[woo49]

Both sides have ulterior motives.

Counting illegal immigrants in the census helps Democrats because liberal states have more of them. This is just a fact. You may think we should still count as many of them in the census, that's fine. But don't pretend there is no issue with one side of the argument.

Mentioning motives of one side but not the other is naive. It also prevents us from having a real conversation about the trade offs at hand.

[ComputerGuru]

But that’s the whole point of the census. I agree Democrats wouldn’t care if it weren’t politically beneficial, but in this case their interest and the law coincide. Everyone, legal resident or not, should be counted. There’s zero legal /constitutional question about it. If you’re going to get angry every time someone does the right thing for the wrong reasons, I am afraid you’re in for a lifetime of disappointment.

Now if Democrats were trying to increase census coverage in Florida, Texas, NY, and IL while playing games to get census takers to skip traversing the vast emptiness of Montana and Wyoming, I’d agree that you have a point. But that’s not the case.

[Auracle]

If there wasn’t a constitutional question there wouldn’t be an upcoming Supreme Court case about it.

And let’s be real - I find it pretty unlikely the constitution and 14th Amendment were written with massive amounts of illegal aliens being in the country in mind. Should we count tourists from other countries as well?

[comex]

The Constitution was, however, written with massive amounts of slaves being in the country in mind. And even they were counted as three fifths of a person. Should illegal immigrants be counted as less?

[Mindless2112]

At the time, slavery was legal. Unauthorized residency is not.

[minitoar]

It seems obvious to me the census is intended to count everyone living there, legally or otherwise. So tourists wouldn’t count.

[mensetmanusman]

It’s not so clear. Tourists are free people, and it might make sense to count them if we are trying to allocate resources to serve all free people (which tourists are).

If you don’t count tourists, why would you count migrants who are supposedly going back to their home country? Maybe tourists who are here for 6 months would be analogous.

[minitoar]

Who said we should count migrants that are supposedly going back to their country?

[mensetmanusman]

Lots of commenters here.

[woo49]

It’s not as simple.

Essentially the vote of two US citizens does not count equally if you count everyone.

If one lives in an area with more illegal immigrants, that US citizens votes foe him/her but also for the non voters in the area. This is not a ‘one person one vote’ situation and it’s a real concern if you believe in equal representation.

Ideally you’d have a citizenship question and you count only citizens for electoral college allocation and everyone for non electoral college matters. But that creates concerns of undercounting etc.

[NelsonMinar]

Elected officials represent all the constituents in their district, not just the citizens.

Are you mad that the census counts children too? They don't vote either. Would you favor the census skipping children? Should the census count people who don't regularly vote? How about felons denied the right to vote? People judged too mentally incompetent to vote? Just who all are you willing to not count?

[eganist]

> Are you mad that the census counts children too?

This is a good point.

Should a district be penalized because their constituents chose to have more kids per family unit than others? Their voting power would go down in the interim, wouldn't it?

Thanks for raising the argument - it does a good job of showing why tying the census to voting power is meaningless.

[NelsonMinar]

Sometimes the reductio ad absurdum is helpful. But really the poster's initial argument is just complete ignorant nonsense. Perhaps they have never read the Constitution's definition of the Census or are unaware of 200+ years of history.

[eganist]

> Essentially the vote of two US citizens does not count equally if you count everyone.

It's not just about the vote. Redistricting is one aspect of it, sure, but it's not the sole reason a census is done.

It's done primarily to predict tax revenues, predict infrastructure needs, predict growth patterns, support municipal planning, etc., all of which are necessities for projects that often span decades.

If you're concerned about the vote, deal with the challenge posed by the electoral college instead. The Census is used for too many other things to be manipulated for the sake of political interests by one party.

[gamblor956]

That is not how the US census had ever worked. See the 3/5 Compromise.

[hn_throwaway_99]

TBH, I don't think it really matters. I mean, take voting for example. Democrats have a clear ulterior motive to expand voting, Republicans have a clear ulterior motive to make voting as difficult as possible.

But, TBH, I don't really care much about their motives, because in a democracy we should be trying to get the most eligible people as possible to vote. Republicans are trying to prevent people from voting because they believe the more voting is expanded, the harder it is to get a majority of people to vote for them. Well, tough shit.

To see what has happened in Texas, with dropboxes limited to one-per-county, I feel like the previous argument against voter fraud has kind of gone out the window, and now it's just blatant - there is no rational reason the giant county that contains Houston should be limited to the same number of dropboxes as a rural county with orders of magnitude fewer people.

[atoav]

Not American but I think a census should reflect reality. This means: which people (regardless of legal status) are currently living in an given area.

How this then translates into policy is an entirely different question, but essentially misrepresenting what should be objective reality for cheap political points is asking for trouble. A bit like closing your eyes: it doesn't make things go away.

[mensetmanusman]

American, and agree.

It should also include the average amount of tourists (steady state) so that the presence of more people in an area get sufficient resources (to serve citizens and non-citizens alike).

[maxerickson]

That's not an ulterior motive, it's a direct motive for counting everybody.

An ulterior motive would be expressing support for a counting method with a statement about the technical superiority of the method, but really preferring it because of some bias inherent in it. The "ulterior" part comes from the motivation being different than what is publicly expressed.

[eganist]

Counting all people who live in the United States of America as well as the distribution of people is the mandate of the Census. The status of said people is irrelevant - taxes are still paid, infrastructure decisions must still be made, etc., so whether any one side benefits more than the other by sticking to the letter of the mandate is irrelevant.

When deviating from the mandate, it's important to consider motives. When aligning with the mandate, unless it's clear that the mandate is ill-formed (which it isn't in this case for the reasons I've given above), motives for enforcing the mandate are, as said above, irrelevant.

[nonplussed]

> liberal states have more [illegal immigrants]

I was skeptical about this so I looked it up. Nevada and Texas are the top 2 states on a per capita basis. I'd hardly call those liberal states.

https://www.pewresearch.org/hispanic/interactives/u-s-unauth...

[NelsonMinar]

The entire purpose of the census is to count everyone. Citizens and non-citizens. Your attempt to make a "both sides" argument here is pitting the very constitutional purpose of the census against a racist party intent on suppressing representation for minorities.