Americans Must Be Able to Count on Census

It shouldn’t even be debatable, but the U.S. Department of Justice wants the next national Census to count the number of U.S. citizens as accurately as possible.Open-borders groups — in their relentless crusade to blur the distinction between legal and illegal immigrants – assail the DOJ’s request for a Census question about citizenship status as naive, nativist and unfair.In reality, failing to make the query would be worse than sticking one’s head in the sand. Willful ignorance makes a mockery out of the country’s decennial head count.At this writing, no one knows how many illegal aliens live here. FAIR’s best estimate is 12.5 million.A state breakdown of that number is significant because California, Texas and Florida – home to the nation’s largest populations of illegal aliens — stand to expand their clout in Congress. Congressional district allocations are based on raw Census data that do not disaggregate by legal status.According to FAIR research:

• Texas, with 2,482,000 illegals, would pick up three seats (39 total).
• Florida, with 1,279,000 illegals, would gain two seats (29).
• California, with 3,535,000 illegals, will likely hold at 53 seats, or perhaps gain one.

A Census that properly distinguishes between legal and illegal residents would give Congress a better fix on the population that’s legally present and eligible to vote.Attorney General Jeff Sessions says DOJ particularly “needs a reliable calculation of the citizen voting-age population in localities where voting rights violations are alleged of suspected.”Money, real money, is also in play. States with large illegal-alien populations receive disproportionately bigger slices of government funds distributed on the basis of inflated Census counts.“It’s not just political representation, which is bad enough, but allocation of federal money,” notes FAIR media director Ira Mehlman.The nation’s immigrant population — legal and illegal – grew an estimated 3.8 million since the 2010 Census, hitting a record 43.7 million as of July 2016.The Census Bureau is evaluating the Justice Department’s request. A final list of questions for the 2020 Census must be submitted to Congress by the end of March.