GOP: Count only legal residents

The GOP wants to count only legal residents in the next Census, which the party says would more justly determine the legislative representation each state gets in Congress. This AP story is getting some play in an immigration message board I have been tracking. From the story about the GOP platform.
From the AP:

The 2008 Republican platform, in language that is hostile to illegal immigrants, says the makeup of Congress should be determined by counting only those legally residing in the United States in the next census.
"The integrity of the 2010 census, proportioning congressional representation among the states, must be preserved," says the platform language, which is a reinterpretation of the Constitution that could affect how congressional seats are apportioned. "The census," it says, "should count every person legally abiding in the United States in an actual enumeration."
The 14th Amendment of the Constitution, ratified in 1868, says representatives to the U.S. House "should be apportioned among the several states according to their respective numbers, counting the whole number of persons in each state, excluding Indians not taxed."
"Our mandate is to count all residents regardless of legal status," said Mark Tolbert, a spokesman for the Census Bureau.
The bureau does not ask questions about legal status. Immigration groups have put the number of illegal immigrants at up to 12 million out of a U.S. population of more than 300 million.
Michigan Republican Rep. Candice Miller has proposed a constitutional amendment specifying that congressional representation "shall be determined by counting the number of persons in each state who are citizens of the United States."
Miller, in reintroducing the amendment last year, said that states with a large number of illegal immigrants are gaining unfair representation in the House. Had her amendment been in place before the 2000 census, Miller said, California would have six fewer seats in the House while New York, Florida and Texas would have one fewer seat. States with fewer undocumented residents, including her own state of Michigan and others such as Kentucky, Pennsylvania and Wisconsin, would have picked up a seat, she said.
The 2008 platform goes on to say that "we urge all who are legally eligible to participate in the census count to do so; at the same time, we urge Congress to specify — and to constitutionally justify — which census questions require a response."
Cecilia Munoz of the National Council of La Raza, an advocacy group for Hispanic Americans, said Sen. John McCain "has a great track record" on immigration issues but is being undercut by his party's positions. "The census language manages to be both unconstitutional and insulting," she said.
Separately, the National Hispanic Leadership Agenda, a nonpartisan coalition of 26 Latino organizations, on Sunday sent McCain a letter saying the GOP platform repudiates McCain's efforts to provide undocumented residents with a path toward legal status. "We urge you to lead your party's platform away from the deportation and detention path that deprives newcomers and the nation of immigrants' positive economic and societal contributions."


TK: It's hard to ignore 12 million people in a Census. Obviously everyone must be counted, but I agree there should be an effort to more accurately determine the legal status of those responding and those who are "enumerated." It is not unreasonable, IMHO, to base representation in the House on the number of legal residents in each state.