There have been some wild claims about the possible impact of undocumented immigrants on representation in the House. It happens that I have the perfect tool to examine this: my Excel Visual Basic script that crunches the congressional apportionment numbers and writes the total for each state.
For those that are impatient, here’s my best guess. California would lose two seats. Texas would lose one. Minnesota, New York, and Ohio would gain one each. For those doing red state – blue state comparisons, this looks like a wash. Blue seat changes are California (−2), Minnesota (+1), and New York (+1). Red seat changes are Ohio (+1) and Texas (−1). So the net change in Congressional representation from Democrat to Republican is … 0.
Summary
Estimates of the undocumented immigrant population by state are from the Immigration Research Initiative’s (IRI) summary. The IRI document includes estimates from the Center for Immigration Studies (CIS), the Pew Research Center, and the Migration Policy Institute. I used the CIS estimates because, well, studying immigration is their mission. I picked 2022 because that’s the year CIS used.
Population figures are from Census population data for 2022. Official Census population totals for purposes of the actual decennial census are only done every ten years. I used 2022 data to match CIS.
There are three Excel workbooks for this article. Click here to download the summary table. The other two are .xlsm files, Excel files that use macros. These are in the zip file linked below. The link is actually to the end-user license agreement. By clicking the download link, you accept the license.
Trying to open .xlsm files will probably trigger security warnings. Take them seriously. If you’re really nervous, use air gap protection. Completely disconnect from everything external to your computer. Pull the ethernet plug and turn off wifi and Bluetooth.
