Should Undocumented Immigrants Count in the 2010 Census?
October 8, 2009
For several reasons I think that undocumented immigrants should be counted in the 2010 census. First and foremost, every person living in the United States is part of American society and leaves some kind of footprint. To overlook these people as significant to society would be a huge misconception. The article, Census Boycott Splits Latinos, gives insight into the magnitude of such as oversight. According to this article, “it’s believed that as many as 300,000 Brazilians live in Massachusetts alone, and that as many as four-fifths of them may be undocumented.” That’s a lot of people. Consider this number on a nation-wide scale. Omitting this portion of the population would paint an extremely skewed picture.
Not only would the omission of undocumented immigrants distort the figures, it would undermine the efforts of these groups to be known and heard. Although many undocumented immigrants are protesting the census in an appeal for immigration reform, I think they ultimately provide a way for these immigrants to achieve change. I think the census is the most safe and accurate way to determine actual population sizes of undocumented immigrants and puts this group in a position to receive greater political clout and federal funding
