Counting Aliens in 1990 Census

During my tenure as the vice chair of the Los Angeles City Task Force on Immigration that was created by the City Council in 1986, I took the opportunity to research the question of the indirect enfranchisement of aliens by counting them in the decennial U.S. census which determines the share of each state’s seats in the U.S. House of Representatives. I found that the Constitutional Convention meeting in Philadelphia in 1787 determined that House representation be based on “one member for every forty thousand inhabitants.” The Supreme Court has consistently maintained a definition that persons (such as in the “one person-one vote” decision of 1964) are to be counted.

Contrary to the pronouncements of Sen. Jesse Helms (R-N.C.), “alien” status was very much taken into consideration by the Founding Fathers. Alien status was no bar to voting privileges on state and national offices such as the President. During the 19th Century, 20 states permitted aliens to vote if they declared their intention to become citizens. During the 1890-1920 period alien suffrage was abolished as a reaction to the arrival of large numbers of non-Protestant immigrants. The last states to retain alien suffrage were Indiana (until 1921) and Arkansas (until the mid-1920s).

Aliens, whether legal or illegal, pay taxes in the form of sales taxes and in the greater number of cases payroll and incomes taxes. By depriving them of representation, we as a nation would be reverting to the very thing that we rebelled against England for doing, that is, taxation without representation.

All persons should be counted in the 1990 census. The requirement of singling out illegal aliens would deal a serious blow to the 1990 census. It may deprive the nation as a whole of the social and economic value and benefits that the $2.6-billion national people-counting effort can provide. Everybody is affected by the census and everyone should be counted.

PINI HERMAN

Los Angeles