“I understand and I get it, but that is not what the Supreme Court ruled.
the US is required to include illegal aliens in the population counts and apportionment. It is settled law.”
Actually The Supreme Court ruled that illegals can be counted, not that they must be counted. “See the April 2016 Texas redistricting ruling”. There’s nothing etched in stone in the Constitution that states illegals must be counted, in reality that’s at the discretion of the Secretary of commerce. Quoting written law- “a) The Secretary shall, in the year 1980 and every 10 years thereafter, take a decennial census of population as of the first day of April of such year, which date shall be known as the “decennial census date”, in such form and content as he may determine, including the use of sampling procedures and special surveys.”
It should be noted that vacationing non-citizen visitors to the U.S. are not counted, so there’s nothing that mandates all categories of people on US. soil be counted, the only people who are likely mandated to be counted are those with 14th amendment citizenship protections and perhaps legal non citizens.
It is the result of a Supreme Court case a decade or so ago and the SC ruled illegals will be included in the Census and included in the House apportionment. I fully understand all the arguments against it, but they are mute from a practical point of view. It is not just an administrative decision, it is the law.
The question Trump wanted was for informational purposes. The Dems feared that some illegals would not participate in fear, but there was never a question to include them or not include them in the population count and apportionment.
The April 2016 count has no relation to the original SC case and is meaningless to the apportionment process. The original case is very operative. Nothing has changed.
Yes, correct.
Dave W has blurred the distinction of who can be counted with who is included in the criteria definition of the Apportionment Population.
Illegals can be counted. No problem.
But illegals will not be included in the Apportionment Population which is used to apportion representatives to Congress.