Arizona Immigration Law Likely To Leave Many Wetbacks Uncounted In Census
May 1, 2010 6 Comments ›› Pat Dollard
Some community and city leaders are worrying that doors may go unanswered today in many hard-to-count communities across Arizona when Census Bureau workers begin visiting homes of people who have yet to return their census forms.
The concern is that people will fear being arrested and deported if they talk to Census workers after the passage last week of the nation’s toughest immigration law.
The census is a once-a-decade count of everyone living in the United States, legally or illegally, and is mandated by the U.S. Constitution.
Efforts have been launched nationally and locally to reach out to people who speak languages other than English. For the first time since the census began in 1790, Arizona and other states with large Latino populations received bilingual census forms printed in Spanish and English. With 455,545 bilingual forms mailed in Arizona, and 316,688 of those going to Maricopa County households, the county and state ranked seventh in the nation for the number of forms sent.
“There are immigrant populations that are considered hard to count where language is a big factor,” said Adrienne Oneto, assistant division chief of content and outreach for the U.S. Census Bureau. “The bilingual form could assist with language barriers.”
To create more personal contact with minority and immigrant populations in the Valley, the census partnered with community volunteers who would reach out to four historically undercounted populations: African-Americans, Asian-Americans, Latinos and Native Americans.
The volunteers have gone to churches, schools, cultural festivals and neighborhood meetings asking people to fill out their census survey.
As of early this week, Arizona had a 67 percent participation rate in the census. National participation is 72 percent, the same rate achieved in 2000. Last week, the state was ranked 38th in the nation for participation.
Phoenix Vice Mayor Michael Nowakowski has led his city’s census outreach. For months, he and other volunteers have canvassed Phoenix, teaching Spanish speakers and immigrants about the census. But efforts to reach the nearly 500,000 illegal immigrants who live in Arizona could fail if they are too frightened to answer the door for a stranger, especially one with government forms, he said.
“What we’re trying to do is educate the children and encourage the kids to help their parents fill out the form. We’re asking for more volunteers to walk with Census workers so people see a familiar face,” he said.
Nowakowski is also reaching out to groups protesting the bill, asking them to use rallies as an opportunity to speak to undocumented immigrants and Latinos.
“We want them to tell everyone that it is illegal for Census workers to share their personal information with anyone. These workers take an oath; if they violate it, there’s a huge penalty and possibly jail time. We want them to tell voters that filling out the census could mean more political seats for our state,” he said.
He hopes that message will get through to people at today’s large immigration rally at the state Capitol.
The message of Census volunteers often has focused on how important federal funding is at a time when Arizona cities are struggling with massive budget deficits. Each person who is counted is worth about $1,550 a year in federal funding.
In El Mirage, city workers were recruited to help spur census participation.
“We were on track to exceed our 2000 participation. But that was before this law,” said Stacy Pearson, a city spokeswoman. “We had city volunteers go out with bilingual volunteers this week to let people know to expect Census workers knocking on their doors. We’re hoping we can still get people who haven’t filled out their form to answer.”
In Phoenix, unexpected help came from Dolores Huerta, an old friend of Nowakowski’s and a longtime civil-rights advocate, who is in the Valley this week to protest the immigration law. Huerta fought by Cesar Chavez’s side to win rights for farmworkers and has been working to increase census participation in her Southern California hometown.
On Thursday, she agreed to tape an impassioned public-service announcement in Spanish about the census that will air on Radio Campesina, a popular Valley Spanish-language radio station.
“This law is a scare tactic. They want you to hide, to leave,” she said in an interview with The Arizona Republic on Friday. “I’m saying don’t be afraid. You need to be counted. You need to talk to your neighbors and let them know it’s OK to do the census.”
