Supreme Court puts citizenship question on hold, but state doesn’t consider the fight to be over
The nation’s highest court on Thursday temporarily blocked the Trump administration’s plan to add a citizenship question to the 2020 Census, but Gov. Jay Inslee said the fight against the question is not over yet and the state will continue to press for its fair share of federal funding and political representation tied to the nation’s count.
In its ruling, the Supreme Court said President Donald Trump’s Commerce Department has the authority to ask people on the Census form if they are citizens, but it had so far failed to offer an adequate reason for doing so. The administration now has a few weeks to offer a more focused rationale in hopes of winning an 11th-hour judicial approval.
The Census mission, mandated by the U.S. Constitution, is to count every person living in the United States once each 10 years. The citizenship question has not been on the standard form since 1950.
A McClatchy News review found that if one-tenth of Washington state’s non-citizen residents skip the 2020 Census because of a question about citizenship, it would result in an undercount of more than 50,000 residents and that would mean a loss of federal funding.
Advocates for immigrants and non-citizens say the question is an attempt to intimidate those populations and keep them from filling out the census, thus improving the chances of creating more political districts that benefit Republicans.
Commerce Secretary Wilbur Ross wrote in a 2018 memo that the federal government needs to know at the block level how many residents are citizens and how many are non-citizens in order to comply with the federal Voting Rights Act and “provide complete and accurate data” to protect minority population voting rights
Inslee, who is running for the Democratic nomination for President, said in a statement Thursday about the Supreme Court’s decision: “This is certainly a blow to the Trump administration and its specious platitudes about protecting voting rights, which the court correctly called contrived. Unfortunately, the court failed to block the question outright.
“Our aggressive effort to ensure a complete count in Washington state will continue. We will not let the Trump administration succeed in using this fight to discourage people from participating in an effort that has profound political and fiscal implications for the next decade,” Inslee added.
Attorney General Bob Ferguson, who joined a multi-state lawsuit challenging the citizenship question, said he thinks it’s unlikely that a citizenship question will ever be added to the 2020 Census.
“The Administration’s supposed justification for adding a citizenship question to the Census was a lie — a lie to the courts and to the American people. Their true goal: To create gerrymandered voting districts that ‘would be advantageous to Republicans and non-Hispanic whites,’ “ Ferguson said in a written statement.
About 7.3 percent of Washington residents were non-citizens between 2013 and 2017, slightly higher than the national average, according to the latest Census Bureau estimates.
In six counties — Franklin, Adams, Douglas, Grant, King, and Yakima — more than 10 percent of the population was not a citizen. King was home to about 47 percent, or 244,000, of the state’s non-citizens.
The Census Bureau estimates come from the American Community Survey, or ACS, which the Census Bureau sends out every year to more than 3 million households. The ACS asks a wide variety of questions, including a question about citizenship.
About one in 12 foreign-born respondents nationwide filled out part of the ACS in 2017 but left blank the question about citizenship.
Washington’s population in the 2010 Census was 6.7 million. As of April 1, 2018, the state estimated its population at 7.4 million.
Tara Lee, an Inslee spokeswoman, said research shows that adding the citizenship question to the Census could lead to an undercount in Washington state and across the country, especially among immigrants and people of color.
Washington gained a congressional district — for a total of 10 — based on the 2010 Census.
Census data is used to send $13.7 billion in federal funds to Washington every year, and the state loses an estimated $4,800 in annual per capita funding for every household missed by the count, Lee said.
A big chunk of that funding goes to low-income residents via programs like Medicaid and food stamps.
The Office of Financial Management — which is state government’s liaison with the Census Bureau — has not analyzed the potential impact if the citizenship question is added to next year’s Census.
State officials are focusing their time and resources on making sure there is a complete and accurate count.
Some non-citizens are illegal immigrants. Others are here legally as permanent residents with Green Cards, temporary work visas or other protected legal status.
Washington did not make a listing of the 10 states with estimated highest number of illegal immigrants in 2015, according to a report that the Department of Homeland Security released in 2018. The report said the highest was California, followed by Texas, Florida, New York, Illinois, New Jersey, Georgia, North Carolina, Arizona and Virginia. The report did not provide an estimate for Washington.
Franklin County has a population of 89,124 and an estimated 15,314 are not citizens — or 17 percent, Census Bureau figures show.
Agriculture is the number one industry in Franklin County — representing 20 percent of total employment — and it is highly seasonal and volatile from year to year, according to the state Employment Security Department.
Franklin County Administrator Keith Johnson said the 17 percent figure for non-citizens is not surprising.
“There has been an influx of people, in the course of the history of Franklin County, coming to this area from other parts of the world. The Latino community, started mostly by farm workers but now in all areas of commerce, are here and bringing family members,” he said.
