Starting Points: Census Bureau

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Apr 2, 2010

Hispanics new to U.S. more likely to participate in census - washingtonpost.com

By Carol Morello
Friday, April 2, 2010; A16

Recent Hispanic immigrants are more likely to return their census questionnaires than Hispanics born in the United States, according to a new study that suggests a census campaign targeting Spanish speakers has been wildly successful.

A telephone survey of about 1,000 people conducted in the third week of March by the Pew Hispanic Center also found that foreign-born Hispanics are less skeptical that their census information will remain confidential.

The study was released Thursday, which the government dubbed "Census Day" -- the day by which, officials hoped, people would have filled out their forms and mailed them in. To encourage participation, the White House released a photo of President Obama filling out his questionnaire.

The government will continue to promote the census throughout April, particularly in areas with low response rates. At the end of the month, officials will compile lists of addresses from which surveys have not been received by mail. Census-takers will be dispatched to those addresses to try to get survey questions answered.

Major Hispanic groups have said there is widespread fear among immigrants that data will be shared with immigration authorities. In response, groups have stressed the confidentiality of the census in a campaign called "Ya es hora. ¡Hagase contar!" or "It's time to be counted."

Arturo Vargas, executive director of the National Association of Latino Elected and Appointed Officials Educational Fund, declared himself "giddy" about the results.

"It shows the work we have been doing has had an impact," he said of the effort that enlisted newscasters, entertainers and other prominent Latinos to spread the message that Hispanics should send in their forms regardless of their legal status. "It shows that this population understands what we need do as a community to move forward, to be counted and to be heard."

But, ironically, the survey suggests that the message did not get through so readily to U.S.-born Hispanics. While 91 percent of the foreign-born said they had returned their forms or would do so soon, only 78 percent of the U.S.-born said they would participate. Both figures would be an improvement over the last census, when 69 percent of Hispanic households returned their forms.

Hispanics are the largest ethnic group in the United States, as well as the fastest growing. About 35 million were counted in the 2000 Census, and they were estimated to number 47 million by 2008, or 15 percent of the population.

Image via Wikipedia

This year, the Census Bureau mailed bilingual forms to neighborhoods with a large Hispanic presence. It also spent more than $25 million, about one-fifth of its total advertising budget, for Spanish-language media.

The sharp focus on messages in Spanish may have created the disparity in how recent immigrants and natives regard the census.

Maria Teresa Kumar, executive director of Voto Latino, said that recent immigrants are the main consumers of Spanish-language programs aired on Univision and Telemundo, which introduced a census-taker as a character in its top-rated telenovela. Generations born in the United States tend to prefer English-language media.

"The more acculturated you are, the more you have the same views as the rest of mainstream America, and a lot of folks are distrustful of government," she said.

The Pew survey also suggests that a census boycott called by some Hispanic evangelical ministers to protest the lack of immigration reform has been a failure. Only 16 percent said they had heard calls for a boycott.

"We're not sure why it didn't gain traction," said Mark Hugo Lopez, associate director of the Pew Hispanic Center. "We know that when it was announced, there was a very broad effort to counter it."

Carlos Aragon, general manager of Radio Fiesta, which broadcasts in the Washington area, said many Hispanics consider the boycott "ridiculous." He also said he hears myths that the Census Bureau will turn in undocumented immigrants to the authorities.

José Robles, director of Hispanic Ministry in the Phoenix Catholic Diocese, said the concern about information being handed over to authorities is more pronounced among members of the clergy than parishioners. The diocese has heavily promoted the census, but Arizonans are among those who are slower to return forms than the national average.

The states whose response rates are lagging are mostly in the South and Southwest.

Jan 22, 2010

Census Figures Challenge Views of Race and Ethnicity

Image by nathangibbs via Flickr

By SAM ROBERTS

New census figures that provide a snapshot of America’s foreign-born population are challenging conventional views of immigration, race and ethnicity.

What it means to be African-American, for example, may be redefined by the record number of blacks — now nearly 1 in 10 — born abroad, according to the report from American Community Survey data, which was released Wednesday. It found that Africa now accounts for one in three foreign-born blacks in this country, another modern record.

More than 1 in 50 Americans now identify themselves as “multiracial.” But the pattern of race reporting for foreign-born Americans, is markedly different than for native-born Americans. The foreign born are more likely to list their nation of origin when identifying race or ethnicity.

For example, while 87 percent of Americans born in Cuba and 53 percent born in Mexico identified themselves as white, a majority born in the Dominican Republic and El Salvador, who are newer immigrants, described themselves as neither black nor white.

