Today, Explained - The citizenship question

Episode Date: November 14, 2018

The Trump administration would very much like to know if you’re a citizen come the 2020 census. NPR’s Hansi Lo Wang explains how that might break the census. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

I saw some weather report that says it's going to be snowing tomorrow on the East Coast, at least in D.C. and New York, which makes me think, yeah, it's maybe time to start thinking about gifts for the holiday season. And KiwiCo would like you to give them a shot. KiwiCo creates these hands-on projects for kids of all ages that make learning about science and technology and engineering and art and math, like, way fun. Give the gift of creative confidence this holiday with KiwiCo. They're offering today, Explained listeners, the chance to try them out for free at KiwiCo.com slash Explained. Most of us think about the census for about 10 minutes once every 10 years. But not Hansi Lo Wang from NPR.

He thinks about the census all the damn time. It's really hard to overstate how important, how influential the census is. It really forms the reality. I think that's the best way to put it. The reality that our democracy is formed upon, the way daily life just works in America. The reason Hansi's got the census on his mind is this. There's this legal battle going on in the background of American politics right now. And it's going to determine who counts in the United States and who doesn't. Doing a census, doing a headcount of every person living in the United States is in the Constitution. It's one of the first things the Constitution says to do.

You have to do this, federal government. You have to count every person living in the country every 10 years. And that count directly impacts how power is shared in this country, specifically how many seats in the House of Representatives each state gets. And that is directly related then to how many electoral college votes each state gets. And if that's too abstract for you, how do we figure out when we need to build a new school, where we need to build new roads, if we should change the speed limit on a certain road because there are more children living in a neighborhood? How do we make sure people affected by a hurricane, by a wildfire? If they're living in rural remote areas, how do we know where to send relief workers to make sure people are taken care of, that they're okay? It's census data. The way you lay it out, it seems impossible that the census could become controversial,

and yet it has. So how did that happen? I guess one caveat, though, is the census has always been controversial in many different ways because it has to do with power and money. And this is how we figure out how to divvy up power and money in this country. So I think by default, it has always been controversial whenever it does come up. But this time around, for the upcoming 2020 census, it became super controversial, at least in terms of lawsuits, because of a new citizenship question

that was added to the 2020 census by the Trump administration. And what is that question? Is it, are you a citizen? This question asks specifically, is this person a citizen of the United States? If multiple options among them, you know, born in the United States, born in Puerto Rico, Guam, other territories in the United States, born abroad of U.S. citizen parent or parents. Or you can say that you're a U.S. citizen by naturalization and you write in the year of your naturalization or you check off a box that says, no, not a U.S. citizen. Where did all of this start? Where did the Trump administration get this idea to add this question? I guess I should start with what I know through the court documents. Through the emails and memos that I've read that have been released as part of these lawsuits, I learned that after Commerce Secretary Wilbur Ross was confirmed, this would be in late February 2017, it seems as though days later he was asking his staff about a citizenship question.

Asking questions like, does the census ask about citizenship status? Are non-citizens included in the apportionment count. And emails also show that former White House chief strategist Steve Bannon contacted Wilbur Ross about adding a citizenship question. And that also Kansas Secretary of State Chris Kobach, former vice chair of the now defunct Commission into Voter Fraud, started by President Trump, Chris Kobach emailed and spoke with Commerce Secretary Wilbur Ross and suggested a wording for a citizenship question. And for months, Commerce Secretary Wilbur Ross pressured his staff to figure out a way to get a citizenship question onto the 2020

census. When Commerce Department staff reached out to the Justice Department, the Justice Department at first pushed back and said, we're not sure we want to add this right now. And then Commerce staff went to Department of Homeland Security and asked. And they were sent back to the Justice Department. And eventually, Commerce Secretary Wilbur Ross connected with former U.S. Attorney General Jeff Sessions. Sessions got involved, really got things moving at the Justice Department. And in December of 2017, a formal letter was sent to the Census Bureau asking for a citizenship question.

And why did the Trump administration say it wanted to add this question to the 2020 census? The Trump administration said it added this question because the Justice Department wants better citizenship data. Data that's necessary for the Department of Justice to protect voters and specifically to help us better comply with the Voting Rights Act. Section 2 of the Voting Rights Act, which has protections against discrimination of racial and language minorities. What's interesting is that ever since the Voting Rights Act was enacted, 1965, the federal government has relied on estimates of citizenship. When voting rights advocates heard about this decision from March to add this question for better voting rights enforcement, they were very surprised.

