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Thread: Once again, the integrity of the #2020Census is under attack, as the Trump administration seeks to rush the count during a pandemic and suppress the count of immigrants.
Last week the President issued a Memorandum directing the Census Bureau not to count undocumented immigrants in the #2020Census count used to apportion congressional seats: https://www.rollcall.com/2020/07/22/trump-immigrant-memo-may-cast-long-shadow-over-census/
Although the constitution is widely understood to require all people, regardless of citizenship or immigration status, to be counted, the order reaffirmed the Administration’s pattern of efforts to suppress the count of immigrants in the Census: https://www.everycrsreport.com/files/20120413_R41048_827f8eaf4c3b8b215bf77c25f31bbe75c59f066a.html
The Executive Order appears designed to sow confusion about who should answer the Census, in the apparent hope of discouraging immigrants not to complete the form.
On Monday, Senate Republicans released their #COVIDRelief package with an additional $448 million for the #2020Census. That sounds like good news but it’s not.
Why? The purpose of this money is to fund the Census Bureau to speed completion of the count, which is contrary to the contingency plans carefully developed by the Bureau’s own experts.
It ignores the Census Bureau’s request for an extended reporting deadline to address challenges brought about by the #coronavirus pandemic.
Rushing the census while also issuing a memorandum that that seeks to dampen immigrant response rates will result in a flawed and inaccurate count.
This could leave communities in an array of states underrepresented in Congress, and shortchanged in federal #Medicaid, economic development, and child care funding.
The Census Bureau has already invested considerable time and resources to get the #2020Census right. Now is not the time to throw away that investment by producing an unfinished census of unacceptable quality.
. @NYTimes also has a great explanation of why rushing #Census2020 is a bad idea: https://www.nytimes.com/2020/07/28/us/trump-census.html
Our nation must live with the results for years, so we have to get this census right.
Our nation must live with the results for years, so we have to get this census right.
