Archive for the ‘Democracy’ Category
Southern Poverty Law Center at it Again!
Monday, August 17th, 2009
Posted in Crime, Democracy, Free Speech, Immigration, Uncategorized, law, media | No Comments »
FAIR is Fair
Friday, July 31st, 2009
Source: http://www.fairus.org/site/PageNavigator/issues/census_and_illegal_immigration
The Census and Illegal Immigration
A national organization of Latino religious leaders is currently calling on illegal aliens to boycott the 2010 Census. They assert that the participation of illegal aliens in the Census may be used to identify them for deportation, and they argue that only if “legalization,” i.e., amnesty, for illegal aliens is adopted this year can the fear of deportation be eliminated.
This intriguing twist on an old controversy reminds us that the Census counts all residents—including illegal residents. FAIR has tried repeatedly to stop this practice. We challenged that interpretation with 30 members of Congress in a lawsuit in 1990—only to have the court toss the case on a technical argument that ignored mountains of evidence demonstrating adverse impacts on voters’ right to a fair apportionment. When illegal aliens are included in the apportionment count, states with slower population growth and fewer illegal aliens lose House representation to those states with the fastest growth and the highest number of illegal residents.
In addition to the allocation of House seats, the Census is used by the federal government for distributing funding to the states, and it is used within a state for both redistricting state legislative seats and for distribution of state funding. Thus, the Census determines how and where federal and state tax dollars are allocated for the coming decade.
It is too late in the 2010 Census preparations to change the current ground rules. There is no pending legislation in Congress on this issue. Nevertheless, FAIR continues to articulate that it is a serious distortion of our mode of governance to include illegal aliens in the Census-based formula for distribution of political representation in the House. The composition of the House also influences the composition of the Electoral College that decides the presidency, so the count of illegal aliens also may decide the presidency.
FAIR has advocated eliminating the illegal alien population from the Census count in allocating political power and federal funding. For 20 years, we have been urging the Census Bureau to ask about legal status. Alternatively, the Census Bureau could define a resident as someone who both resides in the U.S. as their “normal place of abode” and, if a non-citizen, is present in the U.S. with the consent of the federal government. So far, these suggestions have been rejected by the agency.
The decennial Census is one more example of how mass illegal immigration affects not just jobs and tax dollars, but ultimately the voice that American citizens have in determining their own future.
July 2009
Tags: Democracy
Posted in Crime, Democracy, Immigration, law | No Comments »