Your article is bullshit. The question was on the “long form” which is now known as the American Community Survey...and it is still on the ACS.
The long form, like the ACS was sent to less than 5% of the country.
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/——/ Sez you. I believe The Hill before any of your TDS rants,
When Did the U.S. Census Stop Asking About Citizenship?
White House press secretary Sarah Huckabee Sanders said the question about citizenship was removed from census forms in 2010. Was she correct?
David Emery
- Published 2 April 2018
- [...]
The census is a decennial event, meaning it occurs every 10 years. There was a census in 1960, and one in 1970, for example, but there wasn’t one in 1965. It’s unclear why Sanders cited that year as a reference point.
It’s misleading, moreover, to claim that the citizenship question was “removed” from the census in 2010. As noted above, it was a standard question on census forms through 1950; then, for unexplained reasons, it was omitted in 1960 for everyone except residents of New York City and Puerto Rico. Beginning in 1970 and continuing through 2000, the Census Bureau used two different questionnaires to gather information: a
short form sent to more than 80 percent of American households which did not inquire about citizenship, and a
long form distributed to fewer than 20 percent of American households which did. The long form was discontinued after 2000, so in 2010 every household received the short form — meaning, in effect, that no one was asked for citizenship data in that year’s decennial census. But it wasn’t because any questions were “removed.”
By then, the Census Bureau was relying on another program called the American Community Survey (
ACS) to collect most of the same data (including citizenship information) that the long form did, but on an ongoing, annual basis instead of once a decade. That it’s still in use means that technically the Census Bureau never actually stopped asking the citizenship question; to put it more accurately, since 2000 they have only asked the citizenship question of the approximately 3.5 million households (2.6 percent of the population) per year who participate in the ACS survey.
Returning to Sarah Huckabee Sanders’ statement, while it is not absolutely incorrect to claim, as she apparently intended to do, that every census between 1960 and 2010 included a question about citizenship, it is misleading. The vast majority of Americans — the more than 80 percent who only filled out the short form during those years — wouldn’t have been asked about citizenship, because the question only appeared on the long form. And that form ceased to exist after 2000.
Strictly speaking, then, the Trump administration isn’t “reinstating” the citizenship question. They’re calling for it to be added to the short form that will be mailed to every American household in 2020.
It won’t be the first time people are required to divulge their citizenship status on a U.S. census form, but it will be the first time since 1950 that
everyone is required to do so.
When Did the U.S. Census Stop Asking About Citizenship?