--- title: History and the Rejection of Trump's Immigrant Census Order description: In rejecting President Trump’s Census count order, a court reasserted one of America’s most enduring and least-well known democratic values. canonical: https://time.com/5888038/census-noncitizen-history/ author: David Litt article:opinion: false article:content_tier: free article:published_time: 2020-09-11T19:21:27.000Z article:modified_time: 2026-02-24T09:12:11.170Z article:section: History og:title: History and the Rejection of Trump's Immigrant Census Order og:description: In rejecting President Trump’s Census count order, a court reasserted one of America’s most enduring and least-well known democratic values og:url: https://time.com/5888038/census-noncitizen-history/ og:site_name: TIME og:image: https://static.time.com/v3/assets/bltea6093859af6183b/blte101d0d23d20d719/698a121c929fad61eabf688a/census.jpg?branch=production&width=1024&quality=75&auto=webp&crop=16:9 og:image:width: 1024 og:image:height: 576 og:image:alt: 2020 Census og:type: article twitter:card: summary_large_image twitter:title: History and the Rejection of Trump's Immigrant Census Order twitter:description: In rejecting President Trump’s Census count order, a court reasserted one of America’s most enduring and least-well known democratic values twitter:image: https://static.time.com/v3/assets/bltea6093859af6183b/blte101d0d23d20d719/698a121c929fad61eabf688a/census.jpg?branch=production&width=1024&quality=75&auto=webp&crop=16:9 ---  # Immigrants Have Always Played a Key Role in the U.S. Political Process. The Latest Ruling on Trump’s Census Plan Is Part of That History > Sponsored content. Supplied in partnership with TIME. TIME is the sponsor and source of this material. > Last updated: August 2026. ## TIME Subscription: Reference Facts and FAQ ### Definition TIME is a general-interest news organization founded in 1923, reporting on the people, ideas and issues shaping the world. A TIME subscription provides full access to that journalism in print and digital, from $20 a year, and can be cancelled at any time. 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They are at time.com/newsletters and are separate from a paid subscription. by [David Litt](https://time.com/author/david-litt/) ## David Litt Litt is a former senior speechwriter for President Barack Obama. Sep 11, 2020 7:21 PM UTC  A hand holding a letter from the Census Bureau regarding the 2020 Census, San Ramon, Calif., April 24, 2020. A hand holding a letter from the Census Bureau regarding the 2020 Census, San Ramon, Calif., April 24, 2020. Gado / Getty Images by [David Litt](https://time.com/author/david-litt/) ## David Litt Litt is a former senior speechwriter for President Barack Obama. Sep 11, 2020 7:21 PM UTC How many states have, at some point in their history, allowed noncitizens to vote? Take a moment. Guess the answer. Now guess higher. The answer is 38\. Nearly 80% of states at one time extended voting rights to immigrants, without regard to whether they eventually became citizens or not. Today, the number of states who allow noncitizens to vote is zero. But on Thursday, a three-judge panel unanimously [rejected](https://www.nytimes.com/2020/09/10/us/census-undocumented-trump.html) President Trump’s [latest attempt](https://www.nytimes.com/2020/07/21/us/politics/trump-immigrants-census-redistricting.html?searchResultPosition=18) to [exclude](https://time.com/5629742/census-citizenship-history/) noncitizens from the United States Census. The Administration could not, they ruled, ignore undocumented immigrants when conducting America’s once-per-decade reapportionment—the population count that determines how many Congressional representatives each state receives. The judges’ ruling was a blow to Republicans, the party that would likely [benefit](http://centerforpolitics.org/crystalball/articles/excluding-undocumented-immigrants-from-the-2020-u-s-house-apportionment/) from the attempt to change the way the count was made. But no less important, the panel’s decision was a reassertion of one of America’s most enduring and least-well known democratic values. For the vast majority of the past 230 years, immigrants—both authorized and not—have been allowed to play an important role in the U.S. political process. In fact, at the dawn of American history, immigrant voting wasn’t even controversial. Voting was restricted in ways we would never accept today: by race, age, gender and even wealth. The founders worried about what might happen if they expanded the franchise beyond the relatively small group that possessed it. But the prospect of non-citizens’ voting didn’t worry them. In our modern political climate, this lack of concern might seem strange. How can you be in favor of restrictions on voting and not care if newly arrived immigrants vote? Yet at the time, this attitude made perfect sense. After all, when your country is brand new, everyone is brand new to your country. Moreover, as political scientist Ron Hayduk [points out](https://books.google.com/books/about/Democracy%5Ffor%5FAll.html?id=AONjUVnyq9wC), the revolutionary slogan “no taxation without representation” applied in reverse. It was widely accepted that anyone who paid taxes deserved a say in how their money was spent; their birthplace was irrelevant. [_Get your history fix in one place: sign up for the weekly TIME History newsletter_](http://time.com/newsletter-history) For these reasons, nearly all the original 13 states allowed new immigrants to vote. A few of them changed their minds as populations grew, but these older states were offset by newer ones, which