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: 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...