Politico
By Brent D. Griffiths and Andrew Restuccia
March 26, 2018
The 2020 U.S. Census will include a controversial question about citizenship status, the Commerce Department announced Monday night, a move that sparked outrage from Congressional Democrats, civil rights groups and liberal state attorneys general.
A spokeswoman for California Attorney General Xavier Becerra said the state will be suing the administration immediately. Before the announcement, Becerra and California Secretary of State Alex Padilla wrote in an op-ed that including a citizenship question would be “illegal.”
“The Trump administration is threatening to derail the integrity of the census by seeking to add a question relating to citizenship to the 2020 census questionnaire,” the pair wrote in an op-ed in the San Francisco Chronicle. “Innocuous at first blush, its effect would be truly insidious. It would discourage noncitizens and their citizen family members from responding to the census, resulting in a less accurate population count.”
Eric Holder, who served as attorney general under President Barack Obama, also threatened to sue.
“We will litigate to stop the Administration from moving forward with this irresponsible decision,” said Holder, who is now chairman of the National Democratic Redistricting Committee. “The addition of a citizenship question to the census questionnaire is a direct attack on our representative democracy.“
Critics have warned the administration against including the question because they fear it would result in a massive drop in response rates from immigrants who worry the information could be used to deport them.
According to the statement from the Commerce Department, having such data will “permit more effective enforcement” of the Voting Rights Act. Monday’s announcement comes just days before the March 31 deadline, when the census questions are legally required to be finalized by.
In a letter discussing the decision, Commerce Secretary Wilbur Ross said he took a “hard look” at the Department of Justice’s request as part of a review that included an examination of any possible legal issues associated with asking about citizenship. The secretary said the department also reviewed concerns about lower participation due to inclusion of the question, but ultimately was not swayed by the arguments.
“The reinstatement of a citizenship question will not decrease the response rate of residents who already decided not to respond. And no one provided evidence that there are residents who would respond accurately to a decennial census that did not contain a citizenship question but would not respond if it did (although many believed that such residents had to exist),” Ross wrote. “While it is possible this belief is true, there is no information available to determine the number of people who would in fact not respond due to a citizenship question being added.”
The department emphasized that part of the 2000 Census included a question about citizenship status and that a smaller, yearly survey conducted by the bureau known as the “American Community Survey” has included a question since 2005.
Experts worry that a drop in participation would result in an inaccurate count of the full U.S. population, which could have massive ramifications for everything from how federal funds are distributed to how congressional districts are redrawn. Huffington Post Polling Director Ariel Edwards-Levy wrote on Twitter that changes to the census could have impacts beyond the federal government, since many opinion pollsters adjust their election-related polling on census data.
Vanita Gupta, president and CEO of The Leadership Conference on Civil and Human Rights, slammed the addition of the question and said Ross had “capitulated” to President Donald Trump and Attorney General Jeff Sessions.
“This untimely, unnecessary, and untested citizenship question will disrupt planning at a critical point, undermine years of painstaking preparation, and increase costs significantly, putting a successful, accurate count at risk,” Gupta said in statement. “The question is unnecessarily intrusive and will raise concerns in all households — native — and foreign-born, citizen and non-citizen — about the confidentiality of information provided to the government and how government authorities may use that information.
The announcement follows an increasingly tough tact on illegal immigration by the Justice Department and Immigration and Customs Enforcement, which has been spurred on President Donald Trump’s staunch views on the subject.
Democrats have generally opposed including adding a citizenship question.
Democratic Sens. Dianne Feinstein, Kamala Harris, Catherine Cortez Masto, Brian Schatz and Tom Carper had said such an announcement would “undermine the accuracy of the Census as a whole” and was even more troubling given the Justice Department’s immigration rhetoric.
After the announcement, Sen. Robert Menendez (D-N.J.) accused the administration of trying to politicize the constitutionally required practice.
“The federal Census is NOT a tool to rally the President’s base. It’s a constitutionally mandated count of every single PERSON living in this country,” he wrote on Twitter, touting his legislation that would prohibit the bureau from adding a citizenship question.
Holder said there was no valid reason for the decision.
“Make no mistake — this decision is motivated purely by politics,” he said.
For more information, go to: www.beverlyhillsimmigrationlaw.com
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