The Trump administration 2030 Census overhaul would change the count used for political representation and funding by including only U.S. citizens and permanent residents. The U.S. Census Bureau submitted the proposal on Sept. 9, opening a 30-day public comment period before the next full census in 2030.
Meeta Anand, senior director of the census and data equity program at the Leadership Conference on Civil and Human Rights, said the changes could have “earth-shattering” effects. She said, “Census data "undergirds so much of our democracy and our society,"” and warned, “So you'll start seeing a very inaccurate picture of our country, and then we're making political decisions, business decisions, investment decisions based on data that are flawed.”
Sept. 9 census proposal
The proposal would exclude more immigrants from the census, including people in the U.S. on a temporary lawful basis. It would also remove parts of the questionnaire that seek information on race or ethnicity, a set of questions that have been included since the first census in 1790.
Donald Trump had ordered his parent agency to craft a new census that would block immigrants in the U.S. illegally from being counted. The bureau filed the new proposal just over a year after that order, extending the fight over who is counted into the planning for the 2030 census.
Representation and funding
The census is used to determine how many seats each state gets in the U.S. House of Representatives and how state legislative districts are drawn. The proposal would change that count by narrowing who is included, which could leave states and cities with relatively high immigrant populations with fewer seats or less federal aid than they would receive under a broader population tally.
The change also conflicts with the U.S. Constitution's 14th Amendment language calling for political representatives to be apportioned based on the whole number of persons in each State. The proposal does not explain how a citizens-only rule would be carried out alongside that language.
Justice Department warning
On September 2, the Justice Department warned that states could lose billions of dollars in welfare funding if they do not report all immigrants whom state agencies know to be in the country illegally. That warning and the new census proposal pull in the same direction: both shift pressure onto how states count and report population data.
The public can comment on the census proposal for 30 days, and that review period is the immediate step before any final rule can move ahead for the 2030 census. For states and cities that rely on an inclusive count to secure political representation and funding, the filing on Sept. 9 is the point to watch.
