Reflections on the Vitter-Bennett  Amendment

The 2010 Census is fast approaching. The forms are being printed now and they will be mailed to all households in less than 6 months. And the perennial issue of the decennial census has once again reared its head. Every decade a Member of Congress proposes legislation that says the Census should not count illegal residents or people who are not citizens in the allocation of seats for the House of Representatives.

 Recently Sens. David Vitter (R-LA) and Robert Bennett (R-UT) have introduce an amendment to the Commerce-Justice-Science Appropriations  bill which would bar the Census Bureau from conducting the census unless questions on citizenship and immigration status are added.  

The data from the Census result in the most radical peacetime redistribution of political power because these data are used to apportion Congressional seats and to draw legislative districts at every level of state and local government.  The political fights at the state level are very intense and the jockeying has already started.

 Other uses of the Census data include the distribution of over $500 billion of federal funds throughout the country, designing the sample size and composition for every federal and private survey conducted over the next decade, and government decisions about where to locate polling places, schools, roads, and communities.  In addition the location of business sites, where to open new business and where to move companies are based on the data from the decennial Census.

A Little Background

What is the background on this issue of “residents” vs. “citizen”. The constitution calls for an enumeration of all “residents” of the several states for the purpose of allocating the seats in the House of Representatives.  Residents was carefully chosen because in 1879 a person became a citizen of the United States by virtue of being a citizen of  a state.  States had very different requirements for citizenship and for voting.  It was only after the Civil War that the nation began to define a concept of a national citizenship.

  It is easy to forget today that there were 13  “independent” states that came together to form the United States.  They brought different laws and cultures to the union.  To create a somewhat equal means of counting for the distribution of political power they counted all residents including women and children who could not vote.  Blacks only counted as three-fifths of a person.  This counting was regardless of the state’s laws concerning citizenship in that state.

 In 1790, the first Census Act provided that the enumeration of that year would count “inhabitants” and “distinguish” various subgroups by age, sex, status as free persons, etc. The Oxford English Dictionary defined an inhabitant as  one who “is a bona fide member of a State, subject to all the requisitions of its laws, and entitled to all the privileges which they confer.”

 In 1979, the Federation for American Immigration Reform (FAIR) sued to enjoin the Census Bureau from counting illegals in the decennial census of 1980 (FAIR v. Klutznick, 486 F. Supp. 564, D.D.C. 1980). The case was ultimately dismissed by the Supreme Court on the grounds of lack of standing. In 1988, a similar suit filed by FAIR, 40 members of Congress, and the Commonwealth of Pennsylvania which  was also dismissed. As a result, the constitutionality of excluding illegal immigrants from the apportionment has yet to be decided by a court of law.

Consequences

By law, the Congress has the right to review, approve and add questions two years before the decennial census. This is necessary so that questions and forms can be tested, revised, and the forms printed and mailed.  Proposing such an addition to the Census at this time would be very costly and would disrupt the Census. Reapportionment would be delayed because the Census would be delayed.  The additional cost would run into millions of dollars.

 The Department of Commerce has issued a press release opposing the Vittner-Bennett amendment.

 The amendment is an appealing vote.  It is a statement against illegal immigration, feeds into the anti-immigrant feelings in the country and is an easy vote to defend and support.  It is ironic that pressure is coming from the Latino community (see Count or Be Counted) to not complete the 2010 Census form.  Both pro- and anti-immigration reform see the Census as a tool to wield political power.

And who said that the Census was dull.