political power. As these laws are being ignored so to are others such as enforcing any federal law to maintain law and order. We are quickly turning into a nation of a mob instead of a nation of laws.
The more things change the more they stay the same. Democrats using an effective slave population to gain and maintain power in the federal government.
(Score: 1, Informative) by Anonymous Coward on Friday July 24 2020, @01:58PM (1 child)
I've lived most of my life in the suburbs about 30 miles from a large US city and we've always had a noticeably large population of "illegal" or "undocumented" or whatever the PC (Politically Correct) term is these days. They're mostly from Central America but most people refer to them as "Mexican" (because they come through Mexico to get to USA). They don't speak any English, usually work in construction, restaurants, lawn cutting / landscaping / gardening. In fact many job ads in those industries require Spanish-speaking ability.
In one town near me there used to be so many Spanish-only speakers that the local McDonald's had a dual-language (English and Spanish) menuboard 40 years ago. I'm sure that's common in areas of the US that are near Mexico, especially San Diego, Los Angeles, etc., but I'm talking 2,000 miles away from Mexico in northeast USA. They mostly worked in a very specific agricultural industry, and that was well known. I used to know a woman who had dated the son of the owner of a very large farm and she knew well about them bringing box-vans full of undocumented workers from Texas (where much of the US-Mexico border is). Gentrification occurred and the farms are now gone and so are the "illegals" and so is the McDonald's Spanish menuboard.
Point of all of this is: sure, cities have lots of immigrants, but there are more out in the 'burbs than may be commonly known. We tend to be quieter about things than city folks.
(Score: 3, Interesting) by bmimatt on Friday July 24 2020, @05:28PM
"I'm sure that's common in areas of the US that are near Mexico, especially San Diego, Los Angeles, etc., "
As a San Diego resident: no, you're wrong.
(Score: 1, Touché) by Anonymous Coward on Friday July 24 2020, @02:58PM
Well, in that case,we have an answer.
The "unauthorized persons" count as 3/5 of a person....
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Friday July 24 2020, @05:01PM
right, except i think this is more about how many congressional reps states with more illegals get. it's not fair for some reconquered territory like california to get more reps for all of their illegals. The current system gives illegals the vote, indirectly.
(Score: 2, Insightful) by Anonymous Coward on Friday July 24 2020, @11:45AM (14 children)
1. constitution says someone has to count how many people there are.
2. constitution says number of people determines number of congress representatives.
3. unauthorized immigrants are not eligible to vote.
4. it's an election year and the president asks to exclude unauthorized immigrants from the count.
point 4 here seems a bit strange to me. what if they are unauthorized simply because they're in the waiting list to get their authorization? and there are a number of other what-ifs.
constitution of the US, at the moment, seems to be based on the assumption that someone living in the US wants to stay there, even if right now they don't have all the paperwork done. this sort of makes sense if you think of the 1800s and early 1900s, when it was taken for granted that anyone could go to the US and start a new life from scratch (modulo the WASP thing and similar). if the president thinks the constitution should be changed, why not say that, rather than check if there are any loopholes around the easy interpretation?
(Score: 3, Insightful) by Username on Friday July 24 2020, @12:40PM (11 children)
Just read the constitution, and it says they're to be counted as 3/5ths of a person if they're taxed. The 14th amendment only says those born or naturalized, so they exist outside of that, so I'm assuming it goes back to the 3/4th thing.
I'm not a lawyer, but it makes sense not to count visitors to your state. Legal or otherwise.
(Score: -1, Offtopic) by Anonymous Coward on Friday July 24 2020, @01:49PM (10 children)
14th amendment also says "and subject to the jurisdiction thereof". Being in the US does not mean you are "subject to the jurisdiction thereof".
(Score: 5, Informative) by RS3 on Friday July 24 2020, @02:02PM (9 children)
Perhaps you don't know the definition of "jurisdiction", but if you're a visitor somewhere and you break the law, you don't get out of jail by saying "I'm only a visitor". So, in fact, "being in the US" most certainly DOES mean you're "subject to the jurisdiction thereof".
