Justices weigh in on Trump’s memo for illegal immigrant exclusion from 2020 Census

President Trump issued a directive to exclude immigrants from the 2020 census count. The directive was issued on July 21, 2020 but the Supreme Court weighed in on November 30th, 2020.

President trump stated in his memo “Excluding these illegal aliens from the apportionment base is more consonant with the principles of representative democracy underpinning our system of Government.” He also states “Many of these aliens entered the country illegally in the first place. Increasing congressional representation based on the presence of aliens who are not in a lawful immigration status would also create perverse incentives encouraging violations of Federal law.”

The apportionment of House seats is based on “whole number of persons in each state” according to the U.S Constitution. It has been the government’s practice to include all persons including illegal immigrants until now. On Monday, justices expressed their doubts about the memo and its probability to be enacted. They discussed how difficult it would be to effectively count all “illegal aliens” in each state. Census Bureau officials will not be able to finish the count until the end of January. This concerned the justices because at the end of January Trump will have no say in whether or not illegal immigrants are counted.

Three lower courts have already declared the president’s memo to be a violation of census statutes and or of the Constitution. Many people have condemned the memo and are outraged by what they say is disrespect towards immigrants. This includes president elect Joe Biden, who stated “in America, everyone counts.”