To the Teacher:
At the end of 2017, the U.S. Department of Justice requested that the Census Bureau add a question to the 2020 census about the citizenship status of respondents. The issue reemerged in national media a few months later, when the Department of Commerce recommended that the census include a question about citizenship.
Immigrants, human rights advocates, state governments, and former census directors have raised concerns about this move. They have argued that adding a question about citizenship status to the census could make non-citizens and immigrants less willing to participate in the census due to fear of being deported. This would result in a less accurate census count, and it could affect how government resources are distributed to different parts of the country. An undercount of residents in particular neighborhoods, or even in particular cities and states, could shift political power and allocate government less equitably.
Immigrant rights advocates and states with high immigrant populations are appealing to the Census Bureau to remove the question from the 2020 census, and some states are even suing the Bureau to have it do so.
This lesson consists of two readings. The first reading explores the history of the U.S. census and why it is important to the country. The second reading looks at adding a question about citizenship to the census and the controversy that has emerged around this issue. Questions for discussion follow each reading.
Reading One: What is the Census and Why Does the U.S. Conduct It?
The act of taking an official count of the nation’s population (also known as a census) dates back to the earliest days of the United States. While censuses were taken prior to the constitution’s ratification, the first following the American Revolution was conducted in 1790. There have been 22 federal censuses since that time, with one occurring every ten years. Although some questions asked by census-takers have changed over time (reflecting shifts in economics, industry, technology, and values) the purpose of the census has remained constant: As mandated by the constitution, the census is meant to accurately count all residents living in the United States (regardless of their citizenship status).
Once taken, the census is used for many important purposes. The U.S. Census Bureau explains the value of the survey on its website:
Census information affects the numbers of seats your state occupies in the U.S. House of Representatives. And people from many walks of life use census data to advocate for causes, rescue disaster victims, prevent diseases, research markets, locate pools of skilled workers and more.
When you do the math, it's easy to see what an accurate count of residents can do for your community. Better infrastructure. More services. A brighter tomorrow for everyone. In fact, the information the census collects helps to determine how more than $400 billion dollars of federal funding each year is spent on infrastructure and services like:
- Hospitals
- Job training centers
- Schools
- Senior centers
- Bridges, tunnels and other-public works projects
- Emergency services
With both government money and representation hanging in the balance, the census has political implications. As Time Magazine reporter Katy Steinmetz explained in a March 27, 2018 article, the census has long evoked controversy over both the data collected and how the information is used:
Tensions have swirled around the census since it began in 1790. “Whatever the hot-button issue of the time is,” says University of Wisconsin–Milwaukee history professor Margo Anderson, “gets tangled up in the census.” That’s because the regular counting of the population has never been an academic exercise, she says. The census is a basis for deciding how to apportion political power, as well as how to dole out billions in federal funds. “Every 10 years we shuffle the deck,” Anderson says, “and take power away from areas of the country that are not growing as fast as others.”
Some fights about the census are about how and what information is collected. Other snafus are focused on how that information is used once it’s in the U.S. Census Bureau’s filing cabinets. There is dignity in being counted and officially acknowledged by the government, especially for historically marginalized communities, but there is also exposure. “People want to be identified, their characteristics captured and reported,” Anderson says, “but they also don’t want to be targeted.”
Methods of collecting data for the census have often been questioned, particularly when it comes to counting women and people of color. Steinmetz reports: “When the first census was taken, the government wasn’t concerned with counting everyone equally. While enslaved people counted as three-fifths of a person, American Indians weren’t counted at all.”
The questions on the census and how that data is used—whether for the distribution of resources, or recognition of a particular group of people—have resulted in controversy throughout the nation’s history. Given the political power in question, there is likely to be continued controversy over the 2020 census.
For Discussion
- How much of the material in this reading was new to you, and how much was already familiar? Do you have any questions about what you read?
- According to the reading, what is the purpose of the census and how often is it taken?
- What are some of the political implications of the census? What might the numbers it reports be contested or controversial?
