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WASHINGTON This nations empirical and inquisitive Founders considered information conducive to improvement, which is one reason the Constitution mandates a decennial census. And why James Madison soon proposed expanding the census beyond mere enumeration to recording other data. Today, the census provides an ocean of information indispensable to understanding this complex society. And it determines the disbursement of $1.5 trillion annually from the federal government.

On Nov. 30, the Supreme Court will hear arguments in a census-related case concerning a question of large philosophic interest and practical consequences: Was it constitutional 22 states, 15 cities and counties and other entities say no for the president to order the exclusion of unauthorized immigrants from the enumeration of states populations used for apportioning congressional seats? Apportionment was the initial reason for the census, and remains its only constitutional function.

The president says: Because the census original and fundamental purpose concerns Americans as a political community, it would be incongruous to give congressional representation to illegal immigrants who are subject to removal from the country. Foreign tourists should not be counted, and military personnel stationed abroad should be, because the former are not, and the latter are, members of the political community.

This argument, though interesting for a political philosophy seminar, is insufficient for the Supreme Court, which must construe the two constitutional provisions concerning apportionment. One (in Article I) mandates an actual Enumeration of persons other than Indians not taxed. The second (in the 14th Amendment) says seats in the House of Representatives shall be apportioned among the states counting the whole number of persons in each state, excluding Indians not taxed. An amicus brief by two constitutional scholars, Ilya Somin of George Mason University and Sanford Levinson of the University of Texas, demonstrates that neither provision allows the exclusion of unauthorized immigrants.

The Framers understood persons broadly, with the sole exception of Indians not taxed because they were considered noncitizens with an allegiance to distinct political communities: their tribes. The Framers would not have expressly excluded Indians not taxed if persons excluded foreigners or others with an allegiance to a government other than the U.S. government. So, the Framers clearly meant persons to include immigrants.

Most of the Framers, say Somin and Levinson, did not believe the federal government had the power to exclude immigrants there was no significant federal immigration restriction until 1875 so they could hardly have intended to exclude from apportionment illegal immigrants. Furthermore, the Framers expected that the congressional apportionment count would include the more than half the adult population that was not entitled to vote because of gender, or property requirements.

Members of Congress, Somin and Levinson argue, have always been thought to represent the interests of many persons in 1790, at most 70% of white men, and few others, could vote to whom they were not directly accountable at the ballot box. Today, most states deny the vote to children under age 18, and some felons, yet these groups are counted in congressional apportionment.

The 14th Amendment, which stipulates the enumeration of the whole number of persons, elsewhere uses the term citizens. So, by persons the amendments authors denoted a broader category. The Supreme Court has held that in this amendment persons refers to the total population, including immigrants, whatever their status under the immigration laws.

The court has repeatedly held that the person[s] the Fifth Amendments Due Process Clause protects (No person shall be deprived of life, liberty, or property, without due process of law) includes aliens in the U.S. population. And unlike foreign diplomats or tourists, the United States is the usual residence of unauthorized immigrants.

The 1787 Constitutional Conventions Committee of Style replaced inhabitants with persons, so supporters of excluding unauthorized immigrants from the census enumeration for apportionment argue, implausibly: The Framers considered the two words synonymous, and that foreigners by definition cannot be inhabitants. But Somin and Levinson say that in its original public meaning, inhabitants meant people who intend to stay somewhere indefinitely. Therefore, these facts matter: More than 60% of the estimated 10.5 million unauthorized immigrants have lived here more than 10 years, and more than 20% for more than 20 years.

Republicans would benefit from not counting illegal immigrants for purposes of apportionment: This would reduce congressional seats (and electoral votes) in mostly blue states (27% of such immigrants are in California) and shift power away from cities. Republicans generally say, however, that the Constitution should be construed according to the texts original meaning. Forced to choose between power and principle, well . . .

George Wills column is syndicated by The Washington Post.

