U.S. House advances bill to add citizenship question to census

The House of Representatives passed the Equal Representation Act on Wednesday in a 206-202 vote along party lines. No Democrats voted for the measure.

What prompted the legislation? Rep. Chuck Edwards, R-N.C., brought the bill forward in his House floor remarks on Wednesday. He criticized the Biden administration’s failure to secure the U.S. southern border. Record numbers of illegal immigrants coming across the border were having a negative impact on the security of elections in the United States, Edwards said.

The bill adds a citizenship question to the U.S. census, which is administered every decade. The individual filling out the census form must select whether he or she is a legal U.S. citizen. The bill further requires non-citizens to be excluded from the total count used to apportion Congressional seats and Electoral College votes to individual states. The bill further states that if any part of the bill is ruled unconstitutional, the remainder of the bill would still stand.

What are the arguments for and against the bill? Supporters say the bill would ensure that only those with a stake in the future of the U.S. be represented in Congress and elections. Rep. James Comer, R-Ky., chairman of the House Committee on Oversight and Accountability, cheered the bill’s passage. American citizens’ federal representation should be determined only by American citizens, he wrote in a statement on Wednesday. In a similar statement, House Speaker Mike Johnson, R-La., said that failure to pass the protection would reward states and cities with greater representation for violating federal immigration laws.

Democrats who opposed the measure accuse its backers of denying representation to portions of the U.S. population. Leaders of the Congressional Tri-Caucus, meant to represent members of the black, Hispanic, and Asian Pacific American populations, said the bill violates the Constitution. Specifically, they pointed to language in the 14th Amendment, requiring the “whole number of persons in each state” to be counted. They said the bill would undercount citizens living in mixed-status families and households, resulting in the misallocation of trillions of dollars of federal funding. The bill faces an uncertain future in the Senate.

Isn’t there a similar bill in the works? Rep. Chip Roy, R-Texas, has introduced the Safeguard American Voter Eligibility Act. The SAVE Act would ensure that anyone voting in U.S. federal elections is a legal citizen by requiring voters to provide proof of citizenship and states to remove non-citizens from existing voter rolls.

Dig deeper: Read Joseph Backholm’s column in WORLD Opinions on President Joe Biden’s apology for referring to “illegal” immigrants.