House GOP Passes Bill Adding U.S. Citizenship Question to Census

The Republican-controlled House narrowly handed a measure to add a citizenship query to the U.S. Census, which is taken each 10 years to measure the inhabitants and apportion congressional districts.

The Equal Representation Act cleared the chamber in a party-line 206–202 vote. In a 2019 ruling, the U.S. Supreme Court blocked the citizenship query, The Hill reported.

“The measure would direct the Census Bureau to add a question to the 10-year survey asking for the respondent’s citizenship status and require that the U.S. only consider citizens when determining the number of congressional seats each state receives,” the outlet reported.

Republicans may scale back the affect of high-population, liberal-leaning states like California by focusing on apportionment.

Speaker Mike Johnson (R-La.) stated in a press release after the vote, “We should not reward states and cities that violate federal immigration laws and maintain sanctuary policies with increased Congressional representation. Common sense dictates that only American citizens should be counted for electoral apportionment, and the Equal Representation Act ensures that.”

However, together with this query has raised considerations that it may deter participation within the Census, which, in accordance to the Constitution, mandates the counting of “the whole number of free persons.”

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The authorities and non-profit organizations have spent years educating non-citizens about taking part within the Census. They emphasize that collaborating within the census won’t end in immigration enforcement.

Not surprisingly, Democrats railed in opposition to the laws as an assault on immigrant communities.

“A citizen’s only census, as this legislation intends, is reckless, cynical, and frankly, illegal,” Rep. Grace Meng (D-N.Y.) stated throughout a House flooring speech on Wednesday. “It is not the Census Bureau’s job to keep track of immigration status.”

The Hill famous that, in a press release of coverage issued this week, the Biden administration stated it “strongly opposes” the measure “which would preclude the Department of Commerce’s Census Bureau from performing its constitutionally mandated responsibility to count the number of persons in the United States in the decennial census.”

The House is advancing the concept in an effort to revive a plan that the Trump administration had initially proposed however that the Supreme Court later rejected.

Commerce Secretary Wilbur Ross made a last-minute determination to add the query to the 2020 Census, disregarding the suggestions of Census Bureau consultants and aligning with a key precedence of then-President Trump by approving it.

“But the Trump administration failed to justify the move amid legal challenges, ultimately losing at the high court as Chief Justice John Roberts determined the government gave a ‘contrived’ answer about its motivations for adding the question,” The Hill famous.

In October, an evaluation of 2020 Census Bureau knowledge produced higher information for former President Donald Trump than for President Joe Biden, ought to the 2 face off in opposition to one another once more subsequent yr, as appears seemingly.

The Electoral College map is trying higher for Republicans, usually, as “red states such as Florida and Texas picked up Electoral College votes, while blue states such as California, New York, and Illinois lost them,” The Western Journal reported.

According to Ballotpedia, 13 states misplaced and gained electoral votes following the final census. Texas, as an illustration, gained an extra two congressional districts/electoral faculty votes. Colorado, Florida, Montana, North Carolina, and Oregon every picked up one as properly; three of these—Florida, Montana, and North Carolina—pattern purple or are genuinely purple.

At the identical time, California, Illinois, Michigan, New York, Ohio, Pennsylvania, and West Virginia every misplaced one. Of these, California, Illinois, Michigan, and New York are blue or pattern blue, whereas Pennsylvania is leaning that means. Ohio and West Virginia are reliably purple.

“Biden won the 2020 race 306-232 in the Electoral College. However, with the new electoral vote breakdown in place, Biden’s win in 2020 would have dipped slightly to 303-235, according to the site 270 to Win,” the Western Journal famous.

Some have speculated that Biden’s open-border insurance policies, which have flooded the nation with unlawful immigrants, are being executed to offset inhabitants losses in blue states so that they don’t lose any extra congressional seats.

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