Equal Representation Act

Floor Speech

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Mr. EDWARDS. Mr. Speaker, I thank Mr. Biggs for leading this debate, and I thank Mr. Davidson for his co-leadership on this bill.

Mr. Speaker, I will tell you what is an insult. The current situation is an insult to the American people, the citizens who live here whose voice and vote are being degraded because of the horrendous immigration problem that we have at our southern border through illegal aliens coming across the border, and that not being addressed here in Washington, D.C.

One of the lesser acknowledged, but equally alarming, side effects of this administration's failure to secure the southern border is the illegal immigration population's influence in America's electoral process.

Our democracy depends on accurate representation and electoral integrity. Voting is a coveted privilege held by American citizens, and elected Representatives are responsible for serving the interests of the voters in their district.

Even if not a single illegal alien casts a vote, the mere presence of illegal immigrants in the United States is having a profound impact on the outcomes of elections, skewing the representation of Americans.

Mr. Biggs points out that the U.S. Constitution mandates that a Census be carried out every 10 years where everyone who is present in the United States, regardless of their citizenship and immigration status, is counted. The Constitution does not specify whether noncitizens or illegal aliens must be counted for the purpose of apportioning House seats.

You may recall that in 2016, President Trump through executive order added a citizenship question back to the 2020 Census, the same question that had been legally asked on nearly every Census since 1820 until it was removed in 1960, not because there was anything found wrong with that question, but because the effect of illegal immigration was negligible at that time. However, there is no doubt today, Mr. Speaker, the effect of illegal immigration is significant. I won't waste my time making that case here. We all know it. It is a top concern of about 70 percent of all Americans.

Though common sense dictates that only citizens should be counted for the apportionment process, illegal aliens have nonetheless recently been counted toward the final tallies that determine how many House seats that each State is allocated and the number of electoral votes that it will wield in Presidential elections.

Since the illegal alien population is not evenly distributed through the Nation, American citizens in some States are losing representation in Congress to illegal aliens in other States.

A 2019 study by the Center for Immigration Studies estimates illegal immigrants and noncitizens who have not naturalized and do not have the right to vote impact the distribution of 26 House seats. My bill, the Equal Representation Act, would finally address this alarming undermining of American democracy by requiring a citizenship question be added back to the 2030 Census, creating reporting requirements for data gathered from citizenship questions and requiring that only U.S. citizens be counted for the purpose of congressional apportionment.

Mr. Speaker, this bill will no doubt and has no doubt drawn criticism from those who don't want to fix this problem and who seek to gain political influence by not fixing it. They will claim to have become experts on our Constitution. I don't see any black robes in this Chamber today. They will point to the word ``persons'' in section 2 of the 14th Amendment as a reason why this bill should not pass, but this word carries no definition in our Constitution, and it offers multiple meanings in current law.

Allow me to argue, in 1992, in Franklin v. Massachusetts, a Supreme Court case on apportionment of Representatives opined the term ``persons'' to mean an individual who not only has a physical presence but some element of allegiance to a particular place.

The Census Bureau does not include foreigners who visit the United States for a vacation or a business trip in the population count since they have no political or legal allegiance to any State or the Federal Government.

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Mr. EDWARDS. Similarly, illegal aliens who are deportable have no allegiance or enduring tie to the United States. Foreigners here on visas have an allegiance politically and legally to their home countries, not to the United States, so the same logic applies to them.

My bill is a commonsense solution to a chronic problem impacting the very governance and democracy of this country.

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