OPINION:
Illegal immigrants can’t vote, but they still count. The U.S. Supreme Court says so, ruling this week that illegals and other noncitizens can be included in the population when states apportion their state legislative districts. This dilutes the electoral weight of legal residents and encourages partisans to bring in illegals to swell their ranks.
The unanimous ruling in Evenwel v. Abbott rejected a legal challenge by several Texas voters who had argued that the state’s 2013 redistricting formula, which counted voters and nonvoters alike in reapportioning state Senate seats, violated the “one person, one vote” principle the court had earlier found in the Equal Protection Clause of the Constitution. “As the Framers of the Constitution and the Fourteenth Amendment comprehended, representatives serve all residents, not just those eligible or registered to vote,” wrote Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg for a unanimous court. “Nonvoters have an important stake in many policy debates — children, their parents, even their grandparents, for example, have a stake in a strong public-education system — and in receiving constituent services, such as help navigating public-benefits bureaucracies.”
All this is inarguably true. But when conservatives on the high court join with Justice Ginsburg and her liberal colleagues in a rare unanimous ruling, they lead the justices to thin ice. They have done it before. Just as the Supreme Court was pushed by liberal justices to uphold President Obama’s Affordable Care Act (Obamacare), the justices have fallen in with the march toward the day when the distinction between legal and illegal resident becomes moot.
Local and state jurisdictions can be expected to boost representation in government by enabling illegals to settle within their borders. By arguing for inclusion of the undocumented among the calculations of redistricting, Texas chose the “if you can’t beat ’em, join ’em” approach to dealing with the Obama administration’s failure to secure the southern border. The swelling illegal tide becomes opportunity.
More than 300 sanctuary jurisdictions have been established across the nation, including Dallas and Houston, with laws protecting illegal residents from the sanctions of law. Where does it end?
Intended or not, the justices have bolstered the cause of immigration activists who seldom miss a chance to enhance political muscle. In sanctuary cities such as New York City, campaigns are moving to expand rights for illegals.
Mayor Bill de Blasio has backed a plan to provide them with city identification cards, a small step forward to enabling them to vote, citizen or not. The goal may be distant, but as the Chinese proverb counsels, “a journey of a thousand miles begins with a single step.” Voting is a right and a privilege, too, and voting in an American election is a right only of citizens of the United States.
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