The executive action I am taking today will ensure that the Department will have access to all available records in time for use in conjunction with the census.
Therefore, to eliminate delays and uncertainty, and to resolve any doubt about the duty of agencies to share data promptly with the Department, I am hereby ordering all agencies to share information requested by the Department to the maximum extent permissible under law.
Access to the additional data identified in section 3 of this order will ensure that administrative records provide more accurate and complete citizenship data than was previously available.
I am also ordering the establishment of an interagency working group to improve access to administrative records, with a goal of making available to the Department administrative records showing citizenship data for 100 percent of the population. And I am ordering the Secretary of Commerce to consider mechanisms for ensuring that the Department’s existing data-gathering efforts expand the collection of citizenship data in the future.
Finally, I am directing the Department to strengthen its efforts, consistent with law, to obtain State administrative records concerning citizenship.
Ensuring that the Department has available the best data on citizenship that administrative records can provide, consistent with law, is important for multiple reasons, including the following.
First, data on the number of citizens and aliens in the country is needed to help us understand the effects of immigration on our country and to inform policymakers considering basic decisions about immigration policy. The Census Bureau has long maintained that citizenship data is one of the statistics that is “essential for agencies and policy makers setting and evaluating immigration policies and laws.”
Today, an accurate understanding of the number of citizens and the number of aliens in the country is central to any effort to reevaluate immigration policy. The United States has not fundamentally restructured its immigration system since 1965. I have explained many times that our outdated immigration laws no longer meet contemporary needs. My Administration is committed to modernizing immigration laws and policies, but the effort to undertake any fundamental reevaluation of immigration policy is hampered when we do not have the most complete data about the number of citizens and non-citizens in the country. If we are to undertake a genuine overhaul of our immigration laws and evaluate policies for encouraging the assimilation of immigrants, one of the basic informational building blocks we should know is how many non-citizens there are in the country.
Second, the lack of complete data on numbers of citizens and aliens hinders the Federal Government’s ability to implement specific programs and to evaluate policy proposals for changes in those programs. For example, the lack of such data limits our ability to evaluate policies concerning certain public benefits programs. It remains the immigration policy of the United States, as embodied in statutes passed by the Congress, that “aliens within the Nation’s borders [should] not depend on public resources to meet their needs, but rather rely on their own capabilities and the resources of their families, their sponsors, and private organizations” and that “the availability of public benefits [should] not constitute an incentive for immigration to the United States” (8 U.S.C. 1601(2)). The Congress has identified compelling Government interests in restricting public benefits “in order to assure that aliens be self-reliant in accordance with national immigration policy” and “to remove the incentive for illegal immigration provided by the availability of public benefits” (8 U.S.C. 1601(5), (6)).
Accordingly, aliens are restricted from eligibility for many public benefits. With limited exceptions, aliens are ineligible to receive supplemental security income or food stamps (8 U.S.C. 1612(a)). Aliens who are “qualified aliens”—that is, lawful permanent residents, persons granted asylum, and certain
