Senate Kills Vitter Census Amendment « The Washington Independent

The Senate voted today to end debate on the Commerce, Justice and State appropriations bill without considering the controversial amendment proposed by Sens. David Vitter (R-La.) and Bob Bennett (R-Utah) that would have stopped the U.S. Census from taking place without an additional question about each individual’s citizenship and immigration status.

Vitter had claimed that counting illegal immigrants in the Census would allow Democrats to gain more seats in Congress than they’re entitled to have, but previous census directors and experts had warned that changing the census questions at this stage of the process would be extremely costly and basically impossible.

Since 1790, the U.S. Census Bureau has asked people whether they are native or foreign-born, but it has never asked about their legal status. Immigrants’ advocates say asking about legal status would deter many immigrants from participating, leaving the census with an inaccurate count of actual U.S. residents.

In addition to the distribution of congressional seats to states, census data are used to make decisions about what community services to provide and how to distribute federal funds to local, state and tribal governments.