Report: Trumps citizenship question in 2020 census could undercount 24 million people

[babylonsister]

https://thinkprogress.org/census-citizenship-immigrants-undercounting-a7cfc854b8d6/

Report: Trump’s citizenship question in 2020 census could undercount 24 million people
Immigrant families are nervous. States could lose billions of dollars. So why are we asking about citizenship?
Amanda Michelle Gomez
Mar 30, 2018, 11:34 am


A new 2020 decennial census policy means some 24.3 million people could skip answering the critical form if they believe their names and other personal information could be shared with law enforcement, according to a Brookings Institute analysis released Friday.

Commerce Secretary Wilbur Ross announced late Monday that it will restore a question about citizenship to the 2020 census questionnaire, at the behest of the Department of Justice (DOJ) and Attorney General Jeff Sessions.

“In so doing, Ross and Sessions explicitly tied the collection of 2020 Census information to federal law enforcement,” says Brookings’s Robert Shapiro. “That’s what makes his directive so remarkable and so dangerous.”

Federal law, specifically Title 13 of the federal code, requires census information be kept confidential, meaning neither the DOJ nor the Department of Homeland Security can access this information. During World War II, the Bureau did give Secret Service the names and addresses of some Japanese-Americans, which was used to help the military relocate them to internment camps. But in 1978, the law was changed and now prohibits the Census Bureau from sharing this data with other government agencies.

Shapiro, who was the Under Secretary of Commerce overseeing the 2000 decennial Census, noted in his analysis that even in an instance where a respondent threatened President Bill Clinton’s life in their census form, the Bureau did not provide this information to the Secret Service.

“But most Americans have never heard of Title 13,” says Shapiro. For that reason, millions of people — who are either undocumented, have a loved one who is undocumented, or are just members of groups who have been given cause to be fearful under this administration — could skip answering the decennial census this time around. Plenty of people are already nervous, which the Bureau knows all too well.

“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,” one respondent told Mikelyn Meyers, a researcher at the Census Bureau, last year. Another told Meyers, “Particularly with our current political climate, the Latino community will not sign up because they will think that Census will pass their information on and people can come looking for them.”

more...

https://thinkprogress.org/census-citizenship-immigrants-undercounting-a7cfc854b8d6/

[flibbitygiblets]

1. So they can not only round up the immigrants, but underserve their communities as well!

Do these fascists ever run out of evil ideas?

[ProudLib72]

2. This is why the mid-terms are VERY important

We have to stop him NOW so he isn't able to pull stunts like these that screw over millions of Americans.