Latino Statistical Disobedience Against the Census?

NiLP Commentary

Latino Statistical Disobedience?

Countering the Addition of the

Citizenship Question in the 2020 Census

By Angelo Falcón

The NiLP Report (April 4, 2018)

When the Census Bureau presented the questions for the 2020 Census last week to the US Congress including the citizenship question, it generated a majorcontroversy. Understanding the seriouseffects this would have on literally excluding Latino and others from the Census, the reaction has beenwidespread condemnation of this act. More than 20 states and civic groups are suing the Trump Administration, andDemocratic Members of Congress are sponsoring legislation to stop its addition.

However, it these legal and legislative efforts fail and the citizenship question is added to the 2020 Census, there are alternative ways that the affected communities and their allies can counter this clearly racist and political partisan move by the Trump Administration can be countered.

We need to recognize that although participation in the decennial Census is mandatory by law, the process of basically a thoroughly subjective one. There is really no way that the Census Bureau can verify the correctness of your responses. For example, if you are 55 years of age but tell the Census you are actually 39, there is really nothing they can do. If you decide to skip a question, they can make up or “impute” a value to it, but that depends on how reliable the Census is overall based on how others fill out that question.

This nature of the Census, therefore, allows for community-based responses to undermine the cynical use of the citizenship question, but only if there are the result of major national campaigns to do so.

The three options we see to counter the use of this citizenship question in 2020 are:

 It is a shame that we may have to be reduced to implementing these options, but this form of statistical disobedience is justified in response to this outrageous Trump Reign of Immigration Terror.