Santa Ana probably has the most illegals in this state after Lost Angeles.
As usual the priority is money.
~~~

Monday, September 28, 2009
City wants residents, including illegal immigrants, counted
With funding at stake, Santa Ana works to ensure census is accurate.
By DOUG IRVING
The Orange County Register
Comments 53 | Recommend 4

SANTA ANA – With lots of money on the line, community leaders here are planning an all-out push in the next several months to make sure every resident gets counted in the 2010 census.

It won't be easy. The city has large numbers of illegal immigrants, as well as a significant population of homeless people – two groups that have been hard to count in the past.

But the stakes are high for getting it right. The federal government uses census data to help distribute hundreds of billions of dollars to cities every year. Census numbers also help draw the lines for Congressional districts.

City officials, business leaders and community activists have begun working to drum up participation in the census next year. Other cities have formed such "Complete Count Committees," but the demographics of Santa Ana make its task that much more important, committee members said during a kick-off event Monday.

Undocumented immigrants and other hard-to-count people do use some city services, Councilwoman Claudia Alvarez said, and they need to be counted so the city can get all the federal funding it can.

"They use our sidewalks. They use our firefighters, they use our police force," Alvarez said. The city, she said, has to prove through the census that "this is where the money needs to go, because this is where the need is."

The census every 10 years is meant to be a count of everyone living in the United States, citizen and non-citizen alike. The 2010 census questionnaire, which will arrive in mailboxes early next year, has 10 questions on it, such as name, sex and race.

The U.S. Census Bureau has posted a sample questionnaire – in English, Spanish and Vietnamese, among other languages – on its Web site. Go to www.2010census.gov, then click on "Materials."

Federal law prohibits the census from sharing any individual information it collects – even with police or immigration agencies, said Beatriz Fernandez with the Complete Count Committee.

That's a message the city and its committee members will be working to get out in the coming months. On Monday, they talked about going to neighborhood meetings, adopting a snappy census slogan, maybe even hosting a census parade to convince all residents to participate.

"At the end of the day," Alvarez said, "we're going to get stuck with that (census) number for 10 years."

www.ocregister.com