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Census 2020 vs. Coronavirus

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By: Joe Mauricio

 

The Super Virus COVID-19 is upending the 2020 Census, disrupting an already-fragile operation that faces immense challenges in counting the minorities and mainstream groups in America (of course, including the Filipinos and Filipino-American groups), before the global outbreak of the Coronavirus (a real SuperVirus). We (all households) started receiving invitations or forms to respond to the Census 2020 by mail, by phone, and online, an option never before offered, around the time that mayors and governors all over the country started shutting down businesses and telling people to stay home to stop the spread of the virus. The U.S. Constitution mandates a decennial census, and the U.S. Census 2020 that has already started its operations cannot be cancelled. Federal law sets April 1 as the Census Day, the date in which the federal government must try to get as accurate a count of U.S. population as possible. There are certain members of the population already vulnerable to going undercounted in the census, including the religious groups like the Mennonites, the immigrants, and the poor or underserved in the U.S., and this is a big hurdle in normal, healthy situation in our country. The coronavirus outbreak will make this situation even harder, especially if the government is forced to scale back critical door-to-door operations to count people. With the ongoing quarantine situation, we are encouraging people to respond to Census 2020 while they are staying at home. As some homes don’t have the Internet, you may fill out the form and mail it to the return address or call on the phone. Via Times has run some advertising pages in previous and current issues, directing people on what to do and where to go. Some instructions are printed in Tagalog, our national language, for those people who have English language problem. Filling out the Census 2020 form can be done without face-to-face contacts with anyone. Furthermore, questions on immigration or citizenship status cannot be used against anyone who’s concerned about this aspect. An inaccurate census count would have a severe consequences. The data from the census is used to allocate federal funds where hospitals, schools, roads, public transportation and infrastructures. It is also used to draw political district lines in place. The program is also critical to getting traditionally hard-to-count populations to respond to the survey. It is unclear how the Census Bureau would proceed with the count operation if the current social distancing and isolation practices are still in place. This is an unchartered territory, an isolated case, an unpredictable global health dilemma, and results are hard to predict.

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