By Evan Armstrong
Community Engagement VISTA

Starting on Monday of this week, 90% of households received an advance letter from the US Census Bureau warning that the official census questionnaires will be mailed next week, March 15-19. While the letter may seem redundant, remember that most people need to see a piece of information multiple times before they remember it! The Census Bureau has done their homework, and sending this advance letter creates an increase in the overall response rate that ends up saving us money later on. According to Census Bureau Director Robert Groves,for every 1% increase in questionnaires mailed back, $85 million in operational costs is saved because census enumerators don’t have to provide door-to-door follow-up. Remember, millions of young people are filling out the census for the first time, as well as all the new immigrants and refugees who have settled in the United States in the last ten years. Education is needed!

To further prepare people, here is additional information on how to fill out your census form:

The most important thing to remember is that you count everyone who is living at your house on April 1, 2010.
-          This includes family, roommates, or foreign students living abroad.
-          College students living away from home and military personnel stationed on barracks are counted AT their school or base, NOT at their previous residence. People in nursing homes are counted at the nursing home, and people in prison are counted at their prison.

There is NO QUESTION asking for immigration status
-          Your answers are absolutely confidential! There is absolutely no risk in listing all occupants of a household, even if it is against the building code, or if residents do not have all of their paperwork.

In a new change, respondents are able to list multiple races and ethnicities for themselves
-          It is very important that minorities and immigrants list their race and heritage, it is a assertion of presence unlike anything else, and without it, we won’t be able to prove how large the immigrant populations in St. Louis really are!

And most importantly, if you need ANY kind of help filling out your census form, there are many ways to receive assistance.
-          Questionnaire Assistance Centers will be available throughout the city, including at the International Institute.
-          There will also be telephone assistance lines and stations where new questionnaires can be picked up if you don’t receive one in the mail.
-          Stay tuned for more info on the sites where people can go to get help filling out their census form!

So remember, during the week of March 15-19, official census questionnaires will be delivered! Once received, everyone needs to fill it out and send it in to guarantee that their communities receive the resources they deserve! And now that the long form has been removed from the decennial census, there are only ten easy questions to answer, which can be viewed here:http://2010.census.gov/2010census/how/interactive-form.php

By Evan Armstrong
Community Engagement VISTA

As an organization that serves refugees and immigrants, the International Institute places a high priority on providing the most comprehensive language services to our clients as we can offer. The 2010 Census has a number of different strategies to help non-English speakers fill out the census form quickly and accurately.

The first important fact for St. Louisans to know is that in March 2010, the questionnaire arriving in the mail will be in English. For the first time, the census is mailing official bilingual questionnaires in Spanish/English, but these will only be sent out in districts with a substantial majority of Spanish speakers, and no districts in St. Louis qualify for this service.

But, residents who need language assistance will be able to easily obtain translated forms in:Spanish, Simplified Chinese, Korean, Russian, or Vietnamese. These are the five primary non-English languages, determined by previous census studies as the languages most in need of translated services. Hundreds of community areas designated as ‘Be Counted!’ sites will have these materials on hand. As soon as these sites are finalized, the information will be spread quickly!

Telephone assistance is available for the five primary non-English languages (Spanish, Simplified Chinese, Korean, Russian, and Vietnamese). These open, toll-free lines will provide live, confidential assistance in completing the census form. Stay tuned for more info when the numbers to call are released!

But don’t think that those five languages are the only ones the Census Bureau cares about! They have also created Language Assistance Guides to help non-English speakers complete their form. These guides are available in 59 languages, including: Nepali, Somali, Arabic, Croatian, Farsi, and more. They can be downloaded here,http://2010.census.gov/partners/materials/inlanguage.php and will be available at Questionnaire Assistance Centers across the nation.

The International Institute will be a Questionnaire Assistance Center, where people who need extra assistance can come to receive confidential help. Language barriers, the illiterate or disabled, or people who just have a question or two are welcome to come in to receive whatever assistance they need! QACs will be open at different times for 15 hours each week, so make sure you are aware of the hours each center is open!

By Evan Armstrong
Community Engagement VISTA

How far would you go to protect confidential information at your job? In 1980, four agents from the FBI entered the Census Bureau’s office in Colorado Springs, armed with a search warrant authorizing them to seize census documents. While FBI agents and a search warrant would normally trump any instructions you may have at your workplace, a local census worker knew that the law states that all census information is absolutely confidential – including to the FBI, CIA, IRS, law enforcement, etc. This worker refused to allow the FBI access to census documents, and successfully held the agents off until the situation was resolved with her superiors. This is just one example of the commitment census workers have to their positions.

All answers you give while filling out your census form are strictly confidential, and protected under the law (U.S. Code, Title 13, Section 9). The sharing of individual information is prohibited, and no court, or even the President, can access your responses.

Census information remains confidential for 72 years. That means that individual information provided this year will not be available until 2082! Many Americans have used released data from censuses from 1930 or earlier to trace lost lines of their genealogy, filling in important gaps in their family history.

