There has
been a great legal war concerning a proposed question for the 2020 census form.
The question is rather legitimate and straight forward. It is:
Are you a
citizen of the United States?
At least
three federal courts have issued orders to permanently prevent the question
from being asked. The President is considering making it an executive order.
Governor J.B. Pritzker has called it a direct attack on immigrant communities
by the White House. Senator Dick Durbin says---if it happens--- it could cost Illinois
millions in federal funds.
I
understand. Legal residents are leaving the state in droves. The only way
Illinois keeps its 18 Congressional seats is to count illegals.
Back in
1950, the census asked respondents about their birthplace. What state (or
foreign country) was each person born in? If the answer revealed someone had
been born out of the United States, census workers were instructed to
“Immediately” ask whether that person was naturalized.
The best
guess is there are a half-million illegal, undocumented immigrants in the
state. Most of them are in Chicago or the city’s suburbs. Pritzker and Durbin
want them to be counted as if they were citizens. Worse than that, if it were
up to them they would be citizens.
That’s where
we are as a state. We have to count all of the non-citizens in order to cover
all of the citizens---who left---that now live in Missouri and Indiana because
they couldn’t stand the corruption here.
I don't even get why this is a sticking point. We have used non-citizens as part of our total population for representation throughout the years. For a while, only white land-owning males were considered citizens, but our total population was much larger. We also used to count slaves as 3/5 of a person.
ReplyDeleteThere's also a lot of foolishness in conflating non-citizens with illegal immigrants, which is precisely what you did. Estimates put the amount of legal non-citizens at 3 out of 5 non-citizens. Asking this question isn't going to help you realize where illegal immigrants are. You'd only find non-citizens in their varying degrees.
Instead you'd have folks under-reporting for fear that they might face repercussion for not being citizens even if they have proper documentation. After all, an American citizen was detained for weeks by ICE and CBP because the Government thought he was illegal.
But I get it, you've got this whole doom and gloom Illinois thing going on and you like to complain all the time. Immigrants are scary because they aren't like you or whatever.
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DeleteMike, is this your ancestor? David Dreith, born 1866 in Russia, arrived in the US at the Port of New York in 1898, with his wife and four small children. He had 42 dollars. His sponsor was his brother George who lived in Lincoln, Nebraska. He did not apply for naturalization until 1911 in the Denver, Colorado office. So he stayed for nearly 12 years before he applied. Now tell me, how would a man with a wife and four small children and $42 who showed up at the border today be treated? And how would a family who had stayed in the country for 12 years without applying for citizenship be treated today? Wouldn't the children born in the US be separated from their deported parents and siblings? David and his wife had several more what some people call today "anchor babies". It's too easy to think of our ancestors as the wonderful freedom lovers who came to America, while we blast people who want to come now. The US government used the census to wrongfully round up and intern the Japanese in WW II basically because of racial fear. You'll notice they didn't round up all the white Germans. It's naive to believe that the current administration won't do the same. The US Constitution says every person shall be counted. It does not say only citizens will be counted. Trying to add the citizenship question in this climate of hatred is meant to instill fear.
ReplyDeleteHow would David be treated? Well lets see he had a sponsor so he had somewhere to stay and he had $42. If we put that in today's money let's say he invested in the stock market and showed up last week. David would have $5,505,000 in his pocket and could support his family. You see the $42 would have doubled 17 times by now and his family would have been able to live where they wanted. He was invited and came into the country legally the way you should, was allowed to stay before applying because his visa is still in good standing. I personally know a few non-citizens with visa's that have been in the U.S. for over 30 years and had no problems. Besides that this question has been part of the census before with no problems.
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