The Democrat-controlled Senate fell short of passing a GOP-sponsored bill that would prevent illegal aliens from being counted as part of the census, which determines the number of House seats each state is given.
Senator Bill Hagerty (R-TN) put forward an amendment to the $460 billion spending package, stipulating that the Census Bureau must incorporate a citizenship question in all forthcoming censuses. Additionally, the proposal would prohibit individuals who are not United States citizens from being counted for congressional district and Electoral College apportionment purposes.
The proposal would not only exclude legal immigrants holding temporary visas and green cards from the census but is particularly aimed at preventing the counting of illegal immigrants. The measure comes in response to the influx of millions of new entries into the United States after President Joe Biden sacked nearly all of former President Donald Trump’s immigration and border security policies on his first day in office.
The proposed legislation bears similarities to a plan under the Trump administration to include a citizenship question on the 2020 census. Democrats and left-leaning immigration organizations criticized Trump’s initiative, asserting that the inclusion of a citizenship question was unlawful and designed to favor Republicans in forthcoming elections.
Lora Ries from The Heritage Foundation and R.J. Hauman, President of the National Immigration Center for Enforcement, collaborated on an essay warning about the “warped representation” in Congress that actually benefits Democrats.
“Barring the Census from including non-citizens in apportionment is critical in making sure that American citizens — the only population who can and should vote in U.S. elections — are picking America’s leaders,” Ries and Hauman wrote, point out that the crisis is “distorting the representation that states have in the House, and how many electoral votes they have in presidential elections.”
Hagerty’s proposal ultimately fell short as 51 Democrats and Independents voted against it or were absent. Additionally, Republican Senator Lisa Murkowski of Alaska voted against the plan. Meanwhile, all other Republicans either backed the bill or were absent for the vote. The outcome was 51 to 45 against the proposal.
