The 2020 U.S. census will include questions about citizenship, under a memorandum issued today by Commerce Secretary Wilbur Ross. The directive is opposed by local immigrant advocates, who say it will “have consequences for all” by discouraging participation, resulting in an inaccurate count.
SEPA Mujer executive director Martha Maffei, whose organization received funds to help register Suffolk residents in the 2010 Census and to educate people about the importance of being counted, that she believes this decision will backfire.
“If all people are not counted it will mean that schools, and towns and states will be losing valuable resources and funds,” she said. “Many institutions will be working with numbers that are not real.”
Maffei said she went door-to-door for the 2010 census to educate the immigrant community about the census and even then, she said people were afraid and it was a very difficult job to count them, she said.
“People didn’t want to open their doors, the fear was palpable, they thought the government would take their information and report them, and we had to do significant work to explain that that wasn’t the case,” she said.
By law, information provided to the census cannot be shared with other agencies; however, Maffei said this decision only exacerbates people’s fears.
“It is not only undocumented immigrants, it also people who are here documented that are afraid,” she said.
She also said that the purpose of the census, which is to count people and provide general information about the people living in a country, is being twisted and politicized to attack communities that are more vulnerable.
“There is no benefit from doing this since it will certainly create a situation where we are undercounting people and that means less government and private-sector assistance for all,” she said.
Ross said that in regards to people not responding to the census that “while it is possible this belief is true, there is no information available to determine the number of people who would in fact not respond due to a citizenship question being added, and no one has identified any mechanism for making such a determination.”
Ross also said that a citizenship question was included until 1950 and that the data the question would provide outweighs the concerns.
Several attorneys general, including New York and California, as well as other civil rights advocates and opponents of this decision, say that areas with higher immigrant populations will adversely affected.
Rep. Lee Zeldin (R-Shirley) agrees with Ross and in a response to a tweet from California’s attorney general Xavier Becerra announcing the filing of a suit against the administration, Zeldin said that “it is not illegal to ask an illegal whether they are in the U.S. legally” and that “maybe the California AG will find himself an activist judge somewhere in the court system to agree with this ridiculous lawsuit.”
No…actually it is definitely not illegal to ask an illegal whether they are in the US legally, but maybe the California AG will find himself an activist judge somewhere in the court system to agree with this ridiculous lawsuit. https://t.co/yZC2AxruXs
— Lee Zeldin (@RepLeeZeldin) March 27, 2018
Maffei said that this decision felt like a threat and that the rhetoric used by Conservatives was hurting the country.
“An accurate count of all people is required by the Constitution, this is the responsibility of our government, not to instill fear, we should remember that,” she said.
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