In response to a question, Johnson said he didn’t have an estimate of how many non-citizens are legal immigrants or illegal.
Many farm workers are migrants who come to the United States from Mexico and several other countries in Central and South America.
The cherry crop is in full bloom, but several farmers have expressed concerns about having sufficient labor to pick the crop, Johnson said.
The problem is the federal government’s inability to promptly authorize legal immigrants to enter the country through visas and the visiting guest worker program, he added.
“It’s been difficult to get them processed in time to come here and do the work,” Johnson said.
The county is providing Census Bureau officials with mapping data of residential addresses and street names in Franklin County that would help them go to areas that traditionally are not counted, he said.
It’s unclear what effect including the citizenship question would have on the count in Franklin County, Johnson said.
“I have to think that there would be some in the undocumented category who would be a little nervous about answering that kind of a question, but that would be speculation on my part,” he said.
Pasco Mayor Matt Watkins said he is opposed to adding the citizenship question to the Census.
“If anything, I’d like us all to remember the (U.S.) Constitution specifically calls out enumerating people, and we should keep it that simple. It shouldn’t be political,” he said.
According to Census Bureau estimates, Whatcom County has a population of 212,738, with 10,988 residents who are not citizens — or 5 percent.
Rud Browne is originally from Australia. He’s now a U.S. citizen and chairman of the Whatcom County Council.
The citizenship question is part of a “constant erosion of liberties that is problematic,” he said.
Making sure that those estimated 10,988 residents who are not citizens in Whatcom County get counted might be beyond local governments’ reach, Browne added.
“I don’t know what we can do if (the citizenship question) is included. Even if we found a way of collecting the data, the feds would be under no obligation to adjust the allocation of resources,” he said.
Pierce County’s estimated population is 845,193 — with 35,603 residents who are not citizens — or 4 percent.
The Greater Tacoma Community Foundation is among the organizations working with Pierce County Auditor Julie Anderson to try to get a complete count.
Part of that effort is to reach “harder-to-count” communities, which includes immigrants. The messages on how to urge them to take part in the Census has not been determined yet, said a foundation spokeswoman.
Anderson said, “Even before the debate about the citizenship question, we were worried about a complete count because Pierce County had some historically undercounted communities. Black residents, Hispanic residents and Asian residents have the likelihood of being undercounted by 10 percent.”
The undercount results in large part from people not having enough information about the Census, switching residences often, being skeptical about government and not understanding why being counted is important, she said.
“If you add the citizenship question in, we think the risk becomes even higher, especially among the Hispanic population but other populations as well, people who have immigrated legally, illegally that may be living in our community,” Anderson said.
Thurston County has a population of 269,885, with an estimated 8,637 residents who are not citizens -- or 3 per cent, Census Bureau figures show.
“We might have a lower percentage than other areas in the state, but still we want to make sure we get every one one of those counted and that [citizenship question] can make it a lot more challenging,” said Marc Daily, executive director of the Thurston County Regional Planning Council. The council has organized the effort to get a complete count next year.
Under Title 13 of the U.S. Code, the Census Bureau is required to keep respondent information confidential, and answers cannot be used against respondents in court or by government agencies such as immigration officials. The Census Bureau will, however, be publishing data showing how many non-citizens live in each neighborhood.
Daily said if the U.S. Supreme Court sides with the Trump administration and the citizenship question is included in the Census, the challenge is how to give assurances on how the data will be used.
“Although there are disclaimers saying in essence that it’s used for information purposes, Census data goes straight to the executive office and that concerns folks, given the current administration and some of the recent efforts to potentially look at a harder-line stance on undocumented residents. We’re going to be completely open and honest with folks and hope that we can still get people to fill it out, but we can’t tell people that we know exactly how this won’t be used. We’d be making a promise that we may not be able to keep,” Daily said.
Nationwide, California had the highest proportion of non-citizens in the United States. About 13.5 per cent of its residents were not citizens. Texas had the second-highest proportion at 10.8 per cent, followed by Nevada at 10.2 per cent, New York at 10.1 per cent and New Jersey at 10 per cent.
States with a lot of non-citizens tended to back Hillary Clinton in the 2016 election. Of the 20 states with the highest proportion of non-citizens, 15 backed Clinton and only five -- Texas, Florida, Arizona, Utah and Georgia -- supported Donald Trump.
A 2018 study for the Georgetown Center on Poverty and Inequality found decreasing numbers of respondents to the Census Bureau’s American Community Survey have been answering the citizenship question annually between 2010 and 2016, notably among Asian Americans and Hispanics.
A McClatchy News review found that the number of foreign-based residents who didn’t answer the survey’s citizenship question rose again in 2017, the first year of the Trump presidency.
This story was originally published June 27, 2019 at 1:18 PM.
