Every decade, the U.S. Census Bureau sets out to count every person living in the United States, asking each household for names, age, sex, race and relationships.
As the nation gears up for the 2020 census, California is under particular pressure to make sure everyone gets counted, particularly in immigrant communities.
With more than one million residents, San Jose is one of the most diverse cities in the United States, let alone California.
"Perhaps 40% of our adults were born in a foreign country. We’re typically undercounted in census efforts," San Jose Mayor Sam Liccardo said.
Federal law bars the Census Bureau from sharing survey information with law enforcement, immigration officials and the like. And while three pending federal court suits claim the Trump administration is purposefully failing to fully plan for and fund this year's count, the U.S. Census Bureau is making a concerted effort to reach out to the nation's residents in dozens of languages to urge them to participate.
But highly publicized controversies can make some households nervous. The Trump administration was keen to ask every respondent if they were a citizen, until blocked by the U.S. Supreme Court last year. The city of San Jose was among the first in the country to participate in that lawsuit.
The Trump administration has also taken to deporting immigrants for the slightest of reasons, and that has many people feeling anxious about cooperating with census counters.
When individuals beg off participating, that has consequences for the wider community.
"First, of course, there’s the question of political representation and how seats in Congress are allocated," Liccardo said.
That's because congressional seats have been a zero-sum game ever since 1911, when Congress capped its membership at 435. That means states like California that experience "net domestic migration loss," as we did in 2019, are at risk of losing a representative.
"But even more impactful for us, are the tens of millions of dollars of federal funding for education, for housing, for social services," Liccardo added. At present, $1.5 trillion in federal spending is distributed to states and local governments every year on the basis of data gathered by the Census Bureau. It’s estimated each individual counted translates to $2,000 in federal funding, according to the California Department of Finance.
So what is San Jose doing to maximize the accuracy of its count? The city is coordinating with dozens of trusted local nonprofits, like SOMOS Mayfair in East San Jose.
Transportation department staff have installed streetlight pole banners in English, Spanish and Vietnamese at 400 targeted locations to encourage participation.
Given that recent immigrants are not the only difficult-to-count populations, San Jose is also co-sponsoring an app to help census takers find homeless and low-income individuals, like students living in non-traditional housing, like garages and granny flats.
"We’re able to identify thousands of families that way, that otherwise the census would have missed. Beause we have way too many families living in garages, or ADUs [accessory dwelling units, also known as granny flats]," Liccardo said.
Expect other initiatives to be announced in the coming weeks.