Quote:
Originally Posted by Pete F.
Districting and appropriations decisions are in fact based on the census's raw population numbers, not on any citizen count.
If you really want a population count, do it in the way that enables the most accurate number.
Then if the big concern is how many people reside in the US without being citizens you can easily subtract the number of people with Social Security numbers (all citizens and permitted workers) from the census.
The question is purely a political power play.
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Constitutionally, both in Article 1 and the 14th Amendment, the number of Representatives allotted to each state depends either directly on citizenship or on those who have the right to vote (or will have it when they come of age) which is basically the same thing so indirectly on citizenship.
It makes sense that the number of Representatives should be based on those who vote for Representatives. I see no rationale to allotting Representatives on the basis of the number of non-citizens or those who have no right to vote.
Subtracting the number of those in the U.S. who don't have SS numbers would have to be done by state rather than in all the U.S. to be used for Representation purpose. That could be done for apportionment, but would probably be opposed by those who oppose now because they want the number of non-citizens including illegals to influence the number of Representatives since the illegals predominantly live in states that usually vote Democrat. And besides, most illegals don't have SS numbers but would be counted in the census so your plan of counting SS holders would not account for them but would nevertheless influence the number of Representatives.