After the Census Bureau said his initiative would prevent the 2010 Census from being completed on time, Sen. David Vitter (R.-La.) has partially backtracked on his proposal that the Census questionnaire inquire about each person’s immigration status.

“Vitter agreed to drop language that would require the census short form to ask every person about their immigration status,” Nola.com’s Jonathan Tilove reported on Thursday. The senator now wants the form to ask about respondents’ citizenship instead, said another Louisiana news site.

The senator’s shift came after the Census Bureau said that it was basically too late to make any changes, because most of the forms had already been printed, and adding questions would cost hundreds of millions of dollars for additional training for workers and software programming.

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