Lauren Miller Karalunas
Last week, the Trump administration unveiled a proposal to exclude millions of immigrants from the 2030 census. Since the nation’s founding, each decennial census has counted all U.S. residents, including non-U.S. citizens, regardless of their immigration status. The proposed rule would overhaul that process to no longer count immigrants without a green card — a sweeping category that includes undocumented individuals as well as those with various forms of legal status, such as applicants for asylum and H-1B visa holders.
Make no mistake: The proposed rule conflicts with the plain language of the Constitution, applicable federal statutes, and more than 235 years of practice. It will undoubtedly face legal challenges, with narrow prospects of surviving them. But the proposed rule would do more than just violate the law: It would inflict immeasurable harm on the American public.
The census exists to provide an accurate count of everyone living in the United States. Excluding millions of individuals from that count means that the country will spend the next decade operating based on inaccurate data. And the damage that will flow from those inaccuracies will be staggering.
Take the funding implications. Each year, the government uses census data to distribute trillions of dollars in federal funding to states and communities. That funding goes to critical resources — everything from hospital construction and highway maintenance to childcare and school lunch programs. Everyone uses these services, not just citizens. Consider infrastructure: The larger a state’s population, the greater the demands on its highways, which in turn means states need more funding to maintain them. But by design, the administration’s proposal would undercount states with significant immigrant populations, leaving them without sufficient funding to address those safety concerns. Everyone who drives on highways (including drivers from other states) will pay the price.
Beyond funding, excluding millions of individuals from the census would crack the statistical foundation on which every industry and sector in the nation is built. Federal agencies use the census to generate monthly job numbers, inflation rates, and poverty statistics. Academics and researchers across fields use the census’s population figures to accurately calculate measures such as crime rates, the spread of disease, and economic activity. (The rule’s related proposal to eliminate certain demographic questions would make these efforts even more challenging.) Local governments make decisions on critical issues — including school budgets and housing supply — based on census information. Businesses such as retailers and restaurants rely on census data for insights into consumer preferences and where they should open new locations. The rule would insert uncertainty into nearly every aspect of Americans’ day-to-day lives.
These harms are obvious. But the administration would inflict them anyway in an effort to game the census for partisan gain. The census count serves as the basis for apportionment — the process of divvying up congressional seats among the states — and redistricting — the process of drawing districts for elections. The proposal assumes that by excluding millions of individuals from the count, states with significant immigrant populations may lose congressional seats, while other states may gain or retain seats they otherwise would have lost. And once these seats are allocated, removing large numbers of immigrants from the redistricting numbers could shift district boundaries away from areas with significant immigrant communities. Consider it a two-part strategy: First manipulate the census numbers, then use those numbers to increase the relative political weight of populations that may be more likely to vote for the president’s party.
That’s the harm. But the proposal also runs headlong into a fundamental legal problem: the Constitution requires everyone to be counted in the census, regardless of their immigration status.
Wary that those in power would skew the census for political purposes, the Constitution’s framers refused attempts to use other bases for the count, such as voting eligibility. Instead, they insisted on an “actual enumeration” of all inhabitants, once every 10 years. The goal of the census — an accurate count of the growing republic — was simply too important to be subject to the whims of politics and posturing among the nascent states. For this reason, every census since its inception in 1790 has included non-U.S. citizens and others unable to participate in the political system (that is, most of the population in the 18th century).
Nearly 100 years later, when debating the language of the 14th Amendment, Congress again rejected proposals to depart from a population-based count to one based on voting eligibility or citizenship. The resulting language of the amendment clearly states that the census must count “the whole number of persons in each State.” “Persons” mean people, and “people” means everyone.
During the unprecedented surge in immigration to the United States in the 1920s, Congress yet again affirmed its intent that the census count everyone living in the country. The 1929 Census Act, which serves as the basis for the modern census, makes explicit that residency, not immigration status, is the touchstone for inclusion in the census. Throughout the remaining century, Congress would continue to consider, and decline, similar attempts to exclude immigrants from the count.
