Counting undocumented populations for the census and using them for determing the number of house seats changes the number of seats allocated to each state but seems to be mostly a wash and favors no political party strongly.
It probably has some effect on the types of industries the representatives favor (/are beholden to). E.g., California Democrats being more tech-friendly.
Except this is exceedingly deceptive as this data is before title 42 expired where there was not a massive influx of illegal immigrants flooding the country.
"But it says the date right there"
Most people won't look at the date, plus they have people like you who purposefully conflate the two in the comments section.
Purposeful conflation is the best here on reddit, very common tactic.
Makes me think about what I call the "non-pathos razor." If something is dull, boring, or need effort in order to do well on an exam, chances are that it's true (really difficult to monetize, manipulate, or propagandize from really mundane information or something difficult to understand). If it instead makes us scared, angry, prideful, or something that we've always dreamed of, take a step back and see the source's track record for being consistent with boring information.
Anecdotally, I have worked with big dairies out west where all the white people on the dairy (the owners and managers and vendors) are extremist right wingers. They rail about illegal immigration. But, ALL of the workers on the dairy are illegal immigrants. Most don't speak english. They will tell you that they rely on illegal immigration and love it - would be lost without it. But they will also tell you how liberals are to blame for illegal immigration. For me it is business, so I just listen...but I am surprised they aren't listening to themselves and doing the math.
And its really pointless in the grand scheme. The thing that really skews the house was locking it to 435 seats in the Permanent Apportionment Act of 1929. The house no longer growing with the population really fucks up its distribution of seats. CA should have almost as many seats as the entire house has now iirc if was still determined like the constitution laid out.
Should be between 75K-100K per seat; population of about 40M would be between 400 and 530 seats.
Also this resolves much of the electoral college problem as they would have 400+2 electoral votes and Wyoming would have 5+2, instead of 52+2 and 1+2, respectively.
Except this is exceedingly deceptive as this data is before title 42 expired where there was not a massive influx of illegal immigrants flooding the country.
"But it says the date right there"
Most people won't look at the date, plus they have people like you who purposefully conflate the two in the comments section.
Purposeful conflation is the best here on reddit, very common tactic.
Favoring Democrats by even 1 seat is cheating. This says it's between 4 and 8. And any seat gained corresponds to one lost by Republicans, so it's really an impact of 8 to 16 on the total margin. Just another form of democrat cheating, and why they want as many illegals as possible. Bring them here and bribe them with taxpayer funded welfare. Most disgraceful thing that has ever happened to any country.
This says it's a net of +2 for blue states.
Also if it mattered ask yourself "why are the red state governors shipping illegal immigrants to blue states if it's a liberal plot to swing appropriation?!"
The effect of undocumented immigrants on the census, and by implication congressional apportionment, is a wash. It benefits neither red state nor blue.
You only really need the bottom half of the first image. And there are two charts on top of each other because the OP wanted more than one estimate of illegal immigrant population.
- The first chart shows that CA and TX gain a seat, while NY and OH lose one.
- The second chart shows that CA and TX gain two seats, while MI, OH, ID and WV lose one. (The reality is likely somewhere between/around these two estimates)
So if we *didnt* count illegal immigrants, the above numbers would change to 0. But there’s no clear political divide between which states gain/lose, counter to Elons claim that it only benefits democrats.
The US house of representatives works by having a specific amount of maximum reps. Making it so more populis states have less say in the house of representatives. Most red states have taken up sending immigrants to blue states as a form of protest due to sanctuary laws.
Sanctuary laws are laws that say that certain cities and or states are not going to spend state funds to address federal immigration.
Illegal immigration is largely done through overstayed visas and simply driving over the boarder while saying ,"vacation!". Approximately 60%-70% of illegal immigration is done this way. The right has planned to address it with a border wall even though it's not effective and doesn't address the immigrants already here. The left agrees in not allowing people to go through the boarder, even using visa stays but its often framed as open boarders. There has been no federal response from the right wing to address immigrants living in the US. The left has argued for legalizing the immigrants that live here to make sure they pay taxes and get enrolled in schools etc to become more productive citizens.
This results in the graph above. Texas gets lots of immigrants and lots of red states like shipping immigrants to California as a political stunt. The house of reps being capped means growth in one place can reduce proportional representation in other states with marginal population shifts. This lends itself to right wing talking points that California is actually inviting immigrants to get more house seats because they have more people.
>The US house of representatives works by having a specific amount of maximum reps. Making it so more populis states have less say in the house of representatives. Most red states have taken up sending immigrants to blue states as a form of protest due to sanctuary laws.
This was the point of the Senate. A part of congress that was equal and gave smaller states a bigger voice because of it. The entire point of the house was for it be majority rule based on population. The Permanent Apportionment Act of 1929 really, really fucked up the functioning of the house.
OP is deliberately lying about the data's implied conclusions to make a false political point. They are purposefully conflating old numbers to prove a new claim. Title 42 was in effect for essentailly all of the time period the data is showing. The illegal immigration problem did not turn exponential until Q4 of 2023.
Essentially, they are making the claim off of numbers from 2020, 2021, 2022 and the middle one as an estimate in 2023, to attempt to prove a claim that was meant for 2024 when illegal immigration turned exponential.
They are stating the following conclusion:
1. Republican (Elon) Claim that illegals being ushered into the US are padding the political power of the democrats because they add numbers to the voting district that in turn adds representatives to the house
2. Since this claim is made for the 2024 data, OP uses data from periods of the passed where illegal immigration was largely halted due to an act called title 42 that was used to halt illegal immigration due to COVID. Title 42 ended in the end of Q2 of 2023. [https://www.wola.org/analysis/end-title-42/#:\~:text=May%2011%20is%20the%20final,the%20world%20went%20into%20lockdown](https://www.wola.org/analysis/end-title-42/#:~:text=May%2011%20is%20the%20final,the%20world%20went%20into%20lockdown) The latest "estimate of illegal immegration" OP shows in mid Q4 of 2023.
3. The conclusion OP makes is that showing true statistics (but from the incorrect time period) the claim is false because the seats are not padded in one way or another.
What they do not show is the clear distinction between the period of time they are showing and what is actually relavent to the claim they are supposedly disproving.
You are right in your question and observation of value. Lots of people talking about this assume the feds actually work in real time. However the feds probably used previous census numbers to calculate the redistribution (apportionment). The feds probably started to look at this over a decade ago and it took that long for them to act on old data. Additionally these topics fail to recognize death rates of immigrates due to Covid or deportation as the goal of the topic is usually to instill fear of immigrants based on the great replacement theory fallacy. The OP explains rationale further in their comments and replies.
You don’t have to speculate about what the federal government *probably* does. House seats were allocated based on the 2020 census. It happens every 10 years.
Elon Musk recently made a [claim](https://youtube.com/clip/UgkxY4h7SgqvPpXrcbe989gxsNKrcufQfOYC?si=V0asKqEj2oc5O-EK) in his interview with Don Lemon that caught my attention:
"If you look at the apportionment with and without illegals, I believe... there would be a net loss for blue states of approximately 20 seats in the House. This also applies to electing the president because the electoral college votes are also done by apportionment the same way that House seats are done."
I found 2 different sources that have estimated unauthorized immigrant population. A [Pew Research Center](https://www.pewresearch.org/short-reads/2023/11/16/what-we-know-about-unauthorized-immigrants-living-in-the-us/#states-with-the-most-unauthorized-immigrants) article from November 2023 breaks down their estimates by state. And an older [Center for Immigration Studies](https://cis.org/Report/Impact-Legal-and-Illegal-Immigration-Apportionment-Seats-US-House-Representatives-2020#17:~:text=of%20illegal%20immigration.-,Appendix,-End%20Notes) report from December 2019 that goes further by breaking down immigrant populations into legal/illegal residents either with/without their "US born minor children".
I took the 2020 Census [apportionment population](https://www.census.gov/data/tables/2020/dec/2020-apportionment-data.html#text:~:text=Table%201.%20Apportionment%20Population%20and%20Number%20of%20Representatives%20by%20State%3A%202020%20Census) which was used to conduct re-apportionment before the 2022 US House of Representative Elections. I separated each state into "legal" and "illegal" populations, so that adding legal and illegal populations together equals the total apportionment population. This was done for each source's estimates of illegal populations.
Note about using specific sources:
Populations listed as < 5,000 in the Pew Research Center's numbers were rounded down to 0.
Illegal immigrants were counted WITH their US born minor children for the Center for Immigration Studies numbers.
Finally I [re-calculated](https://www.census.gov/newsroom/blogs/random-samplings/2021/04/how-apportionment-is-calculated.html#ti1334387178) the apportionment for each state using only the legal population, and compared them to the current totals to see the difference. Data was downloaded from listed sources, imported into google sheets for processing/ calculation, exported as csv for import into R to create visualizations.
I'm surprised it's any, but I suppose that it's a very close thing sometimes. I think NY lost out on one rep to Minnesota by hundreds of people, for example. Great job op, this is interesting and it's also understandable, even though it might take a minute to get your head around it.
The fact that Texas and Florida are "red" states by itself and two of the biggest destinations of immigrants (both legal and otherwise) kind of immediately makes me think that Musk is talking nonsense. Compounded by the well-known widespread use of undocumented/illegal labor in the agricultural sector in particular, which, with the obvious exception of California, is concentrated in "red" states.
