|
 Senate Democrats have voted to block a Republican amendment that would have required next year's census to ask people whether they are U.S. citizens.
A proposal by Louisiana Republican Sen. David Vitter and Utah’s Robert Bennett would have excluded non-citizens from the population totals that are used to figure the number of congressional representatives for each state. Vitter and Bennett argued that the forthcoming Congressional reapportionment should not be swayed by illegal immigrants, whose numbers will give more seats to certain states, most of which elect Democrats.
“If the current census plan goes ahead, the inclusion of non-citizens toward apportionment will artificially increase the population count in certain states, and that will likely result in the loss of congressional seats for nine other states, including Louisiana,” Sen. David Vitter (R-La.) said in a statement issued before the vote.
"The current plan is to reapportion House seats using that overall number, citizens and non-citizens," Vitter said. "I think that's wrong. I think that's contrary to the whole intent of the Constitution and the establishment of Congress as a democratic institution to represent citizens."
Louisiana stands to lose one of its seven House seats in the upcoming round of reapportionment. Vitter says that if non-citizens were excluded, Louisiana and eight other states would keep or gain congressional seats that would go to California, Texas, Illinois and New York. Vitter said the other eight states were: North Carolina, South Carolina, Oregon, Pennsylvania, Mississippi, Michigan, Iowa and Indiana.
Vitter had hoped that Senators from the states losing seats would back his amendment.
Sen. Robert Bennett (R-Utah) also backed the bill, after introducing a similar measure earlier this year. He told the Washington Post that he didn't realize until only recently that Congressional reapportionment includes an accounting of non-citizens.
Though Bennett has no issue with the Census counting everyone living in the United States regardless of citizenship status, he does not want illegal immigrants to sway Congressional representation. If non-citizens were excluded from the census count for congressional apportionment, states with fewer immigrants would fare significantly better in the upcoming allocation of House seats. States such as California and Texas would fare worse than they would under the current way of allocating seats, which under the Constitution is based on the "whole number of persons" residing in a state.
Republicans are disadvantaged by the current rules of apportionment because non-citizens and illegal immigrants live in higher proportions in Democratic held states. Ethnic minorities generally vote for the Democrats. States with large illegal populations and non-citizens get extra federal aid since census data is also used to distribute billions of dollars in federal aid.
Critics said Vitter's plan would have been expensive. Census Director Robert Groves opposes the proposal and recently told lawmakers that it would greatly delay the decennial count.
Census officials and outside observers warned that passage of the Vitter-Bennett amendment would have required billions of additional dollars to rewrite, reprint and redeliver Census questionnaires already printed and awaiting delivery. More than 400 million of 600 million forms used for gathering census data have already been printed. It also would have required retraining of census workers. Basically, it would have completely upended the 2010 Census planning process, which began five years ago, said critics. "As we've said, the proposal is just not doable and we would have had to delay the census," Census Bureau spokesman Stephen Buckner said Thursday. "The 2010 census remains on track and on schedule, and we're moving forward to ensure we have an accurate count in 2010."
Critics said Vitter's plan would discourage immigrants from responding to the census. They also said that it's long been settled law that the apportionment of congressional seats is determined by the number of people living in each state, regardless of whether they are citizens. A separate survey already collects citizenship data.
They point out that the Constitution only says the government must perform an "enumeration" and says nothing explicitly about citizenship. Some groups also see the Vitter-Bennett amendment is a direct affront to the 14th Amendment, which discusses "equal protection" and that House seats will be apportioned to the states "according to their respective numbers, counting the whole number of persons in each State." Nothing explicit there about citizenship, they say. Vitter's home-state colleague, Democrat Mary Landrieu, recently said in a letter to Vitter that it would take a constitutional amendment to exclude immigrants from the count.
Arizona is one state that would be disadvantaged by not counting illegals and non-citizens. However, both Arizona Senators were for the amendment. Senator John McCain missed the vote but said he would have voted for it. "I think we should know, just as we should know how many citizens are here, we should know how many people who are here illegally as well. That makes sense," McCain said.
When asked if such a question might discourage participation in the census, which is used for purposes of congressional apportionment, McCain said: "I don't think you would scare a citizen off. I don't know why it would. I don't mind being asked if I'm a citizen or not."
All 58 Democrats plus the two Democratic-leaning independents in the Senate voted for cloture on the Commerce, Justice and Science appropriations bill thus blocking the citizenship question from moving forward. The 39 Republicans voted against cloture.
John Fisher teaches communications and does research in the area of mass media and political decision-making.
Trackback(0)
 |
TrackBack URI for this entry
Subscribe to this comment's feed
Show/Hide comments
