You wouldn’t have known it from the Democratic mayoral primary — dominated by promises of free stuff and anti-ICE grandstanding — but New York keeps driving residents away. Only Andrew Cuomo, in passing at a Queens rally, mentioned that from 2023 to 2024 Gotham lost 327,000 residents, per a May 15 Census report.
That 3.7% drop was the largest hemorrhage of any big city in the country. It might make sense to stop the trend by doing something about high taxes and subway crime — but progressives are actually panicked about something else: a looming loss of still more Empire State seats in Congress, as determined by population count.
Their solution isn’t to hold on to high-earning taxpayers fleeing to Florida. Instead, they want to make sure residents not even eligible to vote — non-citizens, including illegal immigrants — aren’t so afraid of ICE that they don’t respond to Census surveys and don’t get counted.
They’re particularly concerned about House legislation that would require the Census to ask about citizenship status.
The New York Times, in what amounted to a recruiting campaign for their cause, reported on the efforts of “a coalition of elected officials, community activists, and labor and civic leaders in New York City” that is “already stirring ahead of the next census in 2030 amid a brewing battle over whether to include noncitizens in the population count.”
Their concern: “threats from the Trump administration and the Republican-led Congress to exclude noncitizens, which could lead to a significant undercount of the city’s population.”
Lower East Side Council member Julie Menon, who in April keynoted a New York Law School conference kicking off the effort, has filed a bill to establish a City Office of the Census “tasked with maximizing local participation in the federal decennial census.”
This Fourth of July weekend suggests a better approach: A campaign to encourage legal immigrants to be counted by becoming citizens. There’s a reason liberals don’t mention that.
Dems are not trying to help residents vote, but merely to buoy the city’s population to protect their congressional seats, including those of House Minority Leader Hakeem Jeffries and progressive star Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez.
In both of their districts, voter totals are abysmally low — because so many non-citizen residents can’t vote. They represent a new version of what England used to call “rotten boroughs,” districts guaranteed representation despite low population.
All 435 congressional districts are required to have an equal number of residents — about 740,000. But they don’t have to have an equal number of eligible voters. That means that districts with high numbers of immigrants — legal and illegal — are likely to have low voter rolls. In Jeffries’s Brooklyn district, there are 267,000 foreign-born residents.
There’s no way to know how many are citizens, but we do know that Jeffries was elected in 2024 with just 168,000 votes. Ocasio-Cortez needed 132,000 in 2024 — in a district where 300,000 residents are immigrants.
In contrast, House Speaker Mike Johnson received 262,000 ballots just to win his primary election, in a district with just 22,000 immigrants
It’s a great deal for Democrats; they can safely ignore the views (in AOC’s case) of 40% of her district. Who knows whether Hispanic immigrants are on board with democratic socialism? She doesn’t have to care.
If progressives want to do something constructive to make sure residents won’t be concerned about being asked about their citizenship status — and be counted in the Census — there’s an obvious (and positive) approach: encourage citizenship.
There are, per the Mayor’s Office of Immigrant Affairs, some 3.1 million immigrants in New York City. There’s no way to know how many have become naturalized citizens—but there’s no mystery about how to become one: those who have been legally in the US for at least five years need only pass a citizenship test.
Common sense Democrats might actually want to encourage that approach. Doing so means learning enough English to read the questions. (The test is only offered in English.) That would help immigrants advance economically, too.
The test, it’s worth noting, consists of just 10 questions — but they’re chosen among 100 possibilities, and cover US government and history.
For July 4, let’s make it possible for immigrants to have a real voice in government — by becoming citizens and voting.
Howard Husock is a senior fellow at the American Enterprise Institute.