Census workers pass intense background checks. They are trained to fully respect individual privacy, the commitment the Census Bureau has to non-disclosure, and are sworn for life to keep this information private. Census Bureau employees are eligible for a $250,000 fine and/or 5 years in prison for revealing identifiable information about an individual or household.

So remember, information provided for the census can only help you. The census is safe and easy – the ten questions on the questionnaire do not ask for social security numbers, immigration status, or yearly income. The census is about taking a snapshot of America, allowing federal and state governments to fairly distribute resources where they are needed. The census questionnaires are mailed out in March, so get ready to participate and do your part to make the 2010 Census the most complete picture yet!

By Evan Armstrong
Community Engagement VISTA

A commonly heard criticism of the census is that it should not count undocumented citizens, a standard the Census Bureau has held since 1790. There are estimated to be more than 10 million undocumented individuals in the United States, and most of these people are working and paying taxes like everyone else. Senator David Vitter of Louisiana proposed in October that the census be modified to only count official United States citizens when reapportioning districts for 2012. This would have enormous consequences in electoral politics, but was ultimately an empty-handed gesture – preparation for Census 2010 was too far along for this proposed change to be taken seriously. However, some critics go even farther than Senator Vitter, advocating that the undocumented not be counted at all.

So to combat that, here are several important reasons why the undocumented are counted every decade:

It is in the Constitution. Non-citizens have been included in the census since its inception. The legal requirement to count every person living in the US is incontrovertible, and has been repeatedly upheld in court.

Funding for public services depends on a complete count. Undocumented individuals work, enroll in schools, stay at hospitals, and use parks. If the undocumented were not factored into census statistics, undercounted regions would not receive the necessary funding to appropriately provide public services. Schools may be too small, hospitals could become understaffed, and roads will not be redone where they are most needed. This impacts everyone in a community, not only new immigrants.

Ignoring the undocumented prevents them from assimilating into American culture. If resources are not directed to the undocumented, they may not be able to achieve the tasks needed to put them on a path to citizenship in the future. Language services

Excluding the undocumented from reapportionment would decrease participation. Fear of deportation is already a problem the Census Bureau faces, and this is despite the fact that Census data is absolutely confidential, even to other government agencies. This additional exclusion in the census would lower participation, making it harder for census workers to accurately determine the real population of the United States.

Non-citizens impact the American economy, and deserve to be valued in reapportionment. Whether an immigrant has paperwork or not, those who work pay taxes, pay social security, and join unions. The contribution of non-citizens toward the American economy makes it important for representation in Congress to reflect their presence. The undocumented are not allowed to vote, but neither are Legal Permanent Residents, many convicted felons, new refugees, or children – and you would be hard-pressed to find someone willing to argue that those groups should not be factored in to a state’s population when allocating the resources it needs.

By Evan Armstrong
Community Engagement VISTA

As covered in previous posts, it is vitally important that the 2010 Census counts every person living in America. This ensures that federal resources are allocated fairly, legislative representation is accurate, local governments understand who is living in their districts, and much more. The challenge then for the Census Bureau is discovering which populations will be the hardest to count, and how they can increase census turnout in those areas.

The Hard-To-Count (HTC) population varies by region, but there are some basic assumptions that can be made on which groups prove the most challenging to count. The government uses 12 identifiers to label HTC areas, including: language barriers, education, telephone access, unemployment rate, poverty rate, and housing vacancy rate.

People in these circumstances are much less likely to be aware of the census, to receive a questionnaire in their mail, and to know that is smart, safe, and easy to fill it out and mail it in.

In the 2000 Census, 20% of Americans lived in Hard-To-Count areas. And unfortunately, this problem is the most noticeable in communities for racial and ethnic minorities. Organizing data by race reveals these troubling statistics (courtesy of US Census Bureau):

-  78% of Native American majority tracts are Hard-To-Count
-  73% of Hispanic majority tracts are HTC
-  61% of African American majority tracts are HTC
-  But less than 1% of tracts that have a high concentration of Non-Hispanic Whites are HTC

Minorities are the most at-risk of being undercounted in the census, which drains valuable funding and attention away from the wards that most need it. When language barriers, fear of government, and unfamiliarity with the census are factored in as well, achieving high turnout in HTC areas becomes a formidable challenge.

And aside from race and ethnicity, there are many other ways to identify at-risk groups less likely to fill out census forms. People leading nomadic lifestyles are harder to track down, as are those with a high fear of government. The indicators used show that recent immigrants, the homeless, college students, extreme rural communities, racial/ethnic enclaves, and people living in poverty are some of the most vulnerable populations to being undercounted.

So remember, it is important to recognize how important the census is to everyone in the country! Maximizing turnout is in your interest, for local and state resources depend on an accurate count to provide the necessary services to every county in America.

To look up your address and see if you live or work in a HTC area, try out this resource from the Community Research Institute in Michigan: http://www.cridata.org/htc/ . Scores over 60 are labeled as Hard-To-Count by the Census Bureau.

To see maps of the Hard-To-Count areas in Missouri, visit: http://oa.mo.gov/mocensus/publications/