Illegal Immigration and It’s Affects on Voting

According to Eliseo Medina, international vice-president of Service Employee International Union (SEIU) and advisor to the president, reforming immigration laws (better known as amnesty) "puts 12 million people on the path to citizenship and eventually voters", while speaking at a June 2009 conference for the liberal America's Future Now. Medina noted that during the presidential election in November 2008, Latinos and immigrants "voted overwhelmingly for progressive candidates" and the president "got two out of every three voters that showed up."

He continued, "Can you imagine if we have, even the same ratio, two out of three? Can you imagine 8 million new voters who care about our issues and will be voting? We will be creating a governing coalition for the long term, not just for an election cycle."

In other words granting citizenship to millions of illegal immigrants expands the progressive voting base with the purpose of creating a long term lock on elected office for progressives.

And progressive groups are more united, better-funded than in 2007, and are ready for the next fight against what they say is a wave of hatred from opponents. "We're in much, much, much, much better condition than we were in 2007," said Medina. "We have a united labor movement, and we have, I think, a tighter-knit network of immigrant rights advocates, organizations, churches and others around the country."

Tamar Jacoby, president of ImmigrationWorks USA, which organizes business owners to push for immigration reform, said their coalition has become smarter and better funded "especially on the left-of-center side, they've had unprecedented amounts of money in the past year, and they're organizing the field, coordinating among themselves, they're unrecognizable almost from what they were in 2006 and 2007".

The 2010 Census includes various steps to reach both legal and illegal immigrants. For the first time, the bureau will mail census forms in other languages to many households. But, no questions will address their legal standing to live in the U.S. Many critics are angry about the lack of any attempt to classify undocumented immigrants separately because they carry the same weight as anyone else when congressional districts are redrawn even though they can’t vote.

Still others don't believe that illegal immigrants should even be counted at all. For example, Florida senatorial candidate Marco Rubio believes that "when it comes to political apportionment, the Census should count legal American citizens only". While Florida Governor Charlie Crist believes that everyone should be counted including illegal immigrants. The problem is that including illegal immigrants in the count dilutes the voting power of all citizens and incentivizes politicians to continue the current system of distributing our tax dollars improperly.

[Ed note: The 2010 census is a short form of 10 questions that will be sent to everyone that won't include any questions about citizenship. The Census Bureau collects more details, including statistics on citizenship, in an annual survey sent to 3 million people].

John Baker of Louisiana State University notes that the first Census Act passed by Congress in 1790 required a Census of all "inhabitants," a term with a well-defined meaning at the time as someone 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." That is not a definition that would apply to illegal aliens. Since then and until 1980, census forms questioned citizenship or permanent resident status, e.g. "what state or foreign country were you born in?"

But democrats blocked a republican effort late in 2009 to require that a citizenship question be included in the 2010 census. An amendment to a Commerce department funding bill, offered by Sen. David Vitter, a Louisiana Republican, would have barred federal money from being used on a census without a citizenship question. Vitter said that he wanted to exclude non-citizens from the census, arguing that several states – including Louisiana – will unfairly lose House seats. The democratic controlled Senate shut down debate by removing the contentious amendments, clearing the way for a final vote.

We have a basic principle in this country that every voter has equal voice. This is undermined when illegals are counted because states that have a large number of illegals are assigned more representation.  Remember that census data will determine the apportionment of House members and Electoral College votes for each state. Including illegals skews the numbers in favor of those states with large numbers of illegal immigrants.

According to the Census Bureau’s latest American Community Survey data (2007), states with a significant net gain in population when including noncitizens: Arizona, California, Florida, Illinois, Nevada, New Jersey, New York and Texas.

Using their latest data California has over 5 million illegals in their population of 36 million, which would increase theirs to 57 members in the newly reapportioned U.S. House of Representatives. However, with noncitizens not included for purposes of reapportionment, California would only have 48 House seats. Texas, including illegals would get 38 seats, as opposed to 34 without. And, while these states get would get more representation, states with lower numbers of illegals (Iowa and Louisiana) would get less because they would get less seats in the house.

In the 1964 case of Wesberry v. Sanders, where it was decided that Georgia had violated the equal vote principle by setting up districts with an unequal number of voters, 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." Justice Hugo Black wrote that "one man’s vote in a congressional election is to be worth as much as another’s." Our government is now violating this same principle by allowing illegal immigrants to be included in the census count for 2010.

In summary while this is not an exhaustive look, these are just two ways that illegal immigrants can dramatically affect voting in this country. First, if they are made legal through some sort of mass amnesty, progressives believe that they will be the long term benefactor and the data agrees with their assumptions. Second, counting illegals in the census data can dramatically affect voter representation distribution from state to state. Both of these problems should be a concern to all legal US citizens.