Continued here:
Will: Where the GOP and the Framers disagree - The Winchester Star

Immigration officials have been accused of using coercive tactics to gain access to peoples homes and businesses without search warrants.

Campaigners claim that rather than convince a judge of the need to perform a search, uniformed immigration officers often simply demand to be let into the premises they are targeting.

While the law allows them to enter if the occupant gives informed consent, critics have said many of the people targeted are unlikely to know they have the right to refuse without risking getting into trouble.

We have been extremely concerned with the number of cases in which immigration enforcement officers have failed to obtain fully informed consent, the Migrants Rights Network (MRN) told the Guardian.

Mahlea Babjak, the groups London project manager, said many people were not being given information regarding all the risks and alternatives to being questioned during an immigration raid, adding: Every business owner and employee has the right to feel safe in their workplace.

The practice was highlighted in evidence given in a case against two anti-raids activists accused of obstructing immigration officers. The district judge, Julia Newton, sitting at Highbury Corner magistrates court, dismissed the charges last Friday.

Raj Chada, of the law firm Hodge Jones and Allen, who represented the two activists, said many people visited by immigration officers were not in a position to give genuinely informed consent. What the hell are they going to say? The occupier often does not know they can say no. They call it informed consent, I call it coercive consent.

The MRN said people from black, Asian and minority ethnic backgrounds were among the principal targets of immigration raids against small businesses, which it said amounted to discrimination.

It said: These operations are rarely focused on intelligence and are consistently beyond a warrants scope. We urge the Home Office to stop conducting immigration raids in the community, as they are extremely harmful to a businesss local reputation and financial earnings, and damaging to employees mental wellbeing.

Activists from the Anti-Raids Network, which regularly documents enforcement activities, have also accused the authorities of pursuing them for political reasons after the case against two of their number was dismissed.

Babjak said: We are extremely concerned with the Home Offices recent targeting of activists, as we believe the Home Office must be held to account for its actions that undermine domestic and international law and the rights of all migrants.

Holly Lynch, the shadow immigration minister, said: This government repeatedly fails to respect the law and legal protections for people, while deliberately undermining the role of lawyers on immigration matters. These are serious issues and its vital that the law is adhered to at all times. Failure to do that puts at risk the possibility of sound and fair judgments being made.

A Home Office spokeswoman said: Immigration officers have a range of powers to tackle illegal working, which is a key driver of illegal migration and exploitative working conditions, including modern slavery. She denied officers were bypassing the need for a warrant if they ask for informed consent and stressed that the law allowed them to question people on that basis.

Continued here:
UK immigration officials accused of using coercive tactics to access homes - The Guardian

We should start thinking now about a new question in immigration policy: to wit, should legal status be a factor when the COVID-19 vaccine or vaccines are distributed?

Clearly, it will take at least months to manufacture and distribute, one arm at a time, the new vaccine or vaccines, so we must set priorities, preferably at the national level.

Clearly, medical personnel, from MDs down to hospital janitors, should be first in line, along with law enforcement people and first responders. Maybe the military is next.

High priority should be given to people with the virus (if that makes medical sense.)

Another high priority should be given, and probably will, to those who are elderly, particularly elderly with pre-existing conditions that make them more vulnerable than others. (This 80+ writer fits into that category.)

After that the priority rankings picture gets a little fuzzier. Should some high-incidence areas of the country get priority before low-incidence areas? Maybe.

And what do we do with the variables of ethnicity which mix with those of migration status?

Should we give priority to citizens, then green card holders, then aliens in legal nonimmigrant status, and only after all these categories are taken care of, illegal aliens? While some may disagree with me, I think not.

My sense is that priority should be given to those most in danger, not those with the most money (which is what usually happens), or to the people with the best civil status, i.e., citizens first.

The people most in danger of contracting COVID-19, as we know from multiple sources,are people of color, people with low incomes, and people who cannot work (as I can) from home.

