2423 Rayburn House Office Building • Washington, D.C. 20515 • 202.225.5464 • http://capac.chu.house.gov

EXECUTIVE BOARD Rep. Judy Chu, Chair August 7, 2018 Sen. Tammy Duckworth Sen. Kamala Harris Sen. Mazie K. Hirono Ms. Jennifer Jessup Sen. Departmental Paperwork Clearance Officer Rep. Ami Bera Rep. Madeleine Z. Bordallo Department of Commerce Rep. th Rep. Jimmy Gomez 14 and Constitution Ave NW, Room 6616 Rep. Al Green Washington, D.C. 20230 Rep. Colleen Hanabusa Rep. Pramila Jayapal Rep. Ro Khanna RE: Comments on Proposed Information Collection on 2020 Census, Docket ID: Rep. Raja Krishnamoorthi Rep. Barbara Lee USBC-2018-0005 Rep. Ted Lieu Rep. Doris O. Matsui Rep. Grace Meng Dear Ms. Jessup: Rep. Stephanie Murphy Rep. Gregorio Sablan Rep. Bobby Scott On behalf of the Congressional Asian Pacific American Caucus (CAPAC), I write to Rep. Mark Takano offer comments on the proposed information collection for the 2020 Census. Since our ASSOCIATE MEMBERS founding in 1994, CAPAC has worked to ensure that federal legislation and policies Rep. Pete Aguilar Rep. Nanette Barragán address the unique needs and concerns of the Asian American, Native Hawaiian, and Rep. Karen Bass Rep. Suzanne Bonamici Pacific Islander (AANHPI) community in all areas of American life. As such, our Rep. Brendan Boyle members are deeply committed to ensuring that the U.S. Census Bureau fulfills its Rep. Salud Carbajal Rep. Katherine Clark constitutionally mandated duty to conduct a decennial census that counts all persons Rep. Gerald Connolly residing in the United States, regardless of their race, ethnicity, language ability, or Rep. Lou Correa Rep. Joseph Crowley citizenship status. Rep. Susan Davis Rep. John Delaney Rep. Suzan DelBene Data from the decennial census determines everything from the apportionment of Rep. Keith Ellison Rep. Anna Eshoo congressional seats to the annual allocation of over $800 billion of federal funding to Rep. Marcia Fudge states and localities across the nation. The census also provides us with the most Rep. Raul M. Grijalva Rep. Ruben Kihuen comprehensive source of disaggregated AANHPI data, which is essential to Rep. Zoe Lofgren understanding the disparities that exist both within and between various AANHPI Rep. Alan Lowenthal Rep. Carolyn Maloney subpopulations. A fair and accurate census is therefore vital to understanding and Rep. Jerry McNerney Rep. Gregory Meeks addressing the wide-ranging needs of our nation’s increasingly diverse population, Rep. Jerrold Nadler including our rapidly growing AANHPI communities. In fact, AANHPIs are an Rep. Grace Napolitano Rep. Scott Peters incredibly diverse population comprised of over 50 distinct ethnicities that speak over Rep. Jamie Raskin 100 different languages. Disaggregated AANHPI data is critical to ensuring that we Rep. Jacky Rosen Rep. Lucille Roybal-Allard have a complete portrait of the various challenges our communities face so that we can Rep. Linda Sánchez develop targeted interventions to address disparities in educational attainment, health, Rep. Janice Schakowsky Rep. Adam Schiff and economic prosperity. In order to ensure that we have a fair and accurate census that Rep. Brad Sherman Rep. Adam Smith fully counts our communities, CAPAC urges the U.S. Census Bureau to remove its Rep. Jackie Speier proposed citizenship question from the 2020 Census and to ensure that the 2020 Census Rep. Thomas Suozzi Rep. Eric Swalwell is linguistically accessible to the AANPHI community. Rep. Juan Vargas Rep. Nydia Velázquez Rep. Maxine Waters Rep. Bonnie Watson Coleman

