Senate Rejects Excluding Illegal Aliens From Key Election Counts

The Senate rejected a plan that would have excluded illegal immigrants from the counts that determine important elements in American politics, including apportionment of House seats, which impacts the Electoral College which selects the president. The move came as President Joe Biden apologized for calling the migrant alleged murderer of student Laken Riley an “illegal” during the State of the Union address Thursday.

Currently, the numbers gathered by the Census Bureau is used to determine the number of representatives sent to the House by each state. Furthermore, the share of representatives also directly affects the Electoral College, which determines the president every four years.

The more seats in the House means more electors, which could assist states that traditionally vote for Democrats due to their high number of migrants.

The measure was introduced as a spending amendment by Sen. Bill Hagerty (R-TN), which would include a citizenship question in the next census. Those who mark that they are not citizens will not be counted toward the number of congressional seats and by extension Electoral College delegates for each state.

The bill would exclude both legal and illegal immigrants from the wider count since they are not citizens.

The bill was part of an effort by Republicans in the Senate to block the use of migrants on equal measure with American citizens.

“They are seeing people leave their state. They’re seeing the potential of the next census to lose congressional districts and electoral votes. I think most people in America are shocked to find out that we count the presence of illegal immigrants in determining the allocation of congressional districts and electoral votes,” Hagerty said.

Despite Hagerty and other Republicans’ efforts, the measure was rejected by the Democratic Party-controlled Senate.

Former President Donald Trump signed an executive order during his tenure requesting that the U.S. Census Bureau not count illegal aliens toward congressional reapportionment. This executive order was reversed by President Joe Biden when he came into office in 2021.

FYI President Trump signed an executive order instructing the U.S. Census Bureau to not count illegal migrants for purposes of apportioning seats in the House of Representatives

On inauguration day Biden signed an order reversing Trumps policy, allowing illegals to be counted in… https://t.co/Y9M0E211wO

— The Conservative Read (@theconread) March 7, 2024