“The concept of race and how we view it culturally has changed,” said Elizabeth M. Grieco, chief of the Census Bureau’s immigration statistics staff, which analyzed 2007 data. “It’s a part of not knowing where they fit into how we define race in the United States.”

Image by Birdie Holsclaw via Flickr

Recent arrivals “might not be sure how to classify themselves,” Dr. Grieco said. (The census treats race and Hispanic origin as separate categories.)

The changing perception of race is being driven largely by immigration and higher birthrates among the foreign born. While immigrants account for 13 percent of the population, the share of recent births to foreign-born mothers rose to 20 percent. As a result of intermarriage with native-born Americans, a growing number of American children — now more than one in four under the age of 6 — are being raised by at least one foreign-born parent.

“It’s fair to say that we are approaching the shares seen at the peak of the last great immigration wave” at the beginning of the 20th century, said Jeffrey S. Passel, senior demographer at the Pew Hispanic Center.

Kenneth M. Johnson, senior demographer at the Carsey Institute at the University of New Hampshire, noted that more that two-thirds of the growth of the Hispanic population last year came from births, not immigration.

“You could shut off immigration tomorrow and the impact of the foreign born on U.S. demographic trends would still be a powerful force,” he said.

Among the nation’s 37.3 million blacks, more than 8 percent are now foreign born, compared with 1 percent in 1960. Of those, more than half came from the Caribbean. Some 34 percent emigrated from Africa, compared with 1 percent in 1960.

The census recorded 10,500 American blacks born in Africa in 1970; in 2008, the number of African-born Americans topped one million for the first time.

Seventy-eight percent of native-born Americans reported their race as white, followed by 13 percent who said they were black. Among the foreign born, 46 percent identified themselves as white and 23 percent as Asian.

Since 2000, the Hispanic foreign-born population has increased 45 percent, to 18.5 million from 12.8 million. Latin Americans represent more than half of the foreign-born population.

Among all who identified themselves as Asian-Americans, which is often understood to mean born here, 67 percent were, in fact, foreign born.

How immigrants translate their own backgrounds and report their adopted identities “have important implications for the nation’s racial and ethnic composition,” the Census Bureau said in the report.

Nicholas A. Jones, chief of the bureau’s racial statistics branch, said that given the likelihood that foreign-born people would identify themselves as German or Irish or Nigerian instead of black or white, the bureau might eventually encourage people to provide more detailed write-in answers to how they define themselves.

Dec 24, 2009

Census: Florida, Nevada had more Americans move out than in

Image via Wikipedia

By Carol Morello
Thursday, December 24, 2009; A01

After decades of rapid growth in which housing developments sprouted in swamps, farmland and deserts, the number of Americans moving to several states in the South and the West has slowed sharply because of the recession and housing bust, according to Census Bureau figures released Wednesday.

The longtime magnets of Florida and Nevada, which had benefited most as people fled the dreary cold of the Northeast and Midwest, saw more Americans move out than move in during the year that ended July 1. California also had a net loss of so-called domestic migrants, although in all three states the impact was blunted by immigration from other countries and by natural growth because of births.

The state population figures foreshadow a political realignment that will occur after the 2010 Census, which is used to determine the reapportionment of seats in the House of Representatives. Texas, which had the biggest population growth last year, 478,000 people, is among the states that stand to gain seats, and states in the Northeast and Midwest could lose.

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The economic downturn and the upheaval it has spawned are creating an unusual set of challenges for next April's national count. Foreclosures and job losses have caused many to give up their homes and move in with friends and family, and Census Bureau officials fear that those people could be undercounted. As the latest data suggest, hard times have led many people to abandon once-booming locales, and increasing numbers of others to stay put, when they cannot sell their houses or land new jobs.

The economy has also reshuffled the growth rates of states, transplanting some onto the losing side of the ledger for the first time in recent memory, according to William Frey, a demographer with the Brookings Institution.

Arizona, for example, was ranked in the top five states in population growth every year of this decade, until this past year. Just 15,000 Americans moved into the state, down from 55,000 the previous year. Georgia's growth rate, usually about 2 percent, has been cut in half.

Conversely, the District's growth rate of 1.6 percent almost tripled from the previous year. Virginia gained 87,000 people, more than half of them new residents. Maryland's population grew by 41,000, but the state had a net loss of 11,000 domestic migrants. That was offset by about 20,000 people who moved to Maryland from other countries.

California and New York had repeatedly been in contention for losing the most American residents to other states; both states are now losing fewer residents than before.

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But it is Florida and Nevada that had the most stark reversals of fortune. In the first half of the decade, they were usually among the top five in both population gain and growth rate. They now rank among 23 states that are losing more Americans than they gain.

