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Juan Marinez

marinezj@msu.edu

NiLP Note: While focused on California, this article points out what Latinos throughout the
country have at stake in the 2020 Census. However, Arana does not adequately sound the
alarm about how its underfunding by the Trump Administration may undermine its
legitimacy for all Americans. The planning for the 2020 Census will require a significantly
greater funding than is on the table currently in the Congress. There is also the possibility that
with Trump in the White House and a Republican-controlled Congress the counting of Latinos
and other racial-ethnic groups, which we take for granted, could be eliminated. There is an
urgent need for Latinos leaders to weigh on these issues.

---Angelo Falcn

What California Latinos


have at stake in next census
By Christian Arana
Sacramento Bee (August 28, 2017)
Special to The Bee

Let's imagine a scenario: A government official comes into Boyle Heights, a historically
Latino neighborhood in East Los Angeles, and makes a proposition to a group of residents.
In exchange for answering a few basic questions about their lives, the government will
guarantee them a lot of money to help pay for child care, education and prescription drugs.

Seems like a winning proposition, right?

It already has a name: the U.S. census. Every decade, the census aims to count every person
in our country - no matter who they are, where they were born or how much money they
make. This information is used to allocate federal funds for public services and also draw
election districts.

Yet for the millions of Latinos in California, the right to be counted is in jeopardy - one of
the biggest threats to the community's demographic power with enormous ramifications
that could last a decade.
That's because the Census Bureau is an agency in peril, without a leader or enough funding,
as it faces a monumental task to count an increased Latino population.

What's more, Latinos have historically been undercounted due to their immigration status
and housing instability. An estimated 400,000 Latino children were not counted in 2010,
the most in Los Angeles of any county.

It's not hard to see why an underfunded and poorly planned 2020 census threatens the
Latino community's position as the largest ethnic group in the state. An undercount could
deny an additional seat in the U.S. House and could also reduce funding for heavily used
programs. For instance, Latinos make up 54 percent of California's K-12 students and the
National School Lunch Program uses census data to distribute more than $1.4 billion to
California.

Fixing the potential problems with the 2020 census, however, is not simple. While
increased funding is one solution and raising awareness is another, the fears of submitting
sensitive personal information to the federal government are not unwarranted in an age of
increased immigration enforcement.

This is where elected officials, nonprofits, and philanthropists can play a pivotal role in
greater outreach, which is necessary not only to motivate and show Latinos how to
participate but also to explain why the census is important.

Latinos in California are nearly 25 years removed from fighting the battles of Proposition
187, the state ballot measure that sought to deny social services to undocumented
immigrants in the state.

While we continue to fight similar battles for a quality education and affordable health care,
we must see our participation in the 2020 census as the single most important thing we can
do to increase our political, economic and demographic power in California.
_______________________________________________________________________________________________________
The NiLP Report on Latino Policy & Politics is an online information service provided by the National Institute
for Latino Policy. For further information, visit www.latinopolicy. org. Send comments
to editor@latinopolicy.org.

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