A fact check on North Carolina politics is long overdue. This week, we’re examining a claim made by Guilford County Republican State Representative John Blust. Blust said that the census count of illegal immigrants in the United States had benefited Democrats more than Republicans during a June discussion over an immigration-related bill.
I’m now joined by Paul Specht from WRAL for more.
Terry Marshall:Therefore, this claim involves some numbers, which we will discuss in a moment. First, whose immigration-related measure in the General Assembly of North Carolina led Blust to make this assertion?
Paul Specht:The legislation is called the North Carolina Border Protection Act, and Democratic Governor Josh Stein has already vetoed it. His veto is being overridden. They have already taken that action in the Senate, and the House has not yet voted on an override. In essence, it would mandate that state and local government organizations assist in identifying those who are receiving assistance while in the country illegally.
Terry:Blust stated that he read during the bill’s debate, “The Republican majority would be 27 seats in the Congress instead of three because they count illegal aliens in the census.” He addressed his claim in an email in response to your question about what he meant. “I’ve read that Democrats have 24 more seats than they would have if illegal aliens were not counted in the census,” he wrote in the email. What is he discussing there?
Specht: It goes without saying that the census, which takes place every ten years, includes all people, regardless of their immigration status. The number of seats each state receives in Congress is then determined in part by those figures. He is arguing that Democrats hold 24 more seats in the 435-member House than they would otherwise have because people who are in the country illegally are included in this process and because they reside in blue districts, according to Rep. Blust.
Terry:Are there any statistics demonstrating that illegal immigrants favor Republicans or Democrats?
Specht: There are many various estimates because the government does not have a definitive figure for the number of people in the United States who are not authorized to be there. There are as many as 18 or 20 million, according to some groups. These estimates are regarded as outliers. Between 10 and 12 million people are in the United States illegally, according to the more reliable statistics.
Next, we examine their location. They are found in states that lean more Democratic, according to certain surveys. Other others think they live in states that tilt more Republican. In reality, according to the libertarian think tank Cato Institute, red states acquired much more noncitizens than blue states between 2019 and 2023. Stated differently, the red states gained more from immigration than the blue states. However, we were unable to locate any research that indicated a 24 seat swing due to illegal immigration alone.
Terry:How would you rank Republican state representative John Blust’s assertion?
Specht: We examined think tanks from the left and right sides of the spectrum and determined that it was untrue owing to a lack of proof.
The Center for Immigration Studies provided us with the information that most closely matched what Rep. Blust stated. They are rather right-leaning because they prefer fewer immigrants, yet even their report refuted Blust’s assertion. They claimed that in 2020, noncitizens—regardless of their immigration status—generated a net gain of 14 additional seats for states that lean Democratic. Still, that isn’t the 24 that Blust stated. And that included not just those who were here illegally, but also non-citizens. That was the closest we could get to an estimate that would back up Blust’s assertion, and even that was far from sufficient.
PolitiFact and WRAL collaborated to create these fact checks, which air on Morning Edition every Wednesday.
