President Donald Trump ordered Tuesday a ban on undocumented immigrants being counted for apportionment of House representation after the 2020 census.
July 21 (UPI) — President Donald Trump issued a memorandum Tuesday that blocks undocumented immigrants from being counted for apportionment of House representation after the 2020 census. Trump ordered the ban in a presidential memorandum that he signed Tuesday. The memorandum has sparked legal challenges as it follows the Department of Commerce losing a Supreme Court case last year where it attempted to include a question about citizenship status on the 2020 census. Still, the memorandum said that the constitution does not require undocumented immigrants to be counted for the purpose of apportionment of the House of Representatives. « The discretion delegated to the executive branch to determine who qualifies as an ‘inhabitant’ includes authority to exclude from the apportionment base aliens who are not in lawful immigration status, » the memorandum states. « For the purpose of the reapportionment of Representatives following the 2020 census, its is the policy of the United States to exclude from the apportionment base aliens who are not in a lawful immigration status under the Immigration and Nationality Act . .. Excluding these illegal aliens from the apportionment base is more consonant with the principles of representative democracy underpinning our system of government.
