The millions of undocumented immigrants living and often working in the United States are counted in the decennial U.S. census. Should they be?

As currently required by law, the U.S. Census Bureau attempts to count all persons in the U.S. living in residential structures, including prisons, dormitories, and similar "group quarters" in the official decennial census. People counted in the census include citizens, legal immigrants, non-citizen long-term visitors, and illegal (or undocumented) immigrants.

Why the Census SHOULD Count Undocumented Immigrants

Not counting undocumented aliens costs cities and states federal money, resulting in a reduction of services to all residents. The census count is used by Congress in deciding how to distribute more than $400 billion annually to state, local, and tribal governments. The formula is simple: the greater the population your state or city reports, the more federal money it might get.

Cities provide the same level of services — think police, fire, and emergency medical treatment — to undocumented immigrants as they do to U.S. citizens. In some states like California, undocumented immigrants attend public schools. In 2004, the Federation for American Immigration Reform estimated the cost to California cities for education, health care, and incarceration of illegal immigrants at $10.5 billion per year.

According to one study released by the U.S. Census Monitoring Board, a total of 122,980 people went uncounted in Georgia during the 2000 census. As a result, the state lost out on some $208.8 million in federal funding through 2012, about $1,697 per uncounted person.

Why the Census SHOULD NOT Count Undocumented Immigrants

Counting undocumented immigrants in the census undermines the fundamental principle of American representative democracy that every voter has an equal voice. Through the census-based process of apportionment, states with large numbers of undocumented aliens will unconstitutionally gain members in the U.S. House of Representatives, thus robbing the citizen-voters in other states of their rightful representation.

In addition, an inflated population count resulting from the inclusion of undocumented immigrants would increase the number of votes some states get in the electoral college system, the process by which the president is elected.

In short, including undocumented immigrants in the census count will unjustly bestow additional political power in states where lax enforcement of immigration laws attract large populations of undocumented aliens.

In calculating congressional apportionment, the Census Bureau counts a state's total population, including both citizens and non-citizens of all ages. The apportionment population also includes U.S. Armed Forces personnel and federal civilian employees stationed outside the United States — along with their dependents living with them — that can be allocated, based on administrative records, back to a home state.

The Foreign-Born Population in the Census

To the Census Bureau, the U.S. foreign-born population includes anyone who was not a U.S. citizen at birth. This includes people who later became U.S. citizens through naturalization. Everyone else makes up the native-born population, composed of anyone who is a U.S. citizen at birth, including people born in the United States, Puerto Rico, a U.S. Island Area, or abroad to a U.S. citizen parent or parents.