Trump Aimed to Erode Immigrant Representation With Census Citizenship Question, Documents Show7/21/2022
Donald Trump’s administration tried to add a citizenship question to the decennial census as part of an effort to alter the way the US House’s 435 seats are divvied up among the 50 states, a new tranche of documents reveals.
The documents, released by the House oversight committee on Wednesday, offer the clearest evidence to date that the Trump administration’s public justification for adding the question was made up. For years, the administration said that it needed to add a citizenship question to the decennial survey because better citizenship data was needed to enforce the Voting Rights Act (VRA). The US supreme court ultimately blocked the Trump administration from adding the question in 2019, saying the rationale “seems to have been contrived”. “Today’s Committee memo pulls back the curtain on this shameful conduct and shows clearly how the Trump Administration secretly tried to manipulate the census for political gain while lying to the public and Congress about their goals,” Carolyn Maloney, a New York Democrat who chairs the oversight committee, said in a statement. Maloney recently introduced legislation that seeks to block future political interference at the census bureau. The decennial census has never asked a citizenship question and the US constitution says House seats shall be apportioned based on “the whole Number of free Persons”. Excluding non-citizens from the apportionment count, and therefore diminishing their political representation, has long been a goal of hard-right immigration groups. It would have clear political impact: California, Texas and Florida all would have lost out on a congressional seat if unauthorized immigrants were excluded from apportionment, a 2020 projection by Pew found. Alabama, Minnesota and Ohio all would have been able to hold on to an additional seat. Commerce secretary Wilbur Ross became interested in adding a citizenship question shortly after taking office in 2017. That year, James Uthmeier, a commerce department attorney, set out to analyze the legality of adding a citizenship question to the census at the request of Earl Comstock, a political appointee serving in a top policy role at the agency. In an undated memo released Wednesday, he concluded that doing so would not be lawful. The document makes it clear there is little evidence those who drafted the constitution wanted to exclude non-citizens from apportionment. “Their conscious choice not to except aliens from the directive to count the population suggests the Founders did not intend to distinguish between citizens and non-citizens for the ‘actual Enumeration’ used for apportionment,” Uthmeier wrote in the draft memo. “Over 200 years of precedent, along with substantially convincing historical and textual arguments suggest that citizenship data likely cannot be used for purposes of apportioning representatives,” he added. “Without opining on the wisdom of such an action, a citizenship status question may legally be included on the decennial census so long as the collected information is not used for apportionment.” But in subsequent drafts throughout 2017, Uthmeier and Comstock substantially changed that analysis. They revised the memo to suggest there was much more ambiguity into whether a citizenship question could be added for apportionment purposes. By August 2017, they turned in a memo to Ross suggesting there was a legal basis for adding the question for apportionment purposes. “There are bases for legal arguments that the Founding Fathers intended for the apportionment count to be based on legal inhabitants,” the new memo said. “If the Secretary decides that the question is needed for apportionment purposes, then it must be included on the decennial.” The memo was eventually hand-delivered to John Gore, a top official at the justice department (DoJ). Attached to the document was a handwritten note from Uthmeier nudging the justice department towards a rationale it could offer for adding the question. “Sec Ross has reviewed concerns and thinks DoJ would have a legitimate use of data for VRA purposes. Please let me know if you’d like to discuss,” Uthmeier wrote. In a postscript, he suggested Gore review a recent supreme court case that could help him make the case for why existing processes for counting citizens were insufficient. Gore subsequently ghostwrote a DoJ letter to the commerce department requesting that a citizenship question be added. The handwritten note is among the new evidence showing that commerce department officials tried to keep their work on adding a citizenship question quiet. A court ruling told the Biden administration it cannot selectively choose which illegal immigrants convicted of crimes deserve immediate deportation.
