On Monday night, in agreement with the Trump administration, the Commerce Department announced the inclusion of a citizenship question in the 2020 census.
The decision was made by Commerce Secretary Wilbur Ross who is determined that it will generate “accurate census block level data” needed in knowing the population percentage eligible to vote. The question inclusion had been requested by the Justice Department in December insisting that it was needed in the Decennial Census to help enforce Section 2 of the Voting Rights Act; its purpose is the prevention of voting rights violation.
Because of this decision, however, several states, including California and New York, intended to sue the Trump administration. California’s Attorney General Xavier Becerra has already made plans to sue the Trump administration. Experts and change critics of the Census Bureau have said that the addition of the citizenship question will cause immigrants, who are residing in the country illegally, not to respond. And faulty data would then be collected for government agencies and groups outside that need the census results, because of the grave undercount of the population due to a percentages refusal to answer the specific question. Also, an unfair redistricting to the benefit of Republicans.
According to a statement released Monday by Vanita Gupta, Chief Executive of the Leadership Conference on Civil and Human Rights and a Deputy Attorney General in the Obama administration, “Adding this question will result in a bad census — deeply flawed population data that will skew public and private sector decisions to ensure equal representation, allocate government resources and anticipate economic growth opportunities — for the next 10 years”.
A final list of the 2020 census questions is required of the Census Bureau to be submitted to Congress by March end.
