Illegal immigration regularly ranks among voters’ top two or three issues in the 2024 election — but mass immigration reduces the amount of power U.S. citizens have over their own government, two new studies show. America’s massive immigrant population has redistributed political power from Republican-leaning districts with a high number of U.S. citizens to liberal, sanctuary cities and states that tend to elect Democrats. Merely counting illegal immigrants and their anchor babies in the U.S. Census gave Democrats two additional seats in the House of Representatives, the report found.

Legal and illegal immigrants have realigned the American political landscape further leftward while watering down U.S. citizens’ representation in Congress, according to two new studies by Steven A. Camarota and Karen Zeigler of the Center for Immigration Studies (CIS). Their findings corroborate Republican claims that counting noncitizens, including illegal immigrants, in the U.S. Census rewards liberal states while punishing conservative ones.

“[I]mmigration significantly redistributes political power in Washington,” their reports, released on Thursday, state. “In 2020, immigration clearly distributed seats toward Democratic-leaning states.”

The first report, “Tilting the Balance,” estimates the impact of legal and illegal immigration on apportionment and political influence in the U.S. House and Electoral College. The scholars divided all 50 states into Democrat-leaning, Republican-leaning, or battleground states. (The five battleground states are Arizona, Georgia, Pennsylvania, Michigan, and Wisconsin.) 

Illegal immigrants and their U.S.-born anchor babies furnished the Democratic Party with a net gain of two seats in Congress in 2020. “If the illegal immigrant population continues to grow at the current pace, it may redistribute seven seats by 2030. When their minor children are included, the redistribution is estimated to be nine seats, with a net gain for Democratic-leaning states of four seats,” the report notes.

Counting all immigrants, legal and illegal, in the 2020 census shifted a total of 17 House districts nationwide. In all, seven states gained at least one seat, while 16 states lost representation.

Mass immigration created 14 Democratic congressional districts, while it cost battleground states four districts and eliminated 10 Republican seats, the report found. Including immigrants’ children gives Democrats a total of 18 additional congressional districts, while erasing six districts in swing states and 12 Republican seats. By 2030, the immigrant advantage will shower Democrats with a net gain of 10 seats — or 16, including their children. 

“Districts where non-citizens comprise a large share of the population tend to vote Democratic, while high-citizenship districts tend to vote Republican,” the scholars observe. “Of the 24 districts where one in five adults is not an American citizen, only four were won by a Republican in 2022. In contrast, in the 54 districts where less than 2 percent of adults are not citizens, just five are represented by a Democrat.”

The immigration scholars were able to pinpoint the exact level at which an increase in the U.S. immigrant population increases the number of Democratic votes in a district. “In 2022, each 1 percentage point increase in the non-citizen share of a congressional district’s adult population is associated with a 1.8 percent point increase in the Democratic share of the two-party vote,” the report notes — although they are quick to point out this reflects the fact that “the voters who live around non-citizens tend to be Democrats, who end up having more voting power due to the presence of a large number of non-citizens. This is not evidence of non-citizens voting.” Election officials have proven that noncitizens have voted thousands of times in U.S. elections.

These changes dilute the vote of U.S. citizens living in law-abiding districts. Apportioning U.S. congressional seats based on total population, rather than the number of U.S. citizens, gives jurisdictions a representative who serves fewer legally registered voters. “The 13 congressional districts with the highest share of non-citizens in 2022 have roughly the same combined population of voting-age U.S. citizens as the nine districts with the lowest non-citizen shares. Thus, in these nine districts there are four fewer representatives for the same number of citizens,” the report notes.

“In effect, each voter in the 10 lowest-citizenship districts had about twice the influence on the election as voters in the 10 highest-citizenship districts,” the scholars conclude.

For instance, California’s 34th congressional district — represented by Democrat Jimmy Gomez, who succeeded current HHS Secretary Xavier Becerra — has 162,000 fewer adult citizens than California’s third congressional district, represented by Republican Kevin Kiley. Nearly one-third (30%) of adults in the Democrat’s district are not U.S. citizens, compared to 5% in the Republican district.

The noncitizen impact gives far-Left voices greater reach and power in Congress. Eight of the 10 states that cover abortion-on-demand through Medicaid are sanctuary states, and 83% of America’s sanctuary states force taxpayers to cover transgender procedures through Medicaid. 

Counting illegal immigrants in the U.S. Census distorts all three branches of government. It adds congressional seats to Democrat-leaning sanctuary cities and states, increases those states’ Electoral College votes, and helps elect a liberal president to nominate like-minded justices to the Supreme Court.