- How do you feel about being counted? Do you think it is important that communities of which you are a part are accurately represented in the survey? Why or why not?
Reading Two: Should the Census Ask About Citizenship?
At the end of 2017, the Department of Justice requested that the Census Bureau add a question to the 2020 census about the citizenship status of respondents. The issue reemerged in national media in the spring of 2018, when the Department of Commerce—the body delegated to determine which questions would appear on the census—recommended that the census include a question about citizenship.
Immigrants, human rights advocates, state governments, and former census directors have raised concerns about this move. They have argued that adding a question about citizenship status to the census could make non-citizens and immigrants less willing to participate in the census due to fear of being deported. This would result in a less accurate census count, and it could affect how government resources are distributed to different parts of the country. An undercount of residents in particular neighborhoods, or even in particular cities and states, could shift political power and allocate government less equitably.
Immigrant rights advocates and states with high immigrant populations are appealing to the Census Bureau to remove the question from the 2020 census, and some states are even suing the Bureau to have it do so.
When the Trump administration’s Department of Justice requested that the Census Bureau add a question about citizenship status to the 2020 census, officials argued that they needed more information about the voting age population in order to enforce the Voting Rights Act. Atlantic assistant editor, Priscilla Alvarez reported about the Department of Justice’s rationale for the request in a January 10, 2018 article:
In December, the Department of Justice sent a letter to the Census Bureau asking that it reinstate a question on citizenship to the 2020 census. “This data is critical to the Department’s enforcement of Section 2 of the Voting Rights Act and its important protections against racial discrimination in voting,” the department said in a letter. “To fully enforce those requirements, the Department needs a reliable calculation of the citizen voting-age population in localities where voting rights violations are alleged or suspected.” The request immediately met pushback from census experts, civil-rights advocates, and a handful of Democratic senators, who say that the argument is unfounded and that the timing of the request is irresponsible….
“I think the argument ridiculous. The Justice Department has never needed or asked for that question on the short form of the census before and the enforcement of the Voting Rights Act does not need it,” said Vanita Gupta, the president and CEO of the Leadership Conference on Civil and Human Rights, who ran DOJ’s Civil Rights Division under Obama, referring to the form that is sent to every household. Census experts and civil-rights advocates argue that there’s no justification for asking everyone in the United States about their citizenship status and that doing so could have a crippling effect on participation.
However, some conservatives, including U.S. Rep. Steve King (R-Iowa), have acknowledged another rationale for adding a citizenship question to the census: that determining political representation based on all residents, rather than just U.S. citizens, gives greater voice to states with large immigrant populations. “If 50 percent of the illegal alien population resides in California and we’re not differentiating them in the census and we’re basing apportionment in the census on those figures, then some states are losing representation while others are overrepresented,” Chris Chmielenski, the director of content and activism at anti-immigration group NumbersUSA, told The Atlantic.
Former census directors and two states came out against adding the new question to the census. Given the current climate of anti-immigrant rhetoric and action, many are worried that adding a question about citizenship would lead to a miscount on the 2020 census. New Yorker staff writer Jonathan Blitzer described some of response to the announcement of the new census question in a March 29, 2018 article:
[The] announcement caused an immediate outcry. Six former heads of the Census Bureau wrote to Wilbur Ross, the Commerce Secretary, registering their “deep concern,” and twelve states, including California and New York, said that they plan to sue the federal government over the move. Adding the citizenship question, Eric Schneiderman, the New York Attorney General, said, “will create an environment of fear and distrust in immigrant communities that would make impossible both an accurate census and the fair distribution of federal tax dollars.”
He was reiterating a point that’s been made, repeatedly, by demographers, civil-rights advocates, and current and former government officials. Last November, a researcher at the Census Bureau named Mikelyn Meyers reported that there was an “unprecedented ground swell in confidentiality and data-sharing concerns among immigrants or those who live with immigrants.” In a presentation before the bureau’s National Advisory Committee, she described the panicked responses of immigrants who were afraid to answer survey questions in the current political climate, due to fears about deportation.
