Michelle Chen is a contributing writer at The Nation, a contributing editor at Dissent and a co-producer of the “Belabored” podcast and Asia Pacific Forum on WBAI FM.
Michelle Chen is a contributing writer at The Nation, a contributing editor at Dissent and a co-producer of the “Belabored” podcast and Asia Pacific Forum on WBAI FM.
Dear Moron
The primary purpose of the Census is to determine poltical representation. WHY, unless you are deliberately trying to foster fraud, would you count anyone BUT Citizens?
Ms. Chen:
The government stopped asking for legal immigrants to count in the 1950’s, but a LOT has changed since then.
California is badly out of synch with the rest of the country. There are MILLIONS of illegals now in California.
This is badly needed. Thanks for your opinion, but now please go away.
Thanks.
“Papers please” is so last century — and is always brought up by the people who want you “chipped.”
Is that Camera Hoggs mom?
The census is to determine Representation in the House. Asking about citizenship will help in apportioning Government services to CITIZENS WHO ARE PAYING TAXES. I do not believe the Constitution says that we have to pay for people who broke the Law while coming into the USA. And hard working Americans are FED UP with paying for those who just want to sponge off those hard working Americans.
“Trump wants to reframe the census to fit his definition of America, not protect Americans”
Because Michelle Chen’s revisionist, counter-intuitive definition of “American” is the manifest, unquestionable Truth, and the vernacular, traditional, popular definition is Falsehood. I wonder if she believes her own drivel.
I will point this out...if you take the number of non-Americans in the country at 22-million (often suggested), and figure that three-quarters of this group are in California, NY, and Florida (my humble guess), then the question weighs greatly upon the 2024 Presidential election and the Electoral College.
You can figure lesser populations counted, and the three states combined would lose at least nine Electoral votes, and those nine votes likely shift to red states (mostly southern states).
This would also reshape a significant number of states and the district-drawing scheme, and put the Supreme Court into a full-time job of trying to figure ‘fair’ district drawings, or not.
The United States of America belongs to the citizens.
Citizens of other countries who broke into ours do not belong here.
I’ve always wondered how illegal aliens had as much political power as they have. Now I know. I never thought about the allocation of congressional seats in their relation to the number of illegals counted in the census.
What a Moroon. States with high levels of non-citizens then “steal” representation from the other state with low levels of non-citizens. Totally unfair.
pablum
Sorry Michelle #2 - Barack Obama is the one who actually did reframe “the census to fit his definition of America, not protect Americans”.
The citizenship question was on the census form until it was eliminated by Barack on the 2010 census form.
Obama and the democrats did not want Americans to know the magnitude of the foreign invasion of America that was underway.
President Trump is trying to repair the widespread damage Obama has done to the nation.
A part of that includes restoring the census inquiry regarding citizenship.
Excuse me?
She needs to go back. She’s not interested in being an American.
I guess that comes from being the "universal nation."
Once again, the left’s accusations reflect their own past and current actions.
Why is our government responsible for coddling illegal aliens? — mic drop.
Ms Chen ugly in every way. Not to mention just wrong.
People this stupid should not be allowed to write articles.
For those of you not aware, WBAI is the Pacifica radio station out of NYC. That says volumes about the author.
Had Ms. Chen done her homework, she'd find out that questions beyond a simple count are Constitutional:
It is constitutional to include questions in the decennial census beyond those concerning a simple count of the number of people. On numerous occasions, the courts have said the Constitution gives Congress the authority to collect statistics in the census. As early as 1870, the Supreme Court characterized as unquestionable the power of Congress to require both an enumeration and the collection of statistics in the census. The Legal Tender Cases, Tex.1870; 12 Wall., U.S., 457, 536, 20 L.Ed. 287. In 1901, a District Court said the Constitution's census clause (Art. 1, Sec. 2, Clause 3) is not limited to a headcount of the population and "does not prohibit the gathering of other statistics, if 'necessary and proper,' for the intelligent exercise of other powers enumerated in the constitution, and in such case there could be no objection to acquiring this information through the same machinery by which the population is enumerated." United States v. Moriarity, 106 F. 886, 891 (S.D.N.Y.1901).
For what it's worth, and I'm not saying this is the intent (since being in this country illegally is, well, illegal already) but mailing back a Census form and lying on the Citizenship question would likely constitute mail fraud.
Or, perhaps, the intent of the question is to get a real count of the citizenry, and re-balance the House and Electoral College...
