• We’re currently investigating an issue related to the forum theme and styling that is impacting page layout and visual formatting. The problem has been identified, and we are actively working on a resolution. There is no impact to user data or functionality, this is strictly a front-end display issue. We’ll post an update once the fix has been deployed. Thanks for your patience while we get this sorted.

2020 census to include citizenship question

Page 7 - Seeking answers? Join the AnandTech community: where nearly half-a-million members share solutions and discuss the latest tech.
pcgeek11 said:
There is no way they could possibly know how many illegals participate or not in the census.
And due to that they could not possibly know for sure what impact that question would have on participation in the census.

Prediction, estimation and guessing.

Do you actually think that they know these things.
Click to expand...

And that's where you'd be wrong.

https://www.vox.com/policy-and-poli...tizenship-2020-immigrants-count-trump-lawsuit

The concern was real even before the citizenship question was added. Last year, a bureau researcher flagged to a census advisory committee that focus groups and field tests were having serious problems getting immigrants to complete the survey.
Click to expand...

I'm sure you'll man up and admit you were wrong now. /s
 
pcgeek11 said:
No, you are incorrect. Do you think the majority of illegals participate in the census regardless of this question.
Click to expand...
I think that in general if something is unknown to begin with, you don't make a significant change that is unlikely to have benefit and has concerns for harm.

We already suspect that our count of non-citizens is limited. Why would you add a question that basically does nothing for you but significantly limits your abilities to count non-citizens that are there? Most private industries and companies do not work this way where they expose themselves to unnecessary risk (here the risk is getting even worse data) without any real benefit. You'll never see Exxon or google say "hey we have a real dearth of data in this arena so lets do something to make our data gathering and general knowledge on the topic even worse". Can you imagine Toyota going "hey we don't know enough about why our brakes are failing, so lets add a question or step or hurdle to our data gathering process to make it even harder to understand what the problem is"

The citizenship question is akin to voter ID laws. We already have a problem with not enough voters in the country actually going down there. Voter ID laws only worsen the problem, but its something that is done for political gain. The same is true here. Pretty shameful I think
 
Jhhnn said:
He didn't even mention the census in that most recent post...
Click to expand...
I provided another perspective on the political oppprtunism for how we count people, which is part of the broader census discussion. I see no harm in including a citizenship question on the census. Lots of forms ask that question.
 
UNCjigga said:
Umm...yeah, sure. Maybe under any trustworthy administration. Census Bureau has shared data with authorities in the past: "During World War I, the Census Bureau shared with the military the names of men who were of draft age. During World War II, the bureau provided the Secret Service with the names and addresses of some Japanese-Americans in the Washington, D.C., area as part of an investigation. And in 2000, the bureau acknowledged and apologized for sharing data on Japanese-Americans living on the West Coast to help the military relocate them to internment camps after the attack on Pearl Harbor in 1941."
https://www.nytimes.com/2018/03/27/us/census-undocumented-immigrants.html
Click to expand...
Thank you for actually researching the history, rather than making it up as some have tried to do.
You are absolutely correct, but you also failed to mention that further down the same article says -
"The law was changed in 1978 to prohibit the Census Bureau from sharing information with other government agencies for a period of 72 years after it collects personal data."
This was just two of the indiscretions of the Census Bureau (others are documented) and the reason(s) the information collected was placed under Title 13 protection in 1978.
Title 13 provides for up to 5 years and up to $250,000 or both for each violation, which in the case of the Census would be each name.
Political BS was the reason for the 22 year wait for an apology, which coincided with an apology for the internment of American citizens of Japanese heritage.
 
fskimospy said:
No need, it’s already been covered. For the vast majority of people it hasn’t been asked since 1950.
Click to expand...
I explained how the Census and the ACS works before and by the numbers of the long form Census respondents and by the numbers of the ACS respondents, the question has been asked in a majority of American households of the time period since 1970, but no never to a majority in a single year.
But since none of that seems to matter to you, I'd ask the question, "why does it matter to you at all?"
No one is forced to answer the question.
There is no penalty for not answering the question.
It would appear you don't care about BLM or LGBT, as there are questions on both the Census and ACS that can target them just as easy.
Why are you not up in arms about all the other "offensive", "intrusive", and "illegal" questions that are also asked by the Census and ACS?
Why just the current "popular" one?
If you don't want any one to know if you are a citizen or not, don't answer the question, don't, it's that simple.
 
Micrornd said:
I explained how the Census and the ACS works before and by the numbers of the long form Census respondents and by the numbers of the ACS respondents, the question has been asked in a majority of American households of the time period since 1970, but no never to a majority in a single year.
But since none of that seems to matter to you, I'd ask the question, "why does it matter to you at all?"
No one is forced to answer the question.
There is no penalty for not answering the question.
It would appear you don't care about BLM or LGBT, as there are questions on both the Census and ACS that can target them just as easy.
Why are you not up in arms about all the other "offensive", "intrusive", and "illegal" questions that are also asked by the Census and ACS?
Why just the current "popular" one?
If you don't want any one to know if you are a citizen or not, don't answer the question, don't, it's that simple.
Click to expand...

I think everybody knows what is going on. Democrats see this added question as hurting them in terms of money and political power and they are correct. Republicans see this added question as helping them in terms of money and political power and they are correct. Now we are left to moralize why it is evil to add the the question or evil to not add the question.

I generally hold to the idea that all the real power is held by financial elites so I am not overly vested in this particular issue.
 
bshole said:
I think everybody knows what is going on. Democrats see this added question as hurting them in terms of money and political power and they are correct. Republicans see this added question as helping them in terms of money and political power and they are correct. Now we are left to moralize why it is evil to add the the question or evil to not add the question.

