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Census 2010: Should Illegal Immigrants be counted?
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The U.S will conduct its census in April 2010. It is a Constitutional requirement. The law requires that everyone in the United States should be counted. While the government will ask several questions, one question it will not ask is, “Are you a U.S. citizen?” Nobody knows how many illegal immigrants are in the United States. The 12 million often quoted is a rough estimate.
Census figures are important in America. It is used to allocate resources in several government programs. But most importantly, congressional seats and electoral votes are determined by the number of people residing in every state. States that lose people, lose seats in Congress.
Now should illegal immigrants be counted in the upcoming census? Bear in mind that any attempt at asking the citizenship question will bring fear in people and many illegal immigrants will go underground for fear that it could be used to facilitate their deportation.
Here is the context. In February, a controversy erupted when an unnamed White House source was quoted to have said that the Obama administration wanted to make the census director report to the White House instead of the Commerce Department. The White House denied the report and restated that the Census Bureau will continue to follow its usual pattern of reporting to the Commerce Department to ensure an independent and a non-partisan work.
Yet, the Republicans in the Senate are holding up the appointment of the Census Director nominated by President Obama. Chances are that the United States will conduct the 2010 census without a director in place. Also in this context is a scrutiny of all the groups that help ensure that those traditionally undercounted are properly represented in the census. That includes groups like ACORN.
Behind the fight is the realization that the fasted growing populations in the United States are Latinos and other minorities groups. Counting them accurately is important to the two parties - to the Democrats- because they need their vote to keep their majority in Congress - to the Republicans - because they fear that their votes will keep them in permanent minority.
Now listen to Glenn Beck and Michelle Bachmann. You will be forgiven if you think that President Obama has transformed the Census Bureau into one of the arms of his emerging communist America. You will be forgiven if you think President Obama is coming to get you and your household for internment in a camp. Like the FBI did to Japanese-Americans during the Second World War. Nut cases!
If the administration of George W. Bush listened to phone conversations of Americans, how difficult is it for any administration to find the phone number of any American? Will your phone number be safe from the NSA because you refused to write it on your census form? If it is so hard to get a phone number, how do telemarketers get it?
Should illegal immigrants be counted?
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