Saturday, October 24, 2009

the 2010 census surveyis about to come your front door...
Should you be asked if you are a citizen?

The register guard

Are you a citizen? That is one of the issues as Senator David Vitter, Louisiana Republican would like to have as one of the questions being asked. In fact, he wants to go as far as having funding cut off unless the census includes that question.

Vitter says he wants to exclude noncitizens from the population totals that are used to determine the appointment of House member.

Senator Orin Hatch, Utah Republican, would only like the rule to apply to people living abroad such as military personnel, federal civilian employees and their families.

The Commerce Department claims that changing the census forms and reprinting them would cost hundreds of millions of dollars.

in a way, I can see Vitter's point. With over 12 million illegal aliens and the influence that they have already made in our society, why should they also be included in the determination of our House seats.

And while I am the first one to say that the census with some other questions goes way above and beyond the initial intense to the point of being none of their business. Asking whether or not you are a citizen of the United States or a legal immigrant I have mixed feelings on.

However, it is one of the questions on a job application. "Are you a citizen?"

Besides, if you are here illegally... are you really dumb enough to answer a survey asking you if you're a citizen or not? Probably not.

1 comment:

Bobkatt said...

I'm not sure what your reservations are about the citizenship issue but in the article was an interesting line. "The Census Bureau already tracks the number of citizens and noncitizens through a separate survey." It seems that if that is the case it would be rather simple to subtract the noncitizens from the total.
I for one totally agree that noncitizens should not be included when you establish representatives.