People with the most likelihood of getting the virus are also, I would assume from my non-medical perch, the people who are most likely to spread it. It is to the interest of all of us that the illegal alien farm worker gets the vaccine before the healthy, 30-year-old Ivy League grad (like my granddaughter). He is more likely to be a spreader than she is.

So I think we should, for once, ignore the migration status variable. I think this makes the most sense for society as a whole and it also carries wonderful by-productit is easy.

Once we have put the vaccines into the entire U.S. population I think it should be mandatory and enforced with violators going to prison we can then start vaccinating overseas populations likely to come to the U.S. illegally, such as from the nations to the south of us.

Excerpt from:
Should Legal Status Be a Factor When the Vaccine is Distributed? - Immigration Blog

MIAMI Unable to vote because of her immigration status, Maria Elena Hernandez, a Nicaraguan janitorial worker with temporary protected status (TPS), found other ways to engage with the 2020 election.

Along with fellow members of her union, a local chapter of Service Employees International, Hernandez spent the days leading up to Nov. 3 knocking on doors across Miami-Dade and talking to voters about Joe Biden, whom she considers to be more "in favor of workers and immigrants" than President Donald Trump. For years, Hernandez has also encouraged immigrant co-workers eligible for citizenship to complete the naturalization process, so that they can "defend our rights" with their vote.

On election night, as preliminary results suggested a possible path to the president's reelection, Hernandez's mind briefly went to the worst-case scenario, given the Trump administration's commitment to ending the TPS program she depends on.

"I was a nervous wreck that night," she said. "I could see myself getting deported back to my country."

For Hernandez, and for many other non-voting Latino immigrants in South Florida who have felt targeted by Trump's restrictionist immigration agenda, the election's final results proved bittersweet.

While Biden ended up posting resounding Electoral College and popular vote victories nationwide, Trump won the state of Florida, buoyed in part by a groundswell of Hispanic support. In Miami-Dade, a growing coalition of Cuban and non-Cuban Latino voters alike helped lift the president to the best margins a Republican candidate has scored in the state's most populous county in 16 years.

Trump won nearly 55% of the vote across the county's majority Hispanic districts. That's forcing immigrants like Hernandez to reconcile their relief over Biden's win with a dose of exasperation with their own community.

"It's frustrating, seeing so many Latinos backing (Trump) and voting for him," Hernandez said. "I keep asking myself, 'Why do they vote for someone who is anti-immigrant? Someone who is racist? Someone who doesn't like us? Why don't they look at the harm he has caused?' It's just a very frustrating situation."

Although she is a U.S. citizen, Mariana Martinez counts many undocumented immigrants and TPS holders among the ranks of her Salvadoran family members. Trump's popularity with Miami-Dade's Latinos isn't something she was shocked by: in the lead-up to the election, she saw more Trump signs popping up in Cutler Bay, where she lives, and in Homestead, where her work as an immigrant rights advocate with the American Friends Service Committee often takes her. But lack of surprise doesn't mean lack of disappointment.

"I guess it's like, 'What happened?' I'm honestly still trying to figure out what went down. But it's really disheartening, how a lot of people voted against their communities, because I can name a couple of folks whose families are also mixed-status, and they still voted for Trump," she said.

"It's a big disconnect. In Miami-Dade, everybody knows someone who is undocumented. (So) why would you vote for someone that's not trying to give members of your community status? ... Do they just not care?"'

In conversations with the Miami Herald, many South Florida immigrants and immigrant rights advocates stressed that Biden was not their preferred choice for president at the onset of the 2020 race, given his role as vice president in an administration that deported record numbers of people.

But all those interviewed saw Biden as a bigger ally to the immigrant community than Trump.

In his four years as president, Trump has managed to reshape virtually every aspect of the immigration system, both legal and illegal. This is despite a spate of litigation that sought to block the implementation of many of his policies.

