Some prominent social scientists are sharing concerns about the Trump administration’s intention to include a question about citizenship in the 2020 national census, adding their voices to opposition expressed by some lawmakers and immigration-rights groups.
Accurate census data is important in numerous ways, including how financial resources are distributed. It informs social science research and impacts decisions about education, transportation, public health and safety and citizen representation through allocation of Congressional seats.
Some observers contend that a question about citizenship is likely to cause legal and illegal immigrants to not respond and, as a result, be undercounted. If responses are suppressed or affected due to an untested question or questions, there could be far-reaching implications, critics of the question suggest.
“We have for this particular census a political climate, a political discourse that’s been created that sort of suggests that there are levels of inclusion in our society,” said Dr. Alondra Nelson, professor of sociology at Columbia University and president of the Social Science Research Council (SSRC). “You have the general principles of the problems of getting people to trust and commit to doing any kind of survey participation. Then you have the sort of heightened — almost a fever pitch sometimes — issue of there being certain groups who would be apprehensive about participating in something that asks about their citizenship, given the contemporary political context.”
Added Nelson: “The concern here is that we won’t get the data that we need. I think anybody of immigrant status should and would worry about being included in this question and the implications of answering it.”
On its website, the Census Bureau explains why it asks questions about citizenship. It reads, in part:
We ask questions about a person’s place of birth, citizenship, and year of entry into the United States to create data about citizens, noncitizens, and the foreign-born population.
