Chuck DeVore - Texas Public Policy Foundation Joins Houston's Morning News

Episode Transcript

Speaker 1 (00:00):
Well, that's what the president wants to count out. The
illegals count in the citizens ruckt of or joins US
Texas Public Policy Foundation. We have all these interpretations, chuck,
of what the Constitution says about the census and who
is to be counted. But it and everybody is supposed
to be counted. But it doesn't say you cannot separate
people based upon whether they're here legally or illegally?

Speaker 2 (00:22):
Does it? Well, no, it doesn't. And if you go
back and look at prior censuses, the last time the
US Census asked about citizenship status was nineteen fifty and
there's been a number of censuses where that has been
the case, where they've asked the question are you you
know where you're from? Are you here legally? So this

(00:46):
is not an uncommon thing. Trump wanted to do it
for the twenty twenty census, was blocked by the courts,
of course, had a whole bunch of other lawfare things
going on that perhaps distracted him from being able to
carry out his duties. So he's looking to try to
do it again. And then the question is is this
going to be a full fledged census or is this
going to be something maybe a little less because the

(01:06):
census costs about fifteen billion dollars to be able to
carry off once every ten years. And the other interesting
thing is that the Census Bureau constantly sends out surveys.
They send out thousands of surveys every month, and so
you know, that's how you come up with these estimates.
Census issues all the time. So there's probably a way

(01:29):
that you could at least estimate and say, hey, you know,
we have a problem here. There's more illegal aliens in
the country than we thought there were, and here's where
they are. So I think that the president's just practicing
some good politics here. Be nice to know.

Speaker 1 (01:46):
So you think it's more about just coming up with
not a guestimate of how many illegal aliens we have,
but something that's a little bit more firm as far
as that number, or do you think that he's going
to try to make the case with that that we
have to that maybe we have to relook at the
census and concerning the fact that we use the census
for apportioning representatives in Congress, then the question will come up,

(02:10):
do illegal aliens do they deserve to have representation in
front of the United States Congress.

Speaker 2 (02:15):
Orlant right, and again going back to our history in
the first gosh, and the censuses that occurred clear up
until about nineteen twenty, if you were a Native American
and you had not applied to become a citizen or
your tribe had not applied to become citizens, you weren't counted.

(02:36):
I mean you were counted. We knew how many people
there were, but you weren't counted for the census because
you were considered a sovereign nation. You were a part.
And it wasn't until Calvin Coolidge and a statute nationalized
or made citizen all the remaining tribes that had not
yet applied to become citizens, so prior to that weren't

(03:00):
counted in the census because they had their own nations.
So there is precedence for this. You could argue. There's
another thing going on as well, which was the as
you recall, in twenty twenty obviously an odd year, right,
in more ways than one, you had COVID going on.
But there was a huge surprise when the Census Bureau

(03:22):
came out with their information pardon me, that several states
had quite a bit more or less people in them
than was projected in what had happened in the first
few months of the new administration. There were some interesting
things going on politically, and you ended up with places
like California, in New York and Illinois that lost fewer

(03:47):
congressional seats than was anticipated, and places like Texas and
Florida gained far fewer seats than were anticipated. And if
you look at the political shift, had things gone the
way they expected in the twenty twenty census, before you know,
Biden and his people got their hands on the census,

(04:08):
the Republicans would probably have another four or five seats
in Congress today.

Speaker 1 (04:13):
Okay, So it's kind of like the jobs numbers, whose
numbers you're gonna believe, right right exactly? Okay, all right,
so this is gonna be fun to try to figure
this one out. Chuck is always good to talk to you, sir.
Thank you from the Texas Public Policy Foundation, Chuck de
Voor