He largely sealed off the country from asylum-seekers and refugees (including from Cuba and Venezuela), vastly expanded immigrant detention and made all undocumented immigrants fair game for deportation. This is in contrast to President Barack Obama who, in the latter part of his tenure, directed ICE to restrict enforcement to unauthorized immigrants who had committed crimes.

Trump also leveraged the COVID-19 pandemic to turn down tens of thousands of visas, and sought to create a wealth test for immigrants seeking permanent residency. Under Trump's watch in 2018, the U.S. government sparked international condemnation when a "zero tolerance" policy led to the separation of thousands of families at the southern border.

"I had been having a rough time emotionally these past few months," Maria Angelica Ramirez said. "If Trump had been reelected, I was pretty sure I was going to end up facing deportation once again."

A 33-year-old Colombian immigrant, Ramirez moved to Miami at 14. She is one of the more than 600,000 beneficiaries of the Obama-era Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals program, or DACA, which has since 2012 allowed undocumented immigrants brought to the United States as children to apply for a temporary status that shields them from deportation and allows them to work.

The Trump administration first sought to terminate DACA in 2017. Though the Supreme Court blocked that policy change earlier this year in concordance with previous rulings by federal judges the government has refused to accept new applications into the DACA program.

Biden, on the other hand, has pledged to fully restore DACA, dismantle the rest of Trump's restrictionist immigration agenda, and even work with Congress to provide "a roadmap to citizenship" for the country's nearly 11 million undocumented immigrants, among other measures.

"We have seen a pattern during this (Trump) administration of attacking as much as they possibly could," said Romina Montenegro, a DACA recipient who moved from her native Argentina to Miami when she was 2. "Meanwhile, Biden is looking for solutions. He is looking for a way to make sure everyone is protected."

Stark differences in Biden and Trump's immigration platforms has made the swell of Latino support for the president in South Florida difficult to process.

"It leaves a bad taste in your mouth," said Montenegro. "It feels a bit like betrayal."

Trump's significant improvement in the 2020 election in Miami-Dade a county where more than 50% of residents are foreign-born is partly due to the fact that, despite the president's well-documented anti-immigrant track record, immigration was simply not a top-of-mind issue for voters at the ballot box, according to local pollsters.

In the lead-up to the election, "when you (asked) Latinos in Florida what are the issues that concern them the most, immigration (was) generally not in the top three," said Eduardo Gamarra, who directs the Latino Public Opinion Forum at Florida International University.

Both Gamarra and Fernand Amandi, a partner of the Miami-based polling firm Bendixen & Amandi International, stressed that events like the pandemic and the pandemic's impact on jobs and the economy far eclipsed immigration concerns in the minds of many within the South Florida Latino electorate.

"The emphasis is not on immigration the way it was four years ago," Amandi said.

That dynamic, which allowed Trump to expand his Latino support, is partly the president's own doing: In the closing rallies of his reelection campaign, immigration received relatively little attention, a far cry from the "build the wall" rhetoric that powered his 2016 run.

In Miami, some non-voting immigrants say that indifference towards immigration matters is something they've run up against, and have been frustrated by, even among close friends and family members.

"It's really sad. It really hurts me ... I don't even want to ask my family who they voted for because I don't want to hear it, I couldn't take it," said Ramirez, the DACA recipient from Colombia. "But there is a family member who was saying, 'Yeah, I'm voting for Trump.' And I was like, 'Wait, are you sure? That's your vote? For someone who wants to send me home?' And that person was like, 'Yeah.'

"It's a moral issue," Ramirez added. "We have become unable to translate politicians' actions into our everyday lives, and how a decision up there in the Capitol or in the White House affects the person who is in front of me. People have become desensitized."

Biden-supporting, non-voting immigrants have other theories to explain why so many of their neighbors supported the president. They range from the much-talked-about impact of the Trump campaign's relentless anti-socialism rhetoric to a perceived lack of investment from Democrats in Latino voter outreach, especially compared to the GOP's robust ground game and infrastructure for reaching voters even outside of election season.

