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Washington » The Senate rejected a proposal by Sen. Bob Bennett, R-Utah, on Thursday that would have required the 2010 census to include a question about citizenship.
Bennet's plan was intended to remove undocumented immigrants from the count used to split U.S. House seats among the states.
The vote, which was on a broader Commerce Department budget bill, broke straight down party lines. The 58 Democrats and two left-leaning independents supported moving forward on the legislation without Bennett's immigration amendment, while 39 Republicans opposed it. Arizona GOP Sen. John McCain, previously a champion of immigration reform, did not vote.
After the vote, Bennett charged that Democratic leaders moved to side-step his amendment because "the majority wants to have illegal residents included in the apportionment count so that states like California and New York can gain more congressional seats."
He promised to continue to push for a citizenship question on the census in future years, "so we can fairly determine congressional representation and ensure that legal residents are equally represented."
Bennett's amendment, which he offered with Louisiana Sen. David Vitter, didn't sit well with census officials and some immigration groups.
Commerce Secretary Gary Locke and census Director Robert Groves have said it is far too late to add a question to the census forms, which are already being printed to prepare for their mass mailing in March. Doing so would carry a significant cost for reprinting and reprogramming computers. Six former Census Bureau directors who opposed the amendment also backed Locke and Groves.
Bennett dismissed their argument, saying all the government would have to do is print an extra sheet of paper to mail along with the already-created ensus questionnaire.
Some Latino organizations argued that the amendment would dissuade immigrants from filling out the government forms, which are used not only to apportion congressional seats to the states, but also to split trillions of dollars in federal funding.
Bennett's amendment would have no bearing on federal assistance and the immigration information would not be used by law enforcement to find people in the country illegally. He said his sole purpose was to remove non-citizens from the counts used to determine U.S. House representation.
"It does not make any sense for congressional seats and the Electoral College to be determined by a process that unfairly provides the advantage to those communities with high illegal populations," Bennett said in September when announcing his proposal.
The census, which takes place every 10 years, has occasionally asked a question about citizenship, but the government has never removed noncitizens from any official counts.
The Bennett-Vitter amendment shows that immigration is still a touchy topic politically. The Senate's first attempt to defeat it failed, and as a result, the budget bill has languished for weeks.
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