Five Tennessee Republican members of Congress signed a letter urging the U.S. Department of Commerce to adopt proposed changes to the Census Bureau’s population-counting rules, including measures to distinguish citizens from noncitizens and revise demographic questions.
U.S. Representatives Diana Harshbarger (R-TN-01), Tim Burchett (R-TN-02), Scott DesJarlais (R-TN-04), John Rose (R-TN-06), and Matt Van Epps (R-TN-07) joined 39 other lawmakers in signing the October 30 letter led by U.S. Representative Mary Miller (R-IL-15).
In the letter addressed to Commerce Secretary Howard Lutnick, the lawmakers expressed support for the Census Bureau’s proposed rule, titled Decennial Census of the Population of Americans; Proposed Residence Criteria and Proposed Regulations for Demographic Questions, which was published in September.
The letter urges the Census Bureau to count only U.S. citizens for congressional apportionment and Electoral College allocation, excluding all foreign nationals, including illegal immigrants, lawful permanent residents, refugees, and individuals holding various temporary immigration statuses.
It also calls for a citizenship question on the 2030 Census and removing race, ethnicity, and sexual orientation questions from both the decennial Census and the American Community Survey.
The proposed rule would exclude illegal immigrants and certain other foreign nationals from the apportionment count but would continue to count lawful permanent residents.
Lawmakers called for a broader exclusion that would also apply to green card holders, writing “The Bureau should exclude all foreign nationals from the final apportionment tabulation including illegal aliens, lawful permanent residents (i.e., green card holders), non-immigrant visas, refugees, asylees, DACA beneficiaries, alien parolees, Deferred Enforced Departure recipients, and temporary protected status recipients.”
The proposal also addresses demographic questions on Census Bureau questionnaires used for population enumeration but does not extend those restrictions to the American Community Survey, as the lawmakers requested.
“These demographic questions should also be removed from the American Community Survey. Bureaucrats created many of these questions and corresponding demographic groups to appease a radical, left agenda. For example, the classification of individuals from the Middle East and North Africa (MENA) was introduced during the Biden Administration under pressure from activists. Eliminating these types of demographic questions is a victory against these woke policies,” the lawmakers argued.
The effort comes as U.S. Senator Bill Hagerty (R-TN) has legislation filed in the Senate that would similarly require the Census Bureau to distinguish citizens from noncitizens and prohibit noncitizens from being counted for congressional and Electoral College apportionment.
Hagerty reintroduced the Equal Representation Act in June 2025, leading a group of Republican senators supporting the measure.
The bill would require a citizenship question on future censuses, bar noncitizens from apportionment calculations, and require the Census Bureau to publicly report certain demographic data.
Senate Democrats have blocked Hagerty’s previous efforts to advance the legislation. In March 2024, the Senate rejected an amendment he introduced to prevent illegal immigrants from being counted for congressional and Electoral College apportionment by a 45-51 vote, with 47 Democrats, three independents, and one Republican voting against it.
At the time of reintroducing the bill, Hagerty argued that counting illegal immigrants and noncitizens for apportionment purposes creates an incentive for states to attract illegal immigration and increases their political influence at the expense of other states.
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Kaitlin Housler is a reporter at The Tennessee Star and The Star News Network.
Photo “U.S. Census Worker” by U.S. Census Bureau.
