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SENATE AMENDMENT WOULD ADD CITIZENSHIP, LEGAL STATUS QUESTION TO 2010 CENSUS
Sponsors hope to exclude undocumented residents
from apportionment counts; Vote set for next week
Census, apportionment, and redistricting could be delayed
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Congress
should not allocate any more funds for the upcoming 2010 decennial
count unless the U.S. Census Bureau adds a question to the census form,
asking respondents to report if they are citizens and legal residents,
according to an amendment offered on the U.S. Senate floor this
week. The sponsors said they believe it is "absolutely crazy" for
the census not to include such questions and for congressional
apportionment to include undocumented residents who live in the United
States.
Sen. David Vitter (R-LA) and Sen. Robert Bennett (R-UT)
made their proposal Wednesday during debate on the Fiscal Year 2010
Commerce, Justice, and Science Appropriations bill (H.R. 2847), which
includes money for the Census Bureau. The $65 billion spending
measure, approved by the Senate Appropriations Committee in July, would
allocate $7.1 billion for Periodic Censuses and Programs, most of which
pays for final census preparations and operations in the fiscal year
that started October 1. The life-cycle cost of the 2010 census is
an estimated $14.3 - $14.7 billion; historically, about half of the
ten-year cost of research, design, testing, preparation, and
implementation is spent in the census year.
Census, apportionment, and redistricting could be delayed: Changing
the content of the questionnaire now is likely to delay implementation
and completion of the census. Sen. Barbara Mikulski (D-MD),
chairwoman of the Senate appropriations subcommittee responsible for
the Commerce Department, noted "the importance of the census being
taken every 10 years" and said the Census Bureau "right now is under
serious duress."
Article I, section 2, of the U.S. Constitution
(as modified by the Fourteenth Amendment) requires a census every ten
years; delaying the count beyond 2010 could violate that
provision. The Census Act (13 U.S.C. §141) sets Census Day as
April 1. The Census Bureau must report the total population
of each state to the President by December 31, 2010 (nine months after
Census Day), for the purpose of reapportioning seats in the U.S. House
of Representatives. The President certifies and delivers the
resulting apportionment to the Clerk of the House in early January of
the year following the census.
The Census Act also
requires the Census Bureau to publish detailed population counts for
each state, for the purpose of congressional redistricting, within a
year after Census Day (e.g. by April 1, 2011); some states also use the
detailed (e.g. block level) census numbers to redraw their state
legislative districts in time for elections in 2011. The new
apportionment and congressional district boundaries take effect for the
2012 elections. Congress failed to reapportion seats in the House
of Representatives only once, following the 1920 census, when the new
data showed a substantial demographic shift from rural to urban
areas. In 1929, Congress enacted a new apportionment law, making
allocation of seats after each census automatic, according to a
mathematical formula, unless Congress expressly rejects the
apportionment by passing a bill.
The Census Act (13 U.S.C.
§141(f)) requires the Census Bureau to submit to Congress, three years
before Census Day (April 1), the topics it will cover in the
census. The bureau must submit the actual questions two years
before Census Day. The lengthy lead time recognizes the need to
field test the questionnaires in a census-like environment during a
Census Dress Rehearsal, which traditionally takes place in the eighth
year of each decade. No member of Congress objected to the
content or question wording when the Census Bureau submitted its
proposal for the 2010 census. Prior to the content submission,
the Census Bureau tested questionnaire wording, formatting, and design
in the field in 2003, 2004, 2005, and 2006.
Printing of more
than 180 million questionnaires is well underway, taking up most of the
nation's printing capacity, according to recent congressional testimony
from Census Director Robert Groves. Census forms are printed in
six languages, including English; there also will be a targeted
replacement questionnaire and bilingual census forms for the first
time. The census count starts in remote Alaska at the end of
January 2010.
In their remarks explaining the amendment,
Sens. Vitter and Bennett suggested that the ongoing American Community
Survey (ACS), which replaced the census long form, already includes
questions that distinguish whether respondents are in the country
legally or not. However, the ACS, implemented nationwide in 2005
and sent to roughly three million addresses a year, only asks
respondents whether they are U.S. citizens and if they were born in the
United States or naturalized; it does not ask for any further
information about legal status.
Promotional materials prepared
for the 2010 census -- including fact sheets; print, television, and
radio advertising; and Census in the Schools information -- highlight
the ten questions on the census form and the slogan, "10 questions, 10
minutes," as well as the absence of any questions on a person's
citizenship or legal status. The Census Bureau has already
prepared assistance guides in 59 languages and instructional materials
for the 1.2 million temporary census workers who will help conduct the
count next spring. Data capture and processing software also were
designed specifically for the 2010 census questionnaire and may have to
be reconfigured or replaced.
Sen. Bennett suggested that the
Census Bureau "could print an extra sheet or an extra card" or an
"errrata sheet" to add the new question on citizenship and legal
status. Sen. Mikulski expressed concern about the simplicity of
"print[ing] one more piece of paper. ... Everything we do that affects
the census at this point presents a logistical and financial challenge
that borders on ... a nightmare."
Constitutionality of excluding non-citizens in question: In
remarks on the Senate floor, Sen. Vitter said, "There are many States
that will lose representation from what they would otherwise have if
illegal aliens are counted in congressional apportionment." He
singled out Indiana, Iowa, Louisiana, Michigan, Mississippi, North
Carolina, Oregon, Pennsylvania, and South Carolina, saying that a vote
against his amendment would be a vote "against the interests of your
State." The senator did not cite a source for his assertion that
these states would gain congressional representation if the census
included a question on legal status and if the apportionment base
subsequently excluded people in the country unlawfully.
A
memorandum prepared last month by the Congressional Research Service
for Rep. Carolyn Maloney (D-NY), a member of the House census oversight
subcommittee, concluded that unauthorized aliens have never been
excluded from the census counts used for apportionment and that the
term "persons" in the Constitution's apportionment clause "is not
limited to 'citizens', as the Framers would have likely used that term
instead had it been their intent."
Sen. Bennett recently
introduced legislation (S. 1688) to require a check-box on the census
form to determine if respondents are U.S. citizens or legal
residents. The senator, whose state lost a seat in Congress after
the 2000 census, called the apportionment process "broken and
unfair." According to most independent apportionment projections,
Utah will most likely regain the fourth congressional seat it lost ten
years ago. (See, for example, analyses by Election Data Services
at http://www.electiondataservices.com/index.php?content=nr09 and Polidata at http://www.polidata.org/census/est008dl.htm.
Both companies are members of the Census Bureau's 2010 Census Advisory
Committee.) The state filed two unsuccessful federal lawsuits
after the last census, challenging the Census Bureau's use of
statistical methods to impute people not directly counted into the
census and the policy of not counting private American citizens, such
as Mormon missionaries, living overseas during the census.
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Census News Briefs and Census News Flashes are prepared by Terri Ann Lowenthal,
an independent legislative and policy consultant specializing in the
census and federal statistics. All views expressed in the News Briefs
are solely those of the author. Please direct questions about the
information in this News Brief/Flash to Ms. Lowenthal at TerriAnn2K@aol.com.
Please feel free to circulate this document to other interested
individuals and organizations. Previous Census News Briefs are posted on The Census Project web site
at www.thecensusproject.org.
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