Census Can Be a Puzzle : Language barrier: The county’s Southeast Asians are having problems understanding just what the head count is, even with some help.

Even for one who commands English with the aplomb of a Laurence Olivier, filling out a census form can be tough.

But imagine trying to complete the questionnaire armed only with knowledge of the Vietnamese, Thai or Tagalog languages.

That’s where people like Chi Duy Do come in. A volunteer for the U.S. Census Bureau, Do is one of scores of people in Orange County and across the country working to ensure that those who speak foreign tongues will be tallied in the nationwide head count.

They are stationed at toll-free telephone lines or ensconced at temporary assistance centers in community agencies, churches and other locations. Do has the Vietnamese of Orange County as his customers, and his task has not been easy.

“They call me and ask me, ‘What is census?’ ” Do said Thursday as he sat in the offices of the Santa Ana-based Vietnamese Community of Orange County Inc., a social service agency where he usually works as a counselor. “They don’t know the meaning. After explaining it to them, I ask them to spread the word . . . but I fear that many, many Vietnamese people will not be counted.”

Indeed, problems have already started to crop up.

There have been reports that some newcomers from Southeast Asia have thrown their census forms away, figuring that the government documents were junk mail.

“In my neighborhood, I have seen in the trash maybe two or three questionnaires,” said Do, who has also received phone calls from half a dozen other Vietnamese immigrants who mistakenly threw out the census form. “They don’t understand. They think it is advertising.”

Moreover, the centers have yet to start doing a breakneck business. At the Vietnamese community center, for instance, only about a dozen people have called or visited since the forms were mailed March 23. Do was able, however, to explain the census to about 40 elderly Vietnamese during a meeting of senior citizens on Wednesday.

Many non-English-speaking residents may have resorted to ringing up the Census Bureau’s toll-free telephone network. Nationwide, about 9,000 people have called the phone lines serving Asian languages, according to Ken Riccini, the bureau’s assistant chief of processing centers.

The Spanish-language lines have been another matter entirely. Calls have jammed the system for days. The bureau has added more lines, but reports persisted Thursday of callers getting only a busy signal despite repeated dialings.

Officials at the Census Bureau are well aware of all the problems.

Faced with large printing costs and various computer-programming difficulties, the Census Bureau mails out questionnaires only in English. Each form also has a phone number for ordering a copy in Spanish.

But those who speak other languages must fend for themselves, seek help from census employees on the bureau’s toll-free telephone lines, or head to one of the more than 75 volunteer assistance centers in Orange County and thousands more throughout the country.

Chi Duy Do and other volunteers use their bilingual skills to translate the census for often-befuddled newcomers, many of them from lands that never held such a nationwide canvass.

If someone shows up speaking an unfamiliar language, the volunteers employ booklets that translate the census into 32 languages.

Despite such efforts, leaders of minority groups throughout the United States worry that the language barrier and inherent fears of government intrusion will combine to cause an undercount among many of the people who could benefit most from the census.

The once-a-decade head count is used to figure political apportionment and distribution of more than $70 billion in federal assistance for programs ranging from highway construction to social service agencies.

“The census is something that is very unfamiliar to the Southeast Asian community in general and the Vietnamese in particular,” said Tuong Duy Nguyen, executive director of the Vietnamese community center, which serves the 130,000 to 150,000 immigrants in Orange County. “They don’t know how good the census is for them.”

Some newcomers fear that information gleaned by the census might be used against them, he said. In particular, they worry that revelations such as several families crammed into one tiny apartment might bring them to the attention of housing authorities, Nguyen said.

And many Vietnamese don’t trust the Census Bureau’s promises of confidentiality, he continued, because of their experience with the government in their homeland--a “distrust in the system” that has been carried to the United States.

“It takes time to change the philosophy, the way of thinking,” he said.

Nguyen said the effort to count the Southeast Asian community has been undermined in part by a lack of census employees to spread the word in the months before the count and to promote the effort among the Vietnamese and other immigrants. The bureau has only a single employee, Vong Ngo, serving as liaison to the Southeast Asian community all across Southern California.

For his part, Ngo expects that only about half the Vietnamese in Orange County will end up returning their census forms. Many of the rest will be counted during a post-census effort involving phone calls to non-respondents and visits to homes, Ngo said. Even then, he expects only 70% to 80% of the community to be counted.

But the short, bespectacled father of two has not given up. Ngo said he plans to hold a press conference on Monday with reporters from immigrant newspapers in Orange County to spark more articles about the census and its importance.