NYT: How a 2020 Census Question on Citizenship Could Affect States
The Trump administration last week announced that it would add a citizenship question to the decennial census in 2020, citing the need for more granular data for determining Voting Rights Act violations. Critics say that adding the question could cause some immigrants — particularly those who are not citizens — not to respond, resulting in an undercount.
There is no reliable data to estimate how many people would opt out of the census, but a panel of experts from inside the United States Census Bureau still expressed opposition to the move, in part because of concerns about accuracy.
“Just because there is not clear evidence that adding the question would harm the census accuracy, this is not evidence that it will not,” they wrote in a memo.