Citizenship question bad for accuracy
Having worked for the U.S. Census Bureau three different times, I can tell you that the decision of the Trump administration to ask for citizenship status on the census questionnaire will be catastrophic.
The last time that question was asked on a census survey was at the height of McCarthyism in the 1950s. The main determiner for success of the U.S. Census is trust. Trust that your information is safe and trust that your government is more respectful of you than Facebook is.
The job of a census “enumerator,” the person who comes to your door to ask you all kinds of personal questions, is dangerous enough as it is without setting off the subject’s deepest fears. Though obviously extreme, I am reminded of Hannibal Lecter’s line from the movie, The Silence of the Lambs: “A census taker once tried to question me. … I ate his liver with some fava beans and a nice bottle of Chianti.”
Even as a trained, experienced employee of the U.S. government, I bristled at many of the questions that I was asked on my own census form, including the question of “race.” No matter how many options that I was given as to “what I was” (race), I always answered “other.”
The last position I had with the census was with an outreach program called the Partnership. My job was to make contact with the faith-based community, seeking help to promote cooperation with our government’s counting. I was assigned to go to every church, synagogue, temple and mosque from Santa Fe to the Colorado border. I was given literature geared to religious organizations and a pile of little plastic things made in China with the U.S. Census printed on them. I cannot imagine the reception I would get from religious leaders in 2020 when explaining why they should help promote something that could lead to the deportation of some of their church members.
For me, I think that we citizens are at war with the fascist leanings of our own administration. Do not make it easy. Draw a line in the sand. Resist. But if the question about citizenship is not on the questionnaire, invite your friendly neighborhood census-taker in for some tea, cookies and patriotic enumeration.