From Merriam-Webster: "Jurisdiction definition is - the power, right, or authority to interpret and apply the law."
(Score: 0, Disagree) by Anonymous Coward on Friday July 24 2020, @02:17PM (8 children)
Perhaps you don't understand the difference between the adjective subject and the noun subject. Any visitor must follow the local laws of that jurisdiction meaning they are under that authority of conduct. That does not mean they are a subject of that jurisdiction meaning a member of the state body politic.
The legal word for "undocumented immigrant" is illegal alien. All foreigners are aliens. Aliens are not citizens and do not have the same rights and responsibilities as a citizen.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Friday July 24 2020, @02:30PM (1 child)
On the other side, domestic criminals are citizens and should have the same rights and responsibilities as a citizen. How come they're not allowed to vote?
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Friday July 24 2020, @02:43PM
You can lose your right to life and liberty through due process of law.
The Constitution is not a suicide pact.
(Score: 2, Insightful) by Anonymous Coward on Friday July 24 2020, @03:58PM (4 children)
Which only means they cannot vote. They do have every other responsibility and rights. Someone with a Green Card can't vote, but it doesn't mean they are not a person and should not be counted in a census. They live in the same house and their kids go to same schools that everyone else goes to.
You are subject to the jurisdiction of where you reside. Be that for 6 months, 6 years or 60 years. Just because you can't vote in politics, means jack shit for purposes of the constitution. If you don't like it, amend the constitution to say that only "white males with land" are to be persons, like in the good old days.
(Score: -1, Troll) by Anonymous Coward on Friday July 24 2020, @04:44PM (3 children)
Buy a gun? Participate in armed organized militias? Run for public office?
Selective Service? The Draft if it comes back? Defend against all enemies of the US and constitution foreign and domestic? Can the US draft non-citizens? Serve on a jury?
The census being used to appropriate power in the federal government. Counting people is one thing. Appropriating power to people that have no legal claim to representation in the federal government is quite another. Also incentivizing states to break federal law to gain more power and money.
There is more to it than voting. Illegal aliens already broke federal law by entering illegally. It fundamentally undermines the point of the US being a nation of laws. It undermines the purpose of a government for the people by the people and the democratic processes to pursue that goal. Democracy means nothing if you ignore the laws created by democratic means.
As AC pointed out earlier, is kind of ironic that an effective slave population is being used to defend the power of the democratic party. Again.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Friday July 24 2020, @06:00PM (1 child)
The constitution is explicitly clear. There isn't room here to bend to some kind of "originalist" or "whaeverist" type of interpretive arguments. There is no confusion in language. You count everybody. Period. And you use that count to apportion representatives.
If you want to change it to alleviate your white grievances, then amend the Constitution. You can't reinterpret it because you are afraid of brown people, but you are allowed to change it if you are afraid. You just have to convince a lot of people to do that, but don't worry, you've got a guy at the top who is trying his damndest to scare all the other nervous white people.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Friday July 24 2020, @10:40PM
Finally, an ardent defender of the 2nd amendment. Preach, brother!
(Score: 2) by dry on Saturday July 25 2020, @03:32AM
Your Forefathers were pretty clear with their "no taxation without representation" slogan. If they pay taxes, they should be allowed to vote. Limiting voting to citizens only happened in the last century.
(Score: 5, Informative) by vux984 on Friday July 24 2020, @04:57PM
"illegal aliens" and "legal aliens" are still "subject to the jurisdiction" in which they reside. To wit, they are not 'subjects OF the united states' but they ARE 'subject TO the jurisdiction of the united states".
"Aliens are not citizens and do not have the same rights and responsibilities as a citizen."
However they do have a very large subset of those rights and responsibilities as a resident. Including the right to due process, and the responsibility to pay taxes for example.
(Score: 1, Insightful) by Anonymous Coward on Friday July 24 2020, @01:12PM (1 child)
When you go to a fast-food joint, and there's a line at the register, do you slip into the kitchen and start swiping food?