These annual estimates are not an exact count. Although the census estimated that Florida gained 114,000 people last year because of immigration and births, researchers at the University of Florida said they thought the population had actually declined for the first time since the end of World War II, when many military personnel based in Florida left the state to go home, said Stan Smith, head of the school's Bureau of Economic and Business Research. Even so, the increase is the smallest since 1949, he said.

"Florida was a state people moved to," said Frey, adding, "It was a growth machine, and it just sort of stopped."

Nevada's population would have been virtually stagnant last year, if not for 11,000 newcomers from other countries who more than offset the net loss of 3,800 American residents.

Both states have built their economies around growth, and their state budgets are in dire straits.

"From Florida's point of view, it's cataclysmic," said Isaac Eberstein, director of the Center for Demography and Population Health at Florida State University. Florida has no personal state income tax, only taxes on sales and property, Eberstein noted. "We've shifted all taxes onto the people coming in, whether new residents or tourists," he said.

Smith said he expects that the state's population growth will pick up when the economy improves, although probably at a lower level. Baby boomers will retire soon, and the state should continue to attract immigrants from Latin America, he said. But birth rates are expected to decline, and other states are aggressively competing to attract retirees.

"I think it's more of a temporary blip than a permanent change," Smith said. "But temporary doesn't mean really short-lived."

Nevada faces hurdles as it tries to return to the growth rates of 3 to 4 percent that it enjoyed throughout most of the decade. Last year, its population increased just 1 percent.

Nevada State Demographer Jeff Hardcastle said legalized gambling in other states and on Indian reservations has ended Nevada's onetime monopoly on casino gambling, and rising fares for travel to the state are drags on any recovery.

"I used to joke a 3 percent growth rate in Nevada was considered a recession," Hardcastle said, with no humor discernable in his voice. "I don't think anybody was fully expecting this to happen. And I don't think anybody has a good handle on what's going to happen next."

Jul 25, 2009

Latino Activists Seize on Texas Ruling to Boost Voting Power

By STEPHANIE SIMON

Latino activists are seeking to gain political clout by forcing electoral changes in communities nationwide, using a recent federal court decision in Irving, Texas, as a template.

The city of 200,000, a Dallas suburb, was ordered to reorganize its municipal election system to give Hispanics more voting power. Irving had been choosing its council members through citywide "at large" elections, but U.S. District Judge Jorge A. Solis ruled that the system diluted the influence of Irving's fast-growing minority population, which is concentrated in the southern half of the city.

He didn't impose a specific remedy but said any new system -- perhaps electing council members by district -- must allow "Hispanics to elect candidates of their own choosing."

The ruling offers a road map for activists who expect the 2010 census to show big growth in the Latino population, especially in Southern states such as Tennessee, Georgia and North Carolina. With the data in hand, they plan to press politicians to give Latino residents more influence when they redraw congressional and state legislative districts, and to force cities and towns to retool municipal elections -- or face lawsuits like the one in Irving.

Growth in the U.S. Hispanic Population

See annual changes from 2000-2008.

The coming census will allow Latinos to make their case to city and state power brokers "in a way they cannot ignore," said Arturo Vargas, executive director of the National Association of Latino Elected and Appointed Officials.

The Irving case was brought by Manuel Benavidez, a Hispanic resident who argued that the city violated the 1965 Voting Rights Act by holding citywide elections instead of dividing the city into districts. Latinos make up nearly 42% of Irving's population, but only one Latino has won a city-council seat in the last 20 years (and, according to the court record, he didn't have a Spanish surname and didn't acknowledge his Hispanic heritage until after the election).

Irving, like other suburbs of Dallas, has churned with ethnic tension in recent years. City police have turned over more than 1,600 illegal immigrants suspected of various crimes to federal authorities for deportation, to the outrage of some in the Hispanic community. Last year, the Justice Department sent federal observers to monitor city elections to ensure compliance with the Voting Rights Act.

The city is negotiating with the Latino community to devise a new electoral system but also plans to appeal the ruling, Mayor Herbert Gears said. "We don't believe our system is illegal and we want to correct the record on that," he said.

Looking Back at the Latino Vote

Latins in U.S. Seek Voting-Law Benefits, Claim Discrimination (July 11, 1975)
Small City in Texas Is a Testing Ground Of Chicano Movement (Sept. 5, 1975)
Plan to Simplify Voter Registration Is Slated by Carter (March 21, 1977)

Nationwide, Latinos and other minorities have been challenging at-large voting systems in court for three decades and have won scores of victories, including a landmark case in Dallas in 1990.

