Speech #1010088008

Census questionnaires would have to be reprinted at a cost estimated to be over $30 million. Ironically. a census taken under these provisions would be inaccurate. unfeasible. yield less information. and ultimately. more expensive. According to the Census Bureau there is no acceptable method of excluding the undocumented from the census count and any effort to do so would seriously flaw the census figures. Excluding the undocumented from the census would compel the Bureau to adopt untested techniques to determine every persons citizenship and immigration status. Any attempt to count. and then exclude. undocumented residents from certain census counts will jeopardize the accuracy of the entire census in every community in the United States. The Secretary of Commerce says: ... excluding illegal aliens would be entirely Infeasible and would considerably undermine critical efforts being undertaken by the [Census] Bureau to assure an effective and complete count in 1990. The Secretary of Commerce and the Attorney General will recommend a veto of the entire appropriations bill if it contains language to exclude illegal aliens from the census. Federal fund allocation to every community will be adversely affected because large numbers of people. even those whose presence here is lawful. will be afraid of participating in the census. Only a small portion of the undocumented population in the United States is actually counted in the census because the Census Bureau makes no special effort to include them and because many undocumented persons simply do not want to be counted.