Hidden Population Poses Census Windfall for Cities

It was a natural fear, and Quach Tho Ninh was no different than the rest. In the grim months after the fall of Saigon in 1975, Vietnamese authorities would conduct an occasional head count, marching house to house with automatic rifles slung over their shoulders.

This was only a census, but the questions invariably strayed. Were you in the army of the south? What are your beliefs? Your politics? Quach would always give the correct responses, the answers that would keep him alive.

Now more than a decade has passed. Quach has come to Orange County, hoping for a new life. One recent day, the 46-year-old immigrant was sitting in an English-language class, grappling with strange new vowels and syllables, when a visitor appeared--a man from the U.S. Census Bureau.

This, Quach soon realized, was different than the homeland. The census employee, a slight Vietnamese man named Vong Ngo, softened up the class with a few one-liners in his native tongue, then explained the importance of the nationwide survey.

The spiel did the trick. Afterward, Quach, without fear, was eager to participate in the U.S. Census.

Such small victories, however, could prove the exception rather than the rule when the 1990 census is launched in late March. While the past decade saw perhaps the greatest influx of foreign newcomers in Orange County’s history, many of those immigrants from south of the border and Indochina might go uncounted in the upcoming national survey.

They are among the nation’s hidden population, which also includes the homeless: families tucked into garages or vans, and drifters with no fixed addresses. Wary of the government and its emissaries, both recent immigrants and the homeless typically are not counted in the U.S. Census.

Although the census missed about 1.4% of the overall U.S. populace in 1980, the undercount was greater among minorities, with the rate of omission for black and Latino inner-city residents pegged at 12%.

The undercount is unfortunate, since the census serves as an important springboard for help. It bears directly on the distribution of about $30 billion in federal aid and millions more in state subsidies for a variety of programs. Each city’s share of that money is generally based on its numbers of poor, homeless or unemployed people.

Federal officials contend that the 1990 census can overcome the daunting obstacles to produce a reasonably complete count, even among immigrants and in the pockets of poverty that lace Orange County and other communities. The bureau has pressed ahead with a spate of programs to reach the types of people who have been overlooked in past decades.

In Orange County, census officials will enlist the help of churches, schools and social service agencies. Outreach specialists have been dispatched to give presentations to community organizations, adult English-language classes and Head Start groups.

Census officials also plan to hire temporary employees directly from the ethnic minority neighborhoods, marching into apartment complexes and housing projects to make a pitch for recruits. By tapping workers from the community, officials hope to ease the tensions and worries of residents facing the census.

Orange County cities such as Santa Ana have also helped, promoting the census with videos on local cable channels and distributing literature.

The Census Bureau, meanwhile, is gearing up for an ambitious, one-night campaign to count the homeless. Dubbed “shelter and street night,” the special push is expected to far surpass the bureau’s past enumeration efforts, which have focused on flophouses and other places of refuge.

But several problems persist.

The Census Bureau’s promotional literature in Spanish and other languages has largely failed to materialize in district offices throughout the United States. Aghast at the information gap, a nonprofit Latino group has stepped in to provide pamphlets in Spanish for many regions of the country.

For the Indochinese communities in Orange County, local census officials have resorted to producing their own literature, drawing up and photocopying rudimentary pamphlets for distribution.

Beyond logistical glitches, critics also see problems with the census form. The questionnaire comes only in English, with a small paragraph at the bottom giving a toll- free number to order a copy in Spanish. The form is unavailable in Vietnamese, Chinese or any of the scores of other languages spoken in the United States.

“Our feeling is a lot of people will not even see the paragraph at the bottom of the census saying they can request one in Spanish,” said Berta Saavedra, state census coordinator for the Mexican-American Legal Defense and Education Fund. “It could cause problems. And it’s even worse for people who speak other languages.”

Census officials attribute such drawbacks mostly to a lack of funds. But they insist the informational literature will be arriving at most district offices in January. They also stress that residents who speak another language can get help at special translation centers.

“It’s a concern,” said Fernando Tafoya, a census district manager in Orange County. “But it’s up to all of us on the local level to get the word out, and I feel we’ve got all the bases covered. The literature is important, but what’s even more important is the personal contact we hope to establish.”

Such a face-to-face approach could prove invaluable.

Undocumented immigrants, most of them Latinos settled in cities such as Santa Ana and Anaheim, fear the census will be used by immigration officials to track them down. (Illegal immigrants are counted by the census, despite repeated efforts by some congressmen to repeal the practice.) Even those granted legal status under the amnesty program are sometimes filled with distrust or don’t understand the benefits of being counted, authorities say.

New arrivals from Vietnam, Cambodia and Laos carry not only fears imported from their homelands, but a suspicion that the census might help housing authorities root out large families packed into cramped apartments in immigrant enclaves like Orange County’s Little Saigon in Westminster.

“Most of our efforts have to be aimed at saturating the community with accurate information about the census,” said Father Jaime Soto, vicar of the Hispanic community for the Catholic Diocese of Orange. “We need to get out the message that the information is confidential, and that the census could actually help them a lot.”

The news is only beginning to trickle out.

