The Tipping Point

Beginning in mid-March every residence in the United States will receive an unassuming but vital piece of mail. Inside the envelope will be a bland government document with 10 questions. Filling in the block spaces will take about 10 minutes, yet those answers will determine everything from how much funding your state gets for healthcare to how many seats it will have in Congress for the next 10 years.

That is the power of the 2010 census in a nutshell. A process that comes around only once every decade, this years’ census is perhaps the most important in history for America’s 47 million Hispanics. Latino leaders and organizers see the census as a way to ensure that the voice of the Hispanic community is heard and recognized in decision-making circles. It also defines how much of a $400 billion federal pie goes to states to fund Medicaid, highway expansion, education for the poor and low-income housing.

Hispanic businesses, workers and elected officials stand to gain from a full and fair count, but getting one is by no means assured. The Hispanic population is historically hard to count, say census officials, and the continued divisiveness surrounding undocumented immigrants and immigration reform could push the trend downward. Even if Latinos participate, achieving greater political power will be a struggle.

Hispanic groups and leaders are, however, more prepared than they were for the last census in 2000. They see massive participation in the census as the zenith of years of mobilizing the Hispanic community. It comes on the back of immigration reform marches in 2006, a citizenship drive in 2007 that resulted in almost 450,000 Latinos becoming nationalized, and a 2008 voter registration campaign that helped get 10 million Hispanics to the polls in the last election.

“We’ve been trying to keep that momentum,” says Arturo Vargas, the executive director of the National Association of Latino Elected and Appointed Officials (NALEO). “Hopefully people will understand that participating in the census is the next step we need to take in this empowerment movement in the Latino community.”

Quite possibly the most significant outcome of the census is the allocation of congressional seats. The census is a legal requirement to even out the House of Representatives among the 50 states in response to the latest population shifts. Simple mathematical logic would dictate that with a greater share of the population, Hispanics should control more seats in Washington—leading to an increased discussion of issues on the Latino agenda.

The high expectations of Hispanic leaders are based on previous census population estimates, which show the Latino community is the fastest growing major race or ethnic group. There were about 36 million Hispanics in 2000, 42 million in 2005 and the latest projections pin the number just shy of 48 million for 2010. The Pew Research Center estimates Hispanics of all races will number 128 million in 2050, accounting for 29 percent of the population, and 60 percent of the nation’s growth over that period. Already Latinos represent one out of every five school-age children and one of every four newborns. More importantly, the rapid rise in the Hispanic community is due not to immigration but to births, meaning a greater number U.S. citizens with voting rights.

[Reapportionment]

By the end of this year, the Census Bureau will provide the actual 2010 population for all 50 states, kicking off the process of reallocating congressional seats. The following April, county and neighborhood-specific data will be released, sparking hotly contested political negotiations across the country. Each state decides how to incorporate or eliminate congressional districts, with all parties trying to redraw the political map in their favor.

Hispanics have historically been an undercounted community. The problem lies in that a significant portion of Hispanics are what the Census Bureau calls “hard to count” populations. These groups generally include those who don’t speak English, have jobs on the margins of society or are unemployed, don’t own homes and, most notably, are undocumented immigrants. National leaders and advocates say Latinos were undercounted by as much as 1 million in 2000.

While the number of unauthorized immigrants (a majority are Hispanic) has fallen from just under 12 million in 2007 to 10.8 million last year, they still account for almost 3.5 percent of the U.S. population. Kenneth Prewitt, the 2000 census director, says increased media attention surrounding the immigration debate, along with the fear of being arrested by federal agents, will likely reduce Hispanic participation in the census and lead to a greater undercount.

“I think we will count a lower percentage of Hispanics in 2010, and since they’re a larger part of the population that means we are already looking at an undercount from what we had in 2000,” Prewitt says. “I’m more worried about whether we will have a fair census because a lot of the census-related benefits are calculated on proportionate shares instead of absolute numbers.”

Two things could reverse the undercount, Prewitt says. First, the Census Bureau received about $1 billion in stimulus funds that pushed the total budget close to $15 billion. In comparison, the 2000 budget was less than half that. “In the absence of stimulus money I would be more concerned about an undercount than I am,” he says.

The additional funds helped inflate the Census Bureau’s marketing budget to more than $338 million. Those funds developed 80 million census-related materials—from pencils to posters—in more than 28 languages. The bureau is also spending $133 million on advertising.

“Although the objective is to reach everyone, special emphasis is placed on really reaching and motivating” the hard-to-count segment, says Louis Maldonado, managing director of Dexposito & Partners, the ad agency charged with developing marketing material for the Latino community. “For some,” he notes, “there is a concern over providing personal information to the government, so communicating that their information is kept confidential, by law, is necessary to overcome any fear that might exist.”

It didn’t help that in October, the Commerce Department, which oversees the Census Bureau, said it would not ask the Homeland Security Department to suspend raids against illegal immigrants during the most active census period. The decision is a departure from the stance taken in 2000, when the census bureau informally asked immigration officials to halt the raids in order to improve cooperation among the undocumented, Prewitt says. The Commerce Department sought a similar agreement in 2007 but was rebuked by the Bush administration. Raul Cisneros, the 2010 census chief publicity officer, says the bureau did not make the request to immigration officials because “they have their job and we have our job.”

A second factor that could tilt the potential undercount is the more experienced organization and preparation of the Hispanic community itself. Hispanic leaders have organized web-based campaigns armed with proven social networks and massive text-messaging databases.

The trusted voices of Christian pastors have also been recruited to assuage fears. Yet the issue of whether to support the census has split the Christian church itself. The National Coalition of Latino Clergy and Christian Leaders, which includes 16,000 churches in 32 states, called on undocumented immigrants to boycott the census as a way to protest against the lack of any movement on an immigration reform bill.