SoylentNews is people
SoylentNews
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, 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.