The Census Was Never Intended Just To Be A Body Count, But It Can Be Fixed

Article I, § 2, Clause 3

Representatives and direct Taxes shall be apportioned among the several States which may be included within this Union, according to their respective Numbers…of persons… The actual Enumeration shall be made within three Years after the first Meeting of the Congress of the United States, and within every subsequent Term of ten Years, in such Manner as they shall by Law direct.

Fourteenth Amendment, § 1, sentence 1

All persons born or naturalized in the United States, and subject to the jurisdiction thereof, are citizens of the United States and of the State wherein they reside.

These are the sections of the US Constitution that govern the Census. As for the Fourteenth Amendment, I’ll simply note that Senator Lyman Trumbull and the 1866 Civil Rights Act drafters defined “subject to the jurisdiction” as “complete jurisdiction,” that is, full and complete loyalty to the U.S., per John Eastman’s razor-sharp scholarship. Illegals flying foreign flags in Los Angeles don’t qualify.

The key here is that the Fourteenth Amendment made former slaves into full citizens. Chief Justice Roger Taney’s decision in Dred Scott v Sandford (1857), which held that, under the law, slaves weren’t “persons,” got thrown into the shredder.

But are aliens “persons” for the purpose of the Census? The left is adamant that they are. The right says they’re not.

In DC v. Heller (2008), the Supreme Court clearly stated that “the people” “unambiguously refers to all members of the political community.” Illegal aliens are, by definition, not members of the American political community. They are intruders. A burglar who breaks into your house does not become a member of your family. Illegal aliens aren’t part of our political family, either.

Late in his first term, Donald Trump attempted to get the Census Bureau to count only citizens. New York State challenged this, and in 2020, the Supreme Court said (Trump v. New York) that he had botched the process under the Administrative Procedures Act. Sorry, Charlie. You still must count all the aliens. But notice that the Court got its exercise by jumping far away from the real issue. Skilled in the sport of Constitutional Avoidance, the Court said Trump didn’t give enough “notice and comment” time before implementing its rule to only count citizens. In short, he didn’t say, “Mother, may I?” It was all about procedure. Because process was enough to let the Court make a decision, they never even asked if Trump was right on the “merits.” His constitutional argument didn’t matter.

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