Neighborhood Ministries

Apportionments for the House of Representatives is based on the total resident population of the fifty States.  The total number of representatives has been set at 441. 435 from the 50 States and one from the District of Columbia and each of the five US territories. It is reapportioned after every Census count to ensure everyone’s vote is equal Liberals claim the illegal immigrants should be counted because they are losing population as residents flee the State and they are replacing them with illegal immigrants to maintain their representation in the House. Conservatives feel that it unfairly gives Congressional seats to liberal States and deprives legal voters of representation since the immigrants are not here legally. Since the delegates are apportioned by population to give equal voting power to everyone, counting illegal immigrants, who can’t vote,  in apportioning seats, gives voters in liberal States more voting power than conservative States. If a representative is assigned to every one million people, and all people are counted, a conservative State with one million legal residents and no illegal residents gets one representative representing one million voters but a liberal State with one million legal residents and one million illegal immigrants totaling two million people gets two representatives, one that represents the one million voters, and one that represents the one million illegal immigrants, who can’t legally vote.

The members of the House of Representatives are reapportioned after each Census to ensure that each Representative represents approximately an equal number of voters.  Since illegal immigrants cannot vote legally, it was felt they should not be included in the Census. Liberals claim that the Founding Fathers wanted everyone counted, not just voters and refer to the 1787 Compromise where they allowed slaves to be counted as three fifths for the Census. The Continental Congress was debating the apportionment of taxes for each State which was determined by population. The Northern States wanted the slaves counted as part of the population so the Southern States would pay their fair share but the Southern States didn’t want them counted in order to reduce their taxes. They finally reached a compromise where the slaves would be counted as three fifths of a person. Indians were excluded from the count until 1860 when those living off the reservations were counted and in 1900, they began counting Indians on the reservations. The Census was also used to determine seats in the House of Representatives and the electoral college. The Census counted every resident except foreign nationals visiting or temporarily working in the United States.  The fact that they did not count foreign nationals temporarily working in the United States indicated they were only counting legal residents, and not counting those who were not legally residents. Since illegal immigrants are not American citizens, they are still citizens of their home country. The 14th Amendment conferred citizenship on all residents born in the United States or naturalized. Liberals claim that nothing in the Constitution precludes counting non-citizens in the Census, however since illegal immigrants are not born here or naturalized, they are not covered by the 14th Amendment and are not counted as citizens until they become naturized citizens.