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Friday July 24 2020, @02:35PM
no, but I expect to be able to stay in the airconditioned enclosure if there is one.
(Score: -1, Troll) by Anonymous Coward on Friday July 24 2020, @11:57AM (9 children)
It's fascism, plain and simple. A relatively small chunk of the population, but one that has for whatever reason near 100% representation in the media, has been trying to increasingly aggressively impose their world view in the US. Any imagery that goes against this world view must be toppled and destroyed. Any language that does not support the view must be rewritten and reformed. Any action, no matter how extreme, that supports the worldview is acceptable. Any action that opposes the worldview, no matter how logical, must be aggressively snuffed out. And, worst of all, any person that goes against this world view, regardless of reason or justification, must be destroyed.
The issue is it's being largely driven by indoctrinated young individuals who simply don't know any better. They have been led to believe that if you believe [insert list of DNC talking points] that you can't be fascist. Indeed even if you look at places such as Wiki they now describe fascism as: "Opposed to liberalism, Marxism, and anarchism, fascism is placed on the far right within the traditional left–right spectrum.[4][5][6]". Yet if people so chose to do so they could peruse the Fascist Manifesto [wikipedia.org]. That was the booklet of ideas upon which Mussolini built up the original Fascist party from which the contemporary usage of the term originates. And if anybody reads that page they might quickly realize that Fascism has fuck all to do with "far right" and all this nonsense. That entire booklet is something near 100% of DNC voters (and a good chunk of GOP) would happily endorse. They're good ideas. Fascism has nothing to do with your ideology but everything to do with your behavior. And this sort of rewriting language, destroying statues, destroying the lives of anybody who disagrees with you, calling violent rioters peaceful protesters, and all of this other bullshit is plan and simple 100% fascism.
(Score: 2, Insightful) by khallow on Friday July 24 2020, @12:50PM
You can't base the ideology of a group like Fascists on public manifestos. They lie about everything, particularly promises, and those promises are pretty generic promises. The only real differences between Fascists and Communists of that time were that the Fascists would preserve in crippled, highly controlled form, existing systems like militaries, religions, and businesses, while the Communists would wholesale replace those with their own versions. Propaganda would then evolve to support those choices and these ideologies would attempt to take over other countries with the same themed tricks. My take is that's how Fascists became "right wing" and Communists became "left wing".
Those differences don't matter much. Both quickly devolved to absolute state power. And once you get there, it really doesn't matter how it happened.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Friday July 24 2020, @02:27PM (6 children)
>It's fascism,
Now, I don't want to scare you. But fascism is everywhere [wikipedia.org]!!!11!1 Especially around that notorious fascist Abraham Lincoln.
Spooky. I know.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Friday July 24 2020, @04:43PM (5 children)
Suspending habeas corpus was a pretty fascist thing to do. Lincoln may have preserved the integrity of the country, but I understand why
Hollywoodtheatre star Booth did what he did.(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Friday July 24 2020, @05:09PM (4 children)
During a civil war to free slaves. Such an ass hole. Extreme circumstances demanded extreme measures.
>but I understand why theatre star Booth did what he did.
Booth being butt hurt that his side lost using violence during a declared peace in an attempt to force his ideology save hell or high water. Sounds rather familiar to antifa thugs. What's even more pathetic is that the South, accepting their lose, did not herald Booth as a hero that Booth thought he was. Booth was hated for what he had done and died as a traitor to the South and the North.
You know happened after Lincoln was assassinated? Andrew Johnson, a Democrat, assumed office and stymied the Republican effort of Reconstruction and Emancipation.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Friday July 24 2020, @08:49PM (3 children)
The war was not to free slaves. That was just a convenience for the side that happened to win. Not saying that freeing the slaves should not have happened, but let's at least not lie to ourselves about the motives there.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Friday July 24 2020, @11:57PM (2 children)
That's a lie and you know it's a lie. Read The Declaration of Causes of Seceding States numbnuts.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Saturday July 25 2020, @12:25PM (1 child)
The south was fighting to keep their slaves, the north was fighting to keep the south. North didn't care about slavery except as a military and political lever.
