Tag Archives: American Community Survey

The Census Question

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As the Supreme Court deliberates on whether or not people living in America should be asked if they are citizens, Michelle Malkin provides some perspective on the issue at The Jewish World Review.

In an article posted yesterday, Michelle Malkin notes:

On Tuesday, the U.S. Supreme Court heard arguments on whether the Trump administration can include a citizenship question on the high-stakes 2020 Census questionnaire. Thank goodness, the conservative majority indicated support for allowing it. There’s already such a question on the annual American Community Survey administered by the Census Bureau. It was asked in long-form questionnaires sent to a sample of households in 2000. And it was regularly asked in historical census forms from 1820-1950.

…Remember: The Census is used to divvy up seats in the House as a proportion of their population based on the head count. The redistribution of power extends to presidential elections because the Electoral College is pegged to the size of congressional delegations. More people equal more seats. More illegal immigrants equal more power. Indeed, the Center for Immigration Studies determined that in the 2000 election cycle, the presence of noncitizens (illegal immigrants, temporary visitors and green card holders) caused nine seats in the House to switch hands. California added six seats it would not have had otherwise. Texas, New York and Florida each gained a seat. Indiana, Michigan, Mississippi, Oklahoma, Pennsylvania and Wisconsin each lost a seat. Montana, Kentucky and Utah each failed to secure a seat they would otherwise have gained.

Our Founding Fathers explicitly warned against the perils of foreigners manipulating representation by overwhelming the country. Immigration scholar and author Daniel Horowitz points to Supreme Court Justice Joseph Story’s prophetic admonition: “If aliens might be admitted indiscriminately to enjoy all the rights of citizens at the will of a single state, the Union might itself be endangered by an influx of foreigners, hostile to its institutions, ignorant of its powers, and incapable of a due estimate of its privileges.”

The article reminds us:

During the last census under President Barack Obama, with $300 billion in federal funding at stake, social justice groups from Soros-funded ACORN to Soros-funded Voto Latino to the Soros-allied SEIU were enlisted to count heads and help noncitizens feel “safe.”

The Census boondoggle has become a tax-subsidized national future Democratic voter outreach drive. Soros’ operations, along with 77 other liberal foundations, have invested $30 million to make illegal immigrants count. The Open Society Institute’s grantees and partners on coopting the Census for Democrat gains include the Southern Coalition for Social Justice, Miami Workers Center, Mexican American Legal Defense and Educational Fund, Southwest Workers Union, New York Community Trust, New York Foundation, Center for American Progress, People for the American Way and the Funders Census Initiative. A recently leaked internal board document revealed that the Soros network has coordinated efforts for the past four years to “influence appropriations for the Census Bureau” and add new racial and ethnic categories.

There is no logical reason to avoid asking people living in America if they are citizens. If they are citizens, they are entitled to be represented in our government. If they are not citizens and they want to be represented, they need to become citizens to obtain that representation. Fix the immigration process to make it easier for people who want to contribute to America to become citizens. Meanwhile, our government needs to represent Americans.

Unintended Or Intended Consequences?

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On Friday, Christian Adams posted an article at PJ Media about the proposed change to the census questions. The proposal is to add a question to the U.S. Census asking the person filling out the census about their citizenship status.

An article posted at The Washington Examiner on March 28 details some of the history of the question.

The article reports:

When the census switched to sending out two different census forms, the short form and the long form, the long form (which went to one out of every six households) contained a citizenship question as demonstrated by the 2000 form.

The long form was discontinued after the 2000 census and replaced with the American Community Survey. The U.S. Census Bureau sends out the ACS “on a rotating basis through the decade,” but it goes to only one in 38 households, according to the Census Bureau, which uses it to provide only “estimates of demographic” characteristics. It contains a citizenship question — which neither Holder nor Becerra has ever complained about. Holder certainly did not act to stop its use when he was the attorney general. But using the very limited ACS data is problematical because it is “extrapolated based on sample surveys,” according to Kelley.

The Commerce Department consulted with so-called “stakeholders” who opposed adding the citizenship question before it made its decision. As Kelly pointed out, however, many of the opponents did not know “that the question had been asked in some form or another for nearly 200 years.” They were also apparently not aware of the accuracy problems with the very limited ACS survey.

So what is the impact of asking the question? PJ Media notes:

In many urban areas, blacks compete with Hispanics for local office, particularly in Democratic Party primaries. Miami, Houston, Dallas, Los Angeles, San Francisco, New York City, and Chicago are places where local Democratic Party politics have deep African-American and Hispanic constituencies. In November, they are rock-solid Democrat voters to defeat Republicans. But in primaries, they often compete.

More importantly, the two groups also compete in line-drawing exercises, where districts are created for school board, county council, statehouse, and Congress. Racial line-drawing — an exercise compelled by the Voting Rights Act whether you like it or not — is reality. Racial line-drawing relies on census data, and each district must have essentially equal population under existing law.

This line drawing counts non-citizen Hispanics to generate Hispanic-majority districts with the minimum total population (citizen and non-citizen combined). But blacks have to ride in the back of the redistricting bus, because they are almost all citizens.

So in essence, the citizenship question on the census restores representation to the black community in places where there are large numbers of non-citizens. That alone is a really good reason to return the question to the census.