Vitter pushes for citizenship question on census
October 11, 2009
Vitter pushes for citizenship question on census
U.S. Senate scheduled to continue debating the bill Tuesday
By Deborah Barfield Berry • dberry@gannett.com • October 11, 2009
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WASHINGTON — With the census less than six months away and immigration reform stalled, U.S. Sen. David Vitter proposes requiring that the once-a-decade survey include a question about a person's citizenship.
"Illegal immigration is a very real and significant concern for our country," the Louisiana Republican says in a statement. "In the past, some states have included illegal immigrants during the census, resulting in the allocation of additional congressional seats. We shouldn't let these states be rewarded for skirting our federal laws."
Vitter has proposed an amendment to the Commerce, Justice and Science spending bill that would ban the use of federal funds if the census does not include questions about citizenship or a person's legal status. The 2010 census form, which has only 10 questions, does not ask that.
The Senate is scheduled to continue debating the bill Tuesday.
The census is a constitutionally mandated count every 10 years of people living in the United States. Much is at stake, from the distribution of $400 billion in federal funds to the number of congressional seats a state gets.
The Census Bureau has stepped up efforts to count every person, including spending billions on outreach to minority groups and printing forms in languages from Spanish to Vietnamese. Civil rights groups say they are working hard to ensure immigrants don't fear filling out the forms.
Vitter's amendment contradicts the intent of the census to get an "accurate portrait of America," said Trupania Bonner, executive director of Moving Forward Gulf Coast, which represents residents of Louisiana, Alabama and Mississippi.
"The Vitter amendment is about intimidating individuals. If anybody is here, regardless of how they got here, they should be counted. It's only fair."
Census Director Robert Groves said the legal status of a resident has not been asked since the first count in 1790.
"Everybody has an argument for and against," said Kat Smith, a spokeswoman for the Dallas Regional Census Center, which covers Mississippi and Louisiana. "We are not in the business of enforcing the law. We implement the count as instructed by Congress."
Adding the question now would create a logistical problem since more than 100 million forms are being printed for the start of the count April 1, Groves said.
The citizenship question is included in the American Community Survey, an annual questionnaire that replaces the census long form and that's sent to a sample of the population, said Jill Wilson, a senior research analyst with the Metropolitan Policy Program of the Brookings Institution think tank.
She said Vitter knows the census form isn't going to be changed at this late date. "There's just no way. It's just to make his constituents happy."
Immigrants' advocates agree.
"Vitter is trying to give conservatives in his district the thing that they want. They don't want the undocumented folks to be counted," said Bonner, whose group is based in Slidell.
Others argue that counting illegal immigrants penalizes states with smaller immigrant populations.
While states with large numbers of illegal immigrants are likely to gain congressional seats, others like Louisiana and Mississippi stand to lose seats, said U.S. Sen. Tom Coburn, R-Okla., adding that the Constitution calls for the census to count resident citizens. "It's not about partisan issues. It's about doing what our Constitution says."
Steven Camarota, director of research for the Center for Immigration Studies, a think tank that supports tighter immigration controls, said demographers suspect that 10 million of the estimated 11 million illegal immigrants in the U.S. may respond to the census. "You are going to have Americans losing political representation so we can give political representation to people who aren't even supposed to be in the country."
For example, Camarota said, the inclusion of illegal immigrants in the 2000 census caused four states — Mississippi, Michigan, Indiana and Montana — to lose congressional seats.
Still, he said he doesn't think Vitter's amendment is practical. "Although Vitter is pointing to a fundamental problem, the solution is to enforce the law.
"If you fail to enforce your immigration laws and you tolerate so many illegal immigrants in the country, there are going to be a cascading series of consequences, whether it's (funding for) school or health care or political representation," Camarota said. "Either you fix the problem or shut up about it."
Meanwhile, Montgomery, Ala., Mayor Todd Strange said he is working with census officials to boost the response rate among all the residents living in his city. The question of whether to ask about citizenship "does demand some discussion and healthy debate," he said, adding that the current law doesn't require that. "If that's the rule, we're going to follow it."
http://www.shreveporttimes.com/article/ ... 060/NEWS01
Who's rules of law does Washington follow?
Meanwhile, Montgomery, Ala., Mayor Todd Strange said he is working with census officials to boost the response rate among all the residents living in his city. The question of whether to ask about citizenship "does demand some discussion and healthy debate," he said, adding that the current law doesn't require that. "If that's the rule, we're going to follow it."
We must follow the law in the same way that obama, the house and senate majority members, czars. la raza, seiu and acorn follow the law, because we are afterall a nation of laws. sarcasm.
Illegals populations= high crime and high taxes.
I want to know where illegals live so when my family moves, we can relocate to a place that has a low illegals population.