Consider the case of Natividad, a 26-year-old Latino woman in Santa Ana. An illegal immigrant who asked that only her first name be used, Natividad said she did not know what the census is. The mother of four also said she feared filling out government forms because of what she believes is the threat of deportation.

But Maria, another undocumented immigrant, said she planned to participate in the census, even though many of her friends are too frightened to be counted.

“My friends have a lot of concern that the census is a way the government can find out we are here illegally,” said Maria, 23, who learned about the nationwide survey from a Spanish-language news program.

There are others just like them, in Anaheim, in Westminster, in Santa Ana and Garden Grove. And that is where people like Vong Ngo come in.

A bespectacled 29-year-old with a wife and two children, Ngo came to the United States as a boat person in 1980 after five years under the communist regime in Vietnam. Now a community outreach specialist for the Census Bureau, he spends his days combing the Indochinese communities throughout Southern California, urging people to come forward and be counted.

So it was that he arrived one recent day for a presentation at Cambodian Family Inc., a nonprofit community services agency in Santa Ana.

Talking in a mix of English and Vietnamese, Ngo stressed that the census is confidential. Moreover, he pointed out how the count would actually help the community. More money would come for day-care centers, for health care, for sidewalks on a street.

“We have to explain it in terms of how it will help their own neighborhood and family,” Ngo said. “That’s why these presentations are important. But there’s never enough. There is no way that we can spread out the message to everyone.”

Across town, Tafoya was delivering a similar talk to a room packed with about 50 young Latino families at a community center. A murmur filled the room and small children in hooded jackets squirmed at their parents’ feet as Tafoya spoke in English. But the audience grew attentive when he broke into Spanish.

Afterward, Tafoya talked of building bridges.

“You’re sort of in their environment when you come out to these meetings,” he said. “It strengthens the relationship. And it helps that we’re going to give some of them a job with the census. The others know that their neighbor is not going to do something to hurt them.”

But it is a fragile trust. Some community leaders argue that unconnected events such as an immigration sweep a few days or weeks before the census could convince many immigrants not to participate. They have asked the Immigration and Naturalization Service for a moratorium on sweeps in the months before the census.

“If they decide to raid, it’ll put a damper on a complete count,” said Saavedra. “These people don’t understand that one hand of the federal government doesn’t always know what the other is doing. When they think of the government, they think of the INS, IRS, FBI. It all begins to run together.”

The Census Bureau faces no less troubling a dilemma with the homeless. Street-corner preachers and bedraggled bag ladies drifting on the periphery of society often hold a chilling animosity toward any type of government representative.

To prepare for the 1990 count, census officials have been putting their heads together with homeless advocates and others to pinpoint all the shelters and street locations that need to be visited.

On March 20, the massive operation will begin across the country. Shelters and low-cost motels will be visited between 6 p.m. and midnight. Streets will be searched the next morning from 2 a.m. to 4 a.m. Sleeping persons will not be awakened, but enumerators will estimate as best they can the person’s age and race.

Even with such tactics, a percentage of the United States’ hidden population will likely remain uncounted, experts say. For many cities, that will mean less federal money for streets, social services and other programs.

In Santa Ana, for instance, officials estimate that $2.5 million a year could be lost during the coming decade if the city’s estimated 50,000 Latino newcomers are omitted. Officials in Los Angeles, which has an even greater variety of needy immigrants, say their city stands to lose $12 million annually if there is an under-count.

“It boils down to the fact that if we do not count everybody, these people will not exist on paper,” noted Santa Ana Councilman Miguel A. Pulido. “Everything from reapportionment to tax dollars will be affected.”

Eager to ensure an accurate tally, many state and city officials are pushing for the Census Bureau to use a new technique it has developed to estimate the nation’s hidden population and adjust the census accordingly.

The concept is similar to a 100-year-old method for counting fish in a lake. Immediately after the census, an intense recount will be conducted of 150,000 randomly selected households across the country, including neighborhoods that have been habitually undercounted. By comparing the survey results against the census, the percentage of residents not included in the original count can be estimated.

The idea was initially endorsed by several key officials with the Census Bureau, but the Reagan Administration rejected the technique, prompting protests from critics who accused the president of playing politics.

As the critics saw it, the Republican president opposed the concept because of a probable rise in population totals in areas that are Democratic strongholds. As a result, those regions would gain Congressional seats and more federal money.

Several large states and cities, including California and Los Angeles, sued to reverse Reagan’s decision. The result was a settlement in 1989 that created an eight-member committee that will recommend whether the survey results should be used to adjust the nation’s population.

But politics could still come into play, the survey’s advocates contend, because the final decision, expected in mid-July, rests with Secretary of Commerce Robert Mosbacher, a Republican political appointee.

While the intrigue continues in Washington, the mood in Orange County has remained one of optimism, of hope that all segments of society will be counted on April 1, Census Day.

“I’m hoping the census will be the beginning of a reorientation in the way we see ourselves here in Orange County,” Father Soto said. “One of the critical issues facing the county will be ethnic pluralism, how we choose to engage the reality of who we are. The census could be a pivotal beginning to bringing that reality to us and making us face it.”

Times staff writer Lily Eng contributed to this story.