The Supreme Court is hearing arguments now about the Trump administration's call for a question about how many citizens are in the country on the 2020 census.  Some media outlets are reporting that it appears to be going favorably for President Trump, but the arguments are not 100% persuasive, given the leftward shift of Chief Justice John Roberts.  All the same, the entire controversy is expected to lay out just why the Trump administration is right to ask.  Here's the New York Times' report: 

The Supreme Court's conservative majority seemed ready on Tuesday to allow the Trump administration to add a question on citizenship to the 2020 census, which critics say would undermine its accuracy by discouraging both legal and unauthorized immigrants [sic] from filling out the forms.

The case, the latest test of executive power in the Trump era, was heard by the court against the backdrop of the administration's aggressive efforts to reduce illegal immigration as well as accusations of bad faith against the architect of the revised census questionnaire, Commerce Secretary Wilbur Ross.  It appeared to divide the court along the usual lines, with its five conservative members poised to defer to the administration and the court's four liberal members ready to question its motives and methods.

The argument, of course, derived from Ross's placing the question on the form, is that America's illegal alien community will refuse to be answer the citizenship question, and that could have implications for the total.  It's a specious argument because the question is pretty anodyne — if you are a citizen, what is your category of citizen, and if you are not, just check the noncitizen box.  It's not about forcing illegals to admit their illegal status, and it's not about enforcement, either.  It's just about getting some information.  And this, as Justice Brett Kavanaugh has already noted, is something the United Nations recommends, something that should give Democrats heartburn.

Knowing how many citizens are in the U.S. terrifies Democrats, because it could reveal just how great their stake is in perpetrating illegal immigration. 

The Trump administration says it's about enforcing the Voting Rights Act, but the issue really is more about what the Democrats say it is — whether the U.S. should know how many people are in the country who are citizens.  Democrats don't want us to know this, and the rest of us do think we have a right to know.

The total could have implications for how many congressional seats are doled out to a district, and how much federal funding is rolled out for services such as schools, for which illegals are copious consumers.  The Left is screaming bloody murder about the question for that, despite the fact that the question is worded to not force illegals to 'out' themselves.  Noncitizens of all kinds are lumped into a single category.

Should the U.S. know this?  Most of us think we should, given that many Democratic congressional representatives, particularly from California, represent what are called 'dead' voting districts, districts with voter turnout of less than 10%.  Something is fishy about that and calls for answers, given that these Democrats representing them wield tremendous power in California.  If these leftists' power is the result of a large foreign population, not a citizenry, that would expose a foreign colonization of sorts — and raise questions about whether the U.S. really is a representative democracy, something they would hate to find themselves on the hot seat for.  Yet at a minimum, 'there should be a conversation,' as Kamala Harris would put it.

The Democrats insist that they are concerned about only accuracy, but that rings false.  If someone is in the country illegally, it's very common that he may not be here for a long period of time, meaning that if they are counted or not counted, the number is very likely to be fluid.  With 'home' elsewhere, in another country, it doesn't always pay to stay, and thousands of illegals come and go in a flash.  Counting them the same as citizens always skews the total.  A citizenship question, on the other hand, in the census count could help demographers pinpoint how permanent the populations of certain districts are — and whether the count is really accurate.  That's a legitimate state interest, given the fact that pork-shoveling could be corrupted by an inflated count.

There are also implications for rule of law in this citizenship question.  The Democrats argue that people who have broken U.S. law to enter the U.S. illegally would break the law a second time by not answering the census.  Rather than find and fine them, which is what happens to Americans who break this particular law, Democrats are arguing that they should be accommodated.  The law should change to accommodate them, they shouldn't have to obey any U.S. law because they have a vested interest in not obeying the law. Does that sound like a sound basis for a nation of laws -- which is presumably what they have fled their home countries to reach? It does not. It's just another bad instance of the breakdown of rule of law, as if illegals were our rulers, not our uninvited guest.

Democrats are arguing that since illegals won't answer the citizenship question, then the question shouldn't be asked, same as they argue that since illegals don't obey border laws, there shouldn't be borders. Their argument that the question should not be asked is nothing but a new enabling of lawbreaking, and a new blow the very real need to make U.S. law meaningful. That's the ugliest part of their argument the Court would be ill-advised to rule in favor of, if it actually cares about rule of law.

Image credit: Pixabay, public domain.