Census Work Is Opened to Non-Citizens

The Census Bureau has for the first time formally waived the citizenship requirement for its census takers, paving the way for the hiring of bilingual non-citizens in to get a more accurate count of the non-English-speaking population in San Diego County and other areas of Southern California.

The census has historically undercounted the minority population, and officials, in part, blame the language barrier.

The plan to hire qualified non-citizens as census takers is expected to help conquer that barrier, since there was a need for more bilingual census takers in the 1980 Census.

“In a lot of cases there are language barriers and perhaps a mistrust of government, particularly with people who are new to this country, and they are reluctant to fill out their forms,” said Karen Lamphere of the San Diego Assn. of Governments, a community organization working with the Census Bureau.

“We’re trying to publicize the fact that the census really means dollars to San Diego County for every person that is counted,” Lamphere said.

At stake is $73 billion a year in federal funds to cities and counties, based directly on census tabulations, plus state money distributed to communities based both directly and indirectly on census data.

Census regional director John Reeder granted a waiver in December to federal policy that only citizens be hired to work as census enumerators.

Reeder said bilingual non-citizens had been used in 1980, but this is the first year that formal channels had been created to hire them. Reeder stressed, however, that bilingual citizens will be given preference over non-citizens.

Reeder said New York and some other regions in the Southwest have taken similar action.

Non-citizens hired must meet the same standards as citizens who are hired, including passing a written test and having proficiency in English, said Pat Montelongo Chriss, district office manager in one of the four census districts in San Diego County. They also must have valid United States work permits.

About 1,600 census takers will be hired in San Diego County, Chriss said. The census takers will go to households that did not respond to mailed census forms in areas where there is a high concentration of foreign-language speakers, Chriss said.

Chriss cited statistics showing that the Latino population in San Diego grew 46% from 1980 to 1988, and the Asian population expanded by 89% in the same time, indicating a need for more bilingual census takers.

But advocates for minority groups were unimpressed Monday.

Irma Castro, executive director of the Chicano Federation and a member of the Sandag committee that issued the recommendation to hire bilingual non-citizens, said the latest step is too little, too late.

“The Census Bureau really needed to have been much more pro-active in the way that it was going to reduce its undercount of the Latino population,” Castro said. “Where the majority of efforts have gone has not been to where the undercounts have occurred.”

Castro complained of a lack of leadership from the Census Bureau as well as a lack of educational materials available to community organizations to help in the effort.

“Community people want to help, but they don’t know how they can be helpful in the census taking,” Castro said.

“The Census Bureau has to look outside of its real traditional methods” of counting, including having census takers go door-to-door to explain the role of the census and to get forms accurately completed, Castro said.

But Reeder defended the mailing campaign as the most efficient means of reaching all the people.

“In the mail-out, mail-back system, we contact every home,” Reeder said.

“Our mailing list is pretty good, and what our mail census allows you to do is concentrate your resources.”