Supreme Court to hear case on plan to add citizenship question to 2020 Census

Supreme Court to hear case on Trump administration plan to add citizenship question to 2020 Census

Richard Wolf, USA TODAY
Published 2:25 p.m. ET Nov. 16, 2018 | Updated 3:55 p.m. ET Nov. 16, 2018

The White House says the decision to include a citizenship question in the 2020 U.S. Census was not made in the West Wing. Press secretary Sarah Sanders says the White House "supports" the decision but it "was made at the department level." (March 27) AP

https://www.gannett-cdn.com/presto/2...unds&auto=webp
(Photo: Manuel Balce Ceneta, AP)


WASHINGTON – The Supreme Court agreed Friday to weigh in on the dispute over the Trump administration's plan to add a question about citizenship to the 2020 Census.

The issue that will come before the justices in February is what evidence can be considered in a challenge mounted by state and local governments and immigrant rights groups. They want to expose the decision-making process, while the administration has argued that's irrelevant.

The court's decisions on the matter could affect the political and financial clout of immigrant communities for the next decade. What's at stake is an accurate count of immigrants in the Census, including non-citizens. Challengers fear a citizenship question could prompt many to avoid being counted.

That, in turn, could cause parts of the country with large percentages of immigrants – mostly in states dominated by Democrats – to be undercounted. That could result in a loss of federal funds and, potentially, seats in Congress.

The overall battle is not what will come before the Supreme Court at oral argument Feb. 19. Instead, the justices only agreed to hear the dispute over what evidence can be considered.

The justices already had refused the Trump administration's request to delay an ongoing federal court trial in New York over the Commerce Department plan. The high court's decision to take on the dispute could delay a ruling in that case.

The court had given both sides a partial victory earlier, when it said Commerce Secretary Wilbur Ross did not have to give a deposition concerning his decision-making process before the trial, but other federal officials could be questioned out of court.

Ross announced the addition of the citizenship question in March, but it has been tied up in court ever since. The government has not asked about individuals' citizenship on the Census since 1950.

Opponents, including California, New York, the American Civil Liberties Union and immigration rights groups, contend fears of deportation among undocumented immigrants will cause them to be undercounted.

That could have two detrimental effects in immigrant communities. Areas with large immigrant populations, which tend to be urban and vote Democratic, could lose seats in the House of Representatives. They also could lose federal, state and local funds used for public works and social service projects.

Ross initially said the Justice Department wanted to reinstate the citizenship question as a means of enforcing the Voting Rights Act. It was later revealed that he made the decision himself and asked Justice Department officials to back him up, despite their reluctance.

The government recently acknowledged in court papers "for the sake of completeness" that Ross discussed the plan with Attorney General Jeff Sessions, former White House strategist Steve Bannon, and Kansas Secretary of State Kris Kobach, a leading proponent of crackdowns on alleged voter fraud.

https://www.usatoday.com/story/news/...on/2026725002/

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Ross initially said the Justice Department wanted to reinstate the citizenship question as a means of enforcing the Voting Rights Act. It was later revealed that he made the decision himself and asked Justice Department officials to back him up, despite their reluctance.

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:)

Yes, Wilbur, I knew it was you and not the DOJ. It should have come from the DOJ, and boy did they stand up and crow for credit when it went public, but I knew it was you. Most of everything has come from Trump and his Team Members like you, no matter how they might present it to share the glory of fixing our country. Good Job, Wilbur, and I hope you win the case, and if DOJ does their job, you should win it in court.

Now go after the IRS for distributing refunds to illegal aliens!

No illegal alien shall collect ANY government benefits on behalf of a US citizen...whether that citizen is a minor or otherwise!

The illegal parent IS the guardian and custodian of their minor child. Deport the whole family.

Their countries laws state if they give birth on foreign soil...then that child IS a citizen of their country.

BOOT THE WHOLE FAMILY OUT! GET THEM OFF IRS TAX REFUNDS, HEALTHCARE, SCHOOL, WELFARE AND FOOD STAMPS!

