Evening star., 1937-01-04
Alien Representation.

Senator Capper of Kansas does not
believe that aliens living in the United
States should be counted in making the
enumeration upon which congressional
apportionment is based. Because of that
belief, he is Offering at the opening of the
next session of Congress a proposed
amendment to the Constitution. Under
this amendment only "citizens" of the
United States, whether native born or
naturalized, would be counted for the
purpose of making the apportionment
among the States of members Of the
House of Representatives.
1t is Senator Cappers contention, also.
that several Of the States are given
unduly large representation in the lower
house OF Congress because the aliens
within their borders are included in the
enumeration for apportionment purposes.
And, he contends, because these States
with large alien population are allowed
this undue representation. other States
which have small percentage Of alien
population-like KanSas-are denied
their proper representation
The Constitution reads today: Repre-
sentatives shall be apportioned among the
several States, according to their reSpec-
tive numbers, counting the whole number
of persons in each State. excluding In
dians not taxed" The Capper proposal
is to change one word in this text, substi-
tuting citizens" for persons" If that
proposed amendment to the Constitution
had been in effect on April l, 1890, the
date of the last census LOGS ,974 known
aliens would not have been counted, nor
would 313,037 aliens who had taken out
their first papers and 1854 aliens about
whom no information regarding citizen
ship was obtained. The elimination of
these aliens from the count for congress
sional apportionment would have re-
duced the number of representatives in
the House from New York perhaps by
five.
New York's foreign-born population is
large, 1882 ,278, according to the census
of 1880. OF these 1.764.753 are naturalized
States. The remainder, to whom refer
ence has been made are not yet citizens.
The total population of the State was
12,588066.
Take the case of Kansas, on the other
hand. The Sunflower State has 80,897
foreign born out Of a total population
Of 1.880,999 as Of 1880. OF these foreign
born, 53.785 are naturalized citizens,
4,211 have taken out first papers, 1875
are "aliens" and 1926 are unknown"
In continental United States, which
includes the District of Columbia, where
the right Of suffrage and the right of
representation within the national House
of Representatives are denied, the total
population as of 1880 was 122, Its, ,046. On
the same date the total number of foreign
born within the United States was a.
2O4149. OF these 7,919,536 were natural
lied and Citizens" The rest were di-
vided as follows: 1886, ,419 had taken out
first papers, 4,518,341 were known aliens
who had not made any move toward
citizenship. and 49s 1853 were carried as
unknown" no information regarding
citizenship being at hand.
When the Constitution was originally
adopted 1t recited: Representatives and
direct taxes shall be apportioned among
the several States which may be included
within this Union, according to their
respective numbers, which shall be de-
termined by adding to the whole number
of free persons, including those bound to
service for term of years, and excluding
Indians not taxed, three-f1fths of all
other persons" This was changed to the
present language and provision under
the fourteenth amendment. All persons
are now "free" in the United States.
Mr.. Capper's proposed amendment may
be fought by those States which have
large foreign-born and allen populations.
On the other hand, it is likely to have the
support Of other States, like his own,
where the number of aliens is compara-
lively small.