RE: [CTPP] Immigrants and redistricting

At 10:01 AM 10/30/2003 -0600, Paoni, Diane wrote: Although I find the issue of the impact of including the population of immigrants whose status does not allow them to vote into the reapportionment process intriguing, some details in the article didn't seem right so I looked at the report online (http://www.cis.org/circle.html). Take a look at this quote from the report regarding the study's methodology: "To measure the political effect of immigration, we removed illegals, non-citizens, or the entire foreign-born population from each stateâ¬"s population and then recalculated the allocation of seats in the U.S. House of Representatives." As I'm sure most of the folks on this list serve know, foreign born population is not a good equivalent for immigrants who are counted in the Census but can't vote. In case you don't know, unlike what's implied in the news article Elaine forwarded, naturalized US citizens can vote. Diane Paoni WisDOT Bureau of Planning ```````````````````````````````````````````````````````` Of course naturalized citizens can vote. I encourage readers to download and read the report yourselves; it's only 8 pages. They did the calculations based on eliminating three different groups from the apportionment count: (1) illegal aliens, (2) non-citizens, (3) the foreign-born. Obviously the latter is irrelevant and its inclusion, in my opinion, is only for purposes of fanning the flames of the sponsoring organization. I am also unclear on how they knew which non-citizens in the census were illegal, since that's not an item on the questionnaire (!) Apparently they used some INS estimates. This all really comes down to the meaning of residence, for purposes of inclusion in the census and the population count for reapportionment. As such, it is highly political and who's on what side depends on who stands to gain or lose. North Carolina beat out Utah for the 435th seat. The report says that's because of counting the illegal aliens in NC. The lawsuit Utah brought all the way to the Supreme Court, trying to change this result and failing, argued that the young Mormon missionaries who are abroad should be counted in Utah's population, which would then (arithmetically) have given them the seat. My personal view is that residence means living within the boundaries of the 50 states and the District of Columia (although the DC population does not count in executing the apportionment formula). This means that non-citizens are counted and that people living abroad are not, whether they're military or civilians. I say all this even though I'm from Michigan, which according to the report lost its 16th seat because of the counting of illegal aliens. People are people, they need services and they need representation. Patty Becker ------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------- Patricia C. (Patty) Becker 248/354-6520 APB Associates/SEMCC FAX 248/354-6645 28300 Franklin Road Home 248/355-2428 Southfield, MI 48034 pbecker(a)umich.edu