Trump Administration Proposes Dramatic Overhaul of 2030 Census That Changes Who Counts as Living in America

The Trump administration proposed a sweeping overhaul of how people in America are counted in the 2030 census on Wednesday, including moving to exclude immigrants in the country illegally from the population totals used to determine political representation and not asking every American about their race and ethnicity.

Under a proposed rule released online by the Census Bureau, the agency would change its definition of a person’s “usual residence” — the standard that has long determined where someone is counted — to omit undocumented immigrants from the count used to divide seats in the House of Representatives among states.

The proposal would also exclude some immigrants who are legally in the country but do not have lawful permanent resident status, a potentially significant expansion beyond President Donald Trump’s previous attempts to remove undocumented immigrants from the population count.

In a separate major change in the filing, the bureau is proposing to prohibit questions about race and ethnicity on the short-form census form and other questionnaires used to enumerate the population. The rule would also prohibit questions about sexual orientation.

The changes, if approved and implemented for 2030, would have enormous political consequences. Census results determine how the 435 seats in the House are apportioned among states and form the basis for redrawing congressional maps. Race and ethnicity data collected through the census are also used to produce population data states receive for redistricting and to help enforce the Voting Rights Act and other civil rights laws.

While Trump will not be president during the 2030 count, planning and preparation for the constitutionally-mandated decennial enumeration is already well underway.

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The proposal would mark a fundamental change in how the government determines who counts as part of a state’s population. The 14th Amendment calls for House seats to be apportioned by “counting the whole number of persons in each State,” rather than citizens, and for more than two centuries the census has generally relied on where a person lives to determine that count, regardless of their citizenship or immigration status.

In its new proposal, the bureau now argues undocumented immigrants should not qualify as usual residents “due to their lack of a sufficient tie and allegiance” to America.

The bureau is proposing to count lawful permanent residents while excluding undocumented immigrants and people whose legal status is “less durable and indefinite” than a green card. {snip}

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