The administration of President Donald Trump is attempting a major overhaul of the United States census, submitting a proposal that would exclude some noncitizens from the population count.<\/p>\n
Under the proposal, released by the Department of Commerce on Wednesday, US citizens and lawful permanent residents would be counted in the census.<\/p>\n
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Other foreign nationals, however, including people with temporary legal status and immigrants without documentation, would be excluded.<\/p>\n
Population counts have wide-ranging purposes, determining the allocation of everything from government resources to seats in the House of Representatives.<\/p>\n
The proposal also suggests eliminating certain questions on race and ethnicity from the questionnaire, citing \u201csubstantial doubts about the meaning, significance, and impact\u201d of such categories and questioning their ongoing \u201cusefulness\u201d.<\/p>\n
\u201cFor all these reasons, the Census Bureau is re-evaluating the proper role of these demographic questions,\u201d the proposal reads.<\/p>\n
It continues by arguing that limiting the questions would boost participation in the census, which is mandated every 10 years.<\/p>\n
\u201cReducing response burden is expected to increase response rate and thus improve the Census Bureau\u2019s record linkage efforts and also enable the Census Bureau to obtain a more complete population count directly from respondents, which helps ensure fairer political representation,\u201d it said.<\/p>\n
The census proposal is one of several Trump administration initiatives that could reshape electoral power, alongside congressional redistricting<\/a> and mail-in ballot restrictions<\/a>.<\/p>\n The proposal says undocumented immigrants and other foreign nationals who lack a sufficiently durable legal status should not be included because they are not \u201ctrue inhabitants\u201d and lack a sufficient \u201ctie and allegiance\u201d to the US.<\/p>\n The change would be a departure from historical precedent. The 1790 Census Act instructed government workers to count anyone who has a \u201cusual place of abode\u201d in the US, regardless of citizenship status.<\/p>\n Wednesday\u2019s proposal also seeks to verify how people list their citizenship status on the census questionnaire.<\/p>\n Already, it is a federal crime to lie on the census. But Wednesday\u2019s proposal suggests cross-referencing responses about citizenship with other government records, including files from the Department of Homeland Security and Treasury, which oversees the government\u2019s tax collection agency.<\/p>\n It would also add questions about legal immigration status to the short-form questionnaire.<\/p>\n