LAS VEGAS, Nev. ---I interviewed one guy who wasn’t the typical “I don’t have time” kind of guy. He was old and polite, just relaxing on his porch on a really beautiful day, and just calmly said he doesn’t trust the census. I of course was ready to engage him (or anyone) with the lines about how his data will be secure under penalty by law etc., but instead I just asked him why he didn’t trust it. He said he can’t support an agency that’s trying to make life better for illegals when we should be asking people for their legal status as a resident.
I spent the next 25 minutes having a polite conversation with this nice old man who just didn’t understand what the census does. I told him about how hospitals can get federal funding based on population in an area, and if a lot of illegal immigrants live in the area but don’t get counted on the census then he might be waiting extra long at our local hospital when he needs treatment, and hospital staff there may be short-handed.
I didn’t see a car in his driveway so I told him if he takes the bus, some public transportation funding is based on census counts, and if illegal immigrants live in his area but aren’t counted, people may be crammed in a single bus one day in the middle of a pandemic when there could’ve been a second bus to a give everyone more space.
I made sure he knew that counting illegal immigrants doesn’t just help them, it also helps him. After that conversation he let me enumerate his household and I thanked him for sharing his information and his family stories during our conversation.
Super nice guy, surprisingly receptive to what I had to say, which wasn’t at all common in my experience. So that conversation really made my day.
--ZACH
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