"The message that Biden is a socialist was really effective," Hernandez said. "I don't understand why people closed their eyes and let themselves be fooled. It's frustrating."

(EDITORS: STORY CAN END HERE)

(EDITORS: BEGIN OPTIONAL TRIM)

During her canvassing rounds, Hernandez and her fellow union members tried to counter the socialism label, and told voters that Biden's platform would help people, not set the U.S. on the path of countries like Cuba, Venezuela or Nicaragua.

"I told people to vote based off what's happening in this country, that we can't keep on basing ourselves off of our countries," said Clara Vargas, a janitorial worker and Cuban immigrant who also knocked on doors for Biden through 32BJ SEIU. "We need to consider what's happening here, and vote for people who are trying to actually make things better here, from the pandemic to immigration and health care."

Both Vargas and Hernandez said they never felt like they got the backup they needed in their canvassing efforts from Democrats.

"The (anti-socialism) propaganda was everywhere and the Democratic Party did nothing to set the record straight," Hernandez said. "The support was lacking. It was really lacking. They need to put in the work ahead of time and help educate voters. ... They didn't run a good campaign in Florida" in 2020.

Absent more consistent outreach from the Democratic camp and considering the scorched-earth Spanish-language misinformation campaign that demonized Trump's political opponents some think that supporting Trump became a cultural signifier.

"It's definitely that thing of trying to assimilate to white America," said Martinez. "Here in Miami, everyone aspires to be something we are not."

Ramirez agrees.

"I think it's that classicism of, 'You know, we are better. We are Americans. The other people who are coming in now are not.'"

When she woke up to the news of Biden's win after working an overnight shift on Nov. 7, Hernandez said she started to cry.

"I'm usually not much of a crier," she said. "I just felt this tremendous relief at that moment. I felt happy."

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Hernandez thinks that Biden will be able to win back some of the Latino support Democrats lost in Florida in 2020 if he governs with immigrant communities in mind. She is confident that he will do so in part because of the person he'll have by his side: Kamala Harris, whose father emigrated from Jamaica and whose mother came from India.

"As a woman, I think it's inspiring that she will be vice president. Plus she is the daughter of immigrants. I'm confident they will keep their promises," she said. "Otherwise it will be very difficult for them to regain our trust."

(c)2020 Miami Herald

Distributed by Tribune Content Agency, LLC

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'Do they just not care?' Miami immigrants troubled by surge of Latino support for Trump - The Bakersfield Californian

A text message from a friend popped on Devani Gonzlezs phone when Joe Biden was named president-elect on the Saturday after Election Day. How do you feel?

The days that passed between the last ballots cast and the announcement of Bidens win were grueling. But so were the last four years. She took a moment before writing back. I dont know. I just feel like, relief. I feel very emotional. I feel hope.

For many like Gonzlez, a 24-year-old Houston paralegal, the election ousting President Donald Trump meant the end of years of worry, threats of deportation and being the target of abuse. A core base of Trumps supporters stood by his immigration policies, which brought increased enforcement, and his vitriol, which made life more difficult for both immigrants and people in the country illegally. He also tightened legal channels into the country and made immigration processes more arduous and expensive for foreign-born people.

Weve been attacked over and over and over and over again, said Gonzlez, who now hopes to achieve a permanent legal status under a Biden presidency.

Gonzlez is among the so-called Dreamers, those brought into the country illegally when they were children, their hopes threatened under the Trump Administration.

Our hope is that even if we dont have somebody to help us 100%, at least we wont have somebody thatll continue to hurt us 100%, said Csar Espinosa, leader of FIEL Houston, one of the largest immigrant advocacy organizations in the city.

The election drew a record number of ballots, including more than 73 million people who voted for Trump, many of whom supported his focus on immigration. In national surveys, most Trump supporters say they view illegal immigration as a significant problem. They support in high numbers stronger law enforcement and tougher border security.

