From the number of congressional seats to the distribution of federal funds, the U.S. Census is a big deal. Brut spoke with a sociologist about why the Supreme Court's decision about including a question about citizenship status could change everything.
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00:00It really is about two things. Money and power.
00:22There's a concern that if they ask citizenship on the short form or the general census,
00:28it will cut down response rates, particularly among non-citizens.
00:33So if areas are undercounted, they will get less of the resources that they would get if they were properly counted.
00:41And then the second thing is power. What it'll do is it'll distort redistricting.
00:58The people that are appalled, in my opinion, are people like me who work with these data and want them to be accurate,
01:04and then people who would be directly affected, which are largely immigrant and foreign-born communities.
01:11A natural experiment was done using the 2010 data that shows that it would cut the response rate for the whole census
01:19by about 9% for households that have one person that can't be confirmed as a citizen in it.
01:26But of course that effect would really be in areas which have a large number of non-citizens.
01:31So like the Texas border, the Southwest, California, New York, Chicago, Florida, all of those places will be very heavily affected by this addition.
01:43And the experiment was carried out when Obama was president.
01:49And so the whole toxic atmosphere toward immigration that the Trump administration seems to favor was not in play at all.
01:58And so now that it is in play, it's very likely that the question will even have a higher non-response or cause a higher non-response.
02:18The basic thrust of that brief is to effectively say, Wilbur Ross was wrong.
02:37It's not like they're returning to past practice at all. That's just a canard.
02:42You can do voting rights enforcement without putting the citizenship question on the census.
02:49It looks like all that's falling on deaf ears.
02:53You know, the fact that it's going to hurt the census, the fact that it's going to undercut the enumeration and all of those other things,
03:00that instead they're just going to go full speed ahead.
03:03You could say that would have a positive political effect for the Republicans.
03:07You know, they would have more power because they're more likely to represent, you know, white people, non-Hispanic white people, older people.
03:14Censuses in other countries, in Nigeria and in Malaysia, have led to a civil war because one group isn't getting counted enough.
03:27I mean, this is sort of part of the polarization here. It's kind of like, well, we won't represent you folks now.
03:34I mean, it certainly could be reversed by a new administration.
03:37So that's, I guess, what I would say. Go out and vote.
03:41You know, like, register and vote.