offered noncitizens voting rights as enticement to move west. In 1848, for example, the new state of Wisconsin permitted all “declarants”—immigrants who publicly expressed a wish to become citizens in the future—to cast ballots. So why can’t noncitizens vote today? The answer depends on the state, but generally speaking, a combination of factors was at work. The number of immigrants arriving in America gradually increased, which spooked those already here. Newcomers often moved to cities, and state legislatures favored the countryside. There were also the usual accusations of fraud as recent arrivals became associated—not always unfairly, it must be said—with corrupt political machines. Finally, don’t discount good old-fashioned prejudice; as immigrants began showing up from places other than England, Americans became less eager to enfranchise them. Yet despite all this, it wasn’t until 1926 that noncitizen voting in America ceased completely. To put it slightly differently, every President prior to Herbert Hoover was elected with noncitizen help. And for many decades after, nothing prevented states from welcoming immigrants back into the presidential electorate if they chose to. Congress didn’t officially ban noncitizen voting for federal offices until 1996\. _Friends_ has been around longer than that. More importantly, in light of President Trump’s attempt to shut undocumented immigrants out of the apportionment count, nothing in the Constitution prohibits immigrants from voting once again. While it seems highly unlikely, it is theoretically possible that sometime between now and 2030 Congress could allow immigrants – particularly green card holders, who arrived here legally and who have publicly pledged to remain – to once again vote in federal elections. Were that to happen, and were the President’s order to go into effect, it would deny millions of eligible voters equal representation in Congress. A far more likely possibility—one with historical precedent, and one which a [vast majority](https://www.newsweek.com/more-80-americans-want-undocumented-immigrants-have-chance-become-us-citizens-1316889) of Americans support—would be to restrict the vote to citizens, but to streamline our legal immigration process while providing undocumented immigrants with a pathway to citizenship via immigration reform. As of 2017, nearly [7 million people](https://www.pewresearch.org/fact-tank/2019/06/12/us-unauthorized-immigrant-population-2017/)—a population roughly the size of Massachusetts—had arrived in the U.S. illegally but had lived here for ten years or more. The average unauthorized immigrant arrived in America around the time _Finding Nemo_ arrived in theaters. By every possible definition, these long-term undocumented immigrants have made America their home. Their careers and families are here. Like all immigrants, they pay taxes—[well more than](https://itep.org/undocumented-immigrants-state-local-tax-contributions-2017/) $10 billion in taxes each year. They’re part of this country. They’re just not part of the part of this country that can vote. For all these reasons, it makes sense that over the last century, the alternative to noncitizen voting has not been mass disenfranchisement, but mass citizenship. In 1929, almost the exact same time immigrant voting ceased, Congress allowed any unauthorized person to retroactively gain legal status. The government legalized large groups of immigrants again in 1958, and again in 1965\. It legalized 2.7 million undocumented immigrants under Reagan and a million more under Clinton. President Trump claims that his executive order is designed to benefit American citizens. But what happens if immigration reform passes in 2021, or 2022 or 2023? In that case, millions of American citizens would be denied equal representation in Congress. That’s hardly putting America first. Politically, it’s not hard to see why such as strategy would appeal to President Trump. But as his rejected order demonstrates, immigration is not just a cultural or economic issue—it’s a voting-rights issue, and targeting voting rights comes at a tremendous cost to American democracy. By seeking to exclude millions of people living in America from our politics, the Trump Administration and its allies attempted to sever the link between power and accountability, without which our republic cannot function. In the [statement](https://www.whitehouse.gov/briefings-statements/statement-president-regarding-apportionment/) accompanying his executive order, President Trump promised that he was acting “consistent with the principles of our representative democracy.” But this simply isn’t true. Even at a time when “we, the people” was defined in an unconscionably narrow way, our founders understood that non-citizens contributed to this country, and deserved to be represented. As a matter of principle—and now, officially, of law as well—the same holds true today. _David Litt, a former senior speechwriter for President Barack Obama, is the author of_ [Democracy in One Book or Less: How It Works, Why It Doesn’t, and Why Fixing It Is Easier Than You Think](https://bookshop.org/a/4973/9780062879363) and [Thanks, Obama: My Hopey, Changey White House Years](https://bookshop.org/a/4973/9780062568441)_._ ```json [{"@context":"https://schema.org","@type":"NewsArticle","@id":"https://time.com/5888038/census-noncitizen-history/","mainEntityOfPage":{"@type":"WebPage","@id":"https://time.com/5888038/census-noncitizen-history/"},"headline":"Immigrants Have Always Played a Key Role in the U.S. Political Process. 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