February 25, 2016

Huge non-citizen populations give states unfair boost in Congress and Electoral College

In the roughly 10 years that I've been reading about immigration issues, I don't recall hearing about this one. If it has been covered before, it has not been hammered enough to be one of the facts that everyone knows.

Each state sends two Senators to the upper house of Congress. The number that it sends to the lower House of Representatives is proportional to its population -- we've all heard that before.

But what we didn't realize was that all residents count toward this population measure -- including illegal immigrants, foreigners legally here on student visas, and any other group of non-citizens, none of whom can vote for the Representatives or for President. It's simply how many people wake up and go to sleep in that state, regardless of their citizenship status.

The Census' website has a FAQ that admits this openly, and even has a separate question just about illegal aliens, saying that they do indeed count toward the population estimate that determines how many Representatives that state will send to Congress.

It gets worse: the number of Electoral College votes that a state gets is equal to the number of Congressmen they have. Each state gets 2 for their Senators; the variable number of Representatives is what makes one state's vote for President weigh more or less heavily in the final count.

Thus, states that have large non-citizen populations wield a disproportionate influence in the House of Representatives, and in the Presidential election. And because the number of Representatives is fixed (at 435), when a foreigner-heavy state gains more influence, it must take influence away from other states that are light on foreigners.

It gets even worse: this creates a positive feedback loop, whereby a state brings in hordes of non-citizens, which gives them more Representatives in Congress and greater power over choosing the President. They wield this greater influence over government to change the laws and their enforcement so that more and more foreigners flood into that state. Which boosts their population further, which gives them more influence, which they use to bring in more foreigners, etc etc etc. Pretty soon California and Texas control the entire country.

Here is a map of Congressional districts by degree of non-citizen presence (red means foreigner-heavy):


The entire West, beginning with Texas, has been stealing influence from the citizen-heavy areas back East, with the exception of the highly urbanized Atlantic coastline. Appalachia and small-town New England have taken the biggest clobbering; the Midwest and non-urban South have been pretty well robbed also. If you've been wondering why these places seem less and less influential in national politics, that's why.

It's not just that California has a large population -- between 10-15% of it is non-citizens. They wield 55 votes in the Electoral College now (far more than any other state), and that should be closer to 45 -- still reflecting the large population of actual citizens there, but discounting the hordes of cheap foreign labor they've brought in, along with massive numbers of foreign students at their many colleges, the legal H1-B visa workers taking white-collar jobs from Americans in Silicon Valley, and so on and so forth.

The WP article that the map comes from discusses an open Supreme Court case (Evenwel v. Abbott) about how the Congressional district lines ought to be drawn -- to include a similar number of people in each district, should they count all residents, only citizens, etc.?

They are not challenging the larger point, though, that huge numbers of non-citizens give the state an unfair number of Representatives and Electoral College votes. According to the 14th Amendment, population is reckoned only by the number of "persons" -- not "citizens". In its original context of the mid-19th Century, there were no hordes of foreign non-citizens. There were the white citizens and the citizens who were newly freed slaves.

Fast-forward to now, where several Sun Belt states have over 10% of their population as non-citizens, and it's a whole 'nother ball game. We need a Constitutional Amendment to make Congressional apportionment (and therefore Electoral College votes) a function only of the citizen population.

Otherwise we're back to the Three-Fifths Compromise that was repealed by the 14th Amendment. During the nation's founding, the Southern plantation owners didn't want their slaves to be able to vote or enjoy other benefits of citizenship, but then that would shrink their state's influence in Congress and in voting for the President, since so much of their population was slaves. So a deal was worked out where the slaves would not be citizens, but they would count toward the population used for Congressional apportionment, at three-fifths of their actual number.

That gave the Southern states undue federal-level influence, especially over matters related to slavery. It was win-win for them -- non-citizen labor, but greater control over the federal government. Eventually that tension led to the Civil War, and in the aftermath the Three-Fifths Compromise was replaced by the 14th Amendment, where every person counted toward the total population, but where they were now citizens allowed to vote.

Today, the immigrant-heavy areas are like the old slave plantations -- the local elites enjoy cheap labor from foreigners who cannot vote and are not citizens, yet these laborers beef up the population totals and allow the local elites more national power. It's even worse than the slavery system, since the slaves were only counted at three-fifths their number -- today the non-citizens count at 100% of their numbers.