Citizenship Question

CAPAC strongly opposes the inclusion of an untested question regarding citizenship status that will demean the quality, utility, and accuracy of the 2020 Census. Over two-thirds of Asian Americans and Pacific Islanders are immigrants, and Asians and Pacific Islanders also account for 16 percent of the undocumented immigrant population in the United States.1 Previous focus groups conducted in preparation for prior censuses indicate that undocumented immigrants, legal permanent residents, and citizens who live in households with family members who may not be U.S. citizens, were disinclined to respond to the census. For example, a 2007 qualitative study on behalf of the U.S. Census Bureau found that there was a perception among Korean- language respondents that Census data could be used to locate and deport those without legal status, which caused some not to respond.2 Additionally, the Census Bureau’s Center for Survey Measurement recently found “an unprecedented ground swell in confidentiality and data sharing concerns, particularly among immigrants or those who live with immigrants.”3 In a September 2017 memorandum, researchers noted an increased level of fear amongst respondents regarding their immigration status, or the status of others living in their household. For instance, one respondent worried that handing over information to the Census Bureau would facilitate her arrest by Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE), and another respondent did not report five household members, citing concerns over the “Muslim ban.”4 Given these findings, we are concerned that the inclusion of a citizenship question will disproportionately impact AANHPIs and other immigrant populations.

We are also concerned about the contradictory and misleading statements that Commerce Secretary Wilbur Ross and other Trump administration officials have made regarding their decision to add a citizenship question to the 2020 Census despite ongoing concerns that doing so will suppress response rates, increase costs, and compromise the accuracy of the decennial census. On March 26, 2018, the U.S. Department of Commerce (DOC) announced it would be adding a citizenship question to the 2020 Census in response to a December 2017 letter sent by the U.S. Department of Justice (DOJ) requesting DOC to include this question as a means to enforce “Section 2 of the Voting Rights Act and its important protections against racial discrimination in voting.”5 However, a supplemental memorandum filed on June 21, 2018 in the case of States of New York et al. v. United States Department of Commerce et al. revealed that Secretary Ross actually began considering the inclusion of this question in February 2017, long before DOJ made its request. Moreover, internal emails show that former White House Chief Strategist Steve Bannon and Kansans Secretary of State Kris Kobach were also involved in initial discussions surrounding the citizenship question. At the time, there was no mention of the Voting Rights Act. Instead, Mr. Kobach expressed concerns regarding the fact that “aliens who do not actually ‘reside’ in the United States are still counted.”6 These new revelations directly contradict Secretary Ross’s sworn testimony before Congress, including his statement before the House Ways

1 Ramakrishnan, Karthick. “One out of every 7 Asian immigrants is undocumented.” AAPI Data, 8 Sept. 2017, available at http://aapidata.com/blog/asian-undoc-1in7/ 2 U.S. Census Bureau, Preparation for the 2010 Census Hispanic Community Focus Group Qualitative Research Report (2007), available at http://www.phila.gov/phillycounts/pdfs/Ethnic%20and%20Racial%20Sub- Population%20Focus%20Group%20Research%20-%20Asian%20&%20Arab%20Americans.pdf 3 Memorandum for Associate Directorate for Research and Methodology (ADRM) on Respondent Confidentiality Concerns from Center for Survey Measurement (Sept. 20, 2017), https://www2.census.gov/cac/nac/meetings/2017-11/Memo-Regarding- Respondent-Confidentiality-Concerns.pdf 4 Id. 5 Gary, Arthur E. “Request to Reinstate Citizenship Question On 2020 Census Questionnaire.” 12 Dec. 2017, https://www.documentcloud.org/documents/4340651-Text-of-Dec-2017-DOJ-letter-to-Census.html 6 Commerce Department’s Administrative Record for Census Citizenship Question Lawsuits, available at https://apps.npr.org/documents/document.html?id=4500011-1-18-Cv-02921-Administrative-Record#document/p776/a428457 2 and Means Committee on March 22, 2018 during which I asked him about the formal process of adding the citizenship question to the census and inquired whether it had been tested and if costs had been considered. Secretary Ross responded, “Department of Justice, as you know, initiated the request for inclusion of the citizenship question.”7 However, in the June 21st memo, Secretary Ross admitted that DOC staff asked DOJ to make the request. Not only does this compromise the veracity of Secretary Ross’s claims, but it also feeds into ongoing concerns that the citizenship question is a politically motivated attempt to advance the Trump administration’s anti-immigrant agenda.

