Census citizen question is fair, but it riles Democrats
Is it racist and evil for a nation to ask if its residents are citizens of that nation?
But if you dare ask that, or support the idea that it’s a reasonable question, you’ll be denounced by the Democratic left as a racist, a tool of Trump, and you’ll be exiled for your sins.
No. Every citizen should have the right to know how many citizens are here. We are not the subjects of the government. We are citizens. And for now, at least, citizenship still counts. You must declare your citizenship if you wish to get a U.S. passport. So why shouldn’t the 2020 census be able to ask if you are a citizen?
Polls aren’t everything, but a Harvard CAPS/Harris poll released the other day shows that 67% of people agreed that the question, “Is this person a citizen of the United States?” should be allowed on the 2020 census. Eighty-eight percent of Republicans, 52 percent of Democrats and even 63 percent of independents said it was legitimate.
If those who agreed to the question are wise, they’ll keep their mouths shut, lest they be denounced for Thought Crime.
As with almost everything in America, politics is involved. The provocateur in chief, President Donald Trump, is behind the question. He ran successfully on a platform of promising to stop illegal immigration, which Republicans and Democrats have allowed and encouraged for decades.
Republican politicians danced for chamber of commerce types who wanted cheap labor. Democrats once opposed illegal immigration, but now they realize their future lies not just with African Americans, but with immigrants coming north across the southern border.
Trump pushed to have a question of citizenship on the census. The Supreme Court in a narrow 5-4 decision, blocked it and tossed the issue back to the lower courts. Democrats argue that such a question would frighten noncitizens and depress the census count, especially in blue states like Illinois, which has lost thousands of residents. And states that lose population risk losing seats in Congress.
Attorney General William Barr said the other day he sees a legal path to the question of citizenship on the 2020 census. House Speaker Nancy Pelosi, the Democrat locked in her own intraparty political civil war with Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez’s Democratic socialists, said asking about citizenship on the census is all about white racism.
“This is about keeping — you know his hat — make America white again,” Pelosi sniffed at an event in San Francisco.
“They want to make sure that people, certain people, are counted,” Pelosi said. “It’s really disgraceful. And it’s not what our founders had in mind. What they want to do is put a chilling effect so certain populations will not answer the form.”
It is an issue that Pelosi’s Democrats may win in the courts but lose at the ballot box.
Citizenship has nothing to do with race. We are all races here.
And citizens should have the right to dare ask who is in their country. What is disgraceful is that Pelosi would play the race card to protect her power.
What is equally disgraceful is that she’s not roundly condemned for such talk by a media so enamored of the Democratic “resistance” against Trump that they willfully ignore danger signs in the culture. And this is a clear danger sign.
There is a chilling effect, but it comes from the Democratic left in shaming Americans from asking a legitimate question