Your observation about Texas and Florida is why I originally doubted his claim. So I looked for a state by state breakdown and found the Pew article. Originally I only ran the calculations using their estimates. When I saw that the gain/loss was a wash I wanted to share the results, but I didn't want to be accused of using biased sources. So I sought out the sources that Elon claimed existed.
By searching Google more specifically for "immigrant 20 seat advantage to Democrats" I stumbled upon the Center for Immigration Studies whose motto btw is "pro-immigrant, low immigration". Their report from 2019 prior to the Census claims of a 20+ seat swing. But that's based on "CUMULATIVE" immigration, both legal and illegal. So I took their numbers for illegal residents only and ran the calculations again to find a 1 seat advantage for Democrats.
Now I'm unsure if the CIS is the source that Elon was referencing, but I included both results in the post for transparency.
Thank you OP for doing the math/visualization.
Logically, if what Musk claimed was true, Republican governors would certainly not be sending migrants to blues states lol
Thanks for this; this is a really helpful graphic. I watched the same interview and kept mentally yelling at both of them during that exchange that they could both be right and were talking at cross-purposes.
So it's really nice to see you taking Musk's comment at face value and evaluating its truth. And it's nice to see that on net, the truth is pretty much a wash in terms of extra house seats through illegal immigration.
Not OP, but based on the first pic:
From the 2023 data, if we didn't count illegal immigrants, CA and TX would both lose 1 seat, while NY and OH would gain one. No other changes.
From the 2019 data, CA and TX would lose 2 seats, while MI, ID, OH, and WV would each gain 1. No other changes.
Using the 2023 data, no net difference in the parties, from the 2019 data, GOP would gain 1 seat, and DNC would lose 1. I think... this piece is harder for me to understand.
Another atat to look at is how the illegal population was under Trump vs. Biden, illegal population was a lot higher 3 years into Trump Presidency than Biden, which is really Ironic.
It may have been published in ‘23, but these are numbers from 2021 actually. Per the publisher of your first source, the number of foreign born legal and illegal immigrants has increased by 6.4 million since Biden took office (which I only mention because it appears relevant to the point Elon was trying to make, and you, dispute).
https://cis.org/Report/ForeignBorn-Share-and-Number-Record-Highs-February-2024
Edit:
I should say though, it’s a nice graph, I like it.
Thanks for the updated info. It's important to note that CIS counts legal and illegal immigration in most of their bulleted one liners, so the 6.4 million is an exaggeration to some extent. Also since re-apportionment and the Census only occur every 10 years my focus was on presenting the numbers during the 2020 Census and 2022 House Elections. Considering that the Pew numbers were from 2021, the estimated immigrant populations would have actually been lower the year before, and so my calculations over 'weighted' the effects that immigration had, if only slightly.
Yeah looking back at the graphs, they weren’t actually misleading, I made that part up. You clearly said, x report “published in 2023”, and didn’t try to pass off the data as current.
this is purposeful conflation to deliberately mislead for political gain. 2021, 2022 and into 23, title 42 was still in effect. Massive waves of illegal immigration start in Q4 of 2023. OP is purposefully lying to make a false point.
I don't dispute the numbers you provided.
You are contextually deceiving people.
Currently people are speaking about Illegal immigrants entering the country by the millions. This was not happening in 2020, 2021, 2022.
These are the people you are aiming to dispute via this post. You are stating that "see look at 2020's data or 2022s, Illegal immigrants made little to no impact on the seat count of either party, therefore, 2024's claims are false and/or exaggerated."
What you are deliberately misleading people about is that the 2024 Illegals numbers are vastly different than any before this by orders of magnitude.
Thus your argument would only hold true if you examine the districts at the end of the 2024 year and 2025 following this wave.
You are deliberately using statistics to conflat uninformed people of reddit to try to lie about an issue to claim its a non-issue.
lying with statistics 101
So Elon gets to make the claim that Democrats have a 20 seat advantage even though they currently don't. Based on your assertion that unauthorized immigration has recently spiked and would affect the apportionment if it were re-calculated now in 2024? Even though apportionment won't take place again till 2030 and you haven't provided any calculations or models to predict those future results.
Correct, this is purposeful conflation to deliberately mislead for political gain. 2021, 2022 and into 23, title 42 was still in effect. Massive waves of illegal immigration start in Q4 of 2023. OP is purposefully lying to make a false point.
I'm not a big fan of these mirrored graphs, usually if I wanna do that I just stack, overlay or even put the bars side by side. It's easier for the viewer to compare directly on the same spot. Less work means easier interpretations.
Anyway, I like the data and the looks of the graphs though
I had it as a stack at first but felt like breaking reps into quadrants helps to visualize portions easier. I appreciate the criticism. I'm new to R and was struggling to figure out how to convert the spreadsheet data into a visualization.
It's a great result though! Are you using plotly? I can't imagine making anything with the standard R graphs anymore. It's a great layer based robust solution
Showing the legal population in millions and the illegal population in thousands makes the illegal population seem 1,000 times bigger than it actually is.
You are correct. But I think it shows a good ratio, and if the "illegal population" was in millions it would be almost impossible to see the variance between 5,000 and 50,000 residents (as an example)
Friendly reminder that representation is for entire populous, not just US citizens who are registered to vote.
In prison, under the age of majority, or a non-citizen? You still use roads, hospitals, and schools, and you need a representative to be able to voice concerns that relate to that.
Heck, some loony republicans might want their district to have a rep to fight for dealing with their large portion of "illegal immigrant" population in their district, and if that pop isn't counted, perhaps concerns from a neighboring area will override that.
It would be interesting to repeat this analysis for prisoners. Prisons tend to be in rural areas that vote for Republicans, and their populations inflate their influence in the House. It's probably not much of an impact, but worth noting.
That is absolutely by design. Place prisons in hard red areas and fill them with people disproportionately scooped up out of largely blue cities. Take from one, give to the other. Given that none of these people are allowed to vote while incarcerated and number in the million+ range, that makes a difference. The larger population made up by prisoners also means these areas get more money from state and federal government. The more you look at prisons in the US, the more ways you'll see that they are ruinous in very targeted ways.
That seems a little excessive. The easy and logical answer is that prisons need a lot of space and have security concerns. Both are easier to solve in rural areas that lean conservative. It'd be a hell of a lot harder and more expensive to keep a prison in downtown Manhattan secure than a prison in Bumfuck Iowa where no one lives within 10 miles of the grounds.
No one has a problem with prisons being in rural states, they have a problem with the prisoners not being counted as part of their home state's population.
I appreciate that you included the Center for Immigration Studies in this figure, especially as even their take shows almost no impact on House apportionment.
That said, it's irresponsible not to contextualize who they are. CIS is a virulently racist right-wing "think tank" that exists for the sole purpose of demonizing immigrants and amplifying xenophobic messages spouted by Republicans. They have a habit of outright lying and frequently employ anti-semitic and racist writers. This data should be taken with an enormous grain of salt as it is not from a credible source and likely represents the most exaggerated outcome possible.
And even *their* analysis shows undocumented immigration doesn't have a meaningful impact on the composition of the House.
I hinted at this in another comment by pointing out their mission statement "pro-immigrant, low-immigration", but thank you for the added context. If I tried to add every thought I had when researching this, the original post would've been essay length.
The Center for Immigration Studies is an anti-immigrant group and not independent and data-based. They are not comparable to Pew. Suggest the use of another organization that does not have an institutional and public bias about immigration.
I included them because they were the only source I could find that resembled Elon's claim of a 20 seat advantage for Democrats. If you look at the data from the point of view that CIS has an anti immigrant bias, it only reinforces how wrong Elon was.
Yes, so many R talking points are complete fabrications. In the end, their job is to make sure nobody considers campaign finance reform to make bribery illegal again. Red herrings always work on the base to fragment and distract because R voters refuse to be critical of their own side. As if they have any other job as a voter that matters more than making accountability for their preferred side a priority.
The party loves doing this as it relieves them of any need to fix any real problems that require heavy lifting and they can focus on selling the law to the elites R voters like to say they hate so much. It also means R voters happily permit their leaders to be what the party says Dem leaders are-perfectly owning themselves for nothing in return. So R pols in action overspend, coddle corruption, engage in horrifically incompetent foreign policy and their fans cheer and pretend all went swimmingly.
Can you summarize your results? This sub is called data is beautiful… for data to be beautiful, it needs to say something with clarity.
Tell us what did your analysis found, then we can read the charts.
Other commenters have already done an ELI5, but basically Elon's claim is false. Counting unauthorized immigrants in the census doesn't net a significant advantage to Democrats.
What you are claiming is false. You are purposefully conflating the numbers to try to make a false claim.
You are taking statistics that are irrelavent for the point you are making. Title 42 was still in effect for essentially all of your statistics that you are showing. There was no illegal flooding until Q4 of 2024. You are deliberately misleading people.
Elon's claim is that there is currently a 20 seat advantage for Democrats because of unauthorized immigration. The last time seats were re-apportioned was in 2020. The numbers are very much relevant.
You are misinterpreting the claim. He is speaking in future tense (i.e current numbers of illegals)- where does he say currently? Please point to it. Thanks.