(Score: 1, Insightful) by Anonymous Coward on Saturday July 25 2020, @04:25PM
And of course Missouri, Maryland, Kentucky and Delaware remained under the authority of the North, but kept slavery until the 13th Amendment was adopted. Did West Virginia too after they seceded from Virginia? If I recall correctly, the Emancipation Proclamation only applied to "states in rebellion".
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Saturday July 25 2020, @08:34AM
From the Wikipedia (not "Wiki") page on the Facist Manifesto you link to:
Fascism isn't considered to be far right because of the original manifesto but because of what it turned into. Mussolini initially tried to "out-socialist the socialists" to gain power but that had little in common with the nationalist and corporatist dictatorship he subsequently established. As Mussolini kept calling that fascism he redefined the term himself, and that is what it refers to today.
(Score: 2, Interesting) by Anonymous Coward on Friday July 24 2020, @12:52PM (1 child)
"I'm sorry, but isn't that how it works in every country?"
Actually no. There are a lot of things in the U.S. law that are very different than other countries. Citizenship by birth residence to start with.
The government represents the people within its jurisdiction, whether it honors those people with title or no. This ties in with the "All men are created equal with certain inalienable rights" thing. Of course that isn't law, just the sales pitch for the law. But generally that is the way it is supposed to work, and defines the fundamental basis for the derived authority of the state.
We have no kings here. Or we had none, until Bush II created an inward facing military and unlawful institutions posing as courts of law. Since of course there are no secret courts in the United States (article 1), which means that any courts that are secret, are by definition not courts of law, and posess no lawful jurisdiction.
If the law isn't the law, then an undocumented worker can pull the string on a guillotine just as easily as a documented one.
(Score: 2) by DeVilla on Saturday July 25 2020, @05:25PM
That's awesome! So the 1%ers can start buying up empty land in the midwest and pay enough of unauthorized immigrants to live there, creating a new congressional district. Then have say 5 family members list the town as their "legal residence" to give themselves greater representation in congress and the electoral college. That's genius.
(Score: 3, Informative) by helel on Friday July 24 2020, @02:13PM (8 children)
I don't know the law your locality operates under but in the United States the constitution clearly states that the number of representatives each state receives is "the whole number of free persons, including those bound to service for a term of years and excluding Indians not taxed, three fifths of all other Persons." So, the law is quite clear, everyone is counted unless they are a slave or a citizen of the first nations. To remove undocumented residents would require an amendment to the constitution, an act quite difficult to achieve.
Ah, I see you're quite familiar with US politics and fully versed in the lingo. In the future if you're going to pretend to be an outsider to our politics it might do you better to focus on dictionary definitions in which case someone who does not have authorization to be in the US could be referred to as "unauthorized." As I understand it the more common term outside the US is "irregular immigrant" so next time you could suggest that as the "correct" term for the article to use.
Is I quoted above, the answer is obvious and includes all "free persons" residing in a state, not just those who have their paperwork in order. This is nothing short of a blatant attack on the United States constitution.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Friday July 24 2020, @02:26PM
Fascists lie and decieve, and TrumpCo is fascism mad manifest. Only the blind republicans around here fall for that bullshit, but they are desparate to seem legitimate while maintaining their image of freedom loving civil society types.
It is getting to be repulsive how fascist they are willing to become while trying blame the people actually fighting for freedom as "the real fascists and racists." They really don't seem to realize how ridiculous they look to anyone that bothers to educate themselves.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Friday July 24 2020, @03:11PM (6 children)
How can they be "Free Persons" when they are subject to removal from the country when they are caught.
(Score: 2) by helel on Friday July 24 2020, @03:17PM (5 children)
A free person, in the constitution of the United States, is anyone who is not a slave. They are not slaves, hence they are definitionally free persons.
(Score: 2) by VLM on Friday July 24 2020, @10:08PM (4 children)
Close but not quite right.