“This behavior was an extreme departure from behavior that we have seen in the past,” she said. “This seems to be related to questions of legal residency or the perception that certain groups are not welcome.”
Atlantic editor, Alvarez continued in her January 10, 2018 article, quoting immigrant rights activists’ responses to the proposed new census question, and describing some of the potential consequences of adding a question about immigration status:
Civil-rights and immigrant advocates worry that changes to the census will stunt the progress made in recent years to increase participation among minorities. Arturo Vargas, a member of the National Advisory Committee on Racial, Ethnic, and Other Populations, and the executive director of NALEO Educational Fund, a Latino advocacy group, noted that historically, the biggest challenge for the Census Bureau has been overcoming people’s distrust.
“People are scared of how the federal government is enforcing immigration laws,” Vargas said. “If a citizenship question is added to the decennial census, then this fear people have is going to result in less people wanting to respond to the census, which will produce a very inaccurate census and will actually increase the Census Bureau’s cost and budget to conduct the census.” In cases where the Census Bureau doesn’t receive a response, it has to send enumerators to the address to interview those who haven’t responded—an expensive process.
Respondents’ recent reactions have led the bureau to believe this may be an issue in the 2020 census. Last year, field representatives found that respondents “intentionally provided incomplete or incorrect information about household members” and “seemed visibly nervous.” In one Spanish interview, the respondent said, “The possibility that the Census could give my information to internal security and immigration could come and arrest me for not having documents terrifies me.”
In fact, by law, the Census Bureau cannot provide personal information of any kind to a government agency. But that doesn’t keep people from worrying about it, particularly those who may be undocumented or have mixed-status families.
In the past, census officials have taken pains to inform immigrant communities that census takers were in no way connected to immigration-enforcement authorities, and that participation would pose no danger to community members. However, concern about how the federal government might use personal demographic information about individuals may not be wholly unfounded. Katy Steinmetz, reporter for Time Magazine described a famous example of census data being used to target a particular population—Japanese-Americans during the Second World War—in a March 27, 2018 article:
[A] researcher... discovered evidence that the U.S. Census Bureau gave the U.S. Secret Service information about the whereabouts of some Japanese-Americans during World War II, at a time when many such individuals were being rounded up and put in internment camps. Normally, the bureau is forbidden from releasing data about specific individuals, but legislation passed during wartime suspended those rules.
The Los Angeles Times editorialized that “It would be good to have an accurate count of those living in the country without permission, rather than relying on estimates as is done now. But the purpose of the census isn't to count citizens, but to count people. If adding a question about citizenship status affects the accuracy of the count, then the Census Bureau should stick to its core mission and not add wrinkles that could imperil the reliability of data so crucial to a fundamental piece of American democracy: congressional representation.”
Failing to obtain an accurate count of who is living in the United States with the 2020 census could result in a number of dismaying consequences, and could ultimately affect both political representation and the allocation of government resources. Given ongoing pushback from advocates and lawsuits from California and New York, it is likely that there will continue to be controversy and news around the possibility of a citizenship question on the census.
For Discussion
- How much of the material in this reading was new to you, and how much was already familiar? Do you have any questions about what you read?
- According to the reading, what is the Department of Justice’s rationale for adding a question about citizenship status to the upcoming census? Does that reasoning make sense to you? Why, or why not? What might be other reasons that the Trump administration wishes to add such a question?
- What are some of the concerns that human rights advocated have raised about adding a question about citizenship status to the 2020 census?
- In the past, government officials have aimed for the widest possible participation in the census and have tried to reassure vulnerable communities that participation would in no way put them in danger. What do you think was the rationale behind this practice?
- Adding a citizenship question to the census might result in a less accurate count. What do you think about this? How might having a less precise sense of the U.S. population affect us? Explain your position.
— Research assistance provided by Ryan Leitner.