Santa Clara County ups census stake

Even before the Trump administration moved to add a citizenship question to the 2020 census, officials in the Bay Area’s largest county were concerned with getting a complete count.

Santa Clara County supervisors had already planned to spend a record amount to count every single resident. They voted in March to allocate more than $1 million toward the first phase of the census, weeks before the Trump administration’s plans to ask people about their citizenship status prompted legal challenges from cities and states concerned it will scare away large numbers of undocumented residents. It will be the first time in 70 years the question is included, if courts rule the inquiry is legal.

In 2010, Santa Clara County spent $750,000 on the entire process, said David Campos, a

deputy county executive.

“We have the monumental task of dealing with an administration that has created an atmosphere of fear among the communities that are most difficult to count,” said Campos, a former San Francisco supervisor. “Especially immigrant communities, which are just terrified of the federal government.”

Officials estimate at least 130,000 undocumented immigrants live in Santa Clara County. The supervisors’ allocation for early census processes will pay for advertising to encourage people to participate and for canvassing resources to identify “low visibility” housing. Both measures are aimed in part at undocumented immigrants.

The U.S. Census Bureau counted 1,781,642 inhabitants of Santa Clara County in 2010. An accurate count in the decennial tally is crucial, as population helps determine an area’s share of federal funding for certain programs and the size of a state’s House delegation.

Undocumented immigrants aren’t the only people in the Bay Area living in hard-to-find places. Some live in garages, RVs or in spots with no roofs — Santa Clara County counted more than 7,300 homeless people in 2017. Low-income families and single-parent households also tend to be difficult to count accurately, Campos said.

“You can see how it’s like a perfect storm,” he said. “Unless places like Santa Clara and San Francisco at the local level make an investment, we’re going to lose a lot of money. It’s billions and billions of dollars. But beyond that, it’s representation.”

San Francisco is among a group of cities and states, including California, suing the Trump administration over the citizenship question. Santa Clara County has not joined in.

County Counsel James Williams said in a statement that the county is “evaluating its legal options and will pursue every available avenue to ensure an accurate and complete count, which is essential for our democracy.”

“The Census Bureau’s plan to include a citizenship question virtually assures that the 2020 census will be inaccurate,” Williams said. “This has profound implications for political representation and funding for the life-saving services that the county provides.”

Educating the community is key to an accurate count, said Salvador Bustamante, executive director of Latinos United for a New America, an immigrant advocacy nonprofit in San Jose.

“A lot of people are afraid to provide information to strangers. They don’t know how that information is going to be used,” Bustamante said. “The goal for organizations like ours is to educate the community about the importance of this exercise and not to be afraid of it.”

A similar problem arises among Asian Americans, said Quyen Vuong, executive director of the International Children Assistance Network, a Vietnamese American advocacy organization in Milpitas.

The last census found Santa Clara County had the second-largest Vietnamese American population in the nation at 125,695 people, or 7 percent of the county’s total.

The 2010 census was an example of what can go wrong, Vuong said. The Census Bureau’s Vietnamese translation of the census form said the U.S. was “investigating the population” instead of tabulating it, which Vuong said was reminiscent of the Vietnamese communist government’s efforts to keep close watch on citizens’ political activities.

“There is a very strong fear of government systems among Vietnamese,” she said. “There’s still a lot of education to be done. A lot of convincing.”

Immigrant communities, Vuong said, need reassurance that participating in the census “doesn’t mean ICE is going to show up at their door.”