Afterward, Dallas was divided into 14 council districts, which has greatly increased minority representation -- but has also fueled discontent, with critics saying the council members run their districts like fiefdoms, with little concern for the greater good.

Mr. Gears says he supports diversity on the Irving city council but fears adopting a Dallas-style system will jeopardize the city's stability -- built on a strong business community and low tax rate -- by "creating parochialism and opportunities for corruption and shenanigans."

Latino advocates respond that they deserve a voice in policy making and will insist on districts and election rules that make that possible.

"To take a slogan from the American revolutionaries, taxation without representation is tyranny," said Hector M. Flores, past president of the League of United Latin American Citizens, a Latino advocacy group.

The Hispanic population in the U.S. is now estimated at 47 million and could top 50 million in the census, which aims to count everyone living in the country, including illegal immigrants.

Census directors are making an all-out effort to reach Hispanics and other groups considered hard to count because of language and cultural barriers. For the first time, the census will send a bilingual questionnaire to 13 million Spanish-speaking homes. Telemundo is even integrating census-related plot twists into its Spanish-language soap operas.

But there is some division in the Hispanic community. The Rev. Miguel Rivera, director of the National Coalition of Latino Clergy and Christian Leaders, has been urging undocumented residents to boycott the census. The boycott, he says, is designed to pressure Congress into enacting reform that will put illegal immigrants on a path to citizenship.

Census population figures govern distribution of more than $400 billion in federal funding for scores of programs.

The census also spurs political redistricting at the federal, state and local levels. This happens automatically every 10 years as the new data come out. This year, however, Latinos hope to make race and ethnicity a crucial part of the conversation, with the Irving court decision as Exhibit A.

Bill Brewer, the attorney who took Irving's political system to court, said his "phone has been ringing off the hook" since the July 15 ruling with calls from activists in other cities seeking advice on bringing similar cases.

"After the census we can expect tons of legal challenges, because in many ways it's a spoils system," said Ellen Katz, a law professor at the University of Michigan who studies voting rights. "Everyone is grabbing."

Write to Stephanie Simon at stephanie.simon@wsj.com

Jul 21, 2009

Minority Turnout Was Critical to Obama's Election, Data Show

By CONOR DOUGHERTY

Census Bureau data released Monday show the extent to which strong minority-voter turnout in the 2008 election helped President Barack Obama win over swing states and make inroads into Republican strongholds.

About five million more people voted for president in November than four years earlier, with minorities accounting for almost the entire increase. About two million more black and Hispanic voters and 600,000 additional Asians went to the polls.

While the figures reflect a long-term demographic shift, they also attest to the success of the Democrats' extensive campaign to register their supporters and get them to the polls. Overall, the 64% turnout was unchanged from four years earlier.

The data also show an increase in turnout by young voters. Those between 18 and 24 had a 49% turnout rate, up from 47% in 2004 -- the only age group to see a statistically significant jump at the polls.

Strong minority support helped Mr. Obama's campaign win swing states such as Ohio and pick off Republican redoubts including Virginia, Nevada and Indiana, according to an analysis of poll and Census data by William H. Frey, a demographer at the Brookings Institution who blended the Census data on voter turnout with poll data from Voter News Service.

The data are the latest to highlight the demographic conundrum facing the Republican Party, which in 2008 lost several red states to Mr. Obama largely because it couldn't compete among minority voters. This demographic challenge isn't going away, as non-Hispanic whites are expected to account for less than 50% of the U.S. population by 2042.

To be sure, Mr. Obama's victory also relied on white voters: In 19 states including California, New York and Massachusetts, a majority of white voters cast ballots for Mr. Obama.

"Democrats are getting the growing parts of the population: Young people, minorities and states people are moving to," Mr. Frey said.

Mr. Frey cautioned that while the long-term demographic changes favor any candidate that can best harness minority voters, Mr. Obama's success in 2008 doesn't mean an easy road to victory awaits him in 2012. Whites accounted for 76% of voters in 2008, down three percentage points from 2004 but still a substantial majority. His rival, Sen. John McCain, won white voters by 12 percentage points, versus the 17 percentage-point margin enjoyed by George W. Bush in 2004. A Republican candidate who could capture a larger share of whites could neutralize the minority edge that went to Mr. Obama.

"President Obama can continue that momentum only if he continues to hold onto minorities and also hold Republicans at bay among white voters," Mr. Frey said.

Mr. Frey found minority voters made the difference in several key states: North Carolina, Florida, Virginia, Nevada, Ohio, Indiana, Maryland and New Jersey. Mr. Obama's ability to win over minorities there overcame white voters who favored John McCain.

Write to Conor Dougherty at conor.dougherty@wsj.com