Immigrants don’t need to have the right to vote to affect elections in the United States — simply by being here, they can tip the scales.
The apportionment of House seats and votes in the Electoral College among the states is based on total population — not citizenship or legal status.
The Census Bureau is clear that naturalized citizens, as well as non-citizens such as green card holders, foreign students, guestworkers and illegal immigrants are captured in the census every 10 years.
Because the legal and illegal immigrant population is so large and unevenly distributed across the country, it causes some states to gain seats in the U.S. House of Representatives and Electoral College at the expense of others.
Equally important, immigration shifts political representation away from American citizens and toward states and districts with large non-citizen populations.
An investigation by the Center for Immigration Studies estimates that immigrants — legal and illegal — counted in the 2020 census shifted 17 seats in the House of Representatives and votes in the Electoral College.
. . .