Like many federal programs, rewarding states for the presence of immigrants benefits a select few at the expense of the many. “[I]mmigrants themselves are concentrated, so the gains tend to be concentrated in relatively few states compared to the reduction in seats that tend to be spread out across many more states,” the report notes. “If the minor children of immigrants are added, Democratic net gains increase to 18 seats, while Republican and battleground states would have 12 and six fewer seats, respectively. Illegal immigrants by themselves had no net partisan impact, though when their children are considered, it creates a net gain of two seats for Democratic states.”

The big winner in 2020 was California, which gained eight congressional seats in 2020. New York gained three seats; Florida gained two additional seats. Illinois, New Jersey, Rhode Island, and Texas each added one seat. Meanwhile, Ohio lost two congressional seats. Arizona, Georgia, Michigan, Pennsylvania, Idaho, Indiana, Iowa, Kentucky, Louisiana, Missouri, North Carolina, Oklahoma, Tennessee, Utah, and West Virginia each lost one seat in the 2020 census.

“If their U.S.-born minor children (<18) are included the impact rises to 22 seats” cumulatively over time, write Camerota and Zeigler.

The problem of immigrant-fueled taxation-without-equal-representation has increased under the Biden-Harris administration. Its lax border enforcement policies have seen 10,446,708 illegal border crossings from February 2021 through October 1, not including “gotaways” and others given special, if legally dubious, parole.

Illegal immigrants in 2024 would give California and Arizona one additional seat each and two to Texas. Minnesota, Oregon, Ohio, and Tennessee would lose one seat each. 

If these trends continue, by 2030 illegal immigrants and their U.S.-born children will redistribute nine congressional seats, the report assesses. After the 2030 census, illegal immigrants would add an estimated three seats to California, two to Texas, and one seat to Illinois, Maryland, Massachusetts, and New Jersey. Minnesota, Missouri, Ohio, Oklahoma, Pennsylvania, South Carolina, Virginia, Washington, and Wisconsin each lose one seat due to the generational impact of illegal immigration.

Yet those numbers tell only half of the story. Legal immigration has more than quadrupled since the 1965 Immigration Act. The United States accepted an average of 250,000 legal immigrants a year in the 1950s (and President Dwight D. Eisenhower led the largest mass deportation campaign in U.S. history). The number of legal immigrants has swelled to one million or more a year since the Clinton administration.

Although the U.S. Census does not ask about citizenship, the bureau’s American Community Survey (ACS) asks about citizenship status. In 2022, the ACS recorded 21.6 million noncitizens in the United States, only half of whom are legal immigrants.

“[I]f the census and reapportionment happened in 2024, immigrants would redistribute 19 seats across 24 states — also benefiting New Jersey, Rhode Island, and Texas while claiming additional congressional seats from the states of Alabama, Minnesota, Oregon, and Wisconsin. Including the children of immigrants increases the number further, changing the electoral map for 26 seats in 30 states. “This is an indication of how widespread the impact of immigration is on political representation in America,” says the report.

Immigrants and their children would redistribute an estimated 28 congressional seats by 2030. This would result in “Democratic states having four more seats than they would have otherwise and both Republican and battleground states having two fewer seats each.”

“[O]ne of the unavoidable consequences of immigration’s impact on reapportionment is that it takes seats and political representation away from low-immigration states comprised largely of American citizens in order to give representation to high-immigration states with large non-citizen populations,” says the report. “Low-immigration Republican and battleground states in the Midwest and Upper South tend to be among the biggest losers from immigration. This is especially true of increasingly Republican Ohio. … In 2020, the state had two fewer seats due to immigration. In that same year, 97 percent of residents in the Buckeye [S]tate were U.S. citizens. In contrast, in California, which had eight more seats than it otherwise would have had due to the presence of immigrants, only 87 percent of the state’s population were American citizens.”

Reformers suggest drawing congressional maps to reflect the number of citizens, who alone are entitled to congressional representation. Opponents say the 14th Amendment requires, “Representatives shall be apportioned among the several States according to their respective numbers, counting the whole number of persons in each State.” Immigration reformers reply it is not clear that state officials have to draw House districts to include noncitizens, although the 2016 Supreme Court case Evenwel v. Abbott established that states may opt to do so.

Reformers have said, at a minimum, the federal government should serve its own citizens by asking which residents are native-born or naturalized American citizens. The U.S. Census last asked respondents their citizenship in 1950, with officials removing the question before the 1960 tally.

President Donald Trump’s Justice Department made a concerted legal effort to return a question on citizenship status to the census beginning in 2018, but Chief Justice John Roberts claimed in Department of Commerce v. New York that the Trump administration harbored sinister motives and its process did not come to his liking. The administration suspended efforts to question U.S. residents about their status by July 2019. However, the report notes that due to the decision’s narrow focus, “it is possible that citizenship could be included in a future Census if done correctly.”