Democrats in the U.S. Senate shot down a bill amendment on Friday that would have prevented non-U.S. citizens from being counted in the redistricting of House and Electoral College seats.
The amendment, proposed by Sen. Bill Hagerty (R-TN), would have been added to the $460 billion spending bill and would require the Census Bureau to ask a citizenship question during any future census, according to Townhall.
Those stating they are not a U.S. citizen would not be counted toward any apportionment for the U.S. House or Electoral College, whether they are present in the country lawfully, like on a visa or green card, or unlawfully.
Every Democrat and Independent senator in the U.S. Senate voted against the inclusion of the amendment, resulting in the legislation being shut down by a vote of 51-45, according to Fox News.
Nearly every Republican senator voted in favor of the amendment, with just Sen. Lisa Murkowski (R-AK) voting against it.
Hagerty released a statement to criticize those who voted against the bill, saying that he believes they have ulterior motives.
“Today I forced Chuck Schumer to hold a vote on whether illegal aliens should be counted for determining the number of congressional seats and electoral votes each state gets. Democrats’ unanimous opposition to this commonsense measure confirms that they’re using illegal aliens and sanctuary cities to increase their political power. With this vote, Senate Democrats chose to trample on the rights of each American’s voice. I will continue to fight and press this issue in the Senate,” said the senator.
Migration experts have begun presenting concerns about how mass unlawful migration into the U.S. could affect representation in Congress.
Lora Ries, director of the Heritage Foundation’s Border Security and Immigration Center, wrote in an essay that preventing the Census Bureau from “including noncitizens in apportionment is critical in making sure that American citizens … are picking America’s leaders.”
“Biden’s intentional border crisis has produced unprecedented apportionment issues, distorting the representation that states have in the House, and how many electoral votes they have in presidential elections,” she added, as previously reported by The Dallas Express.
Meanwhile, U.S. Sen. Mazie K. Hirono (D-HI) and U.S. Rep. Grace Meng (D-NY) sent a letter signed by 48 fellow lawmakers at the end of January to the leaders of the House and Senate, urging them not to allow such legislation.
“The Constitution requires every person to be counted for in the U.S. Census and our country has never excluded undocumented individuals from the apportionment process,” Hirono contended. “This process plays a key role in informing numerous important decisions for our communities, such as determining representation in Congress and allocating government resources.”
Meng argued that including a citizenship question “would produce an incomplete and therefore inaccurate count of the people living in the United States” and thereby “impact the distribution of the billions of dollars in federal resources that are provided to schools, infrastructure projects, social services, and other crucial resources, as well as congressional representation in communities throughout the country—for a decade. Our constitution is clear: the census must count every person in our country.”
Since Biden took office in 2021, U.S. Customs and Border Protection has reported more than 7.5 million encounters with unlawful migrants.
Additionally, the House Homeland Security Committee has stated that there have also been more than 1.7 million “gotaways,” which are migrants who entered the U.S. unlawfully and avoided apprehension.
The rejection of this amendment comes as states, particularly Texas, have begun to take action to secure the border amid the ongoing crisis caused by the influx of unlawful migrants.
Attorney General Ken Paxton recently announced that he obtained a preliminary injunction to prevent the Biden administration from reallocating federal funds originally meant to help construct a border wall.
Paxton said in a news release about the injunction that Biden’s attempts to reallocate the funds “demonstrate his desperation for open borders at any cost, but Texas has prevailed.”
“Biden acted completely improperly by refusing to spend the money that Congress appropriated for border wall construction, and even attempting to redirect those funds,” added the attorney general.
