Citizenship controversy: 4A
Rights advocates fear undercounts of groups
Counting undocumented people via driver’s license data in 4 states criticized.
The Trump administration has begun gathering driver’s license data from at least four states as it seeks to count how many undocumented people live in the U.S., a top priority for the president as he argues for tougher border controls.
The president said citizenship data is basic information to which any country’s leaders should have access. Critics worry President Donald Trump and conservative officials would use that data to financially or politically punish liberal states that are home to large numbers of people living in the U.S. without authorization, particularly California.
National Public Radio first reported the Trump administration’s move to collect data from four states: Iowa, Nebraska, South Carolina and South Dakota.
The U.S. Census Bureau leads the effort to acquire the data, which it could cross-reference with federal or privately run databases, such as those used to generate credit reports, to build a more accurate picture of residents. Participation in the data collection by states is voluntary, and using census data to target specific individuals is illegal.
Trump said in an executive order issued July 11, 2019, that getting accurate data concerning the total number of citizens and undocumented immigrants “has nothing to do with enforcing immigration laws against particular individuals. It is important, instead, for making broad policy determinations.”
Estimates, based on surveys and data analysis by federal officials and university experts, suggest 11 million to 30 million people have entered the U.S. illegally, overstayed visas or otherwise violated the nation’s borders.
Immigrant rights groups argue that simply asking any question about citizenship status creates fear within immigrant communities, including people living in the United States legally, and could contribute to an undercount of certain populations.
The accuracy of census data has broad implications for how federal spending is allocated and how states design legislative and congressional districts, said Tom Wolf, a senior counsel at the Brennan Center’s Democracy Program. Depressing the number of people who respond to the census could have a decadelong impact on whose voices are heard in Congress.
“The Trump administration’s datagathering also threatens to suppress the count because, even though this information cannot be used for things like immigration or criminal law enforcement, mere mention of datagathering like this leads people to fear that they’re at risk,” Wolf said.
Dale Ho, the director of the ACLU’S Voting Rights Project, said the Census Bureau should focus on accurately counting everyone who lives in the United States, regardless of their immigration status. The ACLU is urging states to reject requests to share driver’s license data with the federal government for this or any citizenship determinations.