The United States Census takes place every ten years as it is mentioned in the United States Constitution, Article 1 Section 2; “Representatives and direct taxes shall be apportioned among the several states according to their numbers. The actual enumeration shall be made within three years after the first meeting of the Congress of the United States and with every subsequent term of ten years.”
Also, the first census of the United States took place on August 2, 1790 and it took months to collect all the data from the households, but census takers were instructed to collect information by August 2. (www.census.gov/history)
Additionally, decennial of U.S. census figures are based on actual counts of persons in the U.S. residential structures. The census includes citizens, non-citizen legal residents, non-citizen long term visitors and undocumented immigrants.
Furthermore, all the data collected from the census determines the number of seats each state has in the U.S House of Representatives and at the same time the information is used to give out billions in federal funds to local communities. (www.census.gov/programs)
On the contrary, controversy arose in when it was planned to include a citizenship question in the census for the 2020 questionnaire. In January 2019, a federal judge in New York ruled against the proposal. The decision was appealed in the Supreme Court on April 2019 in which oral arguments were heard if the citizenship question was constitutional. The Supreme Court decided on June 27, 2019 rejecting Trump administration rationale for including the question. The 2020 U.S. census doesn’t include the citizenship question on the forms.
To conclude with, it is important for everyone in the country to fill out the census questionnaire. Every person gets counted and that helps each community get money for schools, hospitals and more. The 2020 census forms are both in English and Spanish and other languages like; Japanese, Russian and others. The questionnaire can be done via internet, mail and phone. The information is confidential and anonymous and your responses matter.
Here are some Tweets and Instagram posts regarding the U.S. Census:
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