VIEW from behind the plow

We’ve undoubtedly filled out a few U.S. Census Forms over the past 80 years.

If they asked whether we were a citizen, we can’t remember.

If it did we probably checked the appropriate block and moved on without giving it much thought.

Suddenly, it is a big deal to the usual whiners: Those who detest President Trump and would find some ulterior motive to anything he does.

The end game it appears to us is to create chaos – or the appearance of chaos – in the nation, lending to their delusion that any change would be for the better. Our opinion: It wouldn’t.

One Tyler Durden, who is quoted by Miles Cheong via HumanEvents.com has gone to the trouble of digging up past census forms back to 1900.

Each of them pictured, until you get to the Obama Administration, except 1910, asks about the respondents’ citizenship.

The Urban Institute (you can guess its political leaning) screams that the 2020 census “threatens to put more than 4 million people at risk of being undocumented” and goes on to add that the question could lead to the “worst undercount of black, Latin people in 30 years.”

National Public Radio, a notoriously left-wing organization, financed in part by tax dollars (unnecessarily), did a “fact check” designed to undermine a comment made by White House Press Secretary Sarah Huckabee Sanders who commented after a statement on the question of whether citizenship has been a standard census question. The snide “fact check” came after the following lead-in comment:

“After a controversial decision by the Department of Commerce to add a question about U.S. citizenship to the 2020 census, White House press secretary Sarah Huckabee Sanders defended the move as nothing out of the ordinary.

NPR stated:

“The claim

“This is a question that’s been included in every census since 1965,” Sanders said Tuesday, “with the exception of 2.”

“The short answer

This statement is inaccurate, incomplete and misleading. A quick history of the decennial survey makes that clear.

“The long answer

“The census has been conducted every decade since 1790 to get a national head count used most critically to decide the distribution of congressional representation. At first it was conducted by U.S. marshals, but later surveys were sent to most American households, with census workers helping those who didn’t promptly return their surveys.

“The last time a citizenship question was among the census questions for all U.S. households was in 1950. That form asked where each person was born and in a follow-up question asked, ‘If foreign born — Is he naturalized?’”

After an extensive harangue implying that Sanders was dishonest, an article concludes:

“But if the 2020 census form does ultimately ask about citizenship status, it will be the first time the U.S. census has directly asked for the citizenship status of every person living in every household.”

What Does Breitbart Say?

So we went to another source, wondering if NPR was as inaccurate as Snopes on its fact checking. We visited Breitbart News to see what it had to say on the “controversy.” It wrote this:

“Contrary to left-wing news media claims, restoring the citizenship question” to the national census will yield more accurate data related to both legal and illegal immigration,” explained Hans von Spakovsky, Heritage Foundation senior legal fellow, in a Wednesday interview on SiriusXM’s Breitbart News Tonight with host Rebecca Mansour and special guest host Dylan Gwinn.

“I don’t think the critics are correct, but in any event, even if they were correct, it wouldn’t matter,” said von Spakovsky. “And the reason it wouldn’t matter is that the American people skip all kinds of questions on the census. There are a lot of people that resent being asked, for example, what race or ethnic group they are part of , and they have a non-response rate on those questions.”

Does It Matter?

“Ignoring some of the census’s questions – or the entire questionnaire – ‘doesn’t matter,’ said von Spakovsky, “because the Census Bureau literally hires millions of temporary workers whose only job it is to go knock on the doors of people who have either not answered questions on the census form they sent back [and] to go after the percentage of Americans who don’t fill out the form at all.” “They do that every census,” continued von Spakovsky, “because even without the citizenship question on it they have a problem [with incomplete census forms], and they have workers out there whose only job it is to go out there and get this information. So that’s something that’s already taken care of.”

“Temporary workers for the Census Bureau are deployed to every household in America that submits incomplete census forms or ignores the census questionnaire, noted von Spakovsky. “A  temporary worker working for the Census Bureau will show up at your door [to] get you to finish the form and finish the questions,” he stated, “and they are extremely persistent about doing that.”

Mansour invited von Spakovsky to share the history of citizenship inquiries on the census.

“The first time the citizenship question was on the census was 1820,” remarked von Spakovsky. “It was then consistently on the census up through 1950. In 1950, the Census Bureau decided that rather than send out one census form, they would send out two forms: a short-form and what they called a long-form.  

The Citizenship Question

Von Spakovsky explained how the Obama administration removed the “citizenship question” from the census in 2010, transferring it (to) a new Census Bureau analysis entitled the American Community Survey.

“The long-form had more questions on it [and] went out to 1-in-6 households across the country, and it also had a citizenship question on it,” recalled von Spakovsky. “The long-form was used through the 2000 census. The 2000 census – the long-form – was sent out with the citizenship question on it. They then decided during the Obama administration in 2010 not to send out the long-form anymore. Instead, they would only send out the short-form, but they decided to create a second survey form in order to get more current information.”

Survey Every Year

Von Spakovsky went on, “[The American Community Survey] doesn’t go out every 10 years. It goes out every year. … It’s very long. It has a lot of questions on it. It goes out to 1-in-36 households. It has a citizenship question on it. The citizenship question is currently being sent out in a Census Bureau survey. The only thing the Trump administration said was, ‘We’re going to take that citizenship question that is on that current survey sent out by the Census Bureau, and we’re going to move it back to the regular census form.’  And yet that’s portrayed as some sort of nefarious, unprecedented action by the administration.”

Von Spakovsky highlighted the need for accurate data regarding demographics in order to have informed analyses of political questions related to immigration.

“How can you have an informed debate about an issue of that importance if you don’t get accurate data on the number of non-citizens across the country?” asked von Spakovsky, “and you’re going to get more accurate data if it’s on the general census form than you are with the limited data from the American Community Survey form, because it goes to such a  smaller portion of the American population.”

Mountains From Molehills

After the debate, Trump was expected to drop the efort to place citizensgip on the census form.

The pushback was entirely political – the left making a mountain out of a molehill.

Of course it gives the left-wing national media additional opportunity to drone on endlessly about whatever bad name is in vogue at the time to demean the president.

Other means likely will be used to gain the necessary information.