Asians Protest Census Follow-Up Procedures : Minorities: A plan to lump them with whites in a door-to-door post-enumeration survey is under review, officials say.

Census officials, reacting to criticism from Asian community leaders, said Monday that they will consider modifying a post-census survey in hopes of more accurately tabulating the nation’s Asian population.

Asian leaders from the San Francisco Bay Area to Orange County have decried the so-called “post-enumeration survey,” saying it will ignore their community at a time when Asians are the fastest-growing ethnic group in the nation.

The post-enumeration survey, scheduled to begin this month, is designed to assure that minority groups and the poor are not undercounted in the nearly completed U.S. census.

The study is to be based on door-to-door interviews with 150,000 households, the results of which will be compared to completed census forms for those same households. Discrepancies will be noted and used to determine if members of minority groups or those who fall within certain income levels were undercounted.

The criticism arose because Asians, while listed separately on the survey forms, were to be grouped together with whites in the study. Los Angeles officials have estimated that Asians were undercounted by 7.3% in the 1980 census.

“In the last decade Asian-Americans have fought two presidential administrations to ensure a correct count,” Secretary of State March Fong Eu said Monday at a press conference in Los Angeles. “Now the Asian community is back at ground zero.”

Monterey Park Mayor Judy Chu, who joined Eu at the press conference, said: “There’s absolutely no justification to exclude Asians. In fact, there’s even more justification to include us. Immigrants are not familiar with the census-taking process and may have undercounted family members.”

Rep. Robert Matsui (D-Sacramento) and Rep. Norman Mineta (D-San Jose) also have criticized the study and, last week, joined with about a dozen other members of Congress to sign a letter of protest directed at the Commerce Department and the Census Bureau.

Before their announcement Monday, census officials had defended their policy, claiming that Asians are such a small percentage of the U.S. population that the post-census count cannot determine if they have been undercounted. Under the bureau’s current plan, blacks and Latinos would be included in separate categories in the count. Anglos, Asians, Pacific Islanders and American Indians who do not live on reservations would be in a third category.

On Monday, Charles Jones, associate director of the Census Bureau, said the bureau would “look at” changing its study as the result of telephone calls and letters demanding that Asians be counted accurately. “I can’t promise anything right now . . . but it’s certainly feasible to look at that and see if we can (count Asians) separately” in the post-census count, he said.

The Asian community has burgeoned with an influx of Chinese, Vietnamese and Cambodian immigrants to the San Gabriel Valley, Orange County and the San Francisco Bay Area. Asians and Pacific Islanders make up about 9.5% of California’s 29 million residents, according to 1989 Department of Finance estimates. Blacks make up 7.5%, and Latinos 24.2%, of the state population.

Population statistics have long been disputed in Orange County, where tens of thousands of Southeast Asian immigrants have settled since the last census, along with perhaps a dozen other Asian ethnic groups.

For example, the state Department of Finance pegged the county’s Southeast Asian refugee population at 57,548 in January, but Asian-American community leaders believe that the Vietnamese population alone tops 100,000, with up to 15,000 Cambodians and 10,000 Laotians.

“We have been trying to tell everybody that there are more Asians here than people think, that Asians are not being counted in this county,” said Vora Huy Kanthoul, associate director of the United Cambodian Community Inc. of Santa Ana. “We keep receiving the answer that we’re exaggerating the numbers. . . . But no one is sure of the real number.”

Though several Cambodian-speaking census workers were hired, Kanthoul believes that there was still a massive undercount.

“It’s very hard,” he said. “It’s a hassle and our people do not see the direct benefits.”

Even if the Census Bureau agrees to change its way of conducting the post-census count, it is unclear whether the results will be used to adjust final census figures. Census officials said they have made no decision on how and whether the count will be used despite demands by officials in California, Chicago, Houston, New York and Miami.

City and state officials there charge that the Commerce Department failed to live up to a court-sanctioned agreement that spells out the conditions under which the census would be adjusted to correct for undercounted populations.

The cities and states argued in a 1988 lawsuit that they stand to lose millions of dollars in federal funds as a result of undercounted minorities and the poor. These critics contend that many members of minority groups and the poor tend to avoid the census because of language barriers, ignorance or distrust of authorities. Latino and black civil rights organizations also were plaintiffs in the suit.

In the settlement with the Commerce Department last year, Los Angeles officials assumed Asians would be counted as a separate group in the post-enumeration survey, said Deputy City Atty. Jessica Heinz.

Staff writer Sonni Efron contributed to this report from Oranges County.