CAPAC is deeply concerned that Secretary Ross made his decision to include this question despite objections from former Census Bureau Directors, as well as the Census Bureau’s senior leadership team. This includes the Bureau’s Chief Scientist, John Abowd, who noted that the addition of this question would be costly and would harm the quality of the census count.8 Given the ample findings that an untested citizenship question will disproportionately impact immigrant communities and undermine the validity of the data, we urge the Census Bureau to remove this harmful question from the 2020 Census form.

Language Access

In order to ensure that our community is fully counted in the 2020 Census, CAPAC also urges the Census Bureau to provide meaningful language access for AANHPIs through the Bureau’s language support program. AANHPIs have one of the highest rates of limited English proficiency in the United States, with over one third of Asian Americans and 13.5 percent of NHPIs being limited English proficient (LEP).9 As a result, certain AANHPI communities have been historically undercounted in previous censuses due to cultural and linguistic barriers that make it difficult to capture segments of our population. For instance, AANHPIs were undercounted by 2.36 percent during the 1990 Census, and NHPIs were undercounted by 2.12 percent in the 2000 Census. While the Census Bureau has improved its outreach to the AANHPI population over the years, hundreds of thousands of AANHPIs were still excluded from the 2010 Census. Therefore, we must do more to engage these traditionally hard-to-count populations.

Specifically, we encourage the Census Bureau to make the paper version of the Census questionnaire available in languages beyond English and Spanish. Although the online form is currently available in 12 languages, the paper version of the questionnaire is not translated into any AANHPI languages. This lack of access to a translated paper questionnaire will disproportionately impact low-income LEP communities who may not be able to fill out an online census form due to lack of internet connectivity at home. Therefore, we urge the Census Bureau to translate the paper version of the decennial census into the same 12 languages that are currently available online.

Because the 2020 Census will be the first census to allow telephonic responses to the census questionnaire, we also urge the Census Bureau to advertise the availability of this new telephonic response system through

7 House Committee on Ways and Means Full Committee Hearing with Commerce Secretary Wilbur Ross, U.S. House of Representatives, 115th Cong. (2018), https://www.c-span.org/video/?c4720089/rep-chu-questions-commerce-secretary-ross-census 8 Memorandum for Secretary of Commerce on Technical Review of the Department of Justice Request to Add Citizenship Question to the 2020 Census from Chief Scientist and Associate Director for Research and Methodology (Jan. 19, 2018), www.osec.doc.gov/opog/FOIA/Documents/AR%20-%20FINAL%20FILED%20-%20ALL%20DOCS%20%5bCERTIFICATION- INDEX-DOCUMENTS%5d%206.8.18.pdf#page=1289 9Ramakrishnan, Karthick and Farah Z. Ahmad, Language Diversity and English Proficiency. Center for American Progress, available at https://cdn.americanprogress.org/wp-content/uploads/2014/04/AAPI-LanguageAccess1.pdf 3

AANHPI ethnic media and in-language outreach materials. Doing so will ensure that LEP individuals within our community, particularly those who are unable to fill out the online form, are able to receive immediate in- language assistance and response support.

We are pleased that the Census Bureau is engaging stakeholders as it works to improve the accuracy of the decennial census. CAPAC strongly believes that removing the citizenship question and ensuring meaningful language access for AANHPIs will help to protect the integrity of the census and ensure a fair and accurate count in 2020 and beyond.

Sincerely,

JUDY CHU Member of Congress CAPAC Chair

4