My Perspective: The U.S. Census Is Politicized

I wrote about the U.S. Census and how it could become politicized in an early article entitled “Politicizing the U.S. Census Count”. Now it seems as if the U.S. Census is truly becoming politicized just as I predicted but not in the way of having it being run by the White House directly but indirectly it seems as if the White House and other interest groups are getting their way in terms of how the U.S. Census will be counted. Writing for the Wall Street Journal John S. Baker and Elliott Stonecipher express their concerns about the census scheduled for next year. This census is not only used to determine the population of America but will also determine the apportionment of House members and Electoral College votes for each state.

Why are the two men concerned? Well, it seems that illegal immigrants will be included:
Instead, the U.S. Census Bureau is set to count all persons physically present in the country—including large numbers who are here illegally. The result will unconstitutionally increase the number of representatives in some states and deprive some other states of their rightful political representation. Citizens of “loser” states should be outraged. Yet few are even aware of what’s going on…

The 2010 census will use only the short form. The long form has been replaced by the Census Bureau’s ongoing American Community Survey. Dr. Elizabeth Grieco, chief of the Census Bureau’s Immigration Statistics Staff, told us in a recent interview that the 2010 census short form does not ask about citizenship because “Congress has not asked us to do that.” Yes you are hearing this currently, our U.S. Congress didn’t ask the Census Bureau to use the long form which asks about citizenship. This is truly a major problem but below are two examples of the affects of using the short form.

Two examples:
According to the latest American Community Survey, California has 5,622,422 noncitizens in its population of 36,264,467. Based on our round-number projection of a decade-end population in that state of 37,000,000 (including 5,750,000 noncitizens), California would have 57 members in the newly reapportioned U.S. House of Representatives… However, with noncitizens not included for purposes of reapportionment, California would have 48 House seats (based on an estimated 308 million total population in 2010 with 283 million citizens, or 650,000 citizens per House seat). Using a similar projection, Texas would have 38 House members with noncitizens included. With only citizens counted, it would be entitled to 34 members.

It is important to keep in mind that Democrats and Republicans both support a different approach to the census. Republicans support the house-to-house approach, meaning that government officials visit every home in a district to determine whether inhabitants have the right to vote. Only those who do are included. Democrats, on the other hand, support using samples, meaning they only want to look at the total amount of inhabitants. This means that illegal immigrants will be included. So one should ask why do both parties disagree so strongly about how a census should be held? Simple; they only care about their own interests. Republicans favor house-to-house because it helps them while Democrats want to include illegal immigrants because doing so helps them since Hispanics went heavily in Barack Obama’s and the Democratic Party favor in 2008 unlike it did in previous Presidential and midterm election years.

The approach favored by Obama favors his own party. He uses the house-to-house method but inhabitants will not be asked whether they have the American nationality. Considering the fact that a census is held only once every ten years it is of vital importance to keep it as pure as humanly possible. Obama’s system has too many weaknesses. Does this mean, then, that Republicans are innocent? Of course not. They would do the exact same thing as the Democrats if it would be in their interest. But that doesn’t mean Obama’s plan shouldn’t be criticized because it should.

The U.S. Census count will be unconstitutional and it seems as if no Democrat is willing to stand up to President Obama and Democratic Party leaders to make sure the U.S. Census is not politicized but it is accurate and pure as it should be. The U.S. Census shouldn’t be bias or partisan but it should be unbiased and non-partisan so that the most accurate, precise and best results are calculated that portray the exact number of legal citizens in America and illegal citizens not to threw the illegal outs but to keep our data as accurate as we can. We as a nation should be going door to door as Republicans want and the Democrats will do but we should be asking individuals about their citizenship not to lock them up for being illegal but to try to finally get the most accurate count of the U.S. population as possible especially of those who are legal and illegal.

The U.S. Census shouldn’t be used as a ploy to appeal to the Hispanic base of this country particularly illegal immigrants but instead it should be used to document people accurately and currently so that our nation can know who is legal and who is illegal. Still the U.S. Census shouldn’t be used to make up for the fact that we have a border problem in this nation so it shouldn’t be used to punish illegal immigrants but it shouldn’t be used to reward them and their states with an additional Congressional seat either. As mentioned already, California could get nine House seats it doesn’t deserve because illegal aliens will be counted in 2010. Next year’s census will determine the apportionment of House members and Electoral College votes for each state. To accomplish these vital constitutional purposes, the enumeration should count only citizens and persons who are legal, permanent residents. But it won’t.

