Trump’s 2020 Census U.S. Citizenship Question Is Illegal, Say Critics, California Attorney General’s Lawsuit
President Donald Trump’s administration has requested that a controversial question about U.S. citizenship be added to the 2020 census, which has set critics abuzz with charges of illegality and undercounting. According to NBC News, the U.S. Dept. of Commerce stated that the upcoming 2020 census questionnaire would include a new question about the respondent’s U.S. citizenship status. The choice to add the question comes in the wake of a “request by the Department of Justice (DOJ) to add a question on citizenship status to the 2020 decennial census.”
As a result of the announcement, the phrase “2020 census” is currently trending on Twitter, with more than 40,000 tweets about the new question flowing into the social networking site. With the Trump administration adding the question about U.S. citizenship status to the census, the backlash has been swift.
According to the San Francisco Chronicle, the new citizenship question on the 2020 census could cause an undercount in population numbers, and therefore have an effect on the funding granted to everything from schools to homeland security money for neighborhoods and natural disasters and beyond.
Xavier Becerra, the attorney general of the state of California, published the following tweet in response to the Trump administration’s U.S. citizenship question on the 2020 census, announcing plans to sue Trump’s administration over it.
#BREAKING: Filing suit against @realdonaldtrump's Administration over decision to add #citizenship question on #2020Census. Including the question is not just a bad idea — it is illegal: https://t.co/vW8sa7khq9
— Archive – Attorney General Becerra (@AGBecerra) March 27, 2018
The U.S. Census Bureau’s 2020 citizenship count question could discourage non-citizens from being counted in the 2020 questionnaire, according to detractors. The new citizenship question would be a departure from a census that has enumerated U.S. citizens as well as non-U.S. citizens since 1790, in order to get an accurate count of actual funding needed for people in various communities.
The deadline to determine if the U.S. citizenship question will actually be added to the 2020 census is March 31, the day that Commerce Secretary Wilbur Ross will have to determine if the question will be added.
The Trump administration is being accused of using the 2020 census question about U.S. citizenship for political gain by targeting immigrants who are fearing how the White House might use the data after it is collected if in fact the new question is added.
