News to Me

I guess I’m very naive.

The census is coming up next year, and although I was aware that the census-takers count illegal aliens, I assumed that was for informational purposes only—to quantify the scope of the problem.

Boy was I wrong.

A little noticed effect is the way in which immigration impacts the distribution of seats in the U.S. House of Representatives. Apportionment is based on each state’s total population — including illegal aliens and other non-citizens — relative to the rest of the country.

None of the states that lost a seat due to non-citizens is declining in population. The population of the four states that lost seats due to illegal immigration increased 1.6 million in the 1990s, while the population of the five states that lost seats because of other non-citizens grew by two million.

In the nine states that lost a seat due to the presence of non-citizens, only one in 50 residents is a non-citizen. In contrast, one in seven residents is a non-citizen in California, which picked up six of these seats. One in 10 residents is a non-citizen in New York, Texas, and Florida, the states that gained the other three seats.

The large number of non-citizens creates a tension with the principle of “one man, one vote” because it takes so few votes to win these immigrant-heavy districts. In 2002, it took almost 100,000 votes to win the typical congressional race in the four states that lost a seat due to illegal aliens, while it took fewer than 35,000 votes to win the 34th and 31st districts of California.

The presence of illegal aliens in other states caused Indiana, Michigan, and Mississippi to each lose one seat in the House in 2000, while Montana failed to gain a seat it otherwise would have.

Illegal immigration not only redistributes seats in the House, it has the same effect on presidential elections because the Electoral College is based on the size of congressional delegations.  The presence of all non-citizens in the Census redistributed a total of nine seats. The term “non-citizens” includes illegal aliens, legal immigrants, and temporary visitors, mainly foreign students and guest workers. In addition to the four states that lost a seat due to the presence of illegal aliens, Oklahoma, Pennsylvania, Wisconsin, Kentucky, and Utah each had one fewer seat than they otherwise would have.

While it’s clear that American citizens in low-immigration states lose from mass immigration, the winners are not necessarily the non-citizens who cause the reapportionment, since they cannot vote or otherwise fully take part in the political process. Instead, it is citizens who live in the same districts with non-citizens whose political power is enhanced. Put simply, in a district in which a large share of the population cannot vote, those who do vote count more than citizens in districts where almost everyone is an American citizen. Large non-citizen populations take voting power from Americans and give it to other American citizens in high-immigration districts. 

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