What is the Census?
Article I, Section 2 of the Constitution of the United States requires that the Census Bureau counts the total number of people in the United States, regardless of citizenship, every ten years for the purpose of reapportionment. The next count will occur on Census Day, April 1, 2010.
Why is it important for Asian Americans to participate?
Completing the census forms will help your neighborhood receive benefits, funding and services and will help empower the community to ensure that your needs are being met. Additionally, census data provides the Asian American community with the only means by which to get quality detailed data, disaggregated for different ethnicities, which is key to our ability to address our communities’ needs. It is required by law that everyone living in the United States fill out the census (regardless of citizenship).
How are census data used?
Census data are used:
- For political empowerment – determines how many representatives from a state will serve in the U.S. House of Representatives and for redistricting efforts at all levels
- For allocation of funding – including over $300B federal funding annually, as well as state and local funding, which uses census data to determine
- How much money your community will receive for schools and English Language Learning
- How much money will be provided for senior centers, job training programs, and student loans
- For planning purposes – government (federal, state, and local), businesses, and community-based organizations use census data to plan how to allocate their resources and what services to provide the community. For example,
- The government uses census data to determine where hospitals, child care centers, and roads will be built;
- Businesses use census data to determine where to open new stores or offices, often times increasing job opportunities in the community related to such openings;
- Community-based organizations can use census data to identify trends and problems occurring in communities to determine their policy agenda to attempt to fix such problems legislatively or the type of services they should provide to the impacted communities.
- To prevent discrimination against minorities, the disabled and the elderly in the workforce
- To enforce civil rights laws like the Voting Rights Act of 1965
Will participating in the Census be harmful to the respondent?
By law, all of the individual answers given in the Census are confidential. Responses and information cannot be shared with any person or any government agency such as the Department of Homeland Security (DHS) or the Internal Revenue Services (IRS).
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