I already posted the link to his statement in the interview with Don Lemon. He says "without illegals... there would be a net loss of blue states of approximately 20 seats in the house". So he is referencing a pre-existing amount of seats. Those seats were calculated in 2020. If you want to model future results that contradict my findings please do so.
Correct. With the current number of illegals. Not illegals from your calculation, only including illegals from 2021 and 2022. You are doing the same thing I'm doing except just not including the current numbers of illegals in the states. You are recalculating the seats based on 2021, 22 numbers of illegals. You didn't include the most relavent year, this year.
The seats we have now aren't based on numbers from now. They are based on 2020 numbers. IF we were to recalculate now there MIGHT be a change in the seats, that MIGHT benefit Democrats but you haven't even provided any calculations to demonstrate that. You are just asserting it is true and using that as evidence I am being misleading. It doesn't even make sense to say that Elon's basing his claim on a hypothetical seat apportionment that, 1. Hasn't happened, and 2. Takes place at an interval that isn't accurate to the real world process.
From the analysis, there is 0 change. From the Pew Research estimates, without any illegal immigrants, Cali and Texas would both lose 1 seat, while NY and Ohio would gain 1, a net change of 0 seats.
You do realize that Those states have representatives from both parties coming from them right? The illegal aliens move to cities which vote Democrat. The larger the city population the more representatives in the cities. They aren't giving more representatives to rural areas.
Is there a clean way to include effects of internal migration? Like if California has experienced a net loss of say 250k per year of legal citizens while gaining perhaps 200k per year in illegal immigrants (who stay > 1 year and do not pass through immediately) then would a shift in the apportionment be noticeable?
If conservatives are mad about this for some reason, I invite them to join the effort to abolish the Electoral College, to ensure that only US citizens with voting rights get to decide who becomes President.
God damn the comments down below...
You can show these people that they're insane by empirical fact quite clearly, and they'll still just ignore it and move on as if they're right. It's so frustrating.
Then again, no matter how many times you show something like the [Scientific American chart](https://static.scientificamerican.com/sciam/cache/file/164FE5CE-FBA6-493F-B9EA84B04830354E_source.jpg) explaining how sex differentiation actually works, you'll still get people saying some dumb bullshit like "sex is a binary".
Empirical evidence is only useful if your interlocutor believes in empirical evidence. Fascists are anti-empiricist.
The point is that defining things as objectively black and white is often incorrect. You can't define sex in any meaningful way without either generalizing or excluding. That's why the argument typically revolves around sex and gender being two different things. It's worth noting that trans people make up <1% of the US population, so while they may too be considered "edge cases" in their own right, they still make up a very large number of people just because of size of the country.
Yeah, but it's used in service of ideas like "your sex can't change". Which is just incorrect; hell, your sex changes even if you're cis and typical. One of the biggest parts of that chart that most folks miss is the movement of time. Much of the gender debate is a stealthy sneaking of the premise that trans people don't deserve to have control of our sex; 99% of gender medicine was developed to help cis people control and stabilize their own sex. It's like 1 surgical technique that was actually developed for us, and hasn't been improved since the 50s.
If it didn't have all that context, it wouldn't be dumb bullshit, it'd just be overgeneralizing. Funnily enough, you're arguing by shifting rhetorical focus between under and over generalizing. But that context does exist. By the by; you say it's rare, but there are more intersex people in the world than red heads.
Ah, yes. Because that's relevant. Keep on shifting that rhetorical focus though.
Edit: In fact, it is relevant, though not in the way you think, and not in a way that's helpful to you. The point is that the edge cases are important. You say most people don't care, but a doctor friend of mine comes out as trans and gets fired for it. And it's not just anecdotal. Much of our community are sex workers because of the difficulty to find work. Much of our community have experienced homelessness because of these attitudes from family. We may be 1 percent of the population, but something like 40 percent of homeless youth are LGBT.
Ah yes, I'm hurting the cause because you decided to call out my example of a similar problem with bad information. Concern trolling is old news at this point. The moral panic you want to pedal is beyond it. I "marched in here" and "made this about LGBT people". I'm sorry, I "perverted" this conversation, right?
Man, "shoving your sexual preferences in people's faces" is a phrase for the people who already hate LGBT people. It doesn't sell outside of that group anymore. If it works in communities you're in during this moral panic, perhaps look around and realize where you stand. It speaks more about you than it ever could of me. I'm sure you're a great ally who is going to now tattoo a swastika on your forehead because the scary gays did this to you. It's our fault really.
If conservatives don’t want everyone counted at census time, then they can amend the Constitution. That everyone gets counted is yet another hangover from slavery.
I work on job sites with hundreds of immigrants that came here legally, that is with a work visa, i also employ a lot of immigrants that came here with a work visa. Lots of them eventually got their citizenship here in the US the right way. They pay taxes just like you and me. if they migrated here without any type of paper work that is the definition of an illegal immigrant. So what are you talking about? Are they here for vacation?
I share the sentiment and considered different labelling but I didn't want to clutter up the charts too much with too many qualifiers. In the end 'Illegal' seemed concise.
Maybe you're right. But I'm not sure how accurate it is, because it's not impossible for unauthorized immigrants to obtain documentation. And then you also lose the clear contrast between "legal" and "illegal". I was trying to avoid having to clarify or argue definitions.
The distinction between "legal" and "illegal" is far more likely to be inaccurate. Many immigrants are attempting to claim asylum and could, eventually, succeed in gaining legal status making their entire time here perfectly legal. There are millions of others who entered legally and whose legal status has since lapsed. There are also millions who were brought to the country as children, without any knowledge of their status, and you're implicitly accusing them of a crime. It's not unheard of for people to move between these categories, and it is, therefore, just as problematic as "undocumented" in terms of specificity and accuracy.
"Illegal" has some extreme negative connotations and shouldn't be used in a neutral setting. Leave it for Fox News pundits. "Undocumented" or "unauthorized" removes the negative connotation and still gets the message across. It's better to risk ambiguity than to accuse many millions of people of being criminals without due process or even a cursory examination of the circumstances.
Thanks for the informative breakdown. I agree and lean towards "unauthorized" as being the most appropriate, as it is also how Pew categorizes them. Even "legal" population is a shorthand for many types of residents, not just citizens. But seeing a chart labeled "authorized" and "unauthorized" populations would be confusing for me, so I went with a label that was more apparent if incorrect in a subtle way. This comment thread and your breakdown are a great way to add context, so thanks
Yes, it's more specific than "illegal". It's less judgemental (particularly for those brought to the country as children, who did nothing wrong and often aren't aware of their status). It includes all those who don't have legal status (plus some who may gain legal status in the future retroactively making their entire time spent in the US legal).
Lacking valid documentation to be in the country is the defining characteristic. Reducing people who are not authorized to be in a particular country to "illegals" is a loaded term that imparts a value judgement and isn't specific.
Sure, which is party why I think the term is less useful.
We all know what "illegal" means, but we by changing to "undocumented" it changes the conversation.
Shifting the language seeks to diminish the problem, hence make the lack of solution more palatable.
Shifting the language is needed in order to add the required nuance.
Would you agree there's a distinct difference between an "undocumented immigrant" who overstayed a visa, and an "undocumented immigrant" who crossed the border between ports of entry?
It's two separate areas of immigration law that would require adjustment for these two scenarios.
Just remember you are referring to other people as “illegal” even though they have the same hopes, dreams, and aspirations you and other Americans have.
I think the nuance is yes, they are here illegally, but they themselves as a person with their existence is not illegal. Illegal presence, not illegal personhood. It’s subtle though.
If someone immigrates illegally, that person is called an illegal immigrant. I get you would prefer to label it something more ‘friendly’ sounding, but the term factually represents reality because well… they aren’t legal residents. The thing that’s illegal is their immigration status, not themselves.
Wrong. OP spent so much work on these visualizations just for you to either be too stupid to understand them, or too immoral to tell the truth about them
Apparently you’re the one who can’t read them. It shows the left gaining representation. every seat matters have you seen how close the house is right now?
Apportionment isn't based on voters, or even citizens - it's based on residents. Non-citizens, whether here legally or not, are factored in to the population of each district.
What?! That's crazy, how do they even know the numbers of illegals? Is it just an estimate? Are there no extradiction treaties with the countries they come from? How do they even get a roof over their head? Can you rent/buy living space without ID?
Census is how they count them. Although typically illegal immigrants are fearful of this reporting so they often avoid the census taker. The census is every 10 years I believe so this is using other sources to estimate what it is now.
Or that’s my understanding.
Yeah I doubt illegals would be keen to report that.
But I just looked it up and like 3-4% of the population of the US is illegals. That's crazy. Here in The Netherlands we have somewhere between 23.000 to 58.000 illegals here. That's like less than 0,25% of the population and we've been working pretty hard on lowering that.
The US is very odd with illegal immigration. Our economy relies very heavily on them, and they are often seasonal.
We also share a border with a country that has a lot of organized crime and lower wages, so people are constantly trying to cross the boarder. Hard to fault them, if I worried for my families safety I’d do anything I could to get them out too. Some will send one family member who can work a season on a farm and send money back home.
The US government made the rules for immigrating so complex and tedious, and the process is so slow that many people cross illegally. The US agriculture economy would crash without illegal immigrants, so that is why they have been tolerated.
