OBAMA REMOVED THE CENSUS CITIZENSHIP QUESTION SO TRUMP CAN PUT IT BACK IN

Should there be a citizenship question on the 2020 census? Will there be?

Those questions have been much in the news lately, because:

The Supreme Court ruled the question could be asked…if the Commerce Department provided a better rationale for asking it.

Then the Commerce Department said that because of time constraints, the census forms will be printed without a citizenship question.

President Trump countermanded that, ordered the Justice Department to revisit the issue with the courts pronto.

A day later, the president said he may issue an executive order to have a citizenship question included.

As the controversy escalated, millions more Americans formed an opinion about it.

According to this poll, 67 percent of Americans – including 52 percent of Democrats – think a citizenship question should be asked.

If the House of Representatives were apportioned on the basis of the population of citizens, California would lose at least six seats

Reapportionment is governed by Section 2 of the Fourteenth Amendment, which states:

“Representatives shall be apportioned among the several States, according to their respective numbers, counting the whole number of persons in each State, excluding Indians not taxed…”

Which means the Constitution must be amended to permit the House to be apportioned on the population of citizens. That isn’t going to happen anytime soon.

However, Section 2 of the 14^th Amendment goes on to say that if a state denies the franchise to anyone eligible to vote, its allotment of House seats shall be “reduced in proportion to which the number of such… citizens… shall bear to the whole number of… citizens…in such state.”

This language is “absolute and mandatory,” noted lawyers David Rivkin and Gilson Gray, but cannot be complied with without counting the number of citizens in each state.

A reasonable – as in not so far-fetched it would be laughed out of court immediately – argument can be made that the presence of large numbers of illegals dilutes the franchise of citizens, in violation of the 14^th Amendment.

Nothing in the Constitution prohibits states from apportioning seats in their legislatures on the population of citizens.

There are other very good reasons for why a citizenship question must be asked, as it was in every census from 1820 until President Obama removed it in 2010.

But there’s a more accurate, less expensive means of determining how many citizens and non-citizens there are the Census Bureau is planning to utilize whether or not a citizenship question is asked, said Michael McDonald of the Elections Project.

So why is President Trump making such a fuss?

Perhaps because the controversy over the census question may be more important than whether it is asked.

If more Americans knew the facts, support for secure borders and sensible immigration reform likely would soar.

Studies – mostly by advocacy groups – estimate the number of illegals here at between 10.5 million and 29 million. The difference between the estimates is equivalent to the population of New York State.

That’s a lot of uncertainty. We need better numbers.

The net cost to taxpayers of illegal immigration is $116 billion a year, FAIR estimated in 2017. That’s more than the VA plans to spend on health care for veterans.

Illegal border crossers create an average fiscal burden of (about) $74,722 during their lifetimes, the National Academy of Sciences estimated.

Non-citizens (8.4 percent of the adult population) commit about 21 percent of federal crimes (excluding immigration law violations) data from the U.S. Sentencing Commission indicates.

From 2011 through 2016, there were 730,000 criminal aliens in federal and state prisons and county and city jails, the Government Accountability Office estimated. They accounted for 4.9 million arrests for 7.5 million offenses.

More than 20 percent of inmates in federal prisons in December, 2017, were non-citizens, of whom about two thirds were illegal immigrants, data from the Bureau of Prisons indicates.

In this poll in April, 35 percent of Americans said illegal immigration is a “crisis;” another 45 percent said it was a “serious problem.” In this poll in June, 23 percent said illegal immigration is the most serious problem facing the country.

If more knew the facts, those numbers would be higher. The Lying Swine don’t want people to know these facts. How can the president get the truth past their censorship, spin, and outright lies?

By creating and sustaining controversy that tricks or forces Fake Newsers to report on the issue.

If the Supreme Court had ruled (as it should have) the citizenship question was good to go, we likely would have had one news cycle of lamentations from leftists, then silence. There’d have been no more reporting until after the census findings came back (after the election).

If Trump issues an executive order, leftists will race to an Obama district court judge, who will issue an injunction. The White House will appeal, may win in the appellate court (the law is clearly on his side). If not, Trump will win in the Supreme Court (Chief Justice Roberts already has said the president has a right to include a citizenship question.)

At each stage, the drama will increase, because of the apparent race against time. Many more Americans will be made aware of the issues.

If the drama is done before the end of October, the citizenship question will be included. Trump wins. If it isn’t, the Census Bureau will use the method McDonald described above to count citizens and non-citizens. Trump wins.

Jack Kelly is a former Marine and Green Beret, and was the Deputy Assistant Secretary of the Air Force during the Reagan Administration.  Until his retirement in January 2017, he was the national security writer for the Pittsburgh Post-Gazette.