Paul Nachman today notes in Speaking up for immigration sanity that his Congressman in Montana is fed up because counting non-citizens in the Census cost the State its second Congressman. This obliges him to cover an area almost three times the size of New York State, and apparently with the largest population of any Congressional District.

This is an extremely serious problem. The effect is to siphon Congressional representation into heavily illegal immigrant-impacted States, often leaning Democrat. As James Fulford has pointed out, this often results in Congressional Districts with small functioning electorates, where a vote is worth far more than, say, Montana.

The Wall Street Journal has a valuable article on this subject today Our Unconstitutional Census By John S. Baker And Elliott Stonecipher August 10, 2009. It points out how heavy the impact is:

Based on our round-number projection of a decade-end population in that state of 37,000,000 (including 5,750,000 noncitizens), California would have 57 members in the newly reapportioned U.S. House of Representatives.

However, with noncitizens not included for purposes of reapportionment, California would have 48 House …Using a similar projection, Texas would have 38 House members with noncitizens included. With only citizens counted, it would be entitled to 34 members.

Of course, other states lose out when noncitizens are counted for reapportionment. According to projections of the 2010 Census by Election Data Services, states certain to lose one seat in the 2010 reapportionment are Iowa, Louisiana, Massachusetts, Michigan, New Jersey, New York, Ohio and Pennsylvania; states likely (though not certain) to lose a seat are Illinois, Minnesota, Missouri, and Ohio could lose a second seat. But under a proper census enumeration that excluded illegal residents, some of the states projected to lose a representative–including our own state of Louisiana–would not do so.

The article also supplies a cogent attack on the presumption (shared I must admit by me) that this practice is irretrievably rooted in loose language in the original legislation, and points out that it is only in recent decades that the Census has strangely lost interest in the issue of citizenship.

Congratulations, Wall Street Journal. But this is only an aspect of immigration’s political threat, long highlighted by Peter Brimelow and Ed Rubenstein - for instance in Swept Away.

The Wall Street Journal is the most bigoted supporter of mass immigration on the purported ”Conservative” side. Logic—and perhaps dawning political reality—demands a rethink.

Hat tip, One Old Vet