Against an unsettling background of immigration raids and deportations, the U.S. Census Bureau expects to have a hard time convincing close to 12 million undocumented immigrants to take part in its population count next year.
First, some immigrant activists proposed a boycott of the 2010 Census to show displeasure with immigration policies centered on enforcement and to demand comprehensive reform. Now, a U.S. senator is calling for the Census Bureau to not count undocumented immigrants.
U.S. Sen. David Vitter.
The move by Sen. David Vitter, a Republican from Louisiana, comes as the Bureau has been reaching out to ethnic media and immigrant communities for months to ensure that the nation’s population is counted as accurately as possible, in fulfillment of its mandate.
Vitter’s office announced in a press release that he introduced an amendment to an appropriations bill “that would require questions in the census regarding citizenship and immigration status.”
The amendment “would also prevent states from counting illegal aliens for the purposes of determining population levels and other data associated with the census.”
Miguel Rivera, president of CONLAMIC, calls for a Census boycott. (Photo: El Diario/La Prensa)
It may sound counterintuitive, but despite all the talk about ensuring that underrepresented minorities are counted in the 2010 Census, some Hispanic activists are calling for undocumented immigrants to avoid being counted next year.
A group of Evangelical leaders, the National Coalition of Latino Clergy and Christian Leaders (CONLAMIC), is calling for immigrants to boycott the census “until Congress and the new administration pass a comprehensive solution to immigration reform that includes a path to legalization for an estimated 12 million undocumented people.”
The calculation behind the organization’s call is that cities and towns need their population to be counted accurately in order to receive federal funds for public services. The coalition’s president, Rev. Miguel Rivera, also says census information has been used in the past to target the undocumented population.
“Our church leaders have witnessed misuse of otherwise benign Census population data by state and local public officials in their efforts to pass and enact laws that assist in the perpetration of civil rights violations and abuses against undocumented workers and families,” Rivera said in a statement.