The other logically consistent but socially suicidal solution would be to give amnesty to the non-citizens. Then their numbers would legitimately count toward how much influence their state gets at the national level.

We keep seeing attempts to push through an amnesty, always led by the immigrant-heavy states. I'm starting to think that they don't actually care if it goes through or not, though. Remember, the elites in a foreigner-heavy state are like the slave-owners of the old South -- they get all that extra influence in government, without having to treat the foreigners as citizens.

In particular, that means that the politicians won't have to learn how to appeal to a new constituency of amnestied immigrants. Maybe they could do it, or maybe they couldn't, and would be replaced by more immigrant-savvy or ethnically-connected rival politicians. Who knows how the newly enfranchised immigrants would vote on all manner of things, potentially re-shaping the political landscape and making it a nightmare for the established elites to find their way through.

It's better for the politicians and their elite constituents if the political ecosystem stays predictable and "more of the same". They can keep their jobs and won't have to learn new tricks. But by boosting the overall population (through more and more non-citizens), the national policies they pursue will have an even greater weight behind them.

Importing hordes of foreigners is a force-multiplier at the national political level that does not entail any extra political costs at the district or state level.

Therefore, I don't think the goal of the immigrant-importing politicians, and the elites they represent, is to "replace the American electorate" with foreigners, who will be more favorable at the voting booth to the immigrant-friendly politicians. I've heard that a lot, and it makes some sense, but only if the immigrants get amnesty and then turn out to vote for those who gave them amnesty.

And yet the amnesty hasn't gotten through over all these years (not since 1986), and these politicians surely know that the Mexicans and other groups do not bother voting even when they are citizens. Politicians stand to gain almost nothing at the voting booth from illegals by giving them amnesty.

Rather, the goal of the elites and their political representatives is simply to keep to politics as usual, only with a great big force-multiplier behind it. Increase total population while not drawing qualitatively new groups into the electorate. Then you won't have to worry about how millions of Mexicans, with Mexican sensibilities, may vote down a California law protecting the environment.

This would seem to explain why there's a constant back-and-forth over amnesty, with no victory for the immigrant-heavy states. They must have an understanding on all sides that the amnesty battle is purely symbolic, empty, and ritualistic. They'll fight over it, stalemate, and each side goes home declaring victory. The anti-amnesty side gets to gloat over preserving the rule of law to their constituents, while the pro-amnesty side gets to gloat over their force-multiplier remaining intact without the system being disrupted by masses of new citizens from a different background coming into the electorate.

Long story short, we need to deport the illegals, anchor babies, and their extended families that were brought in under false pretenses (uniting with a "citizen," i.e. the anchor baby). Build the wall, enforce the border. That would solve most of the problem right there -- then the immigrant-heavy states would lose huge numbers of their total population, and would lose many of their Representatives and Electoral College votes, while the citizen-heavy states would gain them back.

But that's not a permanent solution. We don't want to be in a situation 100 years from now, when the pro-immigrant side has gained the upper hand again, and there are 15% of Californians who are non-citizens, with the Sun Belt wielding disproportionate influence all over again. We need a simple Constitutional Amendment that says Congressional apportionment is to be based on the number of citizens, not just persons or residents.

Only then can we have an American government for the Americans.

8 comments:

  1. You should call this the "five-fifths compromise of Illegal Immigration"

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  2. It is true that Southern elite got to treat slaves as non-citizens. However, the 3/5ths compromise also had to do with how much states were taxed by their population. Northerners wanted to tax Southernors based on slave count but not count them as people for representative purposes. So the compromise was prompt d by one Yankee and one Southernor, and because of the tax issue and 3/5 was nowhere near as bad as the current issue.

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  3. Does Jeb get the Fredo Corleone treatment or just stares at family dinners? http://www.msn.com/en-us/news/politics/jeb-bush-tells-donors-hes-really-sorry/ar-BBq0lQ4?li=BBnb7Kz&OCID=DELLDHP

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  4. I hope the Jeb supporters see the contrast between their guy, who was at least a nice and sincere shill, and the weasel / con-artist nature of the two Cuban shills. Trump may be aggressive as hell, but he's authentic and sincere. The other two are about to get a lot more nasty and aggressive themselves. Perhaps when none of them is Mr. Nice Guy, they'll go for the one who's at least frank and sincere rather than deceptive and fake.

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  5. This blew me away. I had never considered this angle before, but it makes alot of sense. No wonder certain states just do lip-service to combat illegals there. It makes that state and the people who run it all that more powerful.

