Here's an update to an entry I posted last week. As I noted then, the 2010 census has sparked a battle over whether undocumented immigrants should be part of the count and thus included in state tallies used to reapportion Congressional seats, as has been the case in past cycles. The opening round of that fight was a proposed amendment sponsored by Republican Sens. David Vitter and Robert Bennett that would have added a question to the census survey asking whether the respondent is a citizen or not. The aim was to later strip out non-citizens when it came time for reapportionment.
Well, the senators lost that round. Earlier today, the amendment was blocked when the Senate voted 60-39 to end debate on an appropriations bill. But don't expect the issue to go away anytime soon. A Vitter spokesman, Joel DiGrado, says the senator will try to find other legislative vehicles for the amendment and will continue to press the matter. He's "not going to just stop talking about the issue," says DiGrado.
Those opposed to including illegal immigrants in the census count are studying other options. One possibility would be to craft some alternative legislative challenge in Congress, says Ira Mehlman of the Federation for American Immigration Reform, which advocates reduced immigration. Legal action is a possibility, too, though a FAIR lawsuit in 1980 over this issue was thrown out for lack of standing.
The pro-immigrant forces think these tactics will fail. Senate Democrats have just shown they've got the votes to turn back future attempts to include a similar amendment. And in the House, the math just doesn't favor a measure like that, argues Andres Ramirez of the New Democrat Network. The undocumented are concentrated in the biggest states with the largest number of representatives, who won't exactly be keen on shrinking their ranks. Plus, says Ramirez, imagine if California were forced to subtract its population of illegal immigrants and lost five seats. When it came time for the Democrat-controlled state legislature there to redraw Congressional districts, guess which party would come up short? Same goes for other big Democrat-controlled states like New York and Illinois.
Still, Ramirez has no doubt that Vitter & Co. will keep the illegal-immigrant issue alive. "What they're trying to do is win in the court of public opinion," he says. "They want to get people riled up about it." That worries him and his allies, because the more controversy there is surrounding the census, the tougher it'll be to get comprehensive immigration reform passed next year.