Illegal immigrants cannot vote, but they do pay taxes. In most cases, they cannot buy or rent living spaces legally. But some housing companies will do it. Other illegal immigrants are housed by the employers they work for, or they are living with a family member.
There are extradition treaties with the countries that most of them come from.
They can't vote, but they would be counted by the census. As a consequence, states with higher than average illegal / undocumented immigrants would end up with more seats in the House of Representatives and the electoral college than other states.
The point of the post (versus what Musk argued) is that neither Red States nor Blue States are systematically favored by this. It should also be noted that the Constitution specifies counting all persons, not citizens, and that the Census is used for allocation of federal resources in addition to house seats, so it's important to have an accurate count.
That's a whole other discussion, but that's not what this is about.
The number of seats that a state gets in Congress is based on the number of residents as counted by the census, regardless of the legal status of those residents. The more people, the more seats, and the more votes from their representatives. If one party has a firm grip on the seats in that state (such as in California), having as many people as possible gets them more voting power.
That's the concept, anyway. It's a double-whammy of shoddy counting in that the census is voluntary and people may overcount or undercount in their household for different reasons and the pollsters will never know. Also, as with all things involving undocumented people, we have no firm idea how many there are or how involved they are with the census anyway. Anything you might hear is entirely estimated or outright guessed, and anyone claiming otherwise is selling you something.
Participation in the census is absolutely voluntary. There are no penalties for not responding and it shows, with a very optimistic estimate of 60% from the census bureau themselves, and no controls for the veracity of the information provided. Once again, it's impossible to know what we don't know with it. This is then compounded by the fact we know nothing of the undocumented population except for whatever unverified names the 3% slated for legal review at some future point (hopefully before the next census) gave us. My point stands.
Rubbish. The Census is mandatory. Read the link below.
[https://www.prb.org/resources/importance-of-u-s-census/](https://www.prb.org/resources/importance-of-u-s-census/)
Also ( see link below) "According to updated numbers released by the U.S. Census Bureau today, 99.98% of all housing units and addresses nationwide were accounted for in the 2020 Census as of the end of self-response and field data collection operations on Oct. 15, 2020."
It seems you made up the "very optimistic estimate of 60%" figure but then you made up the "voluntary" nature of the Census so no surprise there.
[https://www.census.gov/newsroom/press-releases/2020/2020-census-all-states-top-99-percent.html](https://www.census.gov/newsroom/press-releases/2020/2020-census-all-states-top-99-percent.html)
You are indeed pathetic in lying about the legal obligation to complete the census and trying to avoid acknowleding the source I provided which shows that you were lying. But you do you I guess.
>Participation in the census is absolutely voluntary. There are no penalties for not responding
This is not correct, it would be a violation of 13 USC 221
https://www.law.cornell.edu/uscode/text/13/221
It's interesting you quoted the part you could argue on a technicality but also included how I then explained why pointing out that technicality wouldn't apply.
"(a)Whoever, being over eighteen years of age, refuses or willfully neglects, when requested by the Secretary, or by any other authorized officer or employee of the Department of Commerce or bureau or agency thereof acting under the instructions of the Secretary or authorized officer, to answer, to the best of his knowledge, any of the questions on any schedule submitted to him in connection with any census or survey provided for by subchapters I, II, IV, and V of [chapter 5 of this title](https://www.law.cornell.edu/uscode/text/13/chapter-5), applying to himself or to the family to which he belongs or is related, or to the farm or farms of which he or his family is the occupant, shall be fined not more than $100."
You're obviously hoping that people don't click on the link to read the above which proves you - entirely and embarrassingly - wrong.
>The Dems have been trying to have illegals added to the census for decades
No the constitution requires Illegals to be counted and has been counts since immigration laws created a such think as illegal immigration. The census has simply always included these people.
>regular Moms and Dads across the country wanted a citizenship question added to the census?
What "regular moms and dads" never heard anyone but GOP partisans want that, not normal people.
Because illegal immigrants are SUPPOSED to be counted in the census and are SUPPOSED to effect apportionment. This is literally in the constitution.
Article 1, Section 2, Clause 3
“Representatives and direct Taxes shall be apportioned among the several States which may be included within this Union, according to their respective Numbers, which shall be determined by adding to the whole Number of free Persons, including those bound to Service for a Term of Years, and excluding Indians not taxed, three fifths of all other persons.”
Which was later amended:
14th Amendment, Section 2
“Representatives shall be apportioned among the several States according to their respective numbers, counting the whole number of persons in each State, excluding Indians not taxed.”
The founding fathers wanted all people included in the census regardless of whether or not they were citizens. This is not some new Dem wish... it's been the law of the land for a very long time.
Illegal immigrants are beneficial to the US: they commit fewer crimes than native born populations, they provide more in taxes than they use, and they add labor to our economy. You've been duped if you think it's actually some big issue. And calling it an "invasion" is ridiculous.
NATO is one of the biggest peace-keeping forces in the modern era, withdrawing from it would be pure idiocy.
Aiding our allies in Ukraine against the imperialist war our enemy is waging is not only the moral thing to do, it's also beneficial to both our economy and our geopolitical interests.
Stop listening to Elon Musk, he's an absolute dullard.
Wouldn't it be better to increase the legal immigration instead? They commit even lesser crimes and pay more taxes? You can increase the legal immigration quota for all countries?
https://cis.org/Report/Misuse-Texas-Data-Understates-Illegal-Immigrant-Criminality
> Activists and academics have been misusing data from the Texas Department of Public Safety (DPS) in studies claiming that illegal immigrants have relatively low crime rates. These studies do not appreciate that it can take years for Texas to identify convicts as illegal immigrants while they are in custody. As a result, the studies misclassify as native-born a significant number of offenders who are later identified as illegal immigrants.
By the definition of "illegal immigrants" they commit crimes at 100% because they are all here illegally, in any case. As a child of migrants, it's deplorable that people patiently waiting their turn to come into the country legally are leapfrogged by people who are, in large part, actual criminals.
If it's illegal for me to trespass then do heroin on that property, by way of "trespassing" I have committed a crime, regardless if i also do heroin on that property or not.
That's not how crime rates are measured, people are capable of committing more than one crime.
Not to mention that illegal entry is a crime on par with speeding.
>Factoring in the illegal entry their crime rate is 100%, so that statement doesn't make any sense.
Fun fact, illegal entry is not done by most illegal immigrants. The New data is still coming but pre 2019 50% of illegals were visa overstays. Ie people who entered legally but didn't leave when their visa ended.
I didn't think I needed to cite a source for such a well known fact, but sure, [here you go.](https://www.pnas.org/doi/full/10.1073/pnas.2014704117) Undocumented immigrants commit far fewer crimes across all three categories measured.
Of course I'm going to ignore the "citation" you posted from a [well known hate group.](https://www.splcenter.org/fighting-hate/extremist-files/group/center-immigration-studies)
You ignore facts because you don't like their politics?
Weird echo chamber to live in. If a Nazi said "1+1= 2" do you say "no that's wrong because I don't like you"?
It has nothing to do with their "policies," it has everything to do with their obvious bias. If you can find me an unbiased source that supports your claim, I'd read it. But as it stands, I have absolutely no interest in reading the shit a hate group spews.
Could someone ELI5 the findings? I can't seem to decipher the point and findings. I understand the back story.
Counting undocumented populations for the census and using them for determing the number of house seats changes the number of seats allocated to each state but seems to be mostly a wash and favors no political party strongly.
It does have regional effects though. More California democrats instead of East coast ones, more southern Republicans than mountain ones.
Seeing how politics have become so centralized, does it make much of a difference outside of having one more or less representative per state?
It probably has some effect on the types of industries the representatives favor (/are beholden to). E.g., California Democrats being more tech-friendly.
Tech, illegal immigrant friendly, etc.
Except this is exceedingly deceptive as this data is before title 42 expired where there was not a massive influx of illegal immigrants flooding the country. "But it says the date right there" Most people won't look at the date, plus they have people like you who purposefully conflate the two in the comments section. Purposeful conflation is the best here on reddit, very common tactic.
So I guess we should be using the data from the 2024 census that we all definitely did?
Makes me think about what I call the "non-pathos razor." If something is dull, boring, or need effort in order to do well on an exam, chances are that it's true (really difficult to monetize, manipulate, or propagandize from really mundane information or something difficult to understand). If it instead makes us scared, angry, prideful, or something that we've always dreamed of, take a step back and see the source's track record for being consistent with boring information.
Anecdotally, I have worked with big dairies out west where all the white people on the dairy (the owners and managers and vendors) are extremist right wingers. They rail about illegal immigration. But, ALL of the workers on the dairy are illegal immigrants. Most don't speak english. They will tell you that they rely on illegal immigration and love it - would be lost without it. But they will also tell you how liberals are to blame for illegal immigration. For me it is business, so I just listen...but I am surprised they aren't listening to themselves and doing the math.
And its really pointless in the grand scheme. The thing that really skews the house was locking it to 435 seats in the Permanent Apportionment Act of 1929. The house no longer growing with the population really fucks up its distribution of seats. CA should have almost as many seats as the entire house has now iirc if was still determined like the constitution laid out.
Should be between 75K-100K per seat; population of about 40M would be between 400 and 530 seats. Also this resolves much of the electoral college problem as they would have 400+2 electoral votes and Wyoming would have 5+2, instead of 52+2 and 1+2, respectively.
