Citizen q on Census will benefit blacks and white urbanites, in mostly-blue Rust Belt

The inclusion of a question about citizenship status on the 2020 Census would help the effort to fairly represent Americans in their own government.

Districts for the House of Representatives are apportioned based on population size, which also affects the weight that a state has in the Electoral College when choosing a president. And there's the matter of how much resources need to be allocated to an area to serve the Americans living there. Our government exists to serve us, not foreigners.

Illegal immigrants should not get any representation in our government or receive government spending. They will have influence over the government and receive services from the government when they return to their home countries, who have sole jurisdiction over them.

Temporary legal immigrants -- whether Indian tech drones or Mexican farm hands -- are still not citizens and don't have voting rights for the limited time they're here. So they too should not be influencing our government, and all costs associated with their being here should fall on their employers, not the broad American taxpayer base.

On such a hot-button issue, there's a lot of confusion, and as usual the Right has bought into the bogus picture of reality presented by the Left -- only differing on whether they like it or hate it.

Early in the 2016 campaign, I discussed at length what effects there are from giving Congressional districts based on resident population rather than citizen population, and followed up in a post from last fall.

The effects do NOT include illegal immigrants voting in our elections, which is the main hysterical talking point from the Right. Hispanics are the main immigrant group, and they do not vote even when they are American citizens. Immigrants don't vote, and Hispanic immigrants really don't vote -- only 28% of those who were even eligible to vote (excluding illegals) did so in 2012. Obviously illegals are going to vote at even lower rates.

Even if they did, they are located in deep blue and deep red states where they will not make a difference in the outcome -- California will be blue even if only white people voted, and Texas is red despite all the Hispanics there.

The true effect is not on partisan balance, but on the strength of the state's vote for president.

California may be blue no matter what, but it has an unfair outsized effect on the presidential election if they have 55 vs. 45 votes due to their larger population of non-citizens. And since the number of districts in the entire country is fixed, if California has more influence, that means some other state has an unfair under-sized influence.

Those are states that have minimal non-citizen populations, but are still large enough in population to deserve many EC votes -- mostly these are in the Rust Belt, like Michigan, Wisconsin, Minnesota, Ohio, and Indiana.

Within the districts that are unfairly awarded to places with large non-citizen populations, it's not as though the illegals themselves are voting for the representative -- remember, they don't vote. It is their employers who do the voting, akin to the slavemasters from the old South having a say in government, while their slaves did not, even though the slaves counted toward population size and therefore number of representatives.

So the current system gives an unfair advantage not to the immigrants themselves, but to the latter-day slavemasters who employ illegals and temporary legal immigrants, largely in the Sun Belt.

What would happen if we apportioned districts fairly, according to citizen populations? Here again the Right is clueless because they buy into the bogus picture presented by the Left, only differing in liking it vs. hating it.

The wrong conclusion is that the change would penalize blue states and reward red states, penalize Hispanics and reward whites, and although they don't explicitly say so, they're assuming it will penalize urbanites and reward more sparsely populated areas (that completes the gestalt of typical Republican voters).

First, the second-biggest loser after California would be deep red Texas, along with other Sun Belt red states like Arizona, Georgia, North Carolina, and the swing state of Florida. Blue state losers aside from California would be New York, Illinois, New Jersey, Virginia, and Massachusetts.

More importantly, where would these districts go to? Mostly to other blue states -- Michigan, Wisconsin, Minnesota, Pennsylvania -- and the swing state of Ohio. Oregon could pick up one as well. Some red states might gain a few, like Tennessee or Missouri, and Indiana for sure. But generally speaking, red states don't have large populations -- whether resident or citizen -- so they're not in a position to get awarded more districts.

So the main change would be from the Sun Belt to the Rust Belt.

Within a state, the districts would go to where there are large populations -- meaning cities, not small towns or rural areas. When Michigan gets a few more districts, they will go to the Detroit metro rather than the Upper Peninsula. In Wisconsin, they will go to the Milwaukee metro rather than the north. In Ohio, to the Cleveland, Columbus, and Cincinnati metros rather than Appalachia.

Because districts go to higher populations, and since the Democrats are currently so urban-oriented, the change would not only leave the partisan balance roughly the same -- it would preserve the urban orientation of the party and its goals in Congress.

Finally, within a metro area, the change would disproportionately benefit African-Americans because they're more likely to be urbanites than whites are. If Detroit gets two more representatives in Congress, you can bet that both will be black themselves and will be representing black communities. Ditto for Milwaukee, Cleveland, etc.

Urban / suburban whites will pick up a little more representation, but the chief effect will be to reduce the influence of white slavemasters in heavily immigrant areas, and to boost the influence of African-Americans from places that have been relatively uncolonized by immigrants (like the Rust Belt, where economic prospects are not as great as elsewhere in the phony bubble economy).

On every level, the demographic implications still favor the Democrats if anything.

The change would be entirely within the Democrat party, then. Take away districts and resources from California, and give them to Michigan. Take from one urban metro, give it to another urban metro. Take from the white employers of illegal Hispanics, give it to the African-American working class.

Such an internal shift within the Democrats would be part of their overall re-alignment -- winning back the Rust Belt, focusing on their core non-white group (African-Americans) rather than unreliable non-white groups (Hispanics and Asians), and emphasizing America rather than a multinational Tower of Babel.

There will be a smaller shift on the GOP side, taking away from Texas and giving to Indiana, although again taking from one urban metro and giving to another urban metro, and taking away from white slavemasters of illegal Hispanics and giving to African-American workers in Gary. With more districts going to disproportionately black metros, Indiana, Missouri, and Tennessee will become slightly less red, but still red. Ohio has always been a swing state, and would probably stay one.

In pushing for a fair apportionment of Congressional districts and federal funding, the nationalists on the Trump side should reach out as much as possible to Rust Belt Democrats and the African-Americans of the large metro areas in the Midwest, since that's who the natural allies are. They will be beneficiaries more so than white rural Americans from tiny farm states.

Point out to Michigan Democrats that their state will gain from California's loss, that it's only the white slavemasters in California who are losing anyway, not the immigrants for whom Michigan Dems might have sympathy, and that Michigan's gain will disproportionately benefit their African-American communities.

This should be a slam dunk to get bipartisan support for within the crucial Rust Belt region -- both on the Trump and Bernie sides. Elsewhere support will probably split along partisan lines, but the Rust Belt has enough people to swing the overall debate.