They don't believe that the federal government needs better data than the governor already relies on to enforce the Voting Rights Act. So it really raises the question, why exactly did the Trump administration push to get a citizenship question onto the 2020 census? And why do we think that is? Adding a citizenship question onto the 2020 census means that the federal government is going to go essentially to every household in the country asking people in this household, how many of you are citizens, how many are not U.S. citizens? Having that granular level of data has lots of implications on redistricting. Number one, state and local governments can use this information once it's released. If this question stays on, there could be states, local municipalities, that start drawing political districts based on the citizenship population.

Another pattern that I've found, and again, to be clear, the Trump administration says what's driving their push is better enforcement of the Voting Rights Act. But if you were to look through the more than 12,000 emails and memos that have been released as part of these lawsuits, in the early discussions amongst the Trump administration officials about this question and talking about, do we need one? How do we get one onto the census? Voting Rights Act is not mentioned.

What is mentioned is apportionment. Apportionment is figuring out how we divide up the pie of political power. This is dividing up congressional seats among the states, and specifically the seats in the House of Representatives. And again, that's related to electoral college. There was a discussion within the Trump administration as part of these deliberations over a citizenship question that raised the possibility of breaking with long-standing policy in this country,

of including every person living in this country in apportionment numbers. Is there any indication that's what the Trump administration really wants to do here, add a citizenship question to affect how redistricting or reapportionment works? Beyond mentions of apportionment and undocumented immigrants in these emails and memos released as part of the lawsuits, I'm not aware of any direct evidence that changing how redistricting and reapportionment is done is why the Trump administration added this question. And in fact, Commerce Secretary Wilbur Ross doubled down just yesterday. The Justice Department requested that we ask the question in order to help them enforce the Voting Rights Act.

That's the genesis of the work. Okay. Some people would disagree with that, but... Well, it is the fact that the Justice Department wants it. I think we need to keep in mind, though, the stakes here. There is Census Bureau research that suggests that beyond the questions of whether this is about redistricting or for reapportionment, that adding a citizenship question can really affect the final count. The thing about this citizenship question is a whole lot of people might not want to answer it. And that's why a bunch of states are now suing the Trump administration. That's next on Today Explained. I gotta make a confession here.

KiwiCo sent me a little package of some sort of exciting project of math or science or engineering or something of that sort. I just haven't had a chance to open it yet, but I am very excited to do so, and I'm certainly going to do it before week's end. KiwiCo has all sorts of lines of projects to choose from. I'm very excited to see which one I got. There's a new one called the Eureka Crate for people ages 14 to 104 too. Les, do you think this is just about the kids? I'm very curious if they sent me that one, but I'm hoping they sent me one for kids

because I got a neighbor who I can then give it to for the holidays and be like, hey kid, look what I got you and I can feel great. Anyway, you can feel great if you go to KiwiCo.com slash explained to redeem their offer to you to try KiwiCo out for free. KiwiCo.com slash explained to redeem their offer to you to try KiwiCo out for free. KiwiCo.com slash explained. When the Trump administration announced that it would be asking this question, when Wilbur Ross announced his decision to add the question, how did the country react?

How did states react? Well, within hours, there was a lawsuit. Came out of California. California State Attorney General Javier Becerra filed the first lawsuit. We're not going to stop and we're going to defend every one of our rights to make sure that every one of our people who's worked hard to make California the sixth largest economy in the state is counted. Very quickly after that, more lawsuits. When a new question regarding citizenship was announced for a future census count. New York's Attorney General threatened to fight back, and now he's leading 17 states and a number of cities in a lawsuit targeting that change.

I was tracking lawsuit after lawsuit. Well, Minnesota is suing the federal government. The state of Illinois and the city of Chicago joined a federal lawsuit. Maryland's Attorney General is joining 18 other states and opposing the Trump administration's citizenship question on the 2020 census. And in the end, we currently have six lawsuits around the country. And the one that is furthest ahead are the two lawsuits based out of New York, led by the New York State Attorney General's office.