DOJ Pushes For “Citizenship” Question On 2020 Census

December 30, 2017 Idiocracy, Immigration

ProPublica reports:

The Justice Department is pushing for a question on citizenship to be added to the 2020 census, a move that observers say could depress participation by immigrants who fear that the government could use the information against them. That, in turn, could have potentially large ripple effects for everything the once-a-decade census determines — from how congressional seats are distributed around the country to where hundreds of billions of federal dollars are spent.

The DOJ made the request in a previously unreported letter, dated Dec. 12 and obtained by ProPublica, from DOJ official Arthur Gary to the top official at the Census Bureau, which is part of the Commerce Department. The letter argues that the DOJ needs better citizenship data to better enforce the Voting Rights Act “and its important protections against racial discrimination in voting.”

A Census Bureau spokesperson confirmed the agency received the letter and said the “request will go through the well-established process that any potential question would go through.” The DOJ declined to comment and the White House did not respond to a request for comment.

“People are not going to come out to be counted because they’re going to be fearful the information would be used for negative purposes,” said Steve Jost, a former top bureau official during the 2010 census. “This line about enforcing voting rights is a new and scary twist.” He noted that since the first census in 1790, the goal has been to count everyone in the country, not just citizens.

https://pbs.twimg.com/profile_images...I-9_normal.pngRep. Lucille Roybal-Allard
✔@RepRoybalAllard

We must count every single US resident in the next census and EVERY census. Adding a citizenship question likely reduces response and puts an accurate count out of reach. #CountEveryone https://www.huffingtonpost.com/entry/trump-justice-department-pushes-for-citizenship-question-on-census-alarming-experts_us_5a46fc79e4b0b0e5a7a68d3d …

23
11:34 AM - Dec 30, 2017
Twitter Ads info and privacy

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Trump Justice Department Pushes For Citizenship Question On Census, Alarming Experts

“This is a recipe for sabotaging the census."
huffingtonpost.com


https://www.joemygod.com/2017/12/doj...on-2020-census

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The DOJ made the request in a previously unreported letter, dated Dec. 12 and obtained by ProPublica, from DOJ official Arthur Gary to the top official at the Census Bureau, which is part of the Commerce Department.

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Wilbur Ross is in charge of the Commerce Department. So according to the above, the original letter concerning the immigrant census question came from a DOJ official and was sent to the Census Bureau, which is a part of Wilbur Ross' Commerce Department.

Don't really know the details, just reporting what the article I posted is reporting.

Whatever the case, it was the Department of Justice that pushed for the question and has to support the case in court.

Not really sure why it is important where the request originated from. Either way, I haven't seen anyone going out of their way to "crow" about it.

Someone from DOJ leaked it to the press to get headlines about it, that's crowing, otherwise one would remain silent and do their jobs, like Wilbur did. Wilbur is such a class act.

Two Census Bureau Memos Dealing with Citizenship on the 2020 Census

By Steven A. Camarota on June 23, 2018

https://cis.org/sites/default/files/...20Census_0.jpg

Recently CNN and other news outlets reported on two memos prepared by the Census Bureau for Commence Secretary Wilbur Ross dealing with the possible inclusion of a citizenship question on the 2020 census.

Apparently the memos, and a great deal of related information, were leaked to the media in anticipation of a House hearing on the matter.

The first, much longer memo is dated January 18, 2018, and the second is dated March 1. Both are from John Abowd, chief scientist and associate director for research and methodology at the Census Bureau. Presumably he and perhaps several of his employees wrote the documents. It is clear that the memos' author(s) really do not like the idea of adding a citizenship question to the Census.

(In the discussion below I will use the page numbers on the lower right of the combined 1,332-page document)

The January 18 memo has basically three conclusions: 1) Adding a citizenship question would increase the need for non-response follow-up (NRFU); 2) the increase in NRFU would add to the cost of the census; and 3) matching administrative data to the census would produce more accurate results than adding a citizenship question. The memo states that adding the question would be "very costly", would harm "the quality of the Census count", and produce "substantially less accurate citizenship data" than the alternative of using administrative data (p. 001277).