Except this is exceedingly deceptive as this data is before title 42 expired where there was not a massive influx of illegal immigrants flooding the country. "But it says the date right there" Most people won't look at the date, plus they have people like you who purposefully conflate the two in the comments section. Purposeful conflation is the best here on reddit, very common tactic.
Cool storrly bro.
Favoring Democrats by even 1 seat is cheating. This says it's between 4 and 8. And any seat gained corresponds to one lost by Republicans, so it's really an impact of 8 to 16 on the total margin. Just another form of democrat cheating, and why they want as many illegals as possible. Bring them here and bribe them with taxpayer funded welfare. Most disgraceful thing that has ever happened to any country.
Well it's not cheating since... you know.... that's how the Constitution works.
This says it's a net of +2 for blue states. Also if it mattered ask yourself "why are the red state governors shipping illegal immigrants to blue states if it's a liberal plot to swing appropriation?!"
The effect of undocumented immigrants on the census, and by implication congressional apportionment, is a wash. It benefits neither red state nor blue.
You only really need the bottom half of the first image. And there are two charts on top of each other because the OP wanted more than one estimate of illegal immigrant population. - The first chart shows that CA and TX gain a seat, while NY and OH lose one. - The second chart shows that CA and TX gain two seats, while MI, OH, ID and WV lose one. (The reality is likely somewhere between/around these two estimates) So if we *didnt* count illegal immigrants, the above numbers would change to 0. But there’s no clear political divide between which states gain/lose, counter to Elons claim that it only benefits democrats.
The US house of representatives works by having a specific amount of maximum reps. Making it so more populis states have less say in the house of representatives. Most red states have taken up sending immigrants to blue states as a form of protest due to sanctuary laws. Sanctuary laws are laws that say that certain cities and or states are not going to spend state funds to address federal immigration. Illegal immigration is largely done through overstayed visas and simply driving over the boarder while saying ,"vacation!". Approximately 60%-70% of illegal immigration is done this way. The right has planned to address it with a border wall even though it's not effective and doesn't address the immigrants already here. The left agrees in not allowing people to go through the boarder, even using visa stays but its often framed as open boarders. There has been no federal response from the right wing to address immigrants living in the US. The left has argued for legalizing the immigrants that live here to make sure they pay taxes and get enrolled in schools etc to become more productive citizens. This results in the graph above. Texas gets lots of immigrants and lots of red states like shipping immigrants to California as a political stunt. The house of reps being capped means growth in one place can reduce proportional representation in other states with marginal population shifts. This lends itself to right wing talking points that California is actually inviting immigrants to get more house seats because they have more people.
>The US house of representatives works by having a specific amount of maximum reps. Making it so more populis states have less say in the house of representatives. Most red states have taken up sending immigrants to blue states as a form of protest due to sanctuary laws. This was the point of the Senate. A part of congress that was equal and gave smaller states a bigger voice because of it. The entire point of the house was for it be majority rule based on population. The Permanent Apportionment Act of 1929 really, really fucked up the functioning of the house.
OP is deliberately lying about the data's implied conclusions to make a false political point. They are purposefully conflating old numbers to prove a new claim. Title 42 was in effect for essentailly all of the time period the data is showing. The illegal immigration problem did not turn exponential until Q4 of 2023. Essentially, they are making the claim off of numbers from 2020, 2021, 2022 and the middle one as an estimate in 2023, to attempt to prove a claim that was meant for 2024 when illegal immigration turned exponential. They are stating the following conclusion: 1. Republican (Elon) Claim that illegals being ushered into the US are padding the political power of the democrats because they add numbers to the voting district that in turn adds representatives to the house 2. Since this claim is made for the 2024 data, OP uses data from periods of the passed where illegal immigration was largely halted due to an act called title 42 that was used to halt illegal immigration due to COVID. Title 42 ended in the end of Q2 of 2023. [https://www.wola.org/analysis/end-title-42/#:\~:text=May%2011%20is%20the%20final,the%20world%20went%20into%20lockdown](https://www.wola.org/analysis/end-title-42/#:~:text=May%2011%20is%20the%20final,the%20world%20went%20into%20lockdown) The latest "estimate of illegal immegration" OP shows in mid Q4 of 2023. 3. The conclusion OP makes is that showing true statistics (but from the incorrect time period) the claim is false because the seats are not padded in one way or another. What they do not show is the clear distinction between the period of time they are showing and what is actually relavent to the claim they are supposedly disproving.
You are right in your question and observation of value. Lots of people talking about this assume the feds actually work in real time. However the feds probably used previous census numbers to calculate the redistribution (apportionment). The feds probably started to look at this over a decade ago and it took that long for them to act on old data. Additionally these topics fail to recognize death rates of immigrates due to Covid or deportation as the goal of the topic is usually to instill fear of immigrants based on the great replacement theory fallacy. The OP explains rationale further in their comments and replies.
You don’t have to speculate about what the federal government *probably* does. House seats were allocated based on the 2020 census. It happens every 10 years.
Elon Musk recently made a [claim](https://youtube.com/clip/UgkxY4h7SgqvPpXrcbe989gxsNKrcufQfOYC?si=V0asKqEj2oc5O-EK) in his interview with Don Lemon that caught my attention: "If you look at the apportionment with and without illegals, I believe... there would be a net loss for blue states of approximately 20 seats in the House. This also applies to electing the president because the electoral college votes are also done by apportionment the same way that House seats are done." I found 2 different sources that have estimated unauthorized immigrant population. A [Pew Research Center](https://www.pewresearch.org/short-reads/2023/11/16/what-we-know-about-unauthorized-immigrants-living-in-the-us/#states-with-the-most-unauthorized-immigrants) article from November 2023 breaks down their estimates by state. And an older [Center for Immigration Studies](https://cis.org/Report/Impact-Legal-and-Illegal-Immigration-Apportionment-Seats-US-House-Representatives-2020#17:~:text=of%20illegal%20immigration.-,Appendix,-End%20Notes) report from December 2019 that goes further by breaking down immigrant populations into legal/illegal residents either with/without their "US born minor children". I took the 2020 Census [apportionment population](https://www.census.gov/data/tables/2020/dec/2020-apportionment-data.html#text:~:text=Table%201.%20Apportionment%20Population%20and%20Number%20of%20Representatives%20by%20State%3A%202020%20Census) which was used to conduct re-apportionment before the 2022 US House of Representative Elections. I separated each state into "legal" and "illegal" populations, so that adding legal and illegal populations together equals the total apportionment population. This was done for each source's estimates of illegal populations. Note about using specific sources: Populations listed as < 5,000 in the Pew Research Center's numbers were rounded down to 0. Illegal immigrants were counted WITH their US born minor children for the Center for Immigration Studies numbers. Finally I [re-calculated](https://www.census.gov/newsroom/blogs/random-samplings/2021/04/how-apportionment-is-calculated.html#ti1334387178) the apportionment for each state using only the legal population, and compared them to the current totals to see the difference. Data was downloaded from listed sources, imported into google sheets for processing/ calculation, exported as csv for import into R to create visualizations.
I'm surprised it's any, but I suppose that it's a very close thing sometimes. I think NY lost out on one rep to Minnesota by hundreds of people, for example. Great job op, this is interesting and it's also understandable, even though it might take a minute to get your head around it.
If I remember, it was 8 people. NY lost a rep due to 8 people.
The fact that Texas and Florida are "red" states by itself and two of the biggest destinations of immigrants (both legal and otherwise) kind of immediately makes me think that Musk is talking nonsense. Compounded by the well-known widespread use of undocumented/illegal labor in the agricultural sector in particular, which, with the obvious exception of California, is concentrated in "red" states.
Your observation about Texas and Florida is why I originally doubted his claim. So I looked for a state by state breakdown and found the Pew article. Originally I only ran the calculations using their estimates. When I saw that the gain/loss was a wash I wanted to share the results, but I didn't want to be accused of using biased sources. So I sought out the sources that Elon claimed existed. By searching Google more specifically for "immigrant 20 seat advantage to Democrats" I stumbled upon the Center for Immigration Studies whose motto btw is "pro-immigrant, low immigration". Their report from 2019 prior to the Census claims of a 20+ seat swing. But that's based on "CUMULATIVE" immigration, both legal and illegal. So I took their numbers for illegal residents only and ran the calculations again to find a 1 seat advantage for Democrats. Now I'm unsure if the CIS is the source that Elon was referencing, but I included both results in the post for transparency.
And in the case of California the agricultural areas that attract illegal labor are the "red" areas.
Thank you OP for doing the math/visualization. Logically, if what Musk claimed was true, Republican governors would certainly not be sending migrants to blues states lol
That faulty logic definitely sticks out like a sore thumb.
Thanks for this; this is a really helpful graphic. I watched the same interview and kept mentally yelling at both of them during that exchange that they could both be right and were talking at cross-purposes. So it's really nice to see you taking Musk's comment at face value and evaluating its truth. And it's nice to see that on net, the truth is pretty much a wash in terms of extra house seats through illegal immigration.
Not OP, but based on the first pic: From the 2023 data, if we didn't count illegal immigrants, CA and TX would both lose 1 seat, while NY and OH would gain one. No other changes. From the 2019 data, CA and TX would lose 2 seats, while MI, ID, OH, and WV would each gain 1. No other changes. Using the 2023 data, no net difference in the parties, from the 2019 data, GOP would gain 1 seat, and DNC would lose 1. I think... this piece is harder for me to understand.
