Why are you asking about the American Community Survey, which is not the decennial census?
How could it possibly do that? First off, they can’t hand the information over to law enforcement, and secondly not being a citizen does not necessarily mean one is here illegally. There are various categories of non-citizen that legally reside here.
I extend a tentative “thanks” for giving your opinion about one of the questions. Actual “thanks” is contingent on you expressing an opinion about the 2nd question, as well.
Ah, good! Then we may expect the conservative media outlets will earnestly inform all and sundry that there is no risk whatsoever! This is purely an exercise in civic virtue. Dark suspicions are dispelled, by the purity of Republican intentions, now and forever. Hispanic citizens can rest assured of the warm generosity of Deer Leader, and fear nothing!
And I am the Queen of Romania.
Serious question - Does only the number of “Citizens” determine Representatives and such?
If SCOTUS upholds the citizenship question as they did Trump’s “Muslim Ban”, it will be rapidly careening into the realm of the “see no evil” court. Lower Courts in both cases have properly considered the clear-as-day nefarious motives that are well documented to be driving this Administration’s law-making on both of these issues. Four or five members of the current Supreme Court seem happy to look the other way.
It seems ridiculous to me that a question about citizenship would be any more invasive than many of the other questions on the census, and I don’t care if it’s included or not. A decennial enumeration for congressional apportionment should be just that - a head count, and no more. I find the questions about race, income, and possessions to be especially over-the-top. It’s none of anybody’s business. I say do away with them all except “how many people live here?”
No, even though only citizens can vote, it is the total number of people that determines the representation.
By the way, this (from the Brennan Center for Justice) seems to be a good link into the perspectives and various amicus briefs by those opposing the citizenship question.
Correction to my last post…That link actually summarizes and gives links to briefs on both sides of the question, e.g., it includes briefs by the RNC and some f-cking-crazy-looking brief by Citizens United, English First Foundation and a bunch of other right wing groups whose Table of Authorities includes the Holy Bible and rails against secular humanism and globalism.
Section II of the Common Cause brief [PDF] (starting on p. 13) has a lot of relevant info for this discussion, including the estimate given by the Census Bureau, based on hard analyses in regard to the American Community Survey, that the question would result in a 5.1% decline in the response from non-citizen households. The brief also documents a discussion that Ross had with the infamous Kris Kobach.
Then why does “citizenship” matter then?
Apportionment of congressional representatives to the states is strictly and explicitly based on the whole number of residents, period.
For drawing districts within states, it’s a little more fuzzy, and there’s a fear by some groups that some states will use the citizenship information to draw districts with an equal number of citizens rather than an equal number of residents, and that the Supreme Court will either approve or mandate this approach in the resulting litigation.
One reason would be to provide for a properly run election. Knowing that only citizens can vote it would not be unreasonable to provide for a particular ratio of citizens of voting age to polling places without regard to number of residents.
Community A has a population of 100,000 people. Census data shows that 25% (25,000) are not citizens. Of the 75% (75,000) who are citizens, 20% of those (15,000) are not of voting age leaving only 60,000 eligible voters. If the recommendation is for only polling place for every 1000 eligible voters then Community A needs 6 polling places.
Community B has a population of 100,000 people. Census data shows 12.5% (12,500) are not citizens. Of the 87.5% (87,500) who are citizens, 20% of those (17,500) are not of voting age leaving only 80,000 eligible voters. If the recommendation is for one polling place for every 1000 eligible voters then Community B needs 8 polling places.
A second reason to gather citizenship data would be to determine the extent to which jury pools may be skewed by various methods of choosing jury pools. Only citizens can sit on a jury in most US jurisdictions. Often jury pools are drawn from driver’s licensing records, but that excludes people who are disproportionately poor and/or medically incapable of driving. Similar problems could arise from using property tax records as a source of jury pool data.
Any method of jury selection that underrepresents particular minorities might be challenged as unconstitutional, but would need data to back up the claim. And courts could assess whether any other proposed method of selecting a jury pool is representative if they have the necessary data.
Wash. Rinse. Repeat. Census data ends up being used in many ways.
Citizenship matters to people so they can vote and permanently live in the U.S., among some other things.
The citizenship question matters to the Trump Administration so they suppress the political power of places with more immigrants.
It’s all just that simple.
Sure. And the US already collects this data:
So why put it on the census?
I think your math is off: 6 x 1000 != 60000.
I think the lack of standing argument has merit. These states are saying that they MAY suffer harm, but only if a certain group acts in a stereotypical way and refuses, in violation of federal law, to respond to a question that in and of itself is not inculpatory in any way.
That’s a pretty thin definition of a harm: That a third party might act illegally.
No citizen would have standing to challenge the question; I think that is agreed, so why would a state have standing? I don’t know if there is a good analogy, because it is that absurd.
What else could I go to court for because a law might possibly make a third person act illegally to my detriment? My complaint would be with the third party, not with the law.
Because despite GOP beliefs that that “certain group” is stupider than good Christian White People, they aren’t. Given Trump and the GOP’s complete disregard for the rule of law exhibited in the last few years, you’d have to be insane to believe that they wouldn’t use that question to identify and deport non-citizens, no matter what the “rules” (which don’t apply to Republicans or Trump) say.
The point of this question is to make people not answer the census (nobody cares about the actual answer, we have excellent numbers for that already). If merely asking the question doesn’t achieve that, do you honestly believe they won’t take steps to make sure that fear of answering that question is justified? I sure don’t.
The guys that enjoy ripping kids out of the arms of their parents? But of course, only the noblest and honorable motives.