And those are the two cases that are currently at trial right now. And so what claims are those suing the Trump administration making? The plaintiffs are making a range of claims, mainly that by adding this question, Commerce Secretary Wilbur Ross, who has authority over the census, he misused that authority. By getting this question onto the census, a question that Census Bureau research suggests could dramatically increase an undercount of households with non-citizens and scare off households with non-citizens from participating in the census. That was, these plaintiffs claim, intentionally trying to discriminate against immigrant communities of color. I can imagine if I were an undocumented immigrant living in a house, let's just say here in Washington, D.C., and I got the census in the mail and it said, are you a citizen, I might just throw the thing away

out of fear that if I say no, that the government might come knock on my door and maybe deport me. Is that a fear here? It's definitely a fear. That's something I heard when, you know, there was a test run of the 2020 census in Rhode Island earlier this year. And my NPR colleague Marisa Peñalosa and I,

we spoke to a number of folks who are undocumented. And he told us the citizenship question is just another reason why they wouldn't want to participate in the census. So already there is a lot of fear in this current political climate of increased immigration enforcement, growing anti-immigrant rhetoric, that just the idea of someone from the federal government coming to your door, sending you a form or asking you to give up personal information. That's a super, super sensitive situation for a lot of folks in the country right now. Has the Trump administration and Wilbur Ross or anyone else addressed those concerns? Well, it's important to remember that federal law prohibits the Census Bureau from releasing

personally identifiable information until 72 years after it's collected through the census. For 72 years, the government cannot share this information about individuals. The Census Bureau also cannot share this personally identifiable information with law enforcement agencies, including Immigrations and Custom Enforcement, FBI, police departments. But there's recent Census Bureau research to prepare for the 2020 census to figure out, you know, what are people thinking right now about the census? And these participants in these focus groups across different ethnic groups were super concerned, super mistrustful that the government is going to keep this promise of confidentiality.

They think this citizenship question is a way to locate people in the country without documentation. One focus group participant said, this is coming at a moment with all this immigration enforcement. I may not have any immigration issues myself, but I'm not going to participate in this question for fear of jeopardizing other people living in my household, other people in my community. So now that these lawsuits are in progress, what happens? Is there a chance that one of them gets this question off the census? Or is there a chance that a determination in one of them

keeps the question on the census? I mean, that's a possible scenario. The plaintiffs in all of these six lawsuits around the country, they're asking U.S. district judges to issue rulings that would get this question removed. But we're expecting any ruling at the district court level to be appealed through the circuit courts and eventually to the Supreme Court. Is there a chance if this question is left on the census in 2020 that it's later removed? There's talk amongst Democratic lawmakers, especially now that Democrats are going to take over control of the House in January. They're trying to figure out what's on the table here. What could they do as lawmakers? Certainly, there's a lot of interest in doing more oversight and more investigations into what exactly was behind this decision. Another strategy that has been floated is, is there something in the appropriations process that Democrats can rally behind and to stop the funding of any census that includes a citizenship question.

If these lawsuits fail, if the question gets added on the 2020 census, what will it mean if people who are undocumented in America or relatives of undocumented people in America or permanent residents even, people on work visas, who might feel paranoia from this question end up skipping the census altogether? First, it means the Census Bureau has an even harder job than it was going to have before the citizenship question was going to be added. All those groups you just described are considered among the hardest groups to count. And counting every single person is the Census Bureau's job. It's a constitutional mandate.

And then in the end, when we get our 2020 census results, the implications of that data that is going to determine how many congressional seats each state gets, how many electoral college votes each state gets, it's also going to be used to determine how an estimated $800 billion in federal tax dollars are distributed around the country. And so if there are communities, you know, especially communities that are predominantly made up of non-citizens, they just may essentially disappear off the map. Hansi Lo Wang is a national correspondent for NPR.

I'm Sean Ramos-Firm. This is Today Explained. Thanks again to KiwiCo for their support of the show today. If you're stumped on what to give the kids in your life this holiday season, check out KiwiCo. They create hands-on projects for kids of all ages and even adults that try to make learning about science and technology and engineering and art and math wicked fun. KiwiCo is offering today Explained listeners the chance to try their stuff out for free. You can find out more at KiwiCo.com slash explained. And a podcast

you can try out for free is The Shadows from the CBC in Canada and acclaimed producer Caitlin Prest. The show is a fictional series that takes you inside another relationship.

You can listen as two people fall in love and fight and make up and break down all over again. Maybe it'll teach you something about your relationship Thanks for watching.