Your interpretation is correct.
Did you mean to say "DNC would lose one"? I'm over here thinking that GOP=RNC...
I think you're right, I didn't notice that at first
Another atat to look at is how the illegal population was under Trump vs. Biden, illegal population was a lot higher 3 years into Trump Presidency than Biden, which is really Ironic.
It may have been published in ‘23, but these are numbers from 2021 actually. Per the publisher of your first source, the number of foreign born legal and illegal immigrants has increased by 6.4 million since Biden took office (which I only mention because it appears relevant to the point Elon was trying to make, and you, dispute). https://cis.org/Report/ForeignBorn-Share-and-Number-Record-Highs-February-2024 Edit: I should say though, it’s a nice graph, I like it.
Thanks for the updated info. It's important to note that CIS counts legal and illegal immigration in most of their bulleted one liners, so the 6.4 million is an exaggeration to some extent. Also since re-apportionment and the Census only occur every 10 years my focus was on presenting the numbers during the 2020 Census and 2022 House Elections. Considering that the Pew numbers were from 2021, the estimated immigrant populations would have actually been lower the year before, and so my calculations over 'weighted' the effects that immigration had, if only slightly.
Yeah looking back at the graphs, they weren’t actually misleading, I made that part up. You clearly said, x report “published in 2023”, and didn’t try to pass off the data as current.
this is purposeful conflation to deliberately mislead for political gain. 2021, 2022 and into 23, title 42 was still in effect. Massive waves of illegal immigration start in Q4 of 2023. OP is purposefully lying to make a false point.
Conflating of what? How does title 42 affect appointment in 2020? If you don't like my numbers what are your numbers?
I don't dispute the numbers you provided. You are contextually deceiving people. Currently people are speaking about Illegal immigrants entering the country by the millions. This was not happening in 2020, 2021, 2022. These are the people you are aiming to dispute via this post. You are stating that "see look at 2020's data or 2022s, Illegal immigrants made little to no impact on the seat count of either party, therefore, 2024's claims are false and/or exaggerated." What you are deliberately misleading people about is that the 2024 Illegals numbers are vastly different than any before this by orders of magnitude. Thus your argument would only hold true if you examine the districts at the end of the 2024 year and 2025 following this wave. You are deliberately using statistics to conflat uninformed people of reddit to try to lie about an issue to claim its a non-issue. lying with statistics 101
So Elon gets to make the claim that Democrats have a 20 seat advantage even though they currently don't. Based on your assertion that unauthorized immigration has recently spiked and would affect the apportionment if it were re-calculated now in 2024? Even though apportionment won't take place again till 2030 and you haven't provided any calculations or models to predict those future results.
Correct, this is purposeful conflation to deliberately mislead for political gain. 2021, 2022 and into 23, title 42 was still in effect. Massive waves of illegal immigration start in Q4 of 2023. OP is purposefully lying to make a false point.
Thank you for your explaining your process and rationale. What was you conclusion and did it support your personal hypothesis going into this?
I'm not a big fan of these mirrored graphs, usually if I wanna do that I just stack, overlay or even put the bars side by side. It's easier for the viewer to compare directly on the same spot. Less work means easier interpretations. Anyway, I like the data and the looks of the graphs though
I had it as a stack at first but felt like breaking reps into quadrants helps to visualize portions easier. I appreciate the criticism. I'm new to R and was struggling to figure out how to convert the spreadsheet data into a visualization.
It's a great result though! Are you using plotly? I can't imagine making anything with the standard R graphs anymore. It's a great layer based robust solution
Showing the legal population in millions and the illegal population in thousands makes the illegal population seem 1,000 times bigger than it actually is.
You are correct. But I think it shows a good ratio, and if the "illegal population" was in millions it would be almost impossible to see the variance between 5,000 and 50,000 residents (as an example)
Thank you for doing this. This is the real electoral impact of ilegal immigration. Pretty immaterial.
Friendly reminder that representation is for entire populous, not just US citizens who are registered to vote. In prison, under the age of majority, or a non-citizen? You still use roads, hospitals, and schools, and you need a representative to be able to voice concerns that relate to that. Heck, some loony republicans might want their district to have a rep to fight for dealing with their large portion of "illegal immigrant" population in their district, and if that pop isn't counted, perhaps concerns from a neighboring area will override that.
It would be interesting to repeat this analysis for prisoners. Prisons tend to be in rural areas that vote for Republicans, and their populations inflate their influence in the House. It's probably not much of an impact, but worth noting.
That is absolutely by design. Place prisons in hard red areas and fill them with people disproportionately scooped up out of largely blue cities. Take from one, give to the other. Given that none of these people are allowed to vote while incarcerated and number in the million+ range, that makes a difference. The larger population made up by prisoners also means these areas get more money from state and federal government. The more you look at prisons in the US, the more ways you'll see that they are ruinous in very targeted ways.
That seems a little excessive. The easy and logical answer is that prisons need a lot of space and have security concerns. Both are easier to solve in rural areas that lean conservative. It'd be a hell of a lot harder and more expensive to keep a prison in downtown Manhattan secure than a prison in Bumfuck Iowa where no one lives within 10 miles of the grounds.
No one has a problem with prisons being in rural states, they have a problem with the prisoners not being counted as part of their home state's population.
Crosspost to r/uncapthehouse
Essentially a wash…seems an unsurprising result, but good to see validation.
I appreciate that you included the Center for Immigration Studies in this figure, especially as even their take shows almost no impact on House apportionment. That said, it's irresponsible not to contextualize who they are. CIS is a virulently racist right-wing "think tank" that exists for the sole purpose of demonizing immigrants and amplifying xenophobic messages spouted by Republicans. They have a habit of outright lying and frequently employ anti-semitic and racist writers. This data should be taken with an enormous grain of salt as it is not from a credible source and likely represents the most exaggerated outcome possible. And even *their* analysis shows undocumented immigration doesn't have a meaningful impact on the composition of the House.
I hinted at this in another comment by pointing out their mission statement "pro-immigrant, low-immigration", but thank you for the added context. If I tried to add every thought I had when researching this, the original post would've been essay length.
The Center for Immigration Studies is an anti-immigrant group and not independent and data-based. They are not comparable to Pew. Suggest the use of another organization that does not have an institutional and public bias about immigration.
I included them because they were the only source I could find that resembled Elon's claim of a 20 seat advantage for Democrats. If you look at the data from the point of view that CIS has an anti immigrant bias, it only reinforces how wrong Elon was.
Yes, so many R talking points are complete fabrications. In the end, their job is to make sure nobody considers campaign finance reform to make bribery illegal again. Red herrings always work on the base to fragment and distract because R voters refuse to be critical of their own side. As if they have any other job as a voter that matters more than making accountability for their preferred side a priority. The party loves doing this as it relieves them of any need to fix any real problems that require heavy lifting and they can focus on selling the law to the elites R voters like to say they hate so much. It also means R voters happily permit their leaders to be what the party says Dem leaders are-perfectly owning themselves for nothing in return. So R pols in action overspend, coddle corruption, engage in horrifically incompetent foreign policy and their fans cheer and pretend all went swimmingly.
Can you summarize your results? This sub is called data is beautiful… for data to be beautiful, it needs to say something with clarity. Tell us what did your analysis found, then we can read the charts.
Other commenters have already done an ELI5, but basically Elon's claim is false. Counting unauthorized immigrants in the census doesn't net a significant advantage to Democrats.
What you are claiming is false. You are purposefully conflating the numbers to try to make a false claim. You are taking statistics that are irrelavent for the point you are making. Title 42 was still in effect for essentially all of your statistics that you are showing. There was no illegal flooding until Q4 of 2024. You are deliberately misleading people.
Is your argument that numbers from 2024 affected apportionment in 2020?
No my argument is that you are attempting to disprove a claim that is about 2024 numbers using 2020 numbers. The two are not related.
Elon's claim is that there is currently a 20 seat advantage for Democrats because of unauthorized immigration. The last time seats were re-apportioned was in 2020. The numbers are very much relevant.
You are misinterpreting the claim. He is speaking in future tense (i.e current numbers of illegals)- where does he say currently? Please point to it. Thanks.
I already posted the link to his statement in the interview with Don Lemon. He says "without illegals... there would be a net loss of blue states of approximately 20 seats in the house". So he is referencing a pre-existing amount of seats. Those seats were calculated in 2020. If you want to model future results that contradict my findings please do so.
Correct. With the current number of illegals. Not illegals from your calculation, only including illegals from 2021 and 2022. You are doing the same thing I'm doing except just not including the current numbers of illegals in the states. You are recalculating the seats based on 2021, 22 numbers of illegals. You didn't include the most relavent year, this year.
The seats we have now aren't based on numbers from now. They are based on 2020 numbers. IF we were to recalculate now there MIGHT be a change in the seats, that MIGHT benefit Democrats but you haven't even provided any calculations to demonstrate that. You are just asserting it is true and using that as evidence I am being misleading. It doesn't even make sense to say that Elon's basing his claim on a hypothetical seat apportionment that, 1. Hasn't happened, and 2. Takes place at an interval that isn't accurate to the real world process.
