Immigration Experts Detail Just How Badly Illegal Aliens Could Impact the Election

I've written before about how the influx of illegal aliens can impact the apportionment of seats for Congress as well as the electoral votes for president. X owner Elon Musk has been raising the alarm about this problem. Republicans have introduced bills in both the House and the Senate to stop this practice.

How important is this to the Democrats?

Joe Biden signed an executive order to count noncitizens on the very first day he occupied the Oval Office.

Now immigration experts are weighing in on just how much this may impact the election.

"Illegal immigration has all kinds of effects and among them is that it distorts the mechanics of democratic government," Mark Krikorian, the executive director of the Center for Immigration Studies, told Fox News Digital in an interview. "Illegal immigrants aren't even supposed to be here, so their inclusion in the census count for purposes of apportionment really is outrageous."
"There are a lot of close votes in Congress, more than there used to be. So, it can, in fact, make a difference," Krikorian said. "It shouldn't be a question of: Does this give you personally more influence in Washington? The question should be: Is it right? Is it healthy for our democratic process to be distorted this way? The answer is no."
Overall, according to the Federation for American Immigration Reform, there are an estimated 16.8 million illegal immigrants living in the U.S. as of June 2023. Therefore, because every House seat represents 761,168 residents on average, the total number of illegal immigrants account for roughly 22 seats in the House.

Then there's the impact on the electoral votes.

Electoral votes are allocated among the States based on the Census. Every State is allocated a number of votes equal to the number of Senators and Representatives in its U.S. Congressional delegation—two votes for its Senators in the U.S. Senate plus a number of votes equal to the number of its Congressional districts.

It could potentially help the blue states that have citizens fleeing, like California and New York, if they have illegal aliens flooding in — which might be one reason that they would want to have sanctuary cities or states if it helps them hold onto power that they otherwise might lose. New York just lost a House seat because of the last census in 2020, hence the importance of such calculations.

Lora Ries, director of the Heritage Foundation's Border Security and Immigration Center, and RJ Hauman, the president of the Immigration Center for Enforcement, warned this could result in a "warped representation" in Congress.

"Barring the Census from including noncitizens in apportionment is critical in making sure that American citizens — the only population who can and should vote in U.S. elections — are picking America’s leaders," Ries and Hauman wrote. "Biden’s intentional border crisis has produced unprecedented apportionment issues, distorting the representation that states have in the House, and how many electoral votes they have in presidential elections."

The pair made the argument that if you eliminated counting noncitizens, you would discourage sanctuary cities and stop foreign nationals from influencing our national politics in this way.

Sen. Bill Hagerty (R-TN) called it unconscionable and pointed out how it "dilutes" the votes of Americans.

"While people continue to flee Democrat-run cities, desperate Democrats are back-filling the mass exodus with illegal immigrants so that they do not lose their seats in Congress and maintain electoral votes for the presidency and hence artificially boost their political power, which in turn dilutes the power of other Americans’ votes," he added.

Eric Ruark, the director of research for NumbersUSA, said that this even helps states get more money.

"Federal dollars are also based upon population. States who have a higher illegal immigrant population are going to see more federal funding."

So there are all sorts of incentives for these folks to hold onto power and money by bumping their populations with illegal aliens or other noncitizens. This should be right up there as one of the main issues to rectify by passing the pending bills on the issue — yet many aren't even aware of the issue. If you stop the benefit, you likely discourage the desire to allow illegal aliens just to flood across the border.