Speech #1010044065

I commend Senator SHELBY for his efforts to rectify. to put it mildly. a grave injustice that is about to be committed by the Census Bureau. Here is the situation. The ShelbyHelms amendment instructs the Census Bureau to exclude illegal aliens in the census count. Nothing else makes sense. If you cannot reason with a bunch of bureaucrats. then you have to go legislatively. For some reason the Census Bureau has decided. reductio ad absurdum. to count illegal aliens in the 1990 census. The Census Bureau policy jeopardizes the constitutional right of North Carolina citizens. among others. to fair and equal representation. If the Census Bureau does count illegal aliens. the citizens of my State. and others. may lose a congressional seat. We would lose a congressional representative in North Carolina merely because some of the bureaucrats in the Census Bureau think that the Constitution requires them to count illegal aliens. Well. they better go back to the history books just a little bit. I remind them that there were no illegal aliens in 1787 when the constitutional framers. the Founding Fathers as we call them around this place. debated the issue of the census and reapportionment. Mr. President. illegal aliens did not have the right to vote. So why should they have the right to determine the outcome of the makeup of our Government? If illegal aliens are counted. States like California will gain a seat at North Carolinas expense. Therefore. Californians will have proportionally more congressional representation than North Carolina and some other States. They will have more seats in Congress thanks to people breaking the law and entering this country as illegal aliens. I simply do not believe that our Founding Fathers ever intended to allow people who cannot vote and who Juy1.1989 break the law. to determine the political makeup of this Government. Judge Noonan pointed out adequately and accurately. if a foreign army invaded our country on census day. we would not count them in the census. Furthermore. if a gang of drug runners were in our country illegally on census day. we would rot count them in the census. So why must we count illegal aliens? The answer is that we should not. The amendment of Senator SHELBY. of which I am proud to be a cosponsor. makes sense. it has equity. it is fair. and the Senate ought to adopt this amendment.