The return of President Donald Trump has brought a return to the fight over whether to count illegal immigrants in the Census. Days after Trump returned to office, four Republican-led states---Kansas, Louisiana, Ohio, and West Virginia---filed a lawsuit claiming they lost congressional seats in the 2020 Census due to the inclusion of illegal aliens in states like California. President Trump issued an order in 2020 banning illegals from being counted in the Census, but the order was later blocked in court and reversed by the Biden administration. President Biden then went a step further and issued an order of his own instructing the Census to count illegals.
The states' lawsuit argues that including illegal aliens in the Census violates the 14th Amendment and the constitutional principle of equal representation. Andrew "Art" Arthur, legal expert with the Center for Immigration Studies, says they have a point. "States that have low levels of illegal immigration actually suffer from this apportionment, compared to other states that have larger illegal populations," he tells KTRH. "So the point they're trying to make is we should only be counting people who can vote---citizens---not just all the people who are living in those states."
The issue will likely play out in the courts for years and could eventually be decided by the Supreme Court. Even if the courts don't completely ban illegals from the Census, Arthur believes there could be restrictions on how they are included. "If the purpose of the Census is two-fold---one, to simply count everybody and two, for apportionment (of congressional representation)---it would make sense that you would separate out the apportionment part and limit that just to aliens who are lawfully present in the United States, and to United States citizens," he says.
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