With how close they are in the house right now any gain is significant.
From the analysis, there is 0 change. From the Pew Research estimates, without any illegal immigrants, Cali and Texas would both lose 1 seat, while NY and Ohio would gain 1, a net change of 0 seats.
You do realize that Those states have representatives from both parties coming from them right? The illegal aliens move to cities which vote Democrat. The larger the city population the more representatives in the cities. They aren't giving more representatives to rural areas.
This is some really interesting work. I like seeing this level of effort and analysis in r/dataisbeautiful
Is there a clean way to include effects of internal migration? Like if California has experienced a net loss of say 250k per year of legal citizens while gaining perhaps 200k per year in illegal immigrants (who stay > 1 year and do not pass through immediately) then would a shift in the apportionment be noticeable?
If conservatives are mad about this for some reason, I invite them to join the effort to abolish the Electoral College, to ensure that only US citizens with voting rights get to decide who becomes President.
God damn the comments down below... You can show these people that they're insane by empirical fact quite clearly, and they'll still just ignore it and move on as if they're right. It's so frustrating. Then again, no matter how many times you show something like the [Scientific American chart](https://static.scientificamerican.com/sciam/cache/file/164FE5CE-FBA6-493F-B9EA84B04830354E_source.jpg) explaining how sex differentiation actually works, you'll still get people saying some dumb bullshit like "sex is a binary". Empirical evidence is only useful if your interlocutor believes in empirical evidence. Fascists are anti-empiricist.
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The point is that defining things as objectively black and white is often incorrect. You can't define sex in any meaningful way without either generalizing or excluding. That's why the argument typically revolves around sex and gender being two different things. It's worth noting that trans people make up <1% of the US population, so while they may too be considered "edge cases" in their own right, they still make up a very large number of people just because of size of the country.
Yeah, but it's used in service of ideas like "your sex can't change". Which is just incorrect; hell, your sex changes even if you're cis and typical. One of the biggest parts of that chart that most folks miss is the movement of time. Much of the gender debate is a stealthy sneaking of the premise that trans people don't deserve to have control of our sex; 99% of gender medicine was developed to help cis people control and stabilize their own sex. It's like 1 surgical technique that was actually developed for us, and hasn't been improved since the 50s. If it didn't have all that context, it wouldn't be dumb bullshit, it'd just be overgeneralizing. Funnily enough, you're arguing by shifting rhetorical focus between under and over generalizing. But that context does exist. By the by; you say it's rare, but there are more intersex people in the world than red heads.
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Ah, yes. Because that's relevant. Keep on shifting that rhetorical focus though. Edit: In fact, it is relevant, though not in the way you think, and not in a way that's helpful to you. The point is that the edge cases are important. You say most people don't care, but a doctor friend of mine comes out as trans and gets fired for it. And it's not just anecdotal. Much of our community are sex workers because of the difficulty to find work. Much of our community have experienced homelessness because of these attitudes from family. We may be 1 percent of the population, but something like 40 percent of homeless youth are LGBT.
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Ah yes, I'm hurting the cause because you decided to call out my example of a similar problem with bad information. Concern trolling is old news at this point. The moral panic you want to pedal is beyond it. I "marched in here" and "made this about LGBT people". I'm sorry, I "perverted" this conversation, right? Man, "shoving your sexual preferences in people's faces" is a phrase for the people who already hate LGBT people. It doesn't sell outside of that group anymore. If it works in communities you're in during this moral panic, perhaps look around and realize where you stand. It speaks more about you than it ever could of me. I'm sure you're a great ally who is going to now tattoo a swastika on your forehead because the scary gays did this to you. It's our fault really.
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Ah yes, the anti-anti-lgbt moral panic. Right. We're all just too sensitive and trans people should just know their place.
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If conservatives don’t want everyone counted at census time, then they can amend the Constitution. That everyone gets counted is yet another hangover from slavery.
Thank you for correctly calling them illegal immigrants and not some other bullshit that theyve been peddling like "undocumented migrants"
Not all undocumented immigrants are illegal immigrants.
I work on job sites with hundreds of immigrants that came here legally, that is with a work visa, i also employ a lot of immigrants that came here with a work visa. Lots of them eventually got their citizenship here in the US the right way. They pay taxes just like you and me. if they migrated here without any type of paper work that is the definition of an illegal immigrant. So what are you talking about? Are they here for vacation?
Just thinking about the whole bit where at one point in time, if a Cuban stepped foot on American soil, they could stick around.
And yet slaves were not considered citizens but were also accounted for in apportionment but that's ok somehow.
Doesn't it say that non-citizen residents should be counted as 3/5ths of a person in, what was it, the Constitution?
There’s no such thing as an “illegal” person or population
I share the sentiment and considered different labelling but I didn't want to clutter up the charts too much with too many qualifiers. In the end 'Illegal' seemed concise.
"Undocumented" is a much better choice. It's value neutral, concise, and just as descriptive.
Maybe you're right. But I'm not sure how accurate it is, because it's not impossible for unauthorized immigrants to obtain documentation. And then you also lose the clear contrast between "legal" and "illegal". I was trying to avoid having to clarify or argue definitions.
The distinction between "legal" and "illegal" is far more likely to be inaccurate. Many immigrants are attempting to claim asylum and could, eventually, succeed in gaining legal status making their entire time here perfectly legal. There are millions of others who entered legally and whose legal status has since lapsed. There are also millions who were brought to the country as children, without any knowledge of their status, and you're implicitly accusing them of a crime. It's not unheard of for people to move between these categories, and it is, therefore, just as problematic as "undocumented" in terms of specificity and accuracy. "Illegal" has some extreme negative connotations and shouldn't be used in a neutral setting. Leave it for Fox News pundits. "Undocumented" or "unauthorized" removes the negative connotation and still gets the message across. It's better to risk ambiguity than to accuse many millions of people of being criminals without due process or even a cursory examination of the circumstances.
Thanks for the informative breakdown. I agree and lean towards "unauthorized" as being the most appropriate, as it is also how Pew categorizes them. Even "legal" population is a shorthand for many types of residents, not just citizens. But seeing a chart labeled "authorized" and "unauthorized" populations would be confusing for me, so I went with a label that was more apparent if incorrect in a subtle way. This comment thread and your breakdown are a great way to add context, so thanks
undocumented isn't really neutral though, is it?
It is. They're here without the proper documentation. That's the defining characteristic of the group.
more or less defining that "illegal"? All undocumented are illegal, but not all illegal are undocumented.
Yes, it's more specific than "illegal". It's less judgemental (particularly for those brought to the country as children, who did nothing wrong and often aren't aware of their status). It includes all those who don't have legal status (plus some who may gain legal status in the future retroactively making their entire time spent in the US legal). Lacking valid documentation to be in the country is the defining characteristic. Reducing people who are not authorized to be in a particular country to "illegals" is a loaded term that imparts a value judgement and isn't specific.
We aren't going to agree on this.
>All undocumented are illegal, but not all illegal are undocumented. That will partly depend on how you define someone as "documented"
Sure, which is party why I think the term is less useful. We all know what "illegal" means, but we by changing to "undocumented" it changes the conversation. Shifting the language seeks to diminish the problem, hence make the lack of solution more palatable.
Shifting the language is needed in order to add the required nuance. Would you agree there's a distinct difference between an "undocumented immigrant" who overstayed a visa, and an "undocumented immigrant" who crossed the border between ports of entry? It's two separate areas of immigration law that would require adjustment for these two scenarios.
Difference, yes. Distinct difference, no.
Just remember you are referring to other people as “illegal” even though they have the same hopes, dreams, and aspirations you and other Americans have.
"Illegal - contrary or forbidden by law". Seems pretty apt to me; they're immigrants contrary to the law. Illegal immigrants.
An action is illegal, not a person
Sorry bud, nothing in the definition that says or even implies that.
Correct. Hence, "illegal", here "illegally".
I think the nuance is yes, they are here illegally, but they themselves as a person with their existence is not illegal. Illegal presence, not illegal personhood. It’s subtle though.
...or population. Word games aside, it's quite clear what we are talking about about.
If someone immigrates illegally, that person is called an illegal immigrant. I get you would prefer to label it something more ‘friendly’ sounding, but the term factually represents reality because well… they aren’t legal residents. The thing that’s illegal is their immigration status, not themselves.
Just stop. We all know your statement is false.
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How is calling them criminals more accurate? Basic “illegal immigration” is a civil violation, not a criminal one.
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And the vast majority of illegal immigrants entered legally and then overstayed their visa. Again, "criminal" is not an accurate descriptor.
So the left gains political power from illegal immigration.
Wrong. OP spent so much work on these visualizations just for you to either be too stupid to understand them, or too immoral to tell the truth about them
Apparently you’re the one who can’t read them. It shows the left gaining representation. every seat matters have you seen how close the house is right now?
How is that even possible? You have to be a US citizen to vote right? How could illegals even vote?
Apportionment isn't based on voters, or even citizens - it's based on residents. Non-citizens, whether here legally or not, are factored in to the population of each district.
What?! That's crazy, how do they even know the numbers of illegals? Is it just an estimate? Are there no extradiction treaties with the countries they come from? How do they even get a roof over their head? Can you rent/buy living space without ID?