This is a shame and this is what all Americans should be wondered about because it is already projected that most northern Mid-Western states will lose at least one or more congressional seats. In 1790, the first Census Act provided that the enumeration of that year would count “inhabitants” and “distinguish” various subgroups by age, sex, status as free persons, etc. Inhabitant was a term with a well-defined meaning that encompassed, as the Oxford English Dictionary expressed it, one who “is a bona fide member of a State, subject to all the requisitions of its laws, and entitled to all the privileges which they confer.” Thus early census questionnaires generally asked a question that got at the issue of citizenship or permanent resident status, e.g., “what state or foreign country were you born in?” or whether an individual who said he was foreign-born was naturalized. Over the years, however, Congress and the Census Bureau have added inquiries that have little or nothing to do with census’s constitutional purpose.

By 1980 there were two census forms. The shorter form went to every person physically present in the country and was used to establish congressional apportionment. It had no question pertaining to an individual’s citizenship or legal status as a resident. The longer form gathered various kinds of socioeconomic information including citizenship status, but it went only to a sample of U.S. households. That pattern was repeated for the 1990 and 2000 censuses. The 2010 census will use only the short form. The long form has been replaced by the Census Bureau’s ongoing American Community Survey. Dr. Elizabeth Grieco, chief of the Census Bureau’s Immigration Statistics Staff confirmed that the 2010 census short form does not ask about citizenship because “Congress has not asked us to do that.”

So because the census (since at least 1980) has not distinguished citizens and permanent, legal residents from individuals here illegally, the basis for apportionment of House seats has been skewed. According to the Census Bureau’s latest American Community Survey data (2007), states with a significant net gain in population by inclusion of noncitizens include Arizona, California, Florida, Illinois, Nevada, New Jersey, New York and Texas. (There are tiny net gains for Hawaii and Massachusetts.)

This makes a real difference. Here’s why:
As previously mentioned according to the latest American Community Survey, California has 5,622,422 noncitizens in its population of 36,264,467. Based on our round-number projection of a decade-end population in that state of 37,000,000 (including 5,750,000 noncitizens), California would have 57 members in the newly reapportioned U.S. House of Representatives. However, with noncitizens not included for purposes of reapportionment, California would have 48 House seats (based on an estimated 308 million total population in 2010 with 283 million citizens, or 650,000 citizens per House seat). Using a similar projection, Texas would have 38 House members with noncitizens included. With only citizens counted, it would be entitled to 34 members.

Of course, other states lose out when noncitizens are counted for reapportionment. According to projections of the 2010 Census by Election Data Services, states certain to lose one seat in the 2010 reapportionment are Iowa, Louisiana, Massachusetts, Michigan, New Jersey, New York, Ohio and Pennsylvania; states likely (though not certain) to lose a seat are Illinois, Minnesota, Missouri, and Ohio could lose a second seat. But under a proper census enumeration that excluded illegal residents, some of the states projected to lose a representative—including our own state of Michigan—would not do so.

As Baker and Stonecipher say, “The census has drifted far from its constitutional roots, and the 2010 enumeration will result in a malapportionment of Congress.” In the 1964 case of Wesberry v. Sanders, the Supreme Court said, “The House of Representatives, the [Constitutional] Convention agreed, was to represent the people as individuals and on a basis of complete equality for each voter.” It ruled that Georgia had violated the equal-vote principle because House districts within the state did not contain roughly the same number of voting citizens. Justice Hugo Black wrote in his majority opinion that “one man’s vote in a congressional election is to be worth as much as another’s.” The same principle is being violated now on a national basis because of our faulty census. The Census Bureau can of course collect whatever data Congress authorizes. But Congress must not permit the bureau to unconstitutionally redefine who are “We the People of the United States.”

This is why “We the People of the United States” are those citizens who are legal. I’m not against illegal immigrants who want a chance or an opportunity in life but I can’t go to another country and be included in their citizenship count as if I am a citizen of that nation. In fact, a non-naturalized citizen in the U.S. cannot even run for President unless our constitution changes. Therefore it should outrage us that illegal immigrants are controlling how congressional seats will be drafted thus altering the Electoral College format which can lead to perhaps super states in the Electoral College system i.e. Texas and California. We can’t afford to allow this to happen in our nation. The U.S. Census shouldn’t be politicized and the Obama administration should know better well President Obama should because he seems to be a fair and sensible man so let’s hope that common sense comes over him to fix this problem in the census process, otherwise many states are bound to lose one congressional could lose two as a result of the miscounting of who’s legal and illegal in this “Great” nation of ours. Thus transforming who “WE the People of the United States of America” truly is.