While Sens. David Vitter (R-LA) and Robert Bennett (R-UT) fight to include an amendment in the Commerce, Justice, Science, and Related Agencies Appropriations bill that would require the US Census Bureau to add a question about immigration status to its 2010 survey, hate group spokesperson Phil Kent has added his voice to the mix. Kent, a spokesperson for Americans for Immigration Control (AIC) and board member of its 501(c)(4) arm, was featured in an op-ed debate on the census in the Atlanta Journal Constitution today.

Kent’s general argument echoes that of Vitter, Bennett, and others. In their view, counting undocumented immigrants in the US Census will hurt predominantly Republican states because blue states with large populations of “illegal aliens” will steal their states’ representatives:

That principle [Wesberry v. Sanders] is being shamelessly violated in next year’s census. The Democrat-controlled Congress has abdicated its constitutional responsibility by giving a wink and a nod to the influx of illegal immigrants “concentrating the power” of voters in California, Texas and a few other states where Democrats seek demographic political advantage over Republicans.

The Constitution requires that representation be determined by an indiscriminate population count. That means that those who suggest that we shouldn’t count undocumented immigrants are essentially saying that there’s something wrong with the Constitution and that it should be changed. In the case that Kent cites, Wesberry v. Sanders, the Supreme Court decided that congressional districts have to be approximately equal in population. The majority decision does not draw a distinction between citizens and noncitizens, rather it reemphasizes the Constitution’s original intent of determining the allocation of Congressmen “solely by the number of the State’s inhabitants [emphasis added].”

In her counter op-ed, Afton Branche of the Drum Major Institute (DMI) explains that accurate census data is necessary in order to efficiently distribute federal funding and Community Development Block Grants that benefit all residents. DMI warns that the non-participation of undocumented immigrants could lead to inaccurate demographic information and result in costly mistakes in infrastructure, education, and healthcare planning.

Not only is Kent misguided, he misleads. Kent argues that if “liberal Democrat-dominated California” includes its “6 million illegal aliens,” it will gain a “whopping 57 House members in a newly reapportioned Congress.” However, earlier this year, the Pew Hispanic Research Center pointed out that California is home to about 2.7 million undocumented immigrants, a 22% drop since 1990. The Public Policy Institute of California reports that many immigrants are leaving California, which could cost the state a House seat after the 2010 census is completed. Meanwhile, Kent’s homestate of Georgia has experienced an immigration influx and been identified as a “new immigrant destination.” According to some reports, Georgia is expected to gain a House seat.

Kent’s boss, AIC director John Vinson, claims that America is plagued by “europhobia” — racism that “targets Americans of European descent” and has called for the “secession of the former Confederate states in order to protect the racial purity and economic viability of the white middle class.” His organization cites safeguarding the “the racial and cultural composition of the United States” as one of its primary goals. Phil Kent served in as a press secretary and public affairs advisor to Sen. Strom Thurmond (R-SC).

Looking at the Obama administration’s “seeming unwillingness to pull the trigger on an Iran sanctions package that is already locked and loaded,” New Majority’s Jonathan Schanzer writes “The reason for the president’s ambivalence is clear“:

Gasoline sanctions only have the potential to cause a spike in Iran’s gasoline imports, and possibly weaken the regime. Even if IRPSA hits Iran in the pocketbook, as former Ambassador to the United Nations John Bolton notes, the Mullahs are not likely to change course. If he’s right, the enforcement and subsequent failure of sanctions would only reinforce the notion that military intervention may be the only viable option left.

Obama seems eager to postpone reaching this excruciating conclusion.

I suppose, if one were predisposed toward a US war with Iran, as Schanzer and Bolton clearly are, this would be a plausible explanation for the administration not “pulling the trigger” on new U.S. sanctions. Alternatively, you could actually take seriously what Deputy Secretary of State Jim Steinberg and Treasury Undersecretary Stuart Levey actually said about this in last Tuesday’s hearing of the Senate Banking Committee.

Levey, who has been focused on the Iran sanctions issue since 2004, said that the administration wants to make sure that any sanctions package is “going to affect the decision making in Iran and not target” the population.

And similarly, to make sure that we — that we maximize the chance of getting international support for these things because there is obviously a risk in these things.

And if — if we do not have international support, that there’ll be diversions. There’ll be work-arounds, and the efficacy of the sanctions will not nearly be as effective.

Steinberg affirmed Levey’s view that making the sanctions a multilateral effort was key to making them effective:

I think part of it will be a judgment call as Undersecretary Levey has said about whether there’s a broad international consensus, whether this is seen as the international community taking an action so that it’s not the United States alone singling them out that I think we’ll have an impact on the political dynamic within Iran.

Reuters has a helpful compendium of existing U.S., UN and EU sanctions on Iran. NIAC’s David Elliot analyzed the serious problems with the IRPSA legislation here. It’s worth pointing out that the Obama administration has been doing a far better job than the Bush administration of enforcing and tightening existing sanctions.

There are real concerns whether any new sanctions — multilateral or not — would effectively curb Iran’s nuclear program. The AP reports that sanctions could strengthen Iran’s already powerful Revolutionary Guards Corps (IRGC), whose members have consolidated control over much of Iran’s economy over the last decade. In addition, “much of the smuggling of goods already banned by the U.S. into Iran — as well as alcohol and drugs for the black market — is run with at least implicit approval of the force, experts say. Under sanctions, the underground economy would increase and funnel more money to them.”

At a panel discussion on Capitol Hill earlier this month, Ken Pollack of the Brookings Institution said that he believed that by early next year “what the United States and our allies are going to be looking at is containment,” a long-term process of countering Iranian influence in the region, much as was done against the Soviet Union during the Cold War. “Implicit in the concept of containment, Pollack said “is the idea that there will be a change in regime over time.”

For a small hard-line conservative faction, however, the military option remains the most attractive, which suggests either that they haven’t seriously thought through the consequences of such a strike, or are really just crazy.