CNN’s Avlon: Citizenship Question on Census a ‘Part of a Larger Effort’ to Reduce Immigrant Population
EXCERPT:
AVLON: "Now we know that the Justice Department not only didn't initiate the request, it didn't want the citizenship question at all. Quote, 'Justice staff did not want to raise the citizenship question given the difficulties Justice was encountering in the press at the time (the whole Comey affair).' That's what Commerce official Earl Comstock wrote in a memo to Ross, revealed as part of a lawsuit against the Trump administration. But that didn't stop Ross, who documents show was being pressured by anti-immigration hardliner Kris Kobach, who is currently running for governor of Kansas. You might remember him from hits such as Trump's short-lived Election Integrity Commission which tried to defend Trump's baseless claim that millions voted illegally in 2016. But the reasons were explicitly partisan. As Kobach explained in an e-mail, without the citizenship question, quote, 'Aliens who do not actually reside in the United States are still counted for representation in Congress.' Remember, this is how the census is supposed to work. So the citizenship question was designed to depress responses, benefiting Republicans in congressional redistricting while depriving more populist Democratic districts of millions in federal funding for constituents. But, Ross needed a cover story and the DOJ eventually folded, formally requesting the change to the census under what we now know is a phony rationale. It's clear that this is part of a larger effort to reduce the immigrant population, from the record number of children in detention centers with nearly 1,500 kids now unaccounted for, to the State Department slashing the number of refugees allowed into our country to a new low. The difference is we have the documents to prove it this time and a court case to keep the administration honest."