A free person is one who's rights were recognized by law.
For your example of slaves, its basically the same idea.
The concept of "who have rights recognized by law" is usually interpreted as citizens.
There are weird corner cases to consider such as foreign diplomats with diplomatic immunity or foreign recreational travelers holding internationally recognized passports and visa documents.
Merely being in the boundaries of the country would seem to mean little; should a passenger in a non-stop jet aircraft flight from Canada to Mexico be considered when determining population statistics for Illinois if he merely flew over the state at midnight on a certain date? How about the Russian space astronauts on the ISS, what if the ISS passed over Wyoming on a certain date does that mean WY gets more congressional reps? Think about it, the ISS astronauts are probably 1% of the population of Wyoming LOL.
(Score: 2) by helel on Friday July 24 2020, @10:19PM (2 children)
Firstly, the constitution clearly and plainly recognizes the rights of "persons" and "free persons" as district classes apart from citizens, so no, the concept is not limited to citizens. If they had meant citizens I think it's fair to say they would have used that word instead, as they use it elsewhere.
Secondly, I am addressing what is in the constitution, not whether or not it should be that way. If your argument is "the constitution should be changed because the way it distributes representatives doesn't make sense in a world with travel faster than a horse" that's fine but it doesn't change what is in the document right now.
(Score: 2) by VLM on Friday July 24 2020, @10:39PM (1 child)
Well, historically the constitution description is merely entertaining to debate how it would have been back in 1850. The 14th amendment in the bill of rights supersedes it
So essentially if illegal aliens are participants in crime by nature of being illegal, AND are not allowed to vote in federal elections (both true) then the basis of representation in congress is reduced by the number of illegals.
Yes under the original constitution illegals count for "Basis of representation" but the 14th superseded that back in the late 1860s.
So if the battle of columbus happened in 1850 technically Pancho Villa and his soldiers would have counted for congressional representation numbers while they were raiding, but seeing as it happened in 1916 Pancho and soldiers would not have counted for congressional representation stats under the 14th amendment.
Frankly not sure why anyone wants modern invaders to count any more than Pancho's invaders back in 1916. The idea that all subversion must be legalized is weird.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Saturday July 25 2020, @07:09AM
It's not the "being illegal" that makes it so they can't vote, its the not being a "citizen" that does. Here is an easy test to illustrate that. Can a legal alien vote? No, because they are an alien. The crime of illegal entry doesn't change that. Nor would the lack of a current conviction of a crime for the people in the U.S. as such mean that you'd think they should be allowed to vote. Although, you are innocent until proven guilty in a court of law...
(Score: 2) by dry on Saturday July 25 2020, @03:44AM
As a Canadian, when I fill out our census, I'm supposed to enter the number of people residing in the house, not flying over it. And rights are clearly for everyone in our Constitution excepting some political rights which are only for citizens, rights of movement which is only for people legally in the country and some that only apply to flesh and blood humans. Most of your Constitution talks about people, not citizens, once again with some political exceptions.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Friday July 24 2020, @02:42PM
This is America where corporations are people and people aren't people.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Friday July 24 2020, @04:31PM
Nor a Democrat.
(Score: 1, Interesting) by Anonymous Coward on Friday July 24 2020, @08:54PM
> President seems to be of the opinion that only legal residents of the country should be considered in the political process, and that this is something we should all be up in arms about. I'm sorry, but isn't that how it works in every country? Isn't that the only sane way for the system to work??
No, and specifically the US has a super complicated history with who counts. First, the job of a US House representative is absolutely not to represent the voters -- it is to represent the district. And that's an important distinction. When you represent a district, you represent the interests of all the people in that district. When the system was established, only a small fraction of the people in a district could actually vote. Landowning men were the only ones casting votes, but it would have been considered an obvious dereliction of duty for a representative to vote to pass a law that made it perfectly legal to murder women and children, for example. In the early days of the republic, there was also a lot of complexity from our colonial roots about how to count native Americans who were residents of an area but maybe not citizens of the US and had no legal status, but certainly not illegal immigrants because they had been there longer, etc. Likewise, it's contrary to the office to try and pass laws that unfairly disadvantage foreign workers with legal greencards, despite the fact that they can't vote, etc.