However, the above conclusion seems unjustifiably unequivocal relative to the actual analysis in the memo. In fact, relative to the overall budget and scale of the 2020 census, the costs and administrative burden discussed in the memo seem almost trivial. Moreover, the memos do not really explain in much detail how shortcomings in administrative data, primarily that of the Social Security Administration and IRS, will be entirely overcome. It is also worth adding that while the memo argues that adding the question would increase the need for follow-up in some households by Census enumerators, it does not clearly state that the inclusion of the question would increase the size of the undercount — which is the central contention of many of those who oppose the question.

The decision to add a citizenship question started with a December 12, 2017, request from the U.S. Department of Justice (DOJ) to the Department of Commerce, which supervises the census, to add a citizenship question back into the census for 2020. The stated purpose of the question was to provide local-level citizenship data to better enforce the Voting Right Act.

When the Department of Commerce announced on March 26, 2018, that it was going to include the citizenship question currently used in the American Community Survey (ACS) in the 2020 census, it made clear it had considered three options in response to the DOJ request: A) do nothing; B) include a citizenship question; or C) use administrative data to estimate citizenship at the local level. The two leaked memos, which were of course issued before the March 26 decision and designed to inform it, make the case that Option C (using administrative data) would be the best choice. The second memo actually considers an Option D, combining administrative data as well as asking about citizenship to fill in the gap, which the memo argues would be costly and not produce better data.

The key finding of the first memo is that the 2016 ACS shows that 9.8 percent or 12.3 million households have at least one noncitizen. Based on self-response rates in the 2010 ACS relative to the 2010 census, which had no citizenship question, the memo estimates there will be a 5.1 percent increase in the number of non-citizen households that will require non-response follow up (NRFU). This estimate is based on the idea that while the self-response rate analysis showed that both citizen and noncitizen households had lower response rates to the 2010 ACS than the 2010 census, the self-response rate for noncitizen households was 5.1 percent lower (p. 001280). This means that the number of households requiring NRFU will increase by 0.5 percent (one-half of 1 percent) — 5.1 percent times 9.8 percent (p. 001282).

This may be correct, but it is important to keep in mind that the Bureau did not conduct any new research to create this estimate; it simply compared the census from nearly a decade ago to the ACS at that time. It is not clear that this is an apt comparison. The 2010 ACS was much longer, creating much more respondent burden than will the 2020 census with the citizenship question added. Moreover, the decennial census in 2020 will benefit from large-scale advertising about the importance of taking part in the census. In contrast, in 2010 most Americans had not even heard of the ACS or appreciated its value. The same is true today. Therefore, it is not at all clear that the 2020 census with just one additional citizenship question will follow the pattern of the ACS from a decade ago.

Even if one assumes that there will be a 0.5 percent increase in NRFU, which the memo argues is a conservative estimate, the effect still seems quite small in the context of the overall size of the decennial census. According to the first Census Bureau memo, a 0.5 percent increase in NRFU would only amount to about one additional household interview per enumerator (p. 001291). The impact on costs seems equally modest. The memo estimates that for the 2020 census, a one percentage-point increase in NRFU cases would raise costs by $55 million. Therefore the 0.5 percent increase in NRFU due to the citizenship question would raise costs by $27.5 million (p. 001282).

While this is real money, it is only equal to one-fifth of one percent (0.2 percent) of the 2020 census's expected budget of $15.6 billion. Even if non-response rates double, the increase in costs would still only be one-third of a percent (.35 percent). Given the enormous size and expenditures associated with the 2020 census, it is hard to argue that adding a citizenship question is prohibitively expensive based on these estimates.

