The question before the court was a distraction anyway, from government not just failing, but actively subverting the whole purpose behind its existence, and the whole reason “consent of the governed” has been presumed. The real question, and one that must be answered before the cultural terraforming is complete, is “Who should be admitted into the Republic in the first place?” The follow-up is “What criteria determine citizenship eligibility?” [More]
With an 8-0 ruling that illegals count toward apportionment, will the new player even matter?
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I'm not happy with this result either--as you said, it skews representation from conservative locales to illegal immigrant havens. As I'll explain below, this calls for either a constitutional amendment, or enforcement of federal immigration law (or both, though in this case either would work).
However, if you review the relevant texts in the constitution (Article 1, Section 2, Clause 3, and then 14th Amendment, Section 2 which amends it), this is, unfortunately, the correct decision. The 14 amendment requires counting all residents, and the only exceptions to counting provided in the amendment are Indians and people who have lost voting rights via due process of law. Neither of these apply to illegal immigrants.
We could look at this as the result of imperfect drafting (the founders were, after all, fallible men and couldn't foresee every eventuality), but I think looking at the history shows that this results from the same type of gerrymandering impulse driving this fight.
First, you had the slave states wanting to count slaves who weren't eligible to vote, so as to swing the balance of representation towards themselves. After the Civil War, you had the victorious Unionists wanting to make sure that all the freed slaves could vote, and that former Confederates, who they disenfranchised, not only couldn't vote, but wouldn't even count toward apportionment.
Everyone was looking for advantages over each other, none were thinking of a time when the US would be overrun by non-citizen, illegal immigrants, and so they wrote a crappy set of provisions that only removes the legally infamous from the count. It's a bad set up, but it, unfortunately, matches the strict reading of the text.
The solutions, as I previously mentioned, are to either pass a constitutional amendment stating that all US Citizens (this could be tailored to include legal immigrants close to getting citizenship, or exclude them, same with children, etc.) will be counted rather than all persons. This would be a tall order to get passed, but would fix the situation quickly.
The other solution is federal immigration law enforcement so that the only people here and getting counted are citizens and legal immigrants. This would take some time, and, realistically, would be just as hard to accomplish due to Democratic opposition. And, of course, nothing says you can't do both.
Apart from a new Amendment like I suggested, though, I unfortunately have to agree with the court that they interpreted the law, as written, correctly. It shouldn't be written that way, but until that changes, they have to enforce the words there or they're no better than the liberals when they make up patently unconstitutional "rights." Still, it gives me the willies every time I find myself agreeing with RBG--excuse me while I go shower.
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