Regular Session 2019-2020 House Resolution 0135 P.N. 0798

PRINTER'S NO. 798

THE GENERAL ASSEMBLY OF PENNSYLVANIA

HOUSE RESOLUTION

No.

135

Session of

2019

INTRODUCED BY CRUZ, SCHLOSSBERG, ISAACSON, CALTAGIRONE, HILL-

EVANS AND FIEDLER, MARCH 8, 2019

REFERRED TO COMMITTEE ON STATE GOVERNMENT, MARCH 8, 2019

A RESOLUTION

Urging the Trump Administration to not include a citizenship

question in the 2020 decennial census.

WHEREAS, The Founding Fathers understood the importance of

keeping an accurate recording of the country's population by

including it as a constitutional requirement; and

WHEREAS, Article I, Section 2, Clause 3 of the United States

Constitution, known as the Enumeration Clause, confers on

Congress the power to conduct an actual enumeration every 10

years; and

WHEREAS, Since the adoption of the 14th Amendment, the United

States Constitution has mandated that all persons, regardless of

race, citizenship or legal status, be included in the decennial

census count; and

WHEREAS, The indisputable fact that all persons, including

the nonvoting classes, have a vital interest in the conduct of

the government is just as true today as it was in 1866; and

WHEREAS, When the 39th Congress debated the wording for the

14th Amendment, options including "voters" and "citizens" were

considered and expressly rejected, before the language "whole

number of persons" was decided upon; and

WHEREAS, Congress delegated the responsibility of conducting

the actual enumeration of the population through the Census Act

to the Secretary of Commerce who may delegate authority for

establishing procedures to conduct the census to the Census

Bureau; and

WHEREAS, The fundamental constitutional and statutory purpose

of the Census Bureau in conducting the decennial census is to

acquire an accurate and actual enumeration of the population;

and

WHEREAS, Federal law requires the Secretary of Commerce to

advise Congress as to the questions, which are typically

thoroughly developed and tested, to be included on the decennial

census; and

WHEREAS, The report transmitted by the Secretary of Commerce

advising Congress of the questions to be incorporated in the

2020 decennial census included a demand for information

regarding the citizenship status of every person in the country;

and

WHEREAS, By including the demand for citizenship information

in the 2020 questionnaire, the Census Bureau deviated from its

adopted standards and practices for ensuring the accuracy of the

decennial census and violated the requirements of the

Information Quality Act; and

WHEREAS, For decades, the Census Bureau has acknowledged and

expressed the public opinion that the inclusion of questions on

citizenship or immigration status would deter census

participation and in turn impair population count accuracy; and

WHEREAS, During litigation seeking to compel the Census

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Bureau to demand disclosure of immigration status in 1980, the

Census Bureau argued that "any effort to ascertain citizenship

will inevitably jeopardize the overall accuracy of the

population count." Federation for American Immigration Reform v.

Klutznick, 486 F. Supp. 564 (D.D.C. 1980); and

WHEREAS, The Census Bureau further explained that:

"[o]btaining the cooperation of a suspicious and fearful

population would be impossible if the group being counted

perceived any possibility of the information being used

against them. Questions as to citizenship are

particularly sensitive in minority communities and would

inevitably trigger hostility, resentment and refusal to

cooperate." Id.;

and

WHEREAS, The position of the Census Bureau regarding the

detrimental effects of a citizenship or immigration status

question on the accuracy of the decennial census has remained

unwavering regardless of the administration or political party;

and

WHEREAS, Even without a citizenship demand, minority and

immigrant populations have historically been some of the hardest

groups to count accurately in the decennial census; and

WHEREAS, Statistically, the 2010 census failed to count more

than 1.5 million minorities, and the Hispanic population was

undercounted by 1.54% in 2010, by 0.71% in 2000 and by 4.99% in

1990; and

WHEREAS, Immigrants account for 6.8% of Pennsylvania's

population, and in 2014, more than one in five immigrants in

Pennsylvania were undocumented; and

WHEREAS, Immigrants account for 13.1% of Philadelphia's

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population, and in 2014, an estimated 50,000 undocumented