Homeland Security argued it has limited resources to enforce every removal order. An opinion by the 5th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals said the Biden administration has to follow the federal laws put in place by Congress that all immigrants who commit crimes must be detained and removed. "It takes the Biden administration back a step," said David Coale, who is a constitutional law attorney. The opinion said ICE and Border Patrol agents can no longer follow Biden administration guidelines about what class of criminal immigrants will be detained and deported. Federal law says immigration officials must detain and remove out of the country immigrants who have committed certain criminal offenses or violations. "The Biden administration had adopted a policy that put in place a hierarchy, an order of importance, they were going to go after some cases, but not go after other cases," Coal explained. For example, agents were told to prioritize cases involving aggravated felonies over some drug offenses, or criminal immigrants who participated in sex or human trafficking. Cases where the government already secured convictions. A federal appeals court in another part of the country ruled the Biden administration could do just that, but the 5th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals said no. "In a case brought by Texas saying, ‘Hey, wait a minute. You're supposed to take care of these people, not be giving to us, the state authorities, to deal with,’" Coale said. "It’s people that have a higher risk of causing a problem in society. They've either been convicted of something, or in some way, they've violated the criminal law. Not a huge number of people, but as the opinion points out, they tend to commit more crimes than your average person does. There's a serious recidivism issue." As I think of all the wonderful celebrations in honor of refugees that took place around the world, a particular song from my childhood comes to mind: “Oh, who are the people in your neighborhood? In your neighborhood? In your neighborhood? Say, who are the people in your neighborhood? The people that you meet each day.” I remember singing along to this song from everyone’s favorite educational TV show for children many years ago in Nigeria. In the 70s, 80s, and 90s, African children grew up embodying early lexical learning from Sesame Street. The show offered a glimpse into the lives of children in the United States, and was culturally and socially relevant, serving as a strong reference point for all things American. The show also aided the African child with establishing an understanding of the American culture, through the experiences of American young children interacting with Muppet characters and adults – displayed on our TV screens. Quite sadly, the same could not be said about the similarity in the actual representation of cultures from countries in Africa on TV shows aired in the United States at that time, or even today. American children were not given the same privilege to understand true African culture, over time creating a knowledge deficit, as is seen singularly with the reference to Africa as one country.
Why does this even matter, one might ask. This lack of representation would subsequently cause a misunderstanding of refugees and immigrants from that region, who are among the highest seekers of residency in America. Furthermore, new Americans would have their identity partially erased while attempting to navigate a new culture, resulting in a dichotomous experience, where one group knows much more about the other than they do about us. Arguments gleaned from author Samuel Huntington’s book: “Who Are We? The Challenges to America’s National Identity,” show a fear of the erosion of the American identity, due to multiculturalism, and the cultural immersion of immigrants into American society. That could not be farther from the truth, considering the immense benefit that comes with cultural diversity and immigration. Some new Americans, before arriving in the United States, experienced war, persecution and so much more, while others relocated to seek better economic opportunities. However, since arriving in the U.S., their former identities, lifestyles, and experiences are completely eroded and replaced by the American culture, leaving immigrants with new questions. On June 16, 2022, the U.S. marked 74 years since the Displaced Person’s Act was passed. In 1948, the U.S. Congress enacted this first refugee legislation, “…to authorize for a limited period the admission of displaced persons into the United States for permanent residence, and other purposes…” Subsequently, more bills were passed over the years, to ensure people seeking refuge enter the U.S. safely, yet the diversity in culture fails to reflect America’s decades-long embodiment of this group of new Americans. The Pew Research Center states that over 13% of the United States population are immigrants. These numbers are set to rise, considering more recent wars that have forced people to flee their homelands recently. There is, therefore, a resulting need for more knowledge of who our neighbors are, be they Africans, Muslims, Afghans, Ukrainians, and so on. Luckily, more Americans embrace immigration as a recent survey done by the Cato Institute shows. 91% of 2600 adult Americans surveyed, are in support of immigration to the United States, with only 9% who want zero immigration. However, more work needs to be done to bolster inclusion across different spectrums. |