Mr. Speaker. an llth hour challenge to the constitutionality of the 1980 Census was dismissed yesterday by a threejudge Federal court in the District of Columbia. The lawsuit was brought by the Federation of American Immigration Reform (FAIR) and others. including some Members of the House. to force the Government to amend its decennial plans and count separately and exclude from each States apportionment base the number of undocumented persons in this country on April 1. FAIR contended that the Census Bureaus counting policy was violative of fundamental constitutional principles of equal representation and one man. one vote. The court. however. clearly. and in my view. correctly rejected this argument when it stated: The language of the Constitution is not ambiguous. It requires the counting of the "whole number of persons" for apportionment purposes and while illegal aliens were not a component of the population at the time the Constitution was adopted. they are clearly "persons." We see little on which to base a conclusion that illegal aliens should now be excluded. simply because persons with their legal status were not an element of our population at the time our Constitution was written. " Mr. Speaker. I applaud the courts decision.
Keywords matched
undocumented Immigration illegal aliens