Trump Administration Proposes Excluding Noncitizens From U.S. Census, Removing Race Questions

The Trump administration proposed changing the U.S. census to count only U.S. citizens and lawful permanent residents while excluding other foreign nationals, including people with temporary legal status and immigrants without documentation, under a proposal released by the Department of Commerce on Wednesday.

“submitting a proposal that would exclude some noncitizens from the population count”

Al Jazeera

NBC News said the proposal would exclude even more immigrants from the census, including those in the U.S. on a temporary lawful basis, and would also eliminate parts of the questionnaire that seek information on race or ethnicity.N

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The proposal would also eliminate parts of the questionnaire that seek information on race and ethnicity, citing “substantial doubts about the meaning, significance, and impact” of such categories and questioning their ongoing “usefulness,” according to Al Jazeera.A

Reuters reported that the rule changes are open to public comment for 30 days and that the U.S. Census Bureau submitted the proposal just over a year after President Donald Trump ordered its parent agency to craft a new census that would block immigrants in the U.S. illegally from being counted.

Meeta Anand, senior director of the census and data equity program at the Leadership Conference on Civil and Human Rights, warned the effort could have “earth-shattering” effects by leaving cities and states with relatively high immigrant populations with insufficient federal aid and political representation, according to Reuters.

Anand also told Reuters that census data “undergirds so much of our democracy and our society,” adding, “So you'll start seeing a very inaccurate picture of our country, and then we're making political decisions, business decisions, investment decisions based on data that are flawed.”

Al Jazeera

NBC News reported that demography experts and civil rights advocates warn the changes could warp the data used for drawing congressional and state legislative districts, enforcing anti-discrimination law and allocating federal funds for public services.N

Al Jazeera reported that William Frey, a demographer at the Brookings Institution, said the proposal goes beyond changing how the census is conducted, telling Al Jazeera, “The administration is trying to change the idea of who is American.”A

The proposal would reshape political representation and federal funding by changing the population numbers used to determine each state's share of representatives in Congress and votes in the Electoral College, NPR reported.

“affect the population numbers used to determine each state's share of representatives in Congress”

NPR

NPR said the changes would also redraw maps of voting districts for all levels of government and distribute federal funding for public services, while the plan faces likely legal challenges.

The Independent said the draft proposal would prohibit all noncitizens without a green card from participating in the 2030 Census, which would exclude refugees, people seeking asylum and other protected immigrants with legal status, as well as undocumented people who have long been included in the nation’s headcount.

Al Jazeera reported that the Justice Department warned on September 2 that states could lose billions of dollars in welfare funding if they fail to report immigrants known by state agencies to be in the country without documentation.A