This story was originally published by City Bureau on August 26, 2020.
The Trump administration’s attempted changes to the census have stoked fear and discouraged immigrants from responding, according to PRI The World reporting. On top of delays in outreach due to the COVID-19 pandemic, the U.S. Census Bureau announced recently it will end all counting efforts one month sooner than planned on September 30.
“The immigrant community [in Chicago] as a whole is very diverse, and looking at the foreign-born population alone doesn’t account for the many other factors that make a community hard-to-count, such as the presence of young children, housing insecurity and income levels that all contribute to civic participation,” said Brandon Lee, an Illinois Coalition for Immigrant and Refugee Rights census consultant.
Instead, census outreach workers like Rodriguez post up near popular outdoor spots like fitness-in-the-park classes, pop-up food banks, or drive through neighborhoods in census caravans to reach families who haven’t yet filled out the census. One organization, the Brighton Park Neighborhood Council, even collaborated with a laundromat to give residents a free laundry day in exchange for filling out a census form.
“Don’t you get sick?” she’ll ask, “and do you have insurance?”
Who’s most likely to be missed in the census count?