A representative represents *everybody* who lives in the district. Period. That's the job. And the districts are allocated based on how many people live in a place. Period. Your lack of iumagination about how things could work doesn't effect the text of the Constitution, or the long standing legal precedents governing the interpretation of it.
> Second, the author seems to believe that using the word "unauthorized" is appropriate when it comes to people who refuse to follow lawful procedures, in this case for entering a country. Surely, the correct word would be"criminal", or perhaps "illegal?"
We also have a complicated history in the US with racists trying to paint groups of people as inherently illegal persons with no rights because they made a misdemeanor border crossing that isn't a serious crime. Basically everybody in America has committed some sort of misdemeanor at some point, and it wouldn't be useful to paint all people as "Illegals." Since the racists have made a concerted effort to dehumanize and other groups by referring to them as Illgals, many news organizations prefer not to use that framing since it would not be neutral phrasing within the social context of the United States, even if it appears neutral and accurate in a vacuum.
> And violent rioters into "protesters?" Oh, wait...
If you are referring to the recent protests, thousands of protesters show up to protest, articulate clear demands, and then get shot at by police. in general, none of the protests have actually been riots, they have only become violent by being attacked by police. And in places like Portland, protesters are sufficiently organised they they are adopting things like shield wall formations to defend themselves from police attacks. The definition of a riot requires it to be violent and disordered, neither of which actually applies to the protesters.
> The crux of the matter is whether the term "persons residing in" should be interpreted to include "persons obtaining illegal access to." I would think the answer to that would be pretty obvious, but then I'm not an American.
If they are "persons" and they are "residing in" then there is nothing in the text of the Constitution that asks how they got there when it comes to apportionment of districts.
(Score: 2) by VLM on Friday July 24 2020, @09:54PM
The sole purpose for the USA is to serve Israel at the whim of Israeli controlled leadership. Its weird, I know. We're like the only country in the world where our leaders want the genocide the majority of our population. Well, maybe some countries in Europe are doing that with unrestricted invasion.
(Score: 2, Interesting) by Anonymous Coward on Saturday July 25 2020, @12:09AM (3 children)
Only legal ciitzens are allowed to vote, but that doesn't mean that legal residents shouldn't have representation. Around here there are a ton of legal aliens who came here from various other countries and some stay for a few years before heading back, but I know people who have lived in the US for decades without getting citizenship. Should these people really be cutoff from representation just because they're not citizens?
Or, how about the people who lose their right to vote due to committing a felony, shouldn't they have somebody that's representing them?
The reality, is that this has far more to do with the fact that these people disproportionately live in places which vote Democratic and the GOP wants to end it as an effort to give themselves more power. They can't win elections without engaging in elections fraud, so this is the kind of thing they get.
A happy side effect for them, is that this would require redistricting, and provide another chance to draw the lines so that Democrats never have control of congress again.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Saturday July 25 2020, @12:46PM (2 children)
The problem with arguing about these issues on the internet is that they are /state/ issues. Most states either abridge the right to vote only while incarcerated or not at all, only a handful of states take voting rights from felons permanently. Allowing resident aliens to vote in elections is a local issue for local elections, national elections might be a different story.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Saturday July 25 2020, @04:22PM (1 child)
So a state could theoretically allow non-citizens to vote? The federal government just prescribes who cannot be excluded.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Sunday July 26 2020, @08:39PM
Yes. The Constitution sets floors and ceilings. States are free to do whatever they want between those ranges.
