INSIDE THE STATEHOUSE: Illegal immigrants and the census

INSIDE THE STATEHOUSE: Illegal immigrants and the census

1:00 PM

Conservative Republicans, like Jeff Sessions, have been obsessed with illegal immigrants for years. Sessions is and has always been a stickler for obeying the laws of our land. He is the most honest, upright, squeaky clean, politician I have ever seen in my lifetime of observing politics in Alabama. He is like Dudley Do-Right, only shorter and straighter. He was an Eagle Scout and you can tell he was not making it up on his resume. He epitomizes a grownup Eagle Scout. He has never outgrown the straight and narrow path. During his 20-year tenure in the U.S. Senate as our junior senator, he was the ultimate ideologue and one of, if not the most, conservative members of the Senate. He did not just give lip service to his reactionary positions, He put leg service in to every right-wing cause and issue.

He was the attorney general of Alabama before his election to the U.S. Senate. Before that, he was the U.S. attorney for the Southern District of Alabama in Mobile. Being a prosecutor has always been his passion. Therefore, when Donald Trump offered him the U.S. attorney general post, he took it.

Most U.S. senators would have balked at abandoning a safe Senate seat they could stay in for life. Our senior senator, Richard Shelby, would have laughed in Trump’s face if he offered him a Cabinet position. Shelby would have told him, “Thanks but no thanks.” If Trump had offered him his job as president, Shelby would have considered it a demotion. Probably the only reason that Sessions has not been fired by the irrational Trump is that he knows that Shelby and Mitch McConnell and the Republican Senate leadership would automatically dissolve any power that Trump has as president. He would be rendered irrelevant when it comes to how any federal dollars are appropriated. For you see, Shelby is the chairman of the U.S. Senate Appropriations Committee, which trumps the president every day of the week. There is an adage that those who have the gold make the rules. Trump understands this.

Having said all that, Sessions and Trump are right. We have immigration laws in this country, the same way that we have bank robbery and mail fraud laws. Without these laws and the upholding and adherence to them, we would have anarchy in the United States. It is not right for Mexicans to enter the country illegally while people from Brazil, China or Europe are properly applying for citizenship. The law should be upheld.

States like California have been gleefully welcoming illegal immigrants for decades. It has basically ruined the once Golden State. They are now so deep in debt from giving free health care and school systems to illegals that they will never recover.

My interest has been here in Alabama. It was not our problem. However, folks, it now is our problem, because California may steal one of our seven congressional districts by counting illegal, undocumented Mexicans in the 2020 federal census. Alabama is now at risk of losing a seat in the U.S. House and concurrently an electoral vote in presidential elections because we have experienced slower growth than other states; especially those who count people who are here illegally. Conservative states like Alabama have filed suit in federal court to stop the count of illegals.

The census count is immensely important. It determines the number of seats that each state has in Washington, which also determines the number of electoral votes, which ultimately decides the presidency. California wants to use these illegal residents to steal congressional representation from conservative states like us and even states like Ohio that have not harbored hordes of illegal immigrants.

This court battle will boil down to a simple question: Who should be counted? The biggest battle to determine the answer to this question was started by the Trump administration and implemented by Attorney General Sessions. It is a mandate that the census questionnaire ask: Are you a citizen?

Folks, we have a lot at stake. To lose a congressional seat to a state like California due to the counting of illegal aliens could mean not only less representation but losing billions of dollars in federal grants for Medicaid, Medicare, housing assistance and transportation.

You may have been ambivalent about illegal immigration, but it affects you and it could affect you very adversely if you reside in Alabama.

https://www.tuscaloosanews.com/news/...nts-and-census

I see, so Steve Flowers who wrote this article is a Never-Trumper? It's nice to see him speak out in favor of counting citizens in the Census, but this was Wilbur Ross's passion, Secretary of Commerce, the department in charge of the US Census, and has nothing to do with the Attorney General or the US Department of Justice, other than under our laws the DOJ defends our Departments, Agencies and White House in court battles.