By Paul Waldmiller
Did you know that according to the United States Constitution, the Federal Government takes a census of the American population?
For several months now, Americans and legal permanent residents have been encouraged and asked to fill-out the 2020 census on-line when possible. There has been an extra hard push on the public to provide online answers especially since the Covid-19 virus hit America. In fact, federal officials have been wrestling with ideas on how best to address CENSUS takers and their health/safety during the upcoming time of when they will be knocking on the doors of those who did not answer the census questions online.
Next moth (July) will mark the beginning of a “soft launch” in six locations across the country to be named later “to ensure systems, operations and field plans work as they should”, Government websites announced in a statement last Friday. August will begin a larger scale of census takers going to visit millions of homes across America to gather pertinent information. In September, census takers will go to homeless shelters, soup kitchens and places where people are known to sleep outdoors to count the homeless.
All census takers will be trained in social distancing and will have personal protective equipment, according the Census Bureau. When the census takers visit a home and or person wherever they live, they will also be asking questions such as, the person’s name, age at that address. CENSUS takers cannot ask the Immigration status of residents. Also asked will be their gender and race. All of this information is tabulated to understand the needs of each community and state as well as immigration statistics. Each state is asking residents to answer CENSUS questions completely and correctly for Federal funding purposes. Obviously, the larger the population, the more federal tax funds are needed to help each State with projects such as schools, roads, bridges and other projects.