As the United States’ administration prepares to make the once-in-a-decade headcount, survey forms by the US Census Bureau are expected to include questions on citizenship, alarming experts and raising doubts about an impending significant change coming about to the 2030 census.
The field practice test being conducted in Huntsville, Alabama, and Spartanburg, South Carolina, is using questions from the American Community Survey – the comprehensive survey of American life – rather than questions from recent census forms, with one of the questions asked being: “Is this person a citizen of the United States?”
Last August, US President Donald Trump instructed the Commerce Department to have the Census Bureau start work on a new census that would exclude immigrants who are in the US illegally from the head count, a practice he had failed to carry out in his first term.
But, questions for the census are not supposed to ask about citizenship, and they have not for 75 years.
Since the Constitution’s 14th Amendment says “the whole number of persons in each state” should be counted for the numbers used for apportionment, the process of divvying up congressional seats, and Electoral College votes among the states, the Census Bureau has interpreted that to mean anybody living in the US, regardless of legal status.
In his first term, President Donald Trump unsuccessfully tried to add a citizenship question to the 2020 census form, even signing orders that would have excluded people who are in the US illegally from the apportionment figures and mandated the collection of citizenship data.
But, such an attempt was blocked by the US Supreme Court, and both orders were rescinded when Democratic President Joe Biden arrived at the White House in January 2021, before the 2020 census figures were released.
Republican lawmakers in Congress recently have introduced legislation that would exclude some non-citizens from the apportionment figures, and several GOP state attorneys also have filed federal lawsuits in Louisiana and Missouri seeking to add a citizenship question to the next census and exclude people in the US illegally from the apportionment count.
While the bureau did not respond on Thursday to media inquiries seeking comment about why the ACS questions were being used for the 2026 test, Terri Ann Lowenthal, a former congressional staffer who consults on census issues, acknowledged the ACS questions have never been used for a census field test before.
She said the 2026 test – which was pared down from six locations to two – has become “a shell of what the Census Bureau proposed and should do to ensure an accurate 2030 Census.” “This full pivot from a real field test is alarming and deserves immediate congressional attention, in my view,” Lowenthal said.
