COMMENTARY | Undercounting these communities means less representation and ultimately fewer services
Data collected by the U.S. Census Bureau may not seem political or imminently relevant to your life, but I can assure you it is both. The census helps dictate how federal tax dollars are spent, based on how many people live in given communities. And it determines long-term representation at the state and local level here in Oregon. Now, anti-immigrant policymakers are trying to make changes to the census that will endanger everyone’s access to health care, and immigrant communities will be hurt the worse.
Countless programs depend on the census to collect accurate data to adequately allocate resources we all rely on. For example, Medicaid, a program that one in five women of reproductive age rely on, accounts for 58 percent of census-guided funding. The U.S. Department of Health and Human Services also distributes funding for Title X, the nation’s program for affordable birth control, based, in part, on the census results. Other services affected by the census range from infrastructure spending to foster care and State Children’s Health Insurance Programs.
Adding a question that requires everyone living in the United States to reveal their immigration status is clearly discriminatory, and fears of reprisal will likely lead to inaccurate data.
In this current political climate, immigrant families are already living with daily discrimination, threats of family separation and detention, and fear of harsh immigration enforcement. It is no surprise that members of immigrant and other marginalized communities will not be eager to reveal their citizenship status to government workers knocking on their doors.
With fewer people completing the census, the data will be compromised, resulting in an undercount of marginalized communities, including many immigrant communities right here in Oregon. Undercounting these communities means less representation and ultimately fewer services, including health care services.
We know immigrants already have a very difficult time accessing health care as the lack of health insurance and fear of detention and deportation have driven them farther and farther into the shadows.
At Planned Parenthood Advocates of Oregon, we believe no one’s access to services should be compromised because they belong to an immigrant family or community. We strongly condemn the Trump-Pence administration’s addition of a citizenship question to the 2020 Census. And we are committed to fighting alongside a bipartisan group of former Census directors, our communities and partners to speak out against this injustice and call on U.S. Commerce Secretary Wilbur Ross to reverse this decision.
Tell Congress and the Trump administration this is unacceptable by submitting a comment to CensusCounts.org before Aug. 7. Let your voice be heard, and help us #SaveTheCensus.
For more information, visit PPAOregon.org.
Emily McLain is the executive director of Planned Parenthood Advocates of Oregon.
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