Citizenship question could ‘spook’ immigrants
Maryland town has unique perspective on the issue.
When the 2020 Census lands in Langley Park, Maryland and asks residents whether they are U.S. citizens, the response is likely to be no — if residents respond at all.
“I wouldn’t answer it,” said a 42-year-old undocumented construction worker from Guatemala.
“Nobody is going to do this. Nobody,” said a jewelry saleswoman from El Salvador.
Seven miles from the White House, 58 percent of the residents of this Maryland enclave are not U.S. citizens, the highest percentage of any city, town or unincorporated community in the United States. The number of noncitizen adults is even higher: Nearly 80 percent of the men and two thirds of the women in Langley Park cannot vote for president, qualify for federal financial aid or apply for a U.S. government job.
Many are undocumented and already afraid of federal immigration agents, community leaders say. Now, they are also afraid of the census.
The Trump administration announced last month that it will add a citizenship question to the decennial census for the first time since 1950, a change that federal officials say will result in a more accurate understanding of the U.S. population and better enforcement of minority voting rights. The question will ask whether residents are U.S. citizens, not whether they are in the country legally.
The decision to include the question has generated alarm in ethnic media and in states where many noncitizens live. Even though it is illegal for the Census Bureau to share information with other federal agencies, immigrants’ advocates say some fear the question — coming as President Donald Trump has vowed to aggressively enforce immigration laws — will be used to find and deport them. If those immigrants therefore refuse to fill out the census survey, it could trigger an undercount that would deprive jurisdictions — including those that voted for Trump — of a share of political power and federal funds for roads, bridges and schools.
“I think that a lot of people in my district will be very fearful. They’re already fearful,” said Prince George’s County Council member Deni Taveras, D-District 2, who represents Langley Park. “We’re going to be suffering for it.”
Gustavo Torres, executive director of CASA, a nonprofit operating in Maryland, Virginia and Pennsylvania, said immigrants and their advocates are worried that federal officials “are going to use [census] information to attack and to destroy our families.”
The census is sent to every household once a decade to provide Congress with an official count of every U.S. resident. It is supposed to be a more thorough measure than the Census Bureau’s annual American Community Survey, which is based on a population sample of more than 3 million households a year. About 22 million noncitizens are living in the United States, according to the community survey, which asks about citizenship. Researchers estimate that about half — 11 million — are undocumented.
Census data is used to apportion seats in the House of Representatives, draw state legislative districts and delineate school districts. It is also the baseline used to divide up some $675 billion in federal funding for education, infrastructure, health care and other services.
By the time the 2020 Census launches, Trump’s immigration enforcement should be at full throttle. Temporary protections for Salvadorans and Haitians are scheduled to end in 2019 and - depending on court battles - could also be phased out for 690,000 young immigrants, known as “dreamers,” brought to this country as children.
A spokeswoman for Texas Gov. Greg Abbott (R) - whose state includes nearly 3 million noncitizens, second only to California - said a citizenship question would provide “greater transparency and information.”
“Rather than stoking fear, the Governor believes critics should spend their time urging residents to respond to the census,” spokeswoman Ciara Matthews said in a statement.
But other elected leaders, including more than 160 mayors, some of them Republicans, have condemned the idea.
More than a dozen cities and states have filed a federal lawsuit to block the citizenship question. Last week, residents of Arizona and Maryland filed a lawsuit calling inclusion of the question a “reckless” move.
Noncitizens, once concentrated in California and a few other states, today are scattered widely across the blue and red parts of the country. Georgia has 600,000 noncitizens, up from just 42,000 in 1980, according to the Pew Research Center. Tennessee has more than 200,000. In Arizona, the number of noncitizens has tripled since 1990. Now some officials fear a census undercount would cost the state a congressional seat.
“If immigrants are spooked,” they won’t answer the census, said Mesa Mayor John Giles (R). “The irony of that is regardless of where you’re at on the political spectrum, this is going to hurt you as well.”
Mayor Lydia Mihalik of Findlay, Ohio, a Republican who voted for Trump, said she hopes the administration will not ask about citizenship, because of fears that it will lead to an inaccurate count.
“From my perspective, the less amount of politics that goes into the gathering of this data the better,” Mihalik said. “There are a lot of things the census is used for.”
--Few communities have as much at stake in the citizenship question as Langley Park, a densely populated community of about 20,000, where immigrants have long felt at home.
Spanish is more common than English. Shops stock farmer cheese from El Salvador, cold medicine from Guatemala and push-up jeans from Colombia. Most parents carry passports from Latin American countries, while most of their children are U.S.-born citizens.
But under Trump, many say they now live in fear of federal immigration agents - “la migra” - and have no interest in reminding Uncle Sam through the census that they are not citizens.
“You feel like animals in the woods. You don’t know when they’re going to hunt for you,” said the 42-year-old construction worker from Guatemala, who gave his name only as William. He and others refused to give their full names, because they are undocumented or have temporary legal status that will expire in 2019.
William filled out the census in 2010 but said he will not risk it in 2020. He recently moved to a different apartment building with his wife and four children two of them citizens because they were born in the United States - because immigration agents had arrested a neighbor in his old building. William feared they would return for him.
Inside the building where the family lives now, nobody has posted their names on the mailboxes. Some neighbors refused to answer the door recently, though voices could be heard inside.
At an apartment with a welcome mat, a 29-year-old undocumented construction worker from Honduras cracked open the door. Asked if he would fill out the census if it had a citizenship question, he shook his head.
“No,” said the man, who has a wife and a new baby, “not while we’re in this critical situation.”
Federal officials say the census would not be used to target undocumented immigrants, because it is illegal for the Census Bureau to share respondents’ answers with anyone, including Immigration and Customs Enforcement. Anyone who does share such information can be sentenced to up to five years in prison and fined up to $250,000.
But such disclosures have happened before, including during World War II, when the census was secretly used to find and round up thousands of Japanese Americans and put them in internment camps.
Refusing to answer the census is also illegal, though census officials say they are unaware of anyone being prosecuted on those grounds. Adults can be fined up to $100 for refusing to answer and up to $500 for giving false information. Census enumerators will attempt to follow up with residents who do not fill out the 2020 forms, which for the first time may be answered online as well as through the mail.
Some immigrants who are already American citizens say the addition of the question to the census is no big deal.
“If they’re a citizen, it won’t bother them,” said Yolanda Brewster, a 65-yearold naturalized U.S. citizen from Guatemala who voted for Trump and runs a shop at a mall in the heart of Langley Park.