Republican opposition to creating a path to citizenship for undocumented immigrants serves dual political objectives. The imaginary specter of fraudulent voting by undocumented immigrants provides cover for voter suppression initiatives that disenfranchise communities of color who tend to support Democrats. It also ensures that millions of workers in low-wage, exploitable occupations cannot vote to protect their rights—a population that Republicans fear will become Democratic voters.

President Trump lost the popular vote in 2016 by nearly three million votes. He disputed the calculation, claiming that between three and five million votes for Hillary Clinton were cast by undocumented immigrants. In his first year in office, the president founded—and later disbanded—a White House commission charged with identifying voter fraud that came up empty.

With an even larger popular vote loss projected in 2020, he has doubled down on voter suppression tactics that have become part of the GOP playbook in recent cycles. The renewed vigor of these efforts—from attempting to delay the election to defunding the post office—directly hearken to America’s long, sordid history of denying the vote to communities of color. These undemocratic efforts have gained urgency for those who, like the President, are clinging to electoral advantages by uniting and amplifying a shrinking White majority. And they were given new license to pursue these efforts in 2013 when the Supreme Court struck down a key provision of the Voting Rights Act of 1965 in Shelby County v. Holder.

Shelby rolled back federal oversight of states with a history of racial discrimination in voting practices, leading directly to an explosion of new voting restrictions in the states. In fact, 25 states have enacted new voting laws in the last decade, all of which disproportionately and intentionally disenfranchise Americans of color.

To justify these new restrictions, Republicans have frequently relied on scare tactics and baseless arguments about undocumented voter fraud. Although study after study debunk the myth that undocumented immigrants submit unlawful ballots—getting struck by lightning is more common than voter fraud—the claims remain one of the most commonly cited rationales by Republican elected officials for making voting more cumbersome.

For example, a North Dakota law upheld by the Supreme Court requires voters to present an ID with a current residential address before they cast their vote. The measure was justified as a way to prevent unauthorized immigrants from voting, but the address loophole jeopardizes the votes of tens of thousands of Native Americans who live on reservations and use a PO Box—which does not meet the state’s requirement.

Texas also implemented stringent identification laws designed to screen out undocumented voters, but polling locations accept handgun licenses but not student IDs. For context, more than 80 percent of handgun licenses went to White Texans in 2018, and over half of students in the University of Texas system are non-White. Even after a long legal battle, the Texas law stands—although the state now owes $6.8 million in legal fees.

Creating a path to citizenship for the 11 million undocumented immigrants would help gut that flimsy justification and enable millions more (predominantly Black and Brown) American citizens to more easily exercise their right to vote. It would also help neutralize another effort by the Trump Administration and Republican officials to hold on to power: erasing undocumented immigrants from census data.

The Administration first tried to scare undocumented immigrants away from participating in the census by adding a citizenship question and more recently by suggesting we subtract undocumented immigrants from congressional district populations. Census data is used to draw congressional districts and allocate federal resources proportional to the whole population, not just citizens. Although voters choose their representatives, census data determines who is (and is not) represented.

Undercounted communities are underfunded and underrepresented. Black and Latinx communities have always been undercounted, and although there are ways to statistically adjust for these miscounts, the Supreme Court does not allow the adjusted numbers to be used to apportion seats in the House of Representatives. If undocumented immigrants are excluded from the data used for congressional reapportionment in the 2020 census, California, Texas, and Florida will lose House seats to Alabama, Minnesota, and Ohio.

It is no coincidence that the party in power seeks to stifle the voices and rights of those likely to oppose them. But it is antithetical to democracy: every citizen deserves the right to vote and every person, regardless of status, deserves to be counted.

Creating a pathway to citizenship for 11 million undocumented immigrants will not end voter suppression—there is much more work we have to do to secure our fragile democracy—but it would limit the extent to which Republican politicians can scapegoat the undocumented as perpetrators of voter fraud and subsequently justify their actions. Without fearing deportation, newly legal immigrants would also fill out the census in greater numbers and secure fair resources and representation for their communities. And undocumented immigrants who earn citizenship would be given a political voice in a country that has politicized and weaponized their existence for years.