immigrants lived in Philadelphia; and

WHEREAS, Immigrants account for 8.5% of Pittsburgh's

population, and in 2014, an estimated 18% of those immigrants

were undocumented; and

WHEREAS, In addition to participation and accuracy concerns,

population data from the census is used to apportion

representatives to Congress, draw state and local legislative

districts, allocate electors to the electoral college and

distribute billions of dollars in Federal funding; and

WHEREAS, Approximately $800 billion is annually distributed

to nearly 300 different Federal programs based on census counts,

and a citizenship question could deprive a state or municipality

of its statutory fair share of Federal funding due to inaccurate

counts; and

WHEREAS, Some of the biggest line items in the Federal budget

that rely, at least in part, on census data, include health

programs such as Medicaid, the Supplemental Nutrition Assistance

Program (SNAP), education programs, infrastructure plans and

highway planning and construction programs; and

WHEREAS, Pennsylvania received more than $1.67 billion in

Highway Trust Fund grants in 2015, which is funding allocated on

the basis of local population estimates collected through the

decennial census, for road construction and other surface

transportation programs; and

WHEREAS, Pennsylvania received nearly $183 million in

urbanized area formula grants for planning, operating and

improving transportation; and

WHEREAS, The Child Care and Development Fund allocates

funding based on census information of the number of children

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under 13 years of age, of which Pennsylvania received more than

$116 million in grants in 2015; and

WHEREAS, The Medicaid Program relies on per capita income

information calculated with decennial census data to determine

the amount to reimburse each state for medical assistance

payments on behalf of low-income individuals, and, in 2015,

Pennsylvania received $11.2 billion in reimbursement under the

Medicaid program; and

WHEREAS, If Pennsylvania had even a 1% undercount on the 2010

decennial census, the Commonwealth would have lost nearly $222

million in Federal funding as reimbursement under the Medicaid

program in one year; and

WHEREAS, Undercounts of both citizens and noncitizens alike

in immigrant communities due to the addition of a citizenship

question will inhibit a state's representational interests and

its ability to meet constitutional requirements in creating

congressional and state legislative districts; and

WHEREAS, Each state relies on the accuracy of the decennial

census in order to comply with the 14th Amendment's one-person,

one-vote requirement, which requires that a legislative district

be as close to equal population as practicable and that

congressional apportionment be based on total population; and

WHEREAS, The decision to include a citizenship question in

the 2020 decennial census is so detrimental to our democracy

that the Commonwealth of Pennsylvania joined a coalition of 17

other attorneys general, several cities and the bipartisan

United States Conference of Mayors in filing a lawsuit to block

the collection of the information; and

WHEREAS, The well-documented concerns and risks surrounding a

citizenship question on the census are heightened in the current

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political climate given the President's anti-immigrant rhetoric

and the current administration's pattern of actions and policies

targeting immigrant and minority communities; and

WHEREAS, These actions and policies include the rescission of

the Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals (DACA) program, the

rhetoric and efforts for a physical wall along the border

between the United States and Mexico, the increased detention of

undocumented immigrants, efforts to suspend or terminate Federal

funding to sanctuary cities, the travel ban from several Muslim-

majority countries, the suspension of refugee admissions into

the United States and the termination of special protections

from removal for migrants from nations experiencing war and

natural disasters, among other actions; and

WHEREAS, The decennial enumeration of the population is one

of the most critical functions our Federal Government performs;

and

WHEREAS, The decennial census, although not perfect, should

and must be apolitical in both its execution and its application

to ensure a full, fair and accurate count; therefore be it

RESOLVED, That the House of Representatives of the

Commonwealth of Pennsylvania urge the Trump Administration to

not include a citizenship question in the 2020 decennial census;

and be it further

RESOLVED, That copies of this resolution be sent to the

President of the United States, the Secretary of Commerce, the

Director of the United States Census Bureau, the presiding

officers of each house of Congress and each member of Congress

from Pennsylvania.

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