From Reuters:
“Trump orders voting districts to
exclude people in U.S. illegally”
President Donald Trump signed a memorandum on
Tuesday that would prevent migrants who are in the United States illegally from
being counted when U.S. congressional voting districts are next redrawn,
triggering swift rebukes from Democrats and at least one promise of litigation.
U.S. Census experts and lawyers say the action is legally dubious, and not
easily executed in practice. In theory, it could benefit Trump’s Republican
Party by eliminating the largely non-white population of migrants in the United
States illegally, creating voting districts that skew more Caucasian. It could
also cause populous states with large immigrant contingents to lose seats in
the 435-member U.S. House of Representatives, including big left-leaning states
like California - currently with 53 seats - and New York, with 27. The process
of drawing voting maps for federal congressional districts is known as
apportionment. “Including these illegal aliens in the population of the state
for the purpose of apportionment could result in the allocation of two or three
more congressional seats than would otherwise be allocated,” the memo said. Redistricting, in which voting districts are
redrawn to reflect changes in the population, is next slated for 2021, after
the results of the 2020 U.S. Census are in. Each state will be given a share of
the 435 congressional seats based on population. Historically, the distribution
of seats has been based on total population, regardless of immigration status.
Trump’s memo would exclude those not in the U.S. legally. Tom Wolfe, senior
counsel at the left-leaning Brennan Center, said the memo was “destructive
(and) pointless.”
‘SEE HIM IN COURT’ From a legal standpoint, the move is far
from a slam-dunk. Proponents of citizens-only voting districts argue each vote
should carry the same weight. If one district has far fewer eligible voters
than another, they say, each vote there has more influence on election
outcomes. But, while the U.S. Supreme Court has left the door open for
citizen-based voting maps for state legislatures, experts see it as a long shot
at the federal congressional level. That is because the U.S. Constitution
explicitly says congressional districts must be based on “the whole number of
persons” in each district, as counted in each decennial U.S. census. Dale Ho,
an attorney with the American Civil Liberties Union, vowed litigation, saying
in a statement, “We’ll see him in court, and win,” referring to the president. In
the memo, Trump said the word “persons” “has never been understood to include
... every individual physically present within a state’s boundaries.” In fact
it has, census experts say: Multiple federal laws have reinforced that
apportionment must include everyone, and U.S. Supreme Court precedent has
endorsed that view, said Joshua Geltzer, a constitutional law expert and
professor at Georgetown Law.
‘ANTI-GRAVITY’ Some see the order as mainly theater -
especially because it is unclear how Trump would gather the data necessary to
identify – and exclude – people here illegally. In 2019, the president signed
an executive order calling on states to provide his administration with
government records, such as driver’s license databases, that could be used to
determine the non-citizen population. Other surveys conducted by the U.S.
Census Bureau provide estimates of the non-citizen population. But those data
are incomplete and unreliable, demographers have argued. “There is no count,”
said Justin Levitt, a professor at Loyola Law School, in Los Angeles, and
former U.S. Department of Justice official under then-President Barack Obama, a
Democrat. “It’s as if (Trump) has ordered the National Basketball Association
commissioner to implement rules for the use of anti-gravity boots,” Levitt
said. “(The commissioner) says anti-gravity boots shall be permitted or shall
not be permitted — but they don’t exist.” Trump’s memorandum could prove
popular with the president’s base as he tries to generate enthusiasm for his
re-election in November, Levitt said. Trump has spent much of his presidency
seeking to limit the number of migrants who illegally enter the United States. His
past efforts to use the U.S. census to identify and limit the political power
of undocumented immigrants have faced roadblocks. In 2018, the administration
said it would ask respondents to the 2020 census whether they were citizens, a
move ultimately nixed by the Supreme Court. Following the defeat, Trump issued
an executive order in July 2019 aiming to determine citizenship status through
a trove of administrative records. The order is still facing litigation from
immigration advocates including the Mexican American Legal Defense and
Education Fund.
^ I believe that only legal US
citizens and nationals as well as legal tourists and Permanent Residents should
be counted in the official US Census. Illegal immigrants should be counted in
the same way that other criminals in jail are counted (since an illegal
immigrant broke a law and is a criminal in the pure sense of the word.) Districts
and States should not be rewarded for their criminals. I don’t know how Trump
plans to enforce this Order, but I do think it is a good one. ^
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