Latinos mull census boycott

The University hosted a forum on Sept. 30 to discuss a possible Latino boycott of the 2010 U.S. Census as a means to advocate for immigration reform. As the April 1 commencement of the census approaches, some Latino activists have encouraged illegal immigrants to boycott the count in hopes of encouraging change in immigration policy.

The U.S. Constitution mandates that a census be taken every 10 years to determine the apportionment of congressional seats, electoral votes and federal funding. The goal of the census boycott, activists have said, is to compel the representatives of these areas to take an aggressive stance on immigration reform.

Still, according to a Times of Trenton article, most of the 60 audience members at the forum, however, called the census boycott a misguided effort that would cause more harm than good.

“I advocated for Latino studies a lot on campus, so my heart is with [the protesters],” said Victoria Laws ’08, who is currently studying public policy at UC Berkeley. Still, she noted that “the potential of a long-term detrimental impact is much more significant than any potential political gain.”

Alejandro Rivas GS, a member of the Latino Graduate Student Association who was at the public meeting, said he is also “sympathetic to the outrage,” but he added that the boycott is “not a very well thought-out strategy.”

Typically, Rivas explained, areas with a high Latino population tend to vote Democratic. If the undocumented immigrants who live in those areas don’t participate in the census, those districts will lose representatives in Congress, potentially making it more difficult to pass changes in immigration policy in the coming years. The census results are also used to determine the distribution of federal funding for services like schools, police, fire departments and hospitals, so the districts affected by the boycott would also lose money for essential community services.

“Those funds don’t disappear,” Rivas noted. “They’re just given up to other areas that don’t have undocumented immigrants. What you’re actually doing by not getting counted is increasing the funds that better-off communities get. The money that would’ve gone to East L.A. [Los Angeles] will be going to Beverly Hills, in effect increasing inequality. The rich will be getting more of the pie, and the poor will be getting less.”

A census boycott is, therefore, inappropriate, said sociology professor Douglas Massey GS ‘78, who was a panelist at the forum. “It’s like holding a gun to your head and saying, ‘Stop trying to kill me or I’ll shoot,’ ” he said, according to the Times article.

In fact, the under-representation of Latinos may actually bolster the effort of the protesters’ opponents, Rivas noted. Many people who work against immigration reform support the boycott, reasoning that if immigrants are undercounted, it will be easier to dismiss the illegal immigration problem as unworthy of attention.

Rivas added that immigration reform legislation will likely be passed by April 1 anyway. Sen. Chuck Schumer (D-N.Y.) had said on July 8 that he expected to have an immigration reform bill out of Congress by early September. Since then, health care reform has temporarily pushed the immigration bill out of the picture but Rep. Luis Gutierrez (D-Ill.) recently announced that he plans to introduce his own immigration reform bill.

The boycott effort is being spearheaded by Nativo Lopez and the Rev. Miguel Rivera. Lopez is the president of the Mexican American Political Association, and Rivera is the chairman and founder of the National Coalition of Latino Clergy and Christian Leaders (CONLAMIC).

Rivera, who was one of the speakers at the forum, said the census is “the best tool for comprehensive immigration reform advocates to use in order to apply pressure where pressure needs to be applied, to members of the U.S. Congress.”

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As the chairman of CONLAMIC, the largest Latino Christian advocacy organization in the country, Rivera is the head of a network of 16,000 churches, including 402 in New Jersey. He said at the forum that unless Congress begins comprehensive immigration reform by April 1, at least 2.5 million members of the coalition’s churches are prepared to boycott the census, the Times reported. CONLAMIC plans to abandon the census boycott if immigration reform is passed by April 1, but Rivera said it may not be so easy to turn the movement around.

“You can’t unring a bell,” Rivas said. “People are going to have it in their minds not to participate in the census.”

Thus, even if immigration reform does occur before the deadline, the current push to boycott the census could still adversely affect the Latino population.

“Participating in the census is one of the most important things that Latinos can do,” Rivas noted. “It’s been 10 years since we were last counted, and since then, the demographic has changed. Now, there are more Latinos in the [United States] than there are black people. People need to be shown that Latinos exist – maybe not as the majority in the Northeast, but as an important part of the country.”