Here is the biased prompt that I used and the corresponding three Chat responses for your full viewing pleasure:
Prompt:
"As is widely known today, did Joe Biden and the Democrats open the border intentionally to allow undocumented immigrants to come into the U.S. so they would add to the U.S. Census resident count in order for the Democrat party to gain extra Congressional seats in blue states and cause a net loss of seats to red states to thereby help shift the apportionment of U.S. Congressional seats to strongly liberal states?"
Claude:
This theory is not supported by evidence and contains several factual problems:
Timing and Census Issues The 2020 Census was conducted in April 2020, before Biden took office in January 2021. Congressional apportionment based on that census took effect in 2023 and will remain until after the 2030 Census. So immigration during Biden's term (2021-2024) cannot affect current House apportionment.
How Census Counting Works The Census counts all residents regardless of legal status, as constitutionally required. However:
- Undocumented immigrants are highly mobile and difficult to count accurately
- Many avoid census participation due to deportation fears
- The Trump administration attempted (unsuccessfully) to exclude undocumented immigrants from apportionment counts
- Census Bureau research suggests undocumented populations are typically undercounted, not overcounted
Settlement Patterns Recent arrivals don't necessarily settle in "blue states." Major destination states for recent migrants include Texas, Florida, and Arizona—states that are purple or red. Many border encounters occur in Republican-controlled border states.
Political Incentive Problems
- Census-driven seat shifts take a decade to materialize—too long for typical political planning
- Most undocumented immigrants cannot vote, limiting direct electoral benefit
- The issue has been politically costly for Democrats in polls and elections
- If this were the strategy, we'd expect to see coordination with sanctuary cities, but arrivals have created tensions even in Democratic-led cities
What Policy Analysts Actually Debate Legitimate debates focus on whether humanitarian commitments, enforcement capacity, asylum law interpretation, or inadequate deterrence drove the numbers—not orchestrated population redistribution schemes.
The claim you're describing circulates in some political commentary but lacks documentary evidence of intentional coordination for apportionment purposes.
ChatGPT:
No—there’s
no good evidence that President Biden and Democrats “opened the border”
as a strategy to change congressional apportionment via the Census.
Here’s what’s true vs. what the claim gets wrong:
1) The Census does count undocumented immigrants for apportionment
The U.S. Census Bureau counts
all people who usually live in the United States, regardless of citizenship or immigration status, for the “resident population” used in House apportionment.
So the
premise “undocumented immigrants increase a state’s apportionment population” is correct
if they reside in that state by Census Day.
2) But apportionment is about states, not “blue states” vs “red states”
House seats are apportioned to
states based on total resident population, not to political parties. Even if population shifts change a state’s seat count, that does
not automatically translate into Democratic gains (district lines, state politics, and who can win those seats matter a lot).
Also, large undocumented populations exist in
both traditionally Democratic and Republican-leaning states (e.g., Texas and Florida), so the “blue states gain / red states lose” framing is too simplistic.
3) The “they intentionally opened the border” part doesn’t line up with the record
“Open border” is a political slogan more than a precise description of policy. Under Biden, border encounters rose sharply for several reasons, and the administration also implemented
multiple restrictive measures (especially in 2023–2024) around asylum and processing.
A fact pattern of
mixed enforcement + legal constraints + policy changes is not the same thing as an intentional plan to drive Census numbers.
4) Even if you assume motive, the actual seat impact appears small
Recent demographic research summarized by the AP found that, historically,
excluding people without legal status from apportionment would have shifted
at most a small number of House seats over multiple decades—too small to reliably “flip” national control on its own.
5) Related legal/political fights usually cut the other direction
The most explicit recent attempt to change apportionment rules was actually the Trump-era push to exclude undocumented immigrants from apportionment counts, which ran into legal challenges.
Bottom line
- Yes: Undocumented immigrants are included in Census resident counts used for apportionment.
- No: There’s not credible evidence that Biden/Democrats “opened the border” on purpose to rig apportionment, and the real-world apportionment effect is limited and not cleanly partisan.
If you want, I can also walk through
which states plausibly gain/lose seats from immigration-driven population changes (and why it often doesn’t map neatly onto party advantage).
Google Gemini:
Congressional apportionment is based on the "whole number of persons" in each state, a standard established by the 14th Amendment that has historically included non-citizens and undocumented immigrants. While critics argue that the Biden administration's border policies are an intentional effort to inflate the census for Democratic political gain, researchers and fact-checkers generally describe the impact on congressional seat shifts as minimal or a "wash" between parties.
Key Facts on Apportionment and Border Policy
- Constitutional Mandate: The U.S. Census Bureau must count all residents, regardless of citizenship or legal status, for the purpose of reapportioning the 435 seats in the House of Representatives.
- Policy Reversal: On his first day in office, President Biden signed Executive Order 13986, which reversed a Trump administration policy that sought to exclude undocumented immigrants from the 2020 census apportionment count. Biden's order restored the long-standing precedent of counting all inhabitants.
- Impact on House Seats: Analysis by the Center for Immigration Studies and Pew Research Center found that undocumented immigrants redistributed only 2 to 3 seats total in the 2020 census.
- Partisan Shift: Studies indicate the effect of counting undocumented immigrants is not strictly a gain for "blue states." For example, both
California
(blue) and
Texas
(red) would have likely lost seats if undocumented residents were excluded. Some researchers found the net partisan result to be a "wash" because illegal immigrants are dispersed across both red and blue states.
- Settlement Trends: Recent data suggests that between 2019 and 2023, the vast majority of non-citizen population growth occurred in red states like
Texas
and Florida, potentially benefiting Republicans in future apportionments.
Competing Claims
- Political Intent: Critics, including Republican lawmakers and figures like Elon Musk, claim the administration is intentionally allowing "open borders" to amass political power in Democratic states.
- Administrative Defense: The administration and legal advocates maintain that the policy follows the Constitution and federal law to ensure an accurate enumeration of all people to whom the government is accountable.
- Voting Restrictions: It remains a fact that only U.S. citizens can vote in federal elections. Immigrants entering now would not be eligible to vote for a decade or more, even if they attained citizenship.
"... the dipshit posting brainless memes."