President Trump signed a memorandum seeking to exclude illegal immigrants from being counted in the next round of congressional redistricting.
Redistribution of districts occurs for seats in the state legislature and at the federal level for districts of the United States House, known as congressional distribution. The memorandum would affect the latter.
Trump’s memo, sent by the White House Press Office on Tuesday, says: “Consequently, I have determined that respect for the law and protection of the integrity of the democratic process justify the exclusion of illegal aliens from the base. distribution, as far as possible and to the maximum extent of the President’s discretion under the law. ”
A senior Trump administration official said Reuters that the memorandum “is another decisive step in fulfilling its solemn promise to ensure that only American citizens are represented in Congress, not illegal aliens.” The president signed the memorandum Tuesday at 1:10 pm EDT in the Oval Office.
The memo is expected to face legal challenges in the judicial system. As applied to the distribution of Congress, the Constitution says: “The representatives will be distributed among the various States according to their respective numbers, counting the total number of people in each State.”
In 2016, the Supreme Court unanimously ruled that the 14th Amendment to the Constitution requires that legislative districts be distributed by the total population rather than eligibility to vote.
“All of this makes Trump’s position scandalous,” Georgetown law professor Joshua Geltzer said, adding that he believes the move will surely meet legal challenges.
In the memorandum, the president addresses the question of constitutionality and states that the Constitution does not “specifically define who should be included in the distribution base.”
“Although the Constitution requires that ‘persons in each State, excluding unencumbered Indians’, be listed in the census, this requirement has never been understood to include in the distribution base each individual physically present within the limits of a State at the time of the census, “reads the note.
Instead, the term ‘people in each State’ has been interpreted to mean that only the ‘inhabitants’ of each State should be included. Determining which people should be considered ‘inhabitants’ for distribution requires the exercise of judgment. For example , foreigners who are only temporarily in the United States, such as for business or tourism, and certain foreign diplomatic personnel are “persons” who have been excluded from the distribution base in previous censuses, “the document continues.
The memo also argues that the Constitution does not exclude people who are not physically within the United States, citing foreign federal personnel as an example.
“The discretion delegated to the executive branch to determine who qualifies as ‘inhabitant’ includes the authority to exclude foreigners who are not in a state of legal immigration from the distribution base,” the note read.
The memo can invigorate the president’s base of support. Polls show Trump is following former Vice President Joe Biden in the upcoming 2020 election.
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