SAN JUAN, April 9 - Local political and community leaders feel strongly that they were misled by the U.S. Census Bureau into believing that census survey forms would be delivered by mail to most Rio Grande Valley residents.
This includes the huge colonia community that comprises approximately one quarter of the region’s population. Rather than send out questionnaires, the Census Bureau has “Update/Enumerate” workers going door-to-door in the “hard to count” areas.
There is probably little legal recourse; very little that can be done to obligate the Bureau to change its policy of sending enumerators, rather than census questionnaires, to a huge portion Rio Grande Valley colonias.
Such is the opinion of Luis Echeverria, attorney for the South Texas Civil Rights Project.
“Unless you can demonstrate that there is mismanagement or misrepresentation or misapplication (by the Census Bureau), once the process is under way, there really isn’t much hope of an injunction against the Census Bureau,” said Echeverria, indicating that the latter was going to do things its own way and that local community organizations would have little to say about it until the census is actually completed.
“The legal options are limited, we are looking at them. Our Austin office is researching the issues,” said Echeverria, indicating that executive director, Jim Harrington, was not very hopeful of an effective counter strategy that would obligate the bureau to mail forms to residents with street addresses and mailboxes, in lieu of its surprise decision to canvass house to house instead.
Echeverria made his comments in an interview with the Guardian after speaking at a news conference held by the Equal Voice for America’s Families network on Thursday. The South Texas Civil Rights Project is a member of the network, as is La Unión del Pueblo Entero (LUPE), which hosted the event.
The overriding message at the news conference was aimed at colonia residents: open your doors to the census workers. While Equal Voice is angry with the Census Bureau’s decision not to mail out census forms and equally upset at the way the policy was kept secret until last week, the network is trying to stay positive.
“We know our community, we know the colonias. We are very upset we were not consulted by the Census Bureau,” said Lourdes Flores, of Project ARISE. “However, the census is very important for our community and we need to participate. We are letting people know that enumerators are coming and they need to open their doors to them.”
Along with Echeverria and Flores, other speakers at the news conference included Juanita Valdez-Cox and Martha Sanchez of LUPE, Armando Garza of Proyecto Azteca, Anayanse Garza of Southwest Worker’s Union, and Jose Medrano of the START Center in San Benito.
Echeverria acknowledged that the political stakes are high if the Valley population is severely undercounted as a result of the Census Bureau’s policy.
“Congressional Districts are drawn on an equally proportionate basis, let’s say that District 15 is counted with the same population as McAllen when in fact we have many more people that were not counted, then we get the same number of dollars allocated as a district that has fewer people, and that money is stretched. We would be shortchanged and the ripple effect would hurt us severely especially in the long term,” he said.
Moreover, according to Echeverria, the Border area of Texas was the only major metropolitan area of the country being counted by enumerators in lieu of mailed forms: “It’s discriminatory, maybe not intentionally, but that’s the result, that’s the effect,” declared the attorney.
Echeverria also expressed concern with the Census Bureau’s concept of a “Cultural Facilitator.” This a tool a census worker can use on the ground. The census worker has license to pay a local resident out of his or her own pocket to help them as they go door-to-door in a neighborhood. The worker can then claim a reimbursement from the Census Bureau. Such “Cultural Facilitators,” as the Bureau calls them, can be useful if the census worker does not speak Spanish.
“Often colonia residents don’t have cultural relationships with their neighbors and would not be any more inclined to open the door for someone who they don’t recognize,” Echeverria said.
Echeverria differed with the opinion of Census Bureau Regional Director, Gabriel Sanchez in his assessment that every house in the Rio Grande Valley would be counted, that the Bureau had enough employees to get the job done.
“I think that’s what he has to say, that the Census Bureau would tell him to say (that), to make sure the Bureau doesn’t have a liability. But, when you look at 2,000 enumerators having to count hundreds of thousands of people in a short time without getting the word out how it was going to be done, people are expecting things in the mail, and they are not getting them in the mail,” Echeverria said.
“There is a lot of confusion. They are now being told to sit back and wait. Keep in mind they have to go to school, have to go to work. The chances are not good for finding all the individuals in a household there at the same time so they can be counted.”
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