Todd Bensman, a Texas-based Senior National Security Fellow for the Center for Immigration Studies, said Trump was justifiably targeting programs that should not be protecting immigrants in the country illegally from deportatation.

Allowing them to continue, Bensman said, serves as another fantastic incentive for mass migration.

One of the programs is the Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals, or DACA, that protects dreamers from deportation and provides work permits. Conservatives have long challenged the constitutional legality of DACA, created under executive order by former President Barack Obama.

Trump tried to eliminate the program, but the U.S. Supreme Court rejected that effort. Nonetheless, he closed the door to new applicants around 500,000 newly eligible young immigrants and imposed new restrictions. Beneficiaries are now forced to apply for renewal every year instead of every two.

The U.S. is home to about 644,000 DACA recipients, with about 106,000 in Texas, according to March statistics with the U.S. Citizenship and Immigration Services, the most recent available. The Houston metro area has 32,450 dreamers.

If there had been another Trump term, Gonzlez said, she believes the program would again be in jeopardy.

Us dreamers, we have been waiting for a very long time for a permanent solution to our situation, said Gonzlez, who has been a DACA holder for eight years. It gets very frustrating, very emotionally draining to be pinning your life on a two-year basis, let alone one.

Recipients of Temporary Protected Status, a program created under President George H.W. Bush, are also hopeful for the next four years. The Department of Homeland Security terminated this humanitarian program for almost all of its beneficiaries. Like DACA, TPS provides work permits to people who cannot return to designated countries where violent conflicts, natural disasters or extraordinary conditions exist.

Were getting tons of calls from people who feel relieved, seeing the light with Biden victory, said Iris Canizales, TPS community organizer with the Central American Resource Center in Houston. She explained that callers are hopeful that Biden will restore their status, which for many expires in January.

The majority of around 300,000 TPS holders nationwide are from El Salvador and Honduras, and roughly 17,000 and 6,000 live in Houston, respectively. The rest of the impacted are from Haiti, Nicaragua, Nepal and Sudan.

To Bensman, TPS was a door that needed to be closed. Youll have an earthquake 20 years ago, and all the Salvadorans are still here taking shelter from that earthquake, he countered. Where do you draw the lines?

While seeking to end those programs, Trump began new, controversial measures including the systematic separation of children from their parents at the border. Although it ended, about 600 kids, some under the age of 5, continue to be under the supervision of federal as authorities cannot find their parents.

The so-called Remain in Mexico program restricts requirements for asylum seekers in the U.S. and forces non-Mexican applicants to stay in that country to wait for their hearings. Trump has also banned visas for a dozen mostly Muslim-majority countries from Africa and Asia and increased deportations of non-criminal immigrants in the country illegally, many of whom parents of American children.

Sarah Pierce, a U.S. immigration policy analyst at the Migration Policy Institute, a non-partisan think tank in New York that tracks international migrations, said President Trump is the first modern president to view both illegal and legal immigration as a net negative for the United States.

Her agency has been cataloguing more than 400 policy changes introduced by Trump, many by executive orders, that significantly reshaped the system, including legal migration.

Bidens immigration plan promises to roll back most of Trumps policies during his first 100 days in office. After that, advocates, like Espinosa, as well as policy experts recognize that any significant policy change including finding permanent solutions for DACA and TPS holders will not materialize soon.

They will be more challenging and for a longer term, said Kelsey Norman, director of the Rice Universitys Baker Institute Womens Rights, Human Rights & Refugees Program. Biden would need support from both chambers to pass legislation, an unlikely possibility if the Senate retains its Republican majority.

For impacted immigrants and their families, the nuts and bolts of immigration changes to come are an afterthought compared to surviving four years of Trump.

We cannot see the future. But (Biden) is definitely a relief, said Gonzlez. It feels like leaving behind years of abuse; years of attack that weve been having to put up with.

olivia.tallet@chron.com

Twitter: @oliviaptallet

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For Texas immigrants, the switch from Trump to Biden is 'like leaving years of abuse' - Houston Chronicle