New Jersey to join lawsuit opposing census citizenship question

New Jersey will join a multi-state lawsuit challenging the federal government's move to add a question about citizenship to the next census, Attorney General Gurbir S. Grewal announced Tuesday.

"Notwithstanding the administration's rhetoric, we don't need a citizenship question on the 2020 census. And the reality is that such a question would only do harm,'' he said in a statement. "Particularly, in the current national climate, a citizenship question will obviously cause great consternation and discourage participation in the census.

"That lack of participation will inevitably have far-reaching, negative effects — particularly in New Jersey, where we have the third-largest percentage of immigrants in the country."

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In 2015, 2 million foreign-born residents comprised 22.1 percent of the state’s population, according to figures from the American Immigration Council.

The impending multi-state lawsuit, which is led by New York's attorney general, will name the U.S. Department of Commerce and the U.S. Census Bureau as defendants, Grewal's statement said.

The complaint will challenge the addition of the citizenship question as a violation of the U.S. Constitution and will assert that such a question threatens the fair representation of some states, with large immigrant communities, in Congress and the Electoral College, as well as cost states billions of dollars in critical federal funds for programs like Medicaid.

A question about citizenship on the census hasn't appeared since the 1950s. The administration has said the question is necessary to accurately measure the voting-eligible population and to enforce the 1965 Voting Rights Act.

In a statement announcing that the question would be included in the 2020 U.S. Census, the Commerce Department said the citizenship question will be the same as the one that is asked on the yearly American Community Survey.

"Between 1820 and 1950, almost every decennial census asked a question on citizenship in some form,'' it said. "Today, surveys of sample populations, such as the Current Population Survey and the ACS, continue to ask a question on citizenship."

The statement added that Commerce Secretary Wilbur Ross had determined that obtaining "complete and accurate information to meet this legitimate government purpose outweighed the limited potential adverse impacts."

In December, the Justice Department requested that the Census Bureau include a citizenship question on the 2020 Census form that is sent to every household in the United States, even though the census is supposed to count all people regardless of citizenship.

The census is used to allocate seats in the House of Representatives and to determine the number of delegates each state receives in the Electoral College.

Fears of an undercount vs. worries about voting integrity

Johanna Calle, director of the New Jersey Alliance for Immigrant Justice, applauded Grewal's move, saying the state is standing up for immigrant communities that would be negatively affected by the inclusion of the question in the census.

"Federal and state resources are allocated by how the census is implemented, and it is imperative that immigrant communities feel comfortable participating,'' she said. "This would also impact non-immigrants in our state, as resources could be brought to communities when everyone is properly counted, regardless of immigration status."

Shelly Kennedy, an Atlantic Highlands resident and a member of the Bayshore Tea Party, says she supports the Commerce Department's move to restore the citizenship question.

“Having an accurate count will help enforcement of the Voting Rights Act as well as assist the government in its fiduciary, planning and other duties,” she said. “There is no evidence that the mere appearance of the question suppresses responses to the census, nor is there any evidence of that happening in prior years. It is only one question out of several pages of questions. Questions are occasionally added, modified and dropped; this is no different.”

But immigration advocates expressed concern that immigrants, already afraid of being targeted by federal agents, likely wouldn’t fill out a census form if it means outing themselves as non-citizens.

“There is a perceived lack of trust by the immigrant [community], and other marginalized members of the community, of the federal government, namely the DACA recipients, those protected by TPS and some members of the LGBTQ community,” said David Pascale, chairman of the Human Relations Advisory Committee in Red Bank.

Pascale was referring to an Obama-era program called Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals that offers work permits to undocumented immigrants who were brought to the country as children, and to Temporary Protected Status, a federal program that offers legal status to people from countries affected by armed conflict or natural disasters. President Donald Trump announced in September that he would end DACA — a move that has been held up by a pair of federal injunctions — and he has ended TPS for several countries, including El Salvador, Nicaragua and Haiti.

Red Bank is a diverse, progressive pocket of the Bayshore area where more than 27 percent of residents are foreign-born, according to census data.

Pascale said the citizenship question may not only deter certain immigrants from participating, but it also could result in an undercount of the borough’s population. That could mean less state or federal funding for public services such as the local Parker Family Health Center, a volunteer-based free health care facility.

Angelica Martinez, of Community of Friends in Action, an organization that helps day laborers from Latin America in Palisades Park, said people who are living in the country unlawfully already don’t like to fill out the census. Martinez said some of the people she works with who don't have legal status are afraid that the information they share with the government on census forms could be used against them.

“I think with the situation now, it’s going to be a problem for them,’’ she said.