Democrats on the House Oversight Committee unanimously voted against adding a citizenship question to the U.S. census. Committee Chair James Comer says the addition of the question shouldn’t be controversial.
“HR7109, the Equal Representation Act, does two simple things. First: the bill requires the Census Bureau to include a citizenship question on the decennial census questionnaire,” Rep. James Comer (R-KY) said of the bill. “Second: the bill directs that this information be used to ensure fair representation by requiring only citizens be included in the apportionment base.”
Comer confirmed to his committee that the question would be as simple “yes” or “no.”
“By requiring this question, the United States government will be able to collect accurate data on the makeup of our population,” he said. “The Census Bureau currently estimates the non-citizen population using survey data from the census-administered American community survey. But that data is not based on the entire population. It’s only an estimate and suffers a large margin of error.”
“It’s an easy question and it doesn’t reveal anything about a specific immigration status,” Comer added — but committee Democrats wouldn’t go for it.
An estimated 22 million people are currently in the United States with a non-citizen status.
The commonsense bill was passed, despite Democrats’ best efforts.
“We just passed this commonsense bill through our committee. Unsurprisingly, every Oversight Democrat voted against it. On to the floor!” the House GOP Oversight Committee said on X.
Ranking committee Democrat Rep. Jamies Raskin (D-MD) had an interesting reason for refusing to add the question to the census.
“The Supreme Court has been very clear about this, and the Founders were very clear: There are lots of people who are not voters who get counted in the Census,” Raskin said.
“There was no immigration law when the Constitution was adopted at all,” Raskin said later. “In fact, the only illegals in the country, at least according to the native population, were the people writing the Constitution.”
But why, Mr. Raskin, does this prohibit the addition of a commonsense citizenship question?
