[ad_1]
If Trump is successful in the new case, it could mark the first time the United States has excluded undocumented immigrants when counting individuals so that seats in the United States House of Representatives can be distributed and will also have a impact on the distribution of federal funds.
“The 2020 census is about power and money,” said Thomas Wolf, senior counsel for the Brennan Center.
“These numbers will determine the distribution of seats in Congress over the next 10 years, which will determine the political power that communities will have over the next decade and determine whether they will receive their fair share of the $ 1.5 trillion that is distributed annually by the federal government, ”added Wolf.
Trump’s efforts are complicated by the fact that census officials have indicated that they have difficulty processing census responses to produce the final tally. If the numbers are transferred to the president after inauguration day on January 20, the Trump initiative is unlikely to be carried out by the Biden administration and the case may be moot.
The Constitution provides that representatives “are distributed” among states by counting “the total number of persons in each state” every 10 years.
Congress ordered the Secretary of Commerce to complete the census and submit the table to the President by December 31. The President, in turn, transmits the number to Congress usually around the first week of January.
Trump issued a memo released in July outlining a new policy requiring that undocumented immigrants be excluded from the allocation base. He ordered the Secretary of Commerce to actually submit two issues to the President. The first is the census count. The second excludes undocumented immigrants. The government says other administrative records could be used to determine the immigration status of individuals.
Acting Solicitor General Jeff Wall told the court that “the president is the ultimate decision maker” regarding the content of the census and that the law does not “expressly require” him to use the data submitted by the secretary, but instead, the settlement data can be combined with administrative records for dispatch.
Further, the language of the Constitution and statutes “has long been understood to cover only the inhabitants of a state,” Wall argued in court documents. “As history, precedents, and structure indicate, the President need not treat all illegal aliens as state dwellers and thereby allow their disregard for federal law to distort the attribution of representatives of the people, ”Wall said.
A group of states and local officials, as well as organizations represented by the American Civil Liberties Union, have filed a lawsuit.
A three-judge court in the Southern District of New York has blocked White House policies.
“Throughout the history of the Nation, the numbers used to determine the distribution of Congress have included anyone residing in the United States at the time of the census, whether they are a citizen or not and live here with or without legal status, ”the court said. outfit.
Trump’s memo, the court noted, violates “Congress’ mandate to use census results – and only census results – as part of the allocation process.”
State attorneys told judges that “nothing in the text or history of the Constitution or the Census Act suggests that appellants can treat the millions of people who unquestionably live here as if they were not. not here, just because of their immigration status ”.
And ACLU’s Dale Ho, representing individual groups, argues that the three branches of government over “more than two centuries all point to one conclusion: the Constitution requires that all people from every state be counted in the allocation base – including undocumented immigrants “.
[ad_2]
Source link