(Score: 4, Insightful) by bzipitidoo on Saturday July 25 2020, @02:21AM
> This is nothing but a blatant attempt at manipulating the reader by using clearly inappropriate terms to describe reality
That's Standard Operating Procedure in politics. But having said that, politicians do differ in how often and how bigly they lie. Conservatives are worse. It's not only a matter of degree either. It's their goals. Some are crooks out to loot the public treasury, and party affiliation and consequences be damned. A few are so dumb that if scrap metal paid enough, they would cause bridge collapses from stealing the metal from the bridgework. The more sophisticated crooks restrain their greed enough to give themselves cover.
The Republican Party in the US made a damn fool move in courting the worse among the voters, because they wanted people they could easily sucker. Throw these moronic, trollish voters scraps of the raw meat they want, and laugh all the way to the bank as those voters ignore or don't even notice all the corruption and graft. One of the names for what they did is the Southern Strategy. The Party of Lincoln, who abolished slavery, has made a complete u-turn and is now pro-Confederacy. It's sickening. But now they're stuck. They gathered up all the worst bigots and idiots, and unintentionally made them a lot more unified and coherent. The rot has now spread so much that the leadership that pulled this stunt is either getting the boot in the primaries or converting to extremism themselves, and the extremists have taken control. And to the surprise of no one with a brain, they've made a huge mess.
In one respect true to their label, the social conservatives want to turn the clock back to times when people were more ignorant and savage, and when strength counted for more. Anti-education and anti-science stances fit well with that goal. They are also anti-democracy, all too willing to throw away the hard won independence and right to vote because they want a Big Man to tell them what to do and think, and most of all, lead them on a crusade against other peoples, whom they see as rivals and competitors for resources and land, and the biggest threat to themselves, far more of a threat than Global Warming which they easily fit into their view of everything as just ploys to get topsides in the eternal struggle for mates and resources. To them, Global Warming is nothing more than a liberal conspiracy to trick them into sacrificing resources so the liberals can have more. The kinds of lies conservatives tell and believe are all aimed, if only instinctively, towards that Darwinian goal. White nationalists fear the Great Replacement, while wishing to inflict a Great Replacement of their own.
(Score: 1, Interesting) by Anonymous Coward on Saturday July 25 2020, @06:59AM
Is the actual text of the census requirement. What that has been interpreted to mean the entire time was that there are three categories of persons, free individuals, self-sovereign Indians, and slaves. Slaves were 3/5th of a person. Indians that opted out of taxation on their sovereign land don't count at all. Everyone else who is considered "domiciled" in a state is counted as they are "free persons," regardless of legal status, citizenship, or ability to vote.
Now this modified the original rule. It now mentions only two of the previous categories. The self-sovereign Indians that opted out of taxation and "persons" taking the place of "free persons." Similarly to the previous rule, they interpreted that to mean all persons domiciled in that state, regardless of legal status, citizenship, or ability to vote.
One out defenders of changing the rule argue, despite its 100+ year history and original understanding, is that the last section dealing with disenfranchisement modifies the rule since it only mentions "male inhabitants" "21 years of age" and "citizens." The problem with that is it flies in the face of the original understand and how it was applied. Despite only mentioning men in the second part, they have been counting everyone and using it for apportionment, rather than just using men of the right kind. Instead, what they would do is count everyone and then apply the whole disqualification to the group. Say 100,000 women and children, 1 white man, and 1 disenfranchised black man (that isn't a "rebel" or "criminal") lived in a state. The understanding is that their population for apportionment purposes would be 50,001 in order to reflect that half the voting population couldn't vote, in order to disincentivize the southern states from disenfranchising former slaves. So both the text, original understanding, and the 230+ year and 150+ year history for Article One and the 14th Amendment, respectively, as they were actually used clearly shows that a "person" in the state includes all persons in the state that weren't specifically excluded in the text, i.e. untaxed Indians.
(Score: 2) by Mykl on Sunday July 26 2020, @10:24PM
The use of the word "unauthorised" is appropriate, because it's not illegal to enter the country without permission for the purpose of seeking asylum. Now I grant you that there are a great many people who have entered the country without permission who have no intention of applying for asylum whatsoever. But you can't prima facie claim that all non-permitted entries are "illegal", despite how passionately some people would like that to be the case.