July 25, 2020 at 2:56 a.m.
Non-citizens still must be counted
Take it to the Bank
Ohio has the most to gain out of a memorandum signed by President Donald Trump Tuesday that will likely to never go into effect.
The order would prohibit those deemed to have immigrated to the country illegally from counting toward the decennial redistribution of U.S. House of Representative seats next year.
According to a December report from the Center for Immigration Studies (CIS), three seats are projected to swing if Trump’s memo goes into effect with Ohio, Alabama and Minnesota gaining a seat and Texas, New York and California each losing a seat as a result of the memo.
Ohio and Minnesota, both considered swing states, would each gain another electoral college vote in the 2024 and 2028 presidential elections in addition to another representative in the House until at least 2031.
Minnesota, a state Hillary Clinton won in the 2016 presidential election, would have eight House representatives instead of its projected seven. Ohio would have 16 representatives, the third highest total in the region behind Illinois and Pennsylvania, according to a CIS projection.
Ohio, which currently has 16 House districts, is projected to be reduced to 15 representatives next year based on this year’s census. Trump’s memo would save Ohio from losing a seat because of its relatively small population of immigrants who bypassed the legal way of entering a country.
According to a similar study by CIS, Indiana lost a House district at the beginning of the millennium because those deemed to have immigrated to the country by illegal means were considered in the 2001 distribution of House seats.
None of that will matter as the memo will likely be overturned in the courts (similar to Trump’s attempt to include an identifying question of legal or illegal immigration on this year’s census that was blocked in the U.S. Supreme Court) or rescinded (similar to Trump recently walking back an order that international college students be deported if they are enrolled in online-only classes in the fall).
In a statement last week, the American Civil Liberties Union argued the U.S. Constitution requires the census to count the total population, as it has since the Fourteenth Amendment, and called the memo “patently unconstitutional.”
The ACLU will likely join those states set to lose a House set in litigation against the order if it is not rescinded.
It can also be argued that Trump’s order is a breach of power, as the Reapportionment Act of 1929 outlines that the House alone apportions its 435 seats once a decade based on the latest census.
Morally speaking, it can be argued that it is unfair to penalize states as they still have to expend resources for the thousands, in some cases millions, of immigrants deemed to have come to the country illegally.
Those immigrants, who still pay taxes, would also essentially live in a “taxation without representation” situation if the order goes into effect, which conflicts with America’s founding principles.
When the Constitution was first ratified, representation in the House counted those who were deemed “free” as whole, with everyone else, namely enslaved people, as three-fifths a person.
This was known as the three-fifths compromise and was established at the 1787 Constitutional Convention to appease southern states, which would have less electoral power and congressional representation without the compromise. The compromise, which had a lasting effect on the societal status of slaves and Native Americans, was nulled by future Constitutional amendments.
This electoral power move, which predated U.S. citizenship, is akin to what Trump is trying to do in this order.
Though the magnitude and political advantage is much smaller, Trump is attempting to devalue the quantification of human life for political gain.
But, as stated above, the political ramifications of the order do not matter as it will likely never see the light of day. What does matter is the value our country has for non-citizens.
Bypassing basic decency or our country’s Constitutional principles isn’t worth an extra congressional representative or delegate in the electoral college.
The order would prohibit those deemed to have immigrated to the country illegally from counting toward the decennial redistribution of U.S. House of Representative seats next year.
According to a December report from the Center for Immigration Studies (CIS), three seats are projected to swing if Trump’s memo goes into effect with Ohio, Alabama and Minnesota gaining a seat and Texas, New York and California each losing a seat as a result of the memo.
Ohio and Minnesota, both considered swing states, would each gain another electoral college vote in the 2024 and 2028 presidential elections in addition to another representative in the House until at least 2031.
Minnesota, a state Hillary Clinton won in the 2016 presidential election, would have eight House representatives instead of its projected seven. Ohio would have 16 representatives, the third highest total in the region behind Illinois and Pennsylvania, according to a CIS projection.
Ohio, which currently has 16 House districts, is projected to be reduced to 15 representatives next year based on this year’s census. Trump’s memo would save Ohio from losing a seat because of its relatively small population of immigrants who bypassed the legal way of entering a country.
According to a similar study by CIS, Indiana lost a House district at the beginning of the millennium because those deemed to have immigrated to the country by illegal means were considered in the 2001 distribution of House seats.
None of that will matter as the memo will likely be overturned in the courts (similar to Trump’s attempt to include an identifying question of legal or illegal immigration on this year’s census that was blocked in the U.S. Supreme Court) or rescinded (similar to Trump recently walking back an order that international college students be deported if they are enrolled in online-only classes in the fall).
In a statement last week, the American Civil Liberties Union argued the U.S. Constitution requires the census to count the total population, as it has since the Fourteenth Amendment, and called the memo “patently unconstitutional.”
The ACLU will likely join those states set to lose a House set in litigation against the order if it is not rescinded.
It can also be argued that Trump’s order is a breach of power, as the Reapportionment Act of 1929 outlines that the House alone apportions its 435 seats once a decade based on the latest census.
Morally speaking, it can be argued that it is unfair to penalize states as they still have to expend resources for the thousands, in some cases millions, of immigrants deemed to have come to the country illegally.
Those immigrants, who still pay taxes, would also essentially live in a “taxation without representation” situation if the order goes into effect, which conflicts with America’s founding principles.
When the Constitution was first ratified, representation in the House counted those who were deemed “free” as whole, with everyone else, namely enslaved people, as three-fifths a person.
This was known as the three-fifths compromise and was established at the 1787 Constitutional Convention to appease southern states, which would have less electoral power and congressional representation without the compromise. The compromise, which had a lasting effect on the societal status of slaves and Native Americans, was nulled by future Constitutional amendments.
This electoral power move, which predated U.S. citizenship, is akin to what Trump is trying to do in this order.
Though the magnitude and political advantage is much smaller, Trump is attempting to devalue the quantification of human life for political gain.
But, as stated above, the political ramifications of the order do not matter as it will likely never see the light of day. What does matter is the value our country has for non-citizens.
Bypassing basic decency or our country’s Constitutional principles isn’t worth an extra congressional representative or delegate in the electoral college.
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