The U.S. Senate on Thursday rejected a measure to add a question on citizenship status to the 2010 census.The proposal created by Republican Sens. David Vitter and Bob Bennett would have excluded all non-citizens including legal resident immigrants from the reapportionment of congressional districts based on next year’s national tally. "Illegal aliens should not be included for the purposes of determining representation in Congress, and that's the bottom line here," Vitter said shortly after introducing the amendment to a bill funding the Census count.
Critics of the Vitter-Bennett plan noted that the proposal was very problematic. With about four months until the Census starts “Congress should be encouraging constituents to get counted, not debating the contents of the questionnaire," said Congressional Hispanic Caucus chair Rep. Nydia Velazquez. According to Commerce Secretary Gary Locke over 400 million Census forms have already produced and changing them would be very costly.
The proposal would’ve hurt Census Bureau efforts to calm concerns in the Latino community of misrepresentation and intrusiveness. The amendment "would raise more questions in the public mind about how confidential the Census is," National Association of Latino Elected and Appointed Officials head Arturo Vargas was reported as saying.
Vitter’s Louisiana colleague (Democratic Sen. Mary Landrieu) argued against his proposal and claimed that his idea would require changing the constitution.
Image- WKTV
Online Sources- Washington Independent, The Latin Americanist, NOLA.com, AP, HispanicBusiness.com, Guardian UK, ABC News
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