    If said illegals really act up, then they deport a few. However, if they break their backs doing landscaping or quietly wash dishes, its cheap labor that benefits the lifestyles of the elites and all the way down.

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  6. An election for President based on the nationwide popular vote would eliminate the Democrat’s advantage arising from the uneven distribution of non-citizens.

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  7. http://www.unz.com/isteve/the-future-of-the-republican-party-is-by-the-pool-at-the-biltmore/

    The whole establishment is gayed to hell. This article is from 2013 or so.

    Choice cuts:"As a teenager in the late 1980s, Marco Rubio’s favorite place to get drunk with his high school buddies was the golf course surrounding the Biltmore Hotel,". What kind of "buddies"?

    "the Biltmore, a 400-room luxury resort, has emerged as a national center of gravity for Republican politics: a must-stop for campaign fundraisers, and a favorite vacation spot for retired presidents." Poofer central.

    "Ana Navarro, a high-profile Republican strategist, longtime girlfriend to the Biltmore’s owner, and an avowed friend and ally to both Rubio and Bush". Long-time girlfriend AKA beard, and fag hag to Rubot and Jeb.

    "Rep. Mario Diaz-Balart, who represents Florida’s 25th district and considers both Bush and Rubio friends." Diaz looks a bit, uhh, curious in the standard flag adorned photo. This lips/would-be smile look awkward. Would you hang out with this guy? The hair is a tad whooshy, to the extent that the thinness allows styling at all. I'm sure he's been friendly with the flaming hot stars.

    From Jeb Bush Jr.: "“You’ve got the old guard — Lindsey Graham, John McCain" Two more queens, we're up to 4-5 gays in this frickin' article.

    " The portrait painted by Rubio's more impatient constituents is that of an overly cautious politician acutely aware of his national profile, and desperate not to tarnish his impeccable brand." Anxious probably about hiding his sexuality. Granted, Rubio is an early Gen-Xer who is probably more self-aware about keeping up a straight image compared to the Boomer queens.

    Back to the owner: "“Gene” is Gene Prescott, the Biltmore’s proprietor and the Democratic fundraiser who shares an expensive Spanish revival — along with a Mercedes and high-end golf cart parked out front — with Navarro in the palm-lined Miami suburb of Coral Gables. Prescott bought the shuttered Biltmore, which had once hosted the Duke and Duchess of Windsor, Bing Crosby, Judy Garland, and Al Capone," Go figure that the gay owner (or possibly the gay article writer) would point out Judy Garland. Imagine that.

    Gene and Navarro have turned the place into a bipartisan hub of the political money circuit, and the collection of Beltway boldface names that have graced the hotel’s guest list over the years is among the couple’s proudest achievements. Navarro, who co-chaired Senator John McCain’s Hispanic Advisory Council in 2008, takes obvious pleasure in showing it off."

    Get it yet? Navarro is a fag-hag kiss-ass elite.

    “One time, George W. Bush and Harry Reid were here on the same night for different events. I thought I was going to have a heart attack.” Reid may be a homo. Reid sustained broken facial bones and ribs, and damage to an eye which he said came from an exercise accident. He then announced that he would retire in 2017 after decades as a senator. Did the octopus give him a beat down to intimidate other compromised elites? If they had wanted to kill him, that would've been easy. Maybe a hook-up went wrong, or he pissed off a lover. Who knows? Looks like Denny Hastert (who was exposed as a pedophile after retiring) got it pretty easy.

    "Late last December, the Tampa Bay Times polled a bipartisan group of the state’s most “plugged-in political players,". Ha-ha, are they trolling us?

    "When her 2012 horse of choice, Jon Huntsman, dropped out of the presidential race early last year, Navarro parlayed her dissenting voice and disdain for Mitt Romney into a contributor’s gig at CNN." I guess cuz Mitt isn't gay, she's free to bash him.

    "Her moderate Republican schtick — pro-immigration reform, and pro-gay rights" A G Bomb, it's about time. It's faggy enough, you might as well be upfront about it.

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  8. Excellent article, shedding new light on an old and much-deliberated upon subject. Gives more weight to the need for mass deportation rather than all these trickster compromises and half measures involving them staying. If the globalists get sentimental, they can pool 0.05% of their net worth in a GoFundMe campaign and make a big fat donation to each of the deported illegals to help them get going back in the old country.

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