Staff Reports
The House of Representatives passed a bill on Wednesday to change the way seats in the House are given out and to add a question about citizenship to the census every ten years. This means that states with a lot of people who are not citizens could lose some power in the House compared to other states.
This is a big change from the way things have been done for a long time. Republicans say this change is a response to problems at the border and a way to make sure that only people who are citizens have a say in how the government works. They say that political power should not be based on people who haven’t become citizens yet or who are in the country illegally. The bill was passed with a vote of 206-202, with only members of the Republican party voting in favor of it.
IT'S ABOUT TIME THE POLITICIANS IN DC USED COMMON SENSE – THERE IS NO WAY ILLEGAL ALIENS SHOULD HAVE REPRESENTATIVES IN OUR GOVERNMENT.
House passes bill to add citizenship to census, block noncitizens from House apportionment.
Republicans said it was both a response to the… pic.twitter.com/vR5aVk33Lk
— BelannF (@BelannF) May 9, 2024
The legislation is not likely to be approved in the Democratic-led Senate or signed by President Biden. Critics of the bill, including Democrat Rep. Jamie Raskin, said that it goes against the way seats in the House are supposed to be given out, according to the Constitution. The White House also strongly opposes the bill, saying it would go against the Constitution and make the 2030 census more complicated and expensive.
Groups that focus on voting rights and lean left on the political spectrum are unhappy with the changes to the way seats are given out and with the citizenship question being added to the census. They say that simply asking about citizenship could make some people not want to take part in the census, which would make the information less accurate.
This is not the first time that a question about citizenship has been added to the census. Former President Trump tried to do this in the 2020 census, but it was stopped by the courts. If noncitizens were not included in the count, some states with a lot of immigrants would have lost representation in the House after the 2020 census.
On the same day the House passed this bill, House Speaker Mike Johnson introduced other legislation that would require people to prove they are citizens before they can vote in federal elections. This is a big issue, and how it is resolved will have a big impact on the way the government works.
