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Census 2020 May Need an Act of Latino Statistical Disobedience

The Angelo Falcon commentary below is from our archives. We reissued it in response to the 
New York Times revelations of the Trump administration’s nefarious, anti-immigrant, and 
unconstitutional reasons for adding the citizen question to the upcoming Census population count. The Times concluded that Trump aides Steve Bannon and Kris Kobach “along with 
Attorney General Jeff Sessions and other members of the Trump administration, have long had a 
deeply anti-immigrant agenda. They’re seeking to redefine and restructure American democracy to preserve their political power at a time when the demographics of this country are changing 
significantly. The census, the independence of the Justice Department and the federal courts, 
voting rights and voting access – these are all core functions of our democracy that are being 
weaponized for a partisan agenda, an agenda born out of deep anti-immigrant, anti-people-of-color sentiment.” (NYTimes, “Why the Government Wants to Know Your Citizenship Status.” August 4, 2018)
 
Given these revelations, Angelo’s advice to commit “statistical disobedience” may be sage advice for Latinos and other immigrant communities.
NiLP Commentary
Prepare (Just in Case) for
a Mass Act of Latino
Statistical Disobedience
for an Accurate 2020 Census!
By Angelo Falcón
The NiLP Report (April 8, 2018)
The 2020 Census is two years away, but the Trump Administration’s last minute forcing of a citizenship question on it has generated a major backlash against it in Latino and other communities of color and progressives. The front line of this backlash are the lawsuits being brought by over 18 states, a movement led by California’s Attorney General Xavier Becerra, and complimented by Congressional legislation by the likes of Nydia Velazquez and Carolyn Maloney of New York.
But what if these efforts fail and the citizenship question winds up appearing on the 2020 Census? Would this mean that the Trump Administration and his Republicans will be able to artificially create an historically high level of a Latino and immigrant undercount that will have all sorts of negative political and economic consequences for these communities? Are these communities powerless to prevent this?
Since my initial reaction to this despicable move by the Trump Administration to weaponized the 2020 Census against our community, I offered three possible options avaulkable to the Latino community in case the lawsuits failed. This generated quite a bit of questions and concerns that I attempt to respond to here.
Inspired by the legacy of the power of civil disobedience of the late Martin Luther King Jr, and having had some substantial experience working with the Census Bureau in their designs of the 1990, 2000, 2010 and forthcoming 2020 Censuses, I can without hesitation point out that Latino and other immigrant and communities of color definitely have the power to do something about this. Based on this experience, I propose a call for a massive act of Latino Statistical Disobedience on the 2020 Census that focuses on making the citizenship question unusable for the evil Trumpean purposes it has been introduced for, while not affecting the rest of the Census and an accurate count of Latino and other communities of color.
This would involve massively lying on the Census by having everyone, whether citizen or non-citizen, answer the citizenship question that they are all citizens by checking off any of the three “Yesd” responses on the question.. If enough people do this, it would render the question unusable by the Trump Administration without affecting the overall count.
But if you do this, aren’t you open to legal repercussions from the Census Bureau? According to their Title 13 of the United States Code, you can be fined or even jailed for either not returning the Census form or falsely answering its questions. As they put it on their website: “Violating the law is a serious federal crime. Anyone who violates this law will face severe penalties, including a federal prison sentence of up to five years, a fine of up to $250,000, or both.” Yikes! However, if there is a massively false response to the single citizenship question in the positive there is no way that the Census Bureau would be able to enforce its Title 13 penalties. First, the Bureau doesn’t have the capacity to do so and has rarely done so in its entire history. Second, there is also a 1970 case where a person in Hawaii who was fined had the courts throw out the case as selective prosecution as part of a broader protest. As I’ve told some reporters, the only person probably liable for such penalities for lying on the 2020 Census would be me for putting all this in writing. Plans for a Free Statistical Objector Angelo Falcón Committeee are in the works just in case!
Now, on the other hand, if you don’t return or answer the Census form or leave a question blank, it is possible that the Census Bureau would send an enumerator to your home to get you to return or complete it. But if you complete the form and answer every question (including lying on the citizenship question), there is no way the Bureau would send anyone to visit you as part of their Nonresponse Follow-Up program, which, by all indications, is being currently underfunded by the Republican Congress and will probably have too few staff to be fully operational in 2020 anyway.
I would also argue that by organizing such a mass campaign of Statistical Disobedience this would create a focus and mission for Latinos that will actually promote greater participation in the 2020 enumeration. Besides the boring bureaucratic Census Bureau appeals (“This is your future. Don’t leave it blank” or “Es nuestro futuro. Hágase contar”), a grassroots Latino Statistical Disobedience campaign would be a call to participate to defend your community (“¡NO Dejes Que Te Tomen de Pendejo”/”Don’t Let Them Take You for a Fool!”!). We tested this approach in the community for the 2000 Census and we found it made a difference.
Why make such a call for Statistical Disobedience for something occurring two years from now? Because it shows how outraged the Latino and other immigrant communities are about the consequences the addition of this Trump citizenship question will have for our people. It is also a way to let it be known that Latinos still have the power to affect change no matter what our enemies do. It is also a way to let the Latino community itself know that it has that power no matter how the Trump forces try to convince us we do not.
I would like to explain the basis of my coming to these conclusions. I and my organization have been involved in assisting the Census Bureau in promoting Latino participation in the 1990, 2000 and 2010 Census at different levels. I, for example, served as the volunteer Chair of the Census Advisory Committee on the Hispanic Population, the last chair of this official panel before it was replaced by the Census National Advisory Committee on Racial, Ethnic and Other Populations, on which I served as a founding member. I was also at one point the Chair of the Steering Committee of the Census Information Centers (CIC) Program, and NiLP has been a Census Information Center for years (they’ll probably throw us out for writing this!).
I notice that,upon hearing my proposal for this Statistical Disobedience against the citizenship question in the 2020 Census, many of our longtime colleagues in promoting Census participation have been so thoroughly indoctrinated by the Census participatory messaging that they are horrified by the thought. But just as the Trump Administration has broken all Census rules by introducing this question the way it has, we on the progressive side also have to be willing to break the rules on behalf of the best interests of our communities. We should start with the tagline, with apologies to the Census marketing people: “This is your future. Lie on the citizenship question and don’t leave it blank”/” Este es tu futuro. Mienta sobre la cuestión de la ciudadanía y no la deje en blanco.” That way le damos la vuelta a la tortilla de Donald Trump!
Of course, the lawsuits or Congressional legislation will hopefully be successful in stopping the eddition of the citizenship question in the 2020 Census and none of this will be necessary. But then, in case not, let’s start organizing right way to stop it ourselves.
Angelo Falcón is President of the National Institute for Latino Policy (NiLP). He can be reached at afalcon@latinopolicy.org.