{"id":174469,"date":"2018-08-01T05:22:02","date_gmt":"2018-08-01T09:22:02","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/canadianinquirer.net\/v1\/?p=174469"},"modified":"2018-08-01T05:22:02","modified_gmt":"2018-08-01T09:22:02","slug":"california-urges-resistance-census-citizenship-question","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/canadianinquirer.net\/v1\/2018\/08\/01\/california-urges-resistance-census-citizenship-question\/","title":{"rendered":"California urges resistance to census citizenship question"},"content":{"rendered":"
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Padilla called the administration’s proposed citizenship question a “blatant effort to intimidate non-citizens from participating in the census.” (Photo<\/a> By Alex Padilla\/Facebook<\/a>)<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

SACRAMENTO, Calif. \u2014 California’s top elections official urged residents Tuesday to formally oppose a Trump administration plan that would ask whether a person is a U.S. citizen on the 2020 census.<\/p>\n

Secretary of State Alex Padilla and advocacy groups for immigrant, Muslim and other communities warn a citizenship question will discourage immigrants from participating, giving California an under-count in the decennial recording of each state’s population. The numbers determine each state’s representation in Congress and federal funding.<\/p>\n

Padilla called the administration’s proposed citizenship question a “blatant effort to intimidate non-citizens from participating in the census.”<\/p>\n

He’s launched a website where Californians can submit public comments on the question directly to the federal registrar, which is taking feedback on the census questions through Aug. 7.<\/p>\n

The Trump administration announced in March it would include a citizenship question on the 2020 count, saying the U.S. Justice Department requested it to help with enforcement of voting rights laws. But documents just released through a lawsuit show U.S. Commerce Secretary Wilbur Ross had requested the question months earlier.<\/p>\n

All households were last asked about citizenship in the 1950 census. A citizenship question is included in the American Community Survey, a yearly sample by the U.S. Census Bureau of about 3.5 million households.<\/p>\n

California is one of nearly two dozen states suing the administration over the question, and Democrats in Congress want Ross to offer public testimony clarifying how the question came about.<\/p>\n

Karin MacDonald, a census expert at the University of California-Berkeley’s Institute of Governmental Studies, said she hasn’t witnessed a similar effort by the state to urge citizens to oppose a census question in her roughly 25 years following the survey.<\/p>\n

But, she said, it’s abnormal for the census to include a question opposed by its own Census Scientific Advisory Committee.<\/p>\n

“It’s completely against what the census has said will work, it’s not tested, it’s very problematic for states like California,” said MacDonald, who runs IGS’s Statewide Database.<\/p>\n

The proposed citizenship question asks: “Is this person a citizen of the United States?” It then provides five answer options; one is ‘no’ while the other four are ‘yes.’ The four ‘yes’ answers ask whether the person was born in the United States, a territory, abroad to a U.S. citizen or naturalized.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

SACRAMENTO, Calif. \u2014 California’s top elections official urged residents Tuesday to formally oppose a Trump administration plan that would ask …<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":44,"featured_media":174472,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[6],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-174469","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-immigration","mauthors-kathleen-ronayne","mauthors-the-associated-press"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/canadianinquirer.net\/v1\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/174469","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/canadianinquirer.net\/v1\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/canadianinquirer.net\/v1\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/canadianinquirer.net\/v1\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/44"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/canadianinquirer.net\/v1\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=174469"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/canadianinquirer.net\/v1\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/174469\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/canadianinquirer.net\/v1\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/174472"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/canadianinquirer.net\/v1\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=174469"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/canadianinquirer.net\/v1\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=174469"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/canadianinquirer.net\/v1\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=174469"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}