America's Voice Blog

Posted 11/18/09 at 03:21pm By Frank Sharry

Latinos Poised to Shake Up 2010 Census, Politicians Beware

Note: Cross-posted at Huffington Post.

girlI'm not convinced Washington has awakened to the reality yet -- but the 2010 Census is going to shake things up politically in this country, and politicians would do themselves a favor to wake up and smell the coffee in advance.

This is about raw political power -- something politicians of all stripes understand.

Here is what a new study by my organization, America’s Voice Education Fund, has to say:  the 2010 Census, which will document Latino population growth, will have a profound effect on the U.S. political landscape. An astonishing number of states will owe new Congressional seats, in large part, to their new Latino constituents.

The findings provide a stunning political backdrop to the upcoming debate on comprehensive immigration reform, an issue of major consequence to Latino voters.

Since the 2000 Census, Latinos have become the largest minority group in the United States. A bipartisan firm, Election Data Services, Inc. used existing Census data to project which states are likely to gain and lose Congressional seats following the 2010 Census. Their projections show that eight states will gain at least one House seat, while eleven states will lose at least one seat in Congress. Here they are: 

States gaining House seats: Texas (+4), Arizona (+2), Florida (+1), Georgia (+1), Nevada (+1), Oregon (+1), South Carolina (+1), and Utah (+1).

States losing House seats: Ohio (-2), Illinois (-1), Iowa (-1), Louisiana (-1), Massachusetts (-1), Michigan (-1), Minnesota (-1), Missouri (-1), New Jersey (-1), New York (-1), and Pennsylvania (-1).

Latinos represent 51% of population growth in the United States as a whole since 2000. Latinos have driven growth in the states poised to gain House seats following the 2010 Census, especially in those projected to gain more than one seat: Texas and Arizona. In those two states, Latinos comprise a combined 59% of population growth since 2000.

As the report indicates, Latinos are not just settling in the usual major cities.

New members of Congress in states like Georgia and South Carolina, as well as Arizona and Texas, will owe their positions, in part, to the expanding Latino population. What’s more, states that are losing Congressional representation would have fared much worse had Latinos not moved there in record numbers. While their states’ Congressional delegations are shrinking overall, Latino voters are gaining power as they expand their share of the electorate.

These population figures translate into significant new voting power, too.

Nationwide, Latino voter registration grew 54% and Latino voter turnout grew 64% between 2000 and 2008. In the eight states poised to gain seats, Latino voter registration grew 45% and Latino voter turnout expanded 50% between 2000 and 2008.  In the eleven states poised to lose seats, Latino voter registration grew 50% and Latino voter turnout expanded 62% between 2000 and 2008.

So what does this mean for immigration reform?

Click here to read more.
Posted 11/17/09 at 01:00pm By Jackie Mahendra

The New Constituents: How Latinos Will Shape the Next Congress

Today America's Voice released a report entitled, "The New Constituents… How Latinos Will Shape Congressional Apportionment After the 2010 Census" at a live-streamed event at NDN in Washington, DC.

The report examines the role Latinos will play in shaping the next Congress, after the 2010 Census. According to bipartisan projections, nineteen states are poised to see changes in their Congressional representation. Eight states will gain at least one House seat, while eleven states will lose at least one seat in Congress.

These states, as outlined in the report: 

States gaining House seats: Texas (+4), Arizona (+2), Florida (+1), Georgia (+1), Nevada (+1), Oregon (+1), South Carolina (+1), and Utah (+1).

States losing House seats: Ohio (-2), Illinois (-1), Iowa (-1), Louisiana (-1), Massachusetts (-1), Michigan (-1), Minnesota (-1), Missouri (-1), New Jersey (-1), New York (-1), and Pennsylvania (-1).

Click here to read more.
Posted 11/06/09 at 03:17pm By Frank Sharry

Q: How Much Taxpayer Money Will GOP Waste to Fire up an Anti-Immigrant Base?

CashA: Billions upon billions, if some Republicans get their way.

Fortunately, they didn't get their way on the Census yesterday.

The Vitter-Bennett census amendment to the Commerce, Justice, and Science appropriations bill became a moot point yesterday afternoon when the Senate ended debate on the bill in a nail-biting procedural vote of 60 to 39, which comes as a relief to advocates who worked non-stop, through hubs like DontWreckTheCensus.org, to help sink the unconstitutional, impractical, and expensive measure.  

Senators Vitter (R-LA) and Bennett (R-UT) were adamant that the 2010 Census ask about the citizenship and immigration status of respondents, a change which would have cost the government millions of dollars. All Republican Senators voted to keep debate going, save Senator John McCain (R-AZ), who was absent for the vote.

If the latest antics of Senators Vitter and Bennett are any indication, no cost is too high when it comes to stoking the immigration issue for an unquenchable hard-line base.  Their threat to derail our nation’s decennial census had been panned by nearly every census expert and would have cost billions of taxpayer dollars.  Senate Democrats deserve credit for standing up to the extreme wing of the Republican party that continues to bring up immigration as a wedge strategy in debate after debate-- like a bad broken record. 

Click here to read more.
Posted 10/29/09 at 03:08pm By Jackie Mahendra

Don’t Wreck the Census- Tell Your Senator to Stop Vitter Amendment

VitterFrom Joaquin Guerra, over at the SEIU Blog--the latest action in response to the Vitter-Bennet Amendment:

Check out our latest effort in the Don't Wreck the Census Campaign:

"Some politicians come up with dumb ideas. Some come up with impractical ideas that would cost taxpayers millions of dollars. And then there are those lawmakers with crazy proposals that would violate the United States Constitution."

