Senate Democrats have unanimously defeated Sen. Bill Hagerty’s (R-Tenn.) proposal to bar illegal immigrants from being counted in the national census, warning that their numbers go toward informing the apportioning of House seats and the Electoral College.
Soon after President Joe Biden took office in 2021, he signed an executive order requiring the Census Bureau to determine the population of each state in the United States without regard to whether residents have lawful immigration status.
The amendment, which would be added to the Equal Representation Act that Sen. Hagerty proposed last month, would require the Census Bureau to include a citizenship question in any future census. Anyone who isn’t a U.S. citizen, including people with temporary visas and green cards, would then be excluded from the ballot for congressional district and Electoral College apportionments. Census data is collected every 10 years….
