Watching C-Span today, caught the Republican Party Platform proceedings. I witnessed a little friction over anti-immigration tweaking in the GOP's position on basically everything, but specifically the census.
Saw an amendment proposed that would reform the census and its effect on the apportioning of congressional seats to states. The focus was on how the immigrant population is artificially skewing them toward states and districts with large undocumented populations. They complain that the legal voters in those areas have "heavier" votes because they are represented more per capita in Congress and local and state govts. They're already doing it in their state efforts. Below is an example of the language from the Texas Republican Party Platform:
from "Restoring American Sovereignty and Leadership"
We oppose any attempt by the United States Census bureau to obtain any statistical data beyond the number of citizens residing in the dwelling in the required decennial census, an we oppose statistical sampling adjustments.
Really, just count citizens? Don't write ANYTHING else down? Don't count ANYONE that isn't a citizen? Pretending something doesn't exist and using your denial to construct public policy is about as effective as prohibition or only teaching abstinence in sex education.
Carlos Chardon from Puerto Rico, a member of the "Defending the Nation, Securing the Peace" Subcommittee (how can you keep track of stuff when you call everything something like that?) stood in opposition. He voiced his nervous dissent for this amendment, probably because he didn't like the idea of his constituents being called second class citizens by his party. (A party that despite all this nonsense still claims most Cuban-Americans as hard-liners, even post-Castro! Can dems break into this ever? Jeez.) After he spoke up, other people backed him up.
The next lady stood up and talked about being a Census-taker herself (in the DAY) and admitted she and the people she worked with would be totally unqualified to determine the citizenship of everyone they counted by verifying legal documents on the stop, color of skin, accent, etc.
She also talked about a hospital in her hometown that "suffers because it's used by Hispanics, some legal some not." Without the census, how could the government keep track of and prepare for the horrible burden of Hispanics of all levels legality?
Republicans will do the same thing to our federal government as they're doing to their own states, making subtle little changes to every minor municipal and electoral law to disqualify a major portion of our people and to call into question the rights of all Latino citizens, documented or otherwise. They've made it a part of their platform to disenfranchise immigrants and pretend they don't exist by striking them from the census entirely. The GOP would rather our government be totally unprepared for and uninformed about the logistical details of it's own population, information that is generally useful in things like disaster recovery, heath and public safety, elections, education, transportation, fighting terrorism, law enforcement, I mean, it's the purpose of the government to know these things and act on them. They'd rather stick their head in the sand and put legitimacy out of reach for a whole race of people.
Edited once, 12:41AM PST, 08/28/08 for typing errors.