I generally hold to the idea that all the real power is held by financial elites so I am not overly vested in this particular issue.
Click to expand...
But that is the point - the question is not being added, it has been there since 1970.
Granted it has not been asked of every household, in every year, but it has been asked of 16% of different American households each time, at each Census, except for the last Census.
And the ACS has been asking the same question for 21 consecutive years to 16% of different households each year.
 
Micrornd said:
But that is the point - the question is not being added, it has been there since 1970.
Granted it has not been asked of every household, in every year, but it has been asked of 16% of different American households each time, at each Census, except for the last Census.
And the ACS has been asking the same question for 21 consecutive years to 16% of different households each year.
Click to expand...

Fine, how about you remove the term "added" from my quote and actually address the central point of my claim.

I think everybody knows what is going on. Democrats see this question as hurting them in terms of money and political power and they are correct. Republicans see this question as helping them in terms of money and political power and they are correct. Now we are left to moralize why it is evil to have the the question or evil to not have the question.
Click to expand...
 
bshole said:
Fine, how about you remove the term "added" from my quote and actually address the central point of my claim.
Click to expand...
I only disagree with you on the "added" part, I do agree with the rest of your post.
But as I see it, it is mostly a Democrat "thing", since they haven't any strong objection to this question for as long as it has been around, but now with them being a minority and it looking like they will continue to decline in political power, they need to fight for every vote they can, whereas before they took many voters for granted.
I fully expect to see the Democrats bring many more "issues" to the forefront that weren't worth their time in the past, but now are on their agenda, because they can manipulate the emotions of the voters, since they finally have realized they have lost many of their voting base due to taking them for granted.
I expect the Republicans to simply rehash the same conservative items they have since WWII.
As to moralizing, well as I said, no one has to answer the question, and there is no penalty for not answering, so I don't see a dilemma.
 
Micrornd said:
I explained how the Census and the ACS works before and by the numbers of the long form Census respondents and by the numbers of the ACS respondents, the question has been asked in a majority of American households of the time period since 1970, but no never to a majority in a single year.
But since none of that seems to matter to you, I'd ask the question, "why does it matter to you at all?"
No one is forced to answer the question.
There is no penalty for not answering the question.
It would appear you don't care about BLM or LGBT, as there are questions on both the Census and ACS that can target them just as easy.
Why are you not up in arms about all the other "offensive", "intrusive", and "illegal" questions that are also asked by the Census and ACS?
Why just the current "popular" one?
If you don't want any one to know if you are a citizen or not, don't answer the question, don't, it's that simple.
Click to expand...

This has also been covered in the thread, did you not read it?

It will depress participation among illegal immigrants because instead of not answering one question they will likely just not complete the survey at all. Since the goal of the census is to count everyone as completely as possible, lower participation rates mean a worse survey. This is really all just common sense.
 
Do you honestly think a majority of illegal immigrants participate in these surveys?
And of those that do, do you honestly think they answer all the questions?
And of the questions they do answer, do you honestly think they answer all them truthfully?
I have this bridge for sale, perhaps you are interested?
 
Micrornd said:
Do you honestly think a majority of illegal immigrants participate in these surveys?
And of those that do, do you honestly think they answer all the questions?
And of the questions they do answer, do you honestly think they answer all them truthfully?
I have this bridge for sale, perhaps you are interested?
Click to expand...

Every one of those questions is irrelevant. Will including this survey increase or decrease the likelihood of an illegal immigrant filling it out?

Again, this is really all common sense.
 
Micrornd said:
Ok, I won't deny that is possible, but maybe at least say why?
Click to expand...
There are no sexual orientation questions on the survey. Things that are asked...
gender
DOB
marital status
# of people living in the household and their gender.

There are no questions involving political affiliations
 
HomerJS said:
There are no sexual orientation questions on the survey. Things that are asked...
gender
DOB
marital status
# of people living in the household and their gender.

There are no questions involving political affiliations
Click to expand...

That gender question could be a problem.
 
Micrornd said:
Do you honestly think a majority of illegal immigrants participate in these surveys?
And of those that do, do you honestly think they answer all the questions?
And of the questions they do answer, do you honestly think they answer all them truthfully?
I have this bridge for sale, perhaps you are interested?
Click to expand...

So what? We *want* them to participate so that we'll have accurate numbers. Well, unless honest numbers don't advance our political agenda in which case everything is different, of course.
 
HomerJS said:
Don't remember if it was asked as gender or sex but there were only 2 choices M/F
Click to expand...
You are correct, they ask sex and give only 2 choices, male or female.
They also as for race and ethnic background.
They also ask how anyone else living in the household is related to the de facto head of household.
How many bedrooms?
Does anyone in the household receive food stamps?
Where were the residents of the household born?
If not born in the US, when did they come to live in the US.
Does this person speak a language other than English at home?
How well does this person speak English?
etc., etc.

How in the h*ll can you not find this more or alt the very least as offensive, intrusive or targeted than the simple "Are you a US Citizen", which is also asked on this same survey.

I stand by my statement that it can be used to target blacks and the LGBT community, just as easily as/or illegal immigrants, yet there have been no complaints about it since it's inception in 1996.
Maybe you have forgotten the contents of the ACS survey, so here it is -

https://www2.census.gov/programs-surveys/acs/methodology/questionnaires/2017/quest17.pdf
 
You must log in or register to reply here.

TRENDING THREADS

Back
Top