WASHINGTON - Congressman Comer introduced legislation Tuesday with Congressman Jim Jordan that would require a citizenship question on the United States census.

The Citizens Count Census Act (H.R. 3765) would require that any questionnaire used for a decennial census has a question on it regarding citizenship. Congressman Comer spoke on his bill on the House Floor Tuesday, which can be viewed here.

“It has always been common sense to include a citizenship question on our nation’s census. The partisan politics of the left have infiltrated very basic, common-held notions in this nation – even asking the question of how many legal and non-legal individuals are within our borders. It’s time that we stop playing partisan politics with regards to our illegal immigration problem and ensure that we know who is residing in our sovereign nation. I hope we can work to achieve this goal with the Citizens Count Census Act,” Congressman Comer said.  

“Asking the citizenship question is common sense.  As Justice Alito said: ‘No one disputes that it is important to know how many inhabitants of this country are citizens. And the most direct way to gather this information is to ask for it in a census.’ The United Nations recommends including a citizenship question, and many other nations ask it. I’d encourage the folks who oppose asking this common sense question to go to their district and ask their constituents, ‘should we know how many individuals in this country are citizens?’ Their constituents will quickly answer ‘heck yeah!’ before following up with ‘aren’t we doing that already?’ We’ve been asking this question in one way or another for two hundred years, and we should ask it on our census, which is the most accurate and official count,” commented Congressman Jim Jordan, Ranking Member of the House Oversight and Reform Committee, who is an original cosponsor of the bill.