The third sentence of the Project 2025 chapter on the Census asserted that getting control of the Census “… will require that both committed political appointees and like-minded career employees are immediately put in place to execute a conservative agenda.” The report also argued that “Any successful conservative administration must include a citizenship question.” One analysis of Project 2025 described the report on the Census as a “Blueprint for a Census that doesn’t see itself as an objective data collection and analysis group, but as an instrument of the partisan, redistricting project – and possibly immigration enforcement.”
Given this, it is hardly surprising Congress is advancing legislation that would remove the undocumented – or perhaps all non-citizens – from the Census count.
The decennial census is used for two purposes: to count the population in order to determine how federal funds will be distributed, and to apportion the population into federal and state legislative districts. The legislative proposals would include all persons in the headcount for purposes of allocating funds, but then remove some or all non-citizens from the so-called apportionment headcount.
This appears to fly in the face of the 14th amendment, which requires “”whole number of persons in each state”” to be included in apportionment counts.
The bill that is furthest along is an appropriations bill that that would prohibit the Census Bureau from using any appropriated funds to include noncitizens without legal status in the 2030 apportionment counts. The bill was approved by an appropriations subcommittee on a 9-6 party line vote and is moving forward.
The other two bills would exclude all non-citizens, including green-card and visa holders, from the apportionment counts.
Of course, any requirement to exclude any categories of non-citizens would require the Census Bureau to include a so-called “citizenship question,” which Census advocates argue would deter some non-citizens from answering – and thus reduce federal resources and political representation for states with a high percentage of immigrants, including Texas, Florida, California, New York, New Jersey, and Nevada. The Trump administration tried to include the question in 2020 but dropped these plans when the Supreme Court found that they had not established a legitimate purpose for asking the question. Passage of any of these laws would settle that issue, including the question.
And if the Census becomes politicized to that extent, both its decennial enumeration and its economic analysis become worthless. When I was chair of the 2020 census, Complete Count Committee, we found a surprising level of suspicion – from all sides of the political spectrum – of the Census Bureau’s motives. Militia types thought it was a precursor to gun confiscation and FEMA Camps; immigrants feared deportation. In 2020, it was at least possible to assure suspicious people that their data was totally safe. In 2030, my counterpart might have to say, “Well, yeah, you’re quite right to be concerned.”
Leon Reed is a former US Senate staff member, defense consultant, and history teacher. He is a 10 year resident of Gettysburg, where he writes military history and explores the park and the Adams County countryside. He is the publisher at Little Falls Books, chaired the Adams County 2020 Census Complete Count Committee and is on the board of SCCAP. He and his wife, Lois, have 3 children, 3 cats, and 5 grandchildren.