A major issue hanging over the 1990 Census is resolved with the decision to include military personnel stationed overseas, but Congress is arguing over whether to keep counting illegal aliens. The House blocked an effort Tuesday to require aliens to be excluded from the census numbers used in House reapportionment every decade. But the question still may be raised in committee and in the Senate. The national head count will be taken April 1, 1990. Census figures are used to redistribute the 435 House seats among the states every 10 years and to distribute federal aid to local governments. The reapportionment issue has riveted the attention of House members from states where slow growth threatens to result in losses of House seats. Most of these states are in the North, where growth has lagged behind that of the South and West. Undocumented aliens are largely concentrated in the South, West and industrial states like New York, and other states fear a loss of power to those areas if the aliens are counted. While aliens have been counted in the past, military personnel stationed overseas have not. The Commerce Department settled that problem by announcing it will work with the Defense Department on ways to count the 1.2 million to 1.6 million military and civilian defense workers who live overseas. The problem has been in deciding which states may count these people as residents. That has yet to be decided, but possibilities include counting the state where the person owns a home or the last state where he or she lived for at least six months. The battle over illegal aliens, meanwhile, was taken up both in committee and on the House floor. Rep. Tom Ridge, R-Pa., unsuccessfully sought to attach a ban on counting aliens to an appropriations measure providing $5.8 million to run the State, Justice and Commerce departments next year, including $800 million to take the census. The bill was approved 258-165 and sent to the Senate. Opponents noted the Constitution requires House seats to be apportioned based on all the ``persons'' residing in a state. ``Every census since the Constitution was created has counted all residents of the states, both citizens and non-citizens,'' observed Rep. Don Edwards, D-Calif. ``Congress is empowered to identify those to be counted'' in the census, responded Ridge. The Census Bureau's $4 billion budget for the census is large enough to identify and separate out the illegal aliens, he said. Rep. Mervyn Dymally, D-Calif., charged the debate is really over population shifts that will lead to more House seats for southern and western states. ``Pennsylvania, I don't care what they do, unless they go down to the Southwest and bring the people back, they're going to lose a seat,'' said Dymally. Rep. Tim Valentine, D-N.C., said, however, that counting illegal aliens ``is not fair. It may be constitutional, but it's just not right.'' Census officials generally have opposed any attempt to delete illegal aliens, contending they cannot determine who is in the country legally. Asking people about their status likely would result in people lying or refusing to participate in the count, officials say, resulting in a potential undercount of residents in many areas.
The Census head count will begin on April 1, 1990. These figures are used to redistribute the 435 House seats and to distribute federal aid to local governments. Aliens have been counted in the past but military personal stationed overseas have not. The Census Department and the Department of Defense are devising a plan to count the military and determine which states may count them. In addition to these figures, there is also an additional census for each state that includes information about its population, including race, ethnicity, religion, education, income, family status and other characteristics. It would be difficult to get aliens to tell the truth or participate in the census at all if they were asked about their status.