Trump Administration Pushes to Exclude Immigrants from U.S. Census

The U.S. administration under Donald Trump proposed on the 9th (local time) changing the census criteria to limit who is counted to U.S. citizens and lawful permanent residents.

According to the proposed changes published in the Federal Register on this day, the U.S. government argued that undocumented immigrants and residents without permanent resident status lack sufficient ties and loyalty to the United States and cannot be considered true residents, members of the political community, or persons with a usual residence in the United States.

The proposal also includes excluding refugees and asylum seekers from the census, as well as eliminating questions regarding race and ethnicity, which have been asked in every census since the first one in 1790.

Currently, the census also counts temporary migrants such as international students, refugees, asylum seekers, and undocumented immigrants.

The proposal will undergo a 30-day public comment period, after which the Census Bureau will review the feedback and finalize the rule.

The U.S. census is conducted every 10 years, with the next count scheduled for April 2030.

The Trump administration is pushing for these changes because census results are directly tied to the allocation of seats in the House of Representatives.

The 14th Amendment to the U.S. Constitution stipulates that the basis for apportioning House seats is the total number of "persons" in each state, rather than just "citizens."

Historically, the U.S. Supreme Court and legal scholars have interpreted this term to mean all residents within the United States.

However, the Trump administration argues that "person" should be narrowly interpreted based on the concept of settled inhabitants at the founding of the country, thereby excluding undocumented immigrants and temporary residents who lack a usual residence.

If implemented, states with high proportions of immigrants, such as California, New York, Florida, and Texas, would see their populations decline, resulting in fewer House seats. President Trump believes these shifts would favor the Republican Party.

The Washington Post (WP) reported that such changes would leave millions of people out of the census and lead to a redrawing of congressional seats by state.

Regarding the plan to remove race and ethnicity questions from the census, critics argue that without this data, there will be no district-level data to prove whether provisions of the Voting Rights Act protecting the voting rights of racial minorities have been violated, ultimately weakening the political influence of minority groups.

They also warn that population data used for allocating federal funding for public services and addressing health disparities could be distorted.

Mita Anand, director of the Census and Data Equity Project at The Leadership Conference on Civil and Human Rights, warned Reuters that this could have massive repercussions, leaving areas with relatively high immigrant populations with insufficient federal funding and representation.

Meanwhile, the Trump administration argues that racial classification itself causes social division and that government policies should be "race-neutral."

During his first term in 2018, President Trump pushed to include a citizenship question in the census, but the Supreme Court blocked the move the following year, ruling that the administration's rationale was pretextual.

The WP forecasted that constitutional controversies and subsequent lawsuits are virtually certain to follow.

New York Attorney General Letitia James, who led lawsuits against the Trump administration's previous census modification attempts in 2018, said on the 9th that New York State is once again exploring legal countermeasures against the administration's newly proposed changes.

(Photo: Getty Images)
※ Please note: This article was translated by AI and may contain errors.