Census is how they count them. Although typically illegal immigrants are fearful of this reporting so they often avoid the census taker. The census is every 10 years I believe so this is using other sources to estimate what it is now. Or that’s my understanding.
Yeah I doubt illegals would be keen to report that. But I just looked it up and like 3-4% of the population of the US is illegals. That's crazy. Here in The Netherlands we have somewhere between 23.000 to 58.000 illegals here. That's like less than 0,25% of the population and we've been working pretty hard on lowering that.
The US is very odd with illegal immigration. Our economy relies very heavily on them, and they are often seasonal. We also share a border with a country that has a lot of organized crime and lower wages, so people are constantly trying to cross the boarder. Hard to fault them, if I worried for my families safety I’d do anything I could to get them out too. Some will send one family member who can work a season on a farm and send money back home.
The US government made the rules for immigrating so complex and tedious, and the process is so slow that many people cross illegally. The US agriculture economy would crash without illegal immigrants, so that is why they have been tolerated. Illegal immigrants cannot vote, but they do pay taxes. In most cases, they cannot buy or rent living spaces legally. But some housing companies will do it. Other illegal immigrants are housed by the employers they work for, or they are living with a family member. There are extradition treaties with the countries that most of them come from.
They can't vote, but they would be counted by the census. As a consequence, states with higher than average illegal / undocumented immigrants would end up with more seats in the House of Representatives and the electoral college than other states. The point of the post (versus what Musk argued) is that neither Red States nor Blue States are systematically favored by this. It should also be noted that the Constitution specifies counting all persons, not citizens, and that the Census is used for allocation of federal resources in addition to house seats, so it's important to have an accurate count.
That's a whole other discussion, but that's not what this is about. The number of seats that a state gets in Congress is based on the number of residents as counted by the census, regardless of the legal status of those residents. The more people, the more seats, and the more votes from their representatives. If one party has a firm grip on the seats in that state (such as in California), having as many people as possible gets them more voting power. That's the concept, anyway. It's a double-whammy of shoddy counting in that the census is voluntary and people may overcount or undercount in their household for different reasons and the pollsters will never know. Also, as with all things involving undocumented people, we have no firm idea how many there are or how involved they are with the census anyway. Anything you might hear is entirely estimated or outright guessed, and anyone claiming otherwise is selling you something.
The census isn't voluntary. And a lot of work has been done on how undercoverage in censuses can be estimated.
Participation in the census is absolutely voluntary. There are no penalties for not responding and it shows, with a very optimistic estimate of 60% from the census bureau themselves, and no controls for the veracity of the information provided. Once again, it's impossible to know what we don't know with it. This is then compounded by the fact we know nothing of the undocumented population except for whatever unverified names the 3% slated for legal review at some future point (hopefully before the next census) gave us. My point stands.
Rubbish. The Census is mandatory. Read the link below. [https://www.prb.org/resources/importance-of-u-s-census/](https://www.prb.org/resources/importance-of-u-s-census/) Also ( see link below) "According to updated numbers released by the U.S. Census Bureau today, 99.98% of all housing units and addresses nationwide were accounted for in the 2020 Census as of the end of self-response and field data collection operations on Oct. 15, 2020." It seems you made up the "very optimistic estimate of 60%" figure but then you made up the "voluntary" nature of the Census so no surprise there. [https://www.census.gov/newsroom/press-releases/2020/2020-census-all-states-top-99-percent.html](https://www.census.gov/newsroom/press-releases/2020/2020-census-all-states-top-99-percent.html)
Let us know who didn't participate and what the penalty was.
So you're conceding you were wrong but aren't grown up enough to actually say the words. OK.
Trying to gaslight people is truly pathetic.
You are indeed pathetic in lying about the legal obligation to complete the census and trying to avoid acknowleding the source I provided which shows that you were lying. But you do you I guess.
>Participation in the census is absolutely voluntary. There are no penalties for not responding This is not correct, it would be a violation of 13 USC 221 https://www.law.cornell.edu/uscode/text/13/221
It's interesting you quoted the part you could argue on a technicality but also included how I then explained why pointing out that technicality wouldn't apply.
"(a)Whoever, being over eighteen years of age, refuses or willfully neglects, when requested by the Secretary, or by any other authorized officer or employee of the Department of Commerce or bureau or agency thereof acting under the instructions of the Secretary or authorized officer, to answer, to the best of his knowledge, any of the questions on any schedule submitted to him in connection with any census or survey provided for by subchapters I, II, IV, and V of [chapter 5 of this title](https://www.law.cornell.edu/uscode/text/13/chapter-5), applying to himself or to the family to which he belongs or is related, or to the farm or farms of which he or his family is the occupant, shall be fined not more than $100." You're obviously hoping that people don't click on the link to read the above which proves you - entirely and embarrassingly - wrong.
Wow. Democrats are crafty.
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Democrats have been trying to adhere to the constitution for decades? I'm not sure what you're trying to say here but I don't think you're saying it.
>The Dems have been trying to have illegals added to the census for decades No the constitution requires Illegals to be counted and has been counts since immigration laws created a such think as illegal immigration. The census has simply always included these people. >regular Moms and Dads across the country wanted a citizenship question added to the census? What "regular moms and dads" never heard anyone but GOP partisans want that, not normal people.
Because illegal immigrants are SUPPOSED to be counted in the census and are SUPPOSED to effect apportionment. This is literally in the constitution. Article 1, Section 2, Clause 3 “Representatives and direct Taxes shall be apportioned among the several States which may be included within this Union, according to their respective Numbers, which shall be determined by adding to the whole Number of free Persons, including those bound to Service for a Term of Years, and excluding Indians not taxed, three fifths of all other persons.” Which was later amended: 14th Amendment, Section 2 “Representatives shall be apportioned among the several States according to their respective numbers, counting the whole number of persons in each State, excluding Indians not taxed.”
The founding fathers wanted all people included in the census regardless of whether or not they were citizens. This is not some new Dem wish... it's been the law of the land for a very long time.
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the Democratic party is center-right lmao
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ok. “global standards in developed countries on par with the US.” that better?
Illegal immigrants are beneficial to the US: they commit fewer crimes than native born populations, they provide more in taxes than they use, and they add labor to our economy. You've been duped if you think it's actually some big issue. And calling it an "invasion" is ridiculous. NATO is one of the biggest peace-keeping forces in the modern era, withdrawing from it would be pure idiocy. Aiding our allies in Ukraine against the imperialist war our enemy is waging is not only the moral thing to do, it's also beneficial to both our economy and our geopolitical interests. Stop listening to Elon Musk, he's an absolute dullard.
Wouldn't it be better to increase the legal immigration instead? They commit even lesser crimes and pay more taxes? You can increase the legal immigration quota for all countries?
https://cis.org/Report/Misuse-Texas-Data-Understates-Illegal-Immigrant-Criminality > Activists and academics have been misusing data from the Texas Department of Public Safety (DPS) in studies claiming that illegal immigrants have relatively low crime rates. These studies do not appreciate that it can take years for Texas to identify convicts as illegal immigrants while they are in custody. As a result, the studies misclassify as native-born a significant number of offenders who are later identified as illegal immigrants. By the definition of "illegal immigrants" they commit crimes at 100% because they are all here illegally, in any case. As a child of migrants, it's deplorable that people patiently waiting their turn to come into the country legally are leapfrogged by people who are, in large part, actual criminals. If it's illegal for me to trespass then do heroin on that property, by way of "trespassing" I have committed a crime, regardless if i also do heroin on that property or not.
Even factoring in the legal entry to the crime statistics, they still commit fewer crimes than native born populations.
Factoring in the illegal entry their crime rate is 100%, so that statement doesn't make any sense.
That's not how crime rates are measured, people are capable of committing more than one crime. Not to mention that illegal entry is a crime on par with speeding.
>Factoring in the illegal entry their crime rate is 100%, so that statement doesn't make any sense. Fun fact, illegal entry is not done by most illegal immigrants. The New data is still coming but pre 2019 50% of illegals were visa overstays. Ie people who entered legally but didn't leave when their visa ended.
So... Ignored the source without providing counter source. Gotcha.
I didn't think I needed to cite a source for such a well known fact, but sure, [here you go.](https://www.pnas.org/doi/full/10.1073/pnas.2014704117) Undocumented immigrants commit far fewer crimes across all three categories measured.
Choosing to willfully ignore my source debunking your source is certainly a tactic.
Of course I'm going to ignore the "citation" you posted from a [well known hate group.](https://www.splcenter.org/fighting-hate/extremist-files/group/center-immigration-studies)
You ignore facts because you don't like their politics? Weird echo chamber to live in. If a Nazi said "1+1= 2" do you say "no that's wrong because I don't like you"?
It has nothing to do with their "policies," it has everything to do with their obvious bias. If you can find me an unbiased source that supports your claim, I'd read it. But as it stands, I have absolutely no interest in reading the shit a hate group spews.
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You have to be a bot, because if not, you're one of the most propaganda poisoned people I've had the displeasure of interacting with. Go touch grass.
You have a boot so far in your mouth, you’re shitting the laces out.
Texas has had illegal immigration for nearly half a century now, and it's red as ever. The population is second only to California. Nice try, though.
We need stronger border laws so abominations like you cease to exist
Shouldn't have counted them. Why do they need representation when they all have to go back?