David Cohen at The Brothers Judd has an interesting post regarding the apportioning of Representatives that certainly made me think. A snippet:
The method of apportioning Representatives, however, is still done according to the population of “free Persons.” In other words, non-citizens, whether in the country legally or illegally, count. If a state has enough immigrants, or enough illegal immigrants, it will also have extra Representatives and carry more weight in the House.
Either that got left out of my civics class, or I just haven’t thought about that in many long years. Either way, just the lightest poking at the internet brought this, and this.
It’s an interesting question. Should sheer numbers of people, citizens or not, drive the representation ratio?
One thought floats easily to the surface. Whether everyone is a citizen, or there’s a large percentage on visas (or even illegal, for that matter) – if an area or region has a LOT of people, it will directly affect them. Transportation, education, development – all of it skews with population.
On the other side of the equation, Ken Masugi at the Claremont Institute’s Local Liberty blog made this statement in 2005:
I have argued that illegal aliens should not be included in the census, as their presence contributes to malaportioned electoral districts and unconstitutional “voter dilution” of citizens living in districts with fewer illegals.
Yes, I can also see the problem with “voter dilution”. Tough question, this one…
D’oh. The voter dilution point is a great point, which I just stole back at the original post.
As non citizens are counted for representation but do not vote, there is more contressional representation per citizen in states which have a large number of immigrants. This is also worth thinking about.