Republican Senators Vitter and Bennett hit the trifecta by trying to wreck the US Census.

Click here to read more.
Posted 10/20/09 at 03:03pm By Jackie Mahendra

New York Times, New Website Reveal How To Waste Money And Ruin the Census

vitterWe've been reporting for some time now on Senator David Vitter (R-LA) and his divisive campaign to pass an amendment that would bar undocumented immigrants from participating in the census.

The New York Times has a must-read editorial today called, "How to Waste Money and Ruin the Census," which lays out why, exactly, this is such a terrible idea:

As required by law, the Census Bureau gave Congress the exact wording of the survey’s 10 questions in early April 2008 — more than 18 months ago. Changing it now to meet Mr. Vitter’s demand would delay the count, could skew the results and would certainly make it even harder to persuade minorities to participate.

It would also be hugely expensive. The Commerce Department says that redoing the survey would cost hundreds of millions of dollars: to rewrite and reprint hundreds of millions of census forms, to revise instructional and promotional material and to reprogram software and scanners.

In other words, it ain't gonna be cheap, gentlemen.

And it's not going to be fair, either -- especially when it comes to allocating resources to states with split-status populations.

Would Sen. Vitter be happy if we just counted 3/5ths of the immigrants in our country, maybe?

Today, national civil rights organizations joined NDN for a press conference in Washington, DC. They report in "Leading Civil Rights Groups Join NDN to Oppose Divisive Vitter-Bennett Amendment:"

Tuesday, October 20th at 11 am in Dirksen 406, the nation's leading civil rights groups will join NDN for a press conference on Capitol Hill to announce their opposition to the divisive Vitter-Bennett Amendment aimed at undermining the 2010 Census. The Amendment, proposed by Senators David Vitter (R-LA) and Robert Bennett (R-UT), seeks to add an 11th question to the census forms (which have already been printed) that would discourage minority populations from participating in the census and thus threaten the accuracy of the count.

In his letter to Senators urging them to vote "no" on the proposed Amendment, NDN President Simon Rosenberg wrote, 

While the  Vitter-Bennett Amendment may appear innocent, its intent and practical effect on the  census and reapportionment process is not. If enacted the Amendment would almost certainly disrupt an orderly census count next year, eventually found to be unconstitutional, all the while start ing a highly divisive  conversation about race, the Civil War and the 14th Amendment in the  very first year of America's very first African-American President.

Now there's even a brand new website "Don't Wreck the Census" up about the battle, which urges action:

Call your Senator right now and tell them to to vote "NO" on Senate Amendment 2644. 

The real truth behind Vitter's amendment?

Anti-immigrant legislators like Vitter are willing to compromise the accuracy of the census in their obsessive efforts to inject an anti-immigrant agenda into every conceivable realm of public life. But the real policy ramifications are endless. If passed, this amendment would stop the 2010 Census dead in its tracks--preventing the questionnaire forms from being mailed next spring and wasting over $7 billion in research, planning, and preparation that has occurred for Census 2010. And of course, it would discourage millions of immigrants from participating in the 2010 Census--potentially costing hundreds of billions in lost funding to local communities and diminishing the political power of states like Texas, Arizona, California, New Mexico, Florida and Nevada with large immigrant populations.

Click here to read more.
Posted 04/23/09 at 01:57pm By Jackie Mahendra

Few Call For Census Boycott on Immigration, Most Support Full Latino Participation in 2010

Census WorkerA call by some Latino pastors this month to boycott the 2010 Census, unless immigration reform passes, could have dramatic and undesired consequences. 

That is why the Congressional Hispanic Caucus, the National Hispanic Christian Leadership Conference, and a range of national Latino advocacy organizations are speaking out in support of full Latino participation in the Census.

While the impetus of the proposed boycott centers on urging Congress to pass comprehensive immigration reform, the endgame could indeed be disastrous, if it means that Latinos and their families are not counted in 2010.

An article in the Washington Post today countered claims that Census information might be wielded to pinpoint and arrest individuals who are in the United States illegally or whose family members are undocumented, a concern cited by the boycott’s leader:

While he alleged that state and local governments have unfairly interpreted census data to target or marginalize immigrant groups, Rivera could not cite specific documented examples of federal manipulation or improper sharing, which is prohibited by law and punishable with fines and up to five years in prison, according to Census Bureau spokesman Stephen Buckner.  

In addition, the nation’s largest Hispanic Christian organization today called for all to be counted by the census. In a press statement, Rev. Wilfredo De Jesus, Vice President of Social Justice for the organization, argued for community participation this way:

The National Hispanic Christian Leadership Conference (NHCLC) and the Jesse Miranda Center for Hispanic Christian Leadership believe that Latinos, regardless of faith or legal status, should participate in the 2010 U.S. Census.

For our communities, the benefits of participating in the census are essential to accurate representation, allocation of resources, and to gauge how our community continues to grow. The clear majority of Latino advocacy and faith organizations support the efforts of the U.S. Census Bureau to count each person in America in 2010, including the traditionally undercounted Hispanic population.

Here’s the deal: Latino communities deserve to be counted in our nation’s Census.

Any effort to block them from doing so, no matter how well-intentioned, should raise serious red flags for those concerned about making sure all of our communities receive full representation and vital resources.