Guess what, Y2K fallout isn’t the only thing happening after Jan. 31, 1999.
Shortly after New Year’s Day government officials will begin sending out questionnaires for the year 2000 census. Preparation has already begun to count all the country’s residents, which is mandated in the Constitution and is “the largest peacetime undertaking that the government does,” according to Arthur G. Dukakis, Boston regional director for the Bureau of the Census. (The census bureau will open 520 offices nationally – including two in Rhode Island – and will hire some 350,000 workers to help with the count.)
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The census is of particular interest to members of the Governor’s Advisory Commission on Hispanic Affairs, who say they are determined to rectify the situation that caused an undercount of all Rhode Island’s immigrant communities during the 1990 census. It is important to community and government leaders, because census numbers are used to distribute more than $200 billion in federal funding and draw up political districts.
Making sure the state’s Hispanic and Latino population is properly counted this time could mean more federal funds for schools, municipal services, and redistricting state voting precincts so the Latino community could win as many as two seats in the General Assembly, said Hispanic commission Chair Marta V. Martinez after a May 21 press conference.
The press conference served as a formal kickoff for El Censo 2000, which is the name for the planned outreach campaign to Spanish speaking citizens. Community groups such as the Center for Hispanic Policy & Advocacy will work with Census officials to educate the state’s Hispanic and Latino residents about the Census and to help, if necessary, get translated versions of the questionnaire. The groups will also help recruit Spanish-speaking census workers.
Estimates from community leaders suggest there are perhaps 75,000 people of Hispanic and Latino descent now living in Rhode Island. The 1990 census counted 45,752 people of Hispanic origin, which was 4.6 percent of the state’s 1 million population. That represented a 146 percent increase from the previous decade and showed the Hispanic community is the fastest growing segment of the state’s population, according to Michael DiBiase, Gov. Lincoln Almond’s chief of staff, who also spoke at the event.
Patricia Martinez, executive director of Progreso Latino, told the crowd of about 30 people, “most people say what happened? Why if there’s so many of you, why didn’t you get counted?”
She explained there are a number of reasons that Latinos would not participate in the 1990 census, including language barriers, fear of deportation, and a basic distrust of government. “We come from countries where we’re afraid of investigation. We come from countries where people are intimidated by forces of government.”
This time out the census will be produced in six languages (English, Chinese, Korean, Spanish, Vietnamese, and Tagalong, which is a language from the Vietnam-Cambodia region.), according to Ed Larkin, a spokesman from the Boston census bureau. There will also be language guides in 31 other languages and assistance centers, where people can go for assistance filling out the questionnaire, he said.
The census will be sent in an alternate language in census tracts, which are clusters of about 4,000 people, where more than half the population has be identified as non-English speaking, Larkin added. Federal law, he said, prohibits the census bureau from sharing the data it collects with any other government agency and keeps the information sealed for 72 years.
