When asked about the census, Babu Patel, manager of the grocery chain Patel Brothers, initially thought we were talking about India’s national anthem. Patel had confused the Hindi term for population count, jansankhya, for the anthem’s title, “Jana Gana Mana.” “Republic Day wala gaana,” he said, guessing that I wanted to discuss the song regularly blasted at parades on India’s Independence Day.
For each person who doesn’t fill out the census, community organizations and public service providers lose $1,400 in federal funding from the state. The hardest hit programs—like Medicaid, SNAP, and Head Start—tend to be used by lower-income Chicagoans who are less likely to fill out the census, as well as community-based organizations that do work with immigrant communities whose funding is contingent on census numbers. This can be hard to communicate to South Asians in advance of the count.
The census, through its influence on the configuration of voting districts, also determines, to an extent, the political power a community will have over the next ten years. Through this redistricting process, Asian-opportunity districts (where at least 50 percent of voters are Asian Americans), Asian-influence districts (where Asian Americans constitute 20-30 percent of the district’s population), and multiracial districts (where Asian Americans may be less than a majority, but minority groups together constitute a majority) are created to ensure that Asian Americans have a say in choosing their elected officials. For Asian Chicagoans, this isn’t an abstraction: The 2010 census resulted in Illinois’s second House district being redrawn to give Chinatown a stronger voice in the district’s representation. In 2016, Theresa Mah was the first Asian American elected to the Illinois House or Senate, as a Chinese American woman from the second district representing Chinatown. “Our entire ability to have representation hinges on this,” said Mansi Kathuria of the organization Asian Americans Advancing Justice Chicago.
This diversity of nationalities fits into two ethnicity categories on the census: “Asian Indian” and “other Asian”; the latter category groups communities like Pakistanis and Bangladeshis with Laotian and Thai Americans. “All South Asian folks might not know that, yeah, like that’s supposed to be you,” said Kathuria, laughing.
With the census going digital, the large portion of Chicago’s South Asian population that isn’t computer literate is getting shut out of the process. Jyoshi and Patel don’t regularly use the Internet or check an e-mail inbox, a common experience for many of the 35 percent of adults in the United States who do not have Internet access at home. But in households like Sukhadia’s, in which young people take the lead on managing communications and filling out the survey, going digital might net a few more respondents than the 2010 effort.
It’s not just fears about documentation that keep many low-income South Asians from participating in the census. “The first two questions in the census ask about how many people are staying in a place of residence and the third question asks about the ownership of the unit. “Often South Asian immigrant families on the north side are on these month-to-month leases,” explained Hasan. “They’re dealing with these tense landlord and tenant situations because the lack of affordable housing has families occupying every room in every unit. Their concern is if you submit X amount of people live in your house, somehow it’ll loop back to their landlord.”