The first memo argues that Option C, using administrative data to create block-level citizenship data, is the best way to comply with the Justice Department request for local-level data. The argument is that administrative data has fewer errors than survey data, as it is common for respondents to misstate their citizenship. The memo states that in, "no less than 23.8% of the cases, and often more than 30%" of cases when a person who the administrative data indicates is a non-citizen, the 2000 census, 2010 census, and 2016 ACS, showed they had reported they were U.S. citizens (p. 001283). Of course, only about 7 percent to 8 percent of the total population are non-citizens, so even if 30 percent misreported their citizenship it would still only equal something like 2 percent to 3 percent of the total population. Moreover, the memo states that the ACS and 2000 long-form census data do "have more complete coverage of citizenship than administrative record data." According to the memo, citizenship information is missing in 10.9 percent of the administrative records and 6.3 percent of the records in the 2016 ACS (001284). As for costs, it does seem clear that using administrative data would be the much cheaper option. The bureau estimates that doing so would cost between $500,000 and $2 million (p. 001285).

The second memo included with the package of items released to the media responds to a request from Secretary Ross to explore the idea of combining Option B (including the question on the census) with Option C (using administrative data). This is referred to as Option D in the second memo. The option involves creating a comprehensive citizenship list from the 2020 census with a citizenship question combined with administrative data. This list of citizens would then be continually updated from administrative data. For reasons that are not clear, the citizenship question would be dropped from future ACS surveys or decennial censuses. This second memo is largely devoted, again, to making the case for Option C.

The second memo, more so than the first, does run through the many weaknesses of administrative data. For example, many people do not have Social Security numbers and an unknown number of naturalized citizens do not inform the Social Security Administration that they have become citizens. But as is argued in the first memo, the Bureau hopes to get access to immigration records from USCIS to solve at least some of this problem, though the memo discusses some of the known problems with USCIS. Given the traditional problems associated with immigration statistics, it seems almost certain there will be unforeseen gaps in the data if the Census Bureau attempts to use those statistics to help estimate citizenship.

The second memo's most important argument is that non-citizens who are also not LPRs and do not have an SSN or ITIN have a "strong incentive to provide an incorrect answer, if they answer at all." (p. 001311.) This, of course, is simply a recognition that some large share of illegal immigrants may not answer a citizenship question truthfully, may leave the question blank, or may simply refuse to answer the census. As a result, those whose citizenship information is missing from the administrative data are also the people most likely to lie or not answer the question in a census.

This is certainly a reasonable point, but the extent of the problem is far from clear. We know from the Survey of Income and Program Participation (SIPP) that a large share of illegal immigrants are willing to respond in the survey that they did not enter as LPRs and are still not LPRs at the time of the survey. The data is considered so good that this analysis and this analysis both use information from this Census Bureau survey to help estimate the size and characteristics of the illegal immigrant population. Contrary to the assertion in the second Census Bureau memo, it seems at least likely that a citizenship question in the 2020 census could augment information coming from administrative data. Though, to be sure, it would not solve all the problems.

The two Census memos released by the media certainly provide much useful information and analysis. They are well worth reading. But they do not seem to make a particularly strong case for not asking a citizenship question in the 2020 Census. To be sure, there are costs to doing so and some risk that it might reduce response rates. But the costs and risk seem manageable, and the information such a question would provide would be valuable. Secretary Ross considered all these issues in his memo outlining the decision to add a citizenship question to the 2020 census. At this point, Ross's decision seems like sound one.

https://cis.org/Camarota/Two-Census-...ip-2020-Census

Cut off the freebies, no school, no medical care, no welfare, no food stamps, no anchor baby.

Make them self deport!

Jail the owners of businesses who hire them!

Not to get off topic, but Wilbur Ross is a swamp gator, proven liar and alleged crook. He's a greedy globalist.

Judge bars citizenship question from 2020 Census

Including foreign citizens, who live here illegally, in our Census is collusion with foreign nations influencing our voting process and Electoral College system.

Supreme Court agrees to rule quickly on citizenship question on census