News Update - October 17, 2009

By Alan Lee, Esq.^†‡

Citizenship and the 2010 Census

Senator David Vitter (R) of Louisiana introduced a bill this week that would require the 2010 Census to inquire about an individual’s immigration status. Vitter argues that counting undocumented immigrants artificially inflates state population and so skews the division of congressional districts among states. The census determines how the 435 congressional districts are distributed among the states.

The Commerce Department and Census Bureau spoke out against Vitter’s bill on Tuesday. The Census Bureau has already printed 425 million questionnaires. Revising the census now would delay its scheduled 2010 release date and would cost taxpayers hundreds of millions of dollars.

The Obama administration opposes the bill, and the Senate has delayed its vote on the bill. Critics have noted that the Constitution makes no mention of citizenship when discussing the census, requiring only an “enumeration”.

In preparation for the 2010 census data collection, the Census Bureau is spending $300 million in an effort to circulate information and is sending out postcards in five different languages to ensure that immigrants are informed about the process.

By law, information collected by the Census Bureau is completely confidential.

† The author is a 26+ year practitioner of immigration law based in New York City. He was awarded the Sidney A. Levine prize for best legal writing at the Cleveland-Marshall College of Law in 1977 and has written extensively on immigration over the past years for the ethnic newspapers, World Journal, Sing Tao, Pakistan Calling, Muhasha and OCS. He has testified as an expert on immigration in civil court proceedings and was recognized by the Taiwan government in 1985 for his work protecting human rights. His article, "The Bush Temporary Worker Proposal and Comparative Pending Legislation: an Analysis" was Interpreter Releases' cover display article at the American Immigration Lawyers Association annual conference in 2004, and his victory in the Second Circuit Court of Appeals in a case of first impression nationwide, Firstland International v. INS, successfully challenged INS' policy of over 40 years of revoking approved immigrant visa petitions under a nebulous standard of proof. Its value as precedent, however, was short-lived as it was specifically targeted by the Administration in the Intelligence Reform Act of 2004.

‡ This article © 2009 Alan Lee, Esq.

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