Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid wants next year's census to include illegal aliens in the overall tallies.
That's the word from Louisiana Republican Sen. David Vitter, who is co-sponsoring an amendment that would require illegals to disclose their status to the Census Bureau.
Vitter claims that Reid wants illegals to be counted so that left-leaning states with large numbers of undocumented aliens will increase the size of their congressional delegations, The Hill newspaper reported.
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"I think it's pretty clear that Harry Reid and the Democratic side ... [want] illegals in the reapportionment of the House," Vitter said in a radio interview.
The census is a major factor in determining how many House seats each state will have.
A number of Republicans want the 2010 census form to include a question about citizenship, and believe congressional seats should be reapportioned based on a count of citizens, rather than all residents.
According to Vitter, illegals counted in the 2000 census gave California up to five additional seats in Congress.
"Basically states with large illegal populations, starting with California, are rewarded and other states are penalized," he said.
Reid is now seeking to block a vote on the amendment for fear that Democratic senators from states with low illegal immigrant populations might vote for it, according to Vitter.
He named Louisiana, Iowa, Indiana, Maine, Mississippi, Pennsylvania and North Carolina as states that could lose House seats if illegal aliens are counted.
According to the Census Bureau’s 2007 American Community Survey data, California, Florida, Illinois, New Jersey, New York, Texas and Reid's home state of Nevada are set for big gains thanks to their large populations of illegals.
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