2000 Ad

0 Comments | Insight on the News, Sept 27, 1999 | by Ellen Sugarman

The U.S. Census Bureau refuses to include the millions of Americans living overseas in the quadrennial enumeration. But a group called the C2K Coalition demands change.

At a time marked by citizen apathy, when many bemoan the average American's lack of civic responsibility and our last president was elected by a mere 30 percent of the voters, millions of Americans living abroad want to be included in the year 2000 census. So far, the U.S. Bureau of the Census has turned them down flat -- despite the fact that the Supreme Court in 1992 upheld inclusion of at least one category of overseas citizens, those with federal affiliations -- saying that "usual residence can mean more than mere physical presence, and has been used broadly enough to include some element of allegiance or enduring tie to a place."

They call themselves the C2K Coalition and they've been fighting the battle for years, with no luck. They represent more than 3 million Americans residing in other countries. Explaining that the American population is more mobile and global than ever and that this trend is sure to continue, they argue that there's really no good reason to exclude them just because they're living overseas. Eschewing the label "expatriate" as a pejorative, they insist they count as much as the next person -- more, perhaps. They vote (in absentia), pay taxes and act as informal ambassadors because, living in other countries, they're routinely called on to defend this one.

The U.S. Constitution requires the government to count its citizens every 10 years. To do this, Census sends people door-to-door. The idea was posed to replace an actual head count with a statistical estimate in 2000; the suggestion drew a lot of fire. After heated bipartisan debate, the head-counters won out in a Supreme Court ruling. (Census-watchers accuse the bureau of planning an end run around the ruling.) They point out that a lot is riding on the census. The count determines the number of voting districts and thereby the number of elected representatives a state gets to send to the House, as well as the allocation of all those billions of federal dollars.

This spring, 35 C2K members stormed Washington to lobby on Capitol Hill. They met with 300 elected representatives -- finding most of them unaware of the issue. They were treated cordially but, as Mary Beth Behrent, a "door-knocker" from Paris, tells Insight, a lot of people said they supported the idea "but no one offered to sponsor a bill."

Whether C2K's lobbying will help members have their way with the Census Bureau remains to be seen. They did get a June 9 hearing before the House Government Reform subcommittee on the Census, chaired by Rep. Dan Miller, a Florida Democrat. Members of the coalition, ranging from the chairman of Democrats Abroad to the secretary of the American Business Council of the Gulf Countries to the executive director of American Citizens Abroad, testified. A couple of congressmen spoke and Rep. Ben Gilman, a New York Republican, introduced a resolution supporting the idea.

Otherwise, nothing much happened, and it looks like the matter might end there. These citizens have hit a brick wall. At the hearing, Census Bureau Director Kenneth Prewitt read a prepared statement that said in part, "The Census Bureau has concluded that it cannot credibly enumerate the population of Americans living abroad." Prewitt mentioned that his staff had met with the C2K Coalition in May -- but neglected to say they'd been meeting for years. He enumerated the problems Census had with the issue -- cost, operational complexity, accuracy, etc. Then the director left before any of the C2K Coalition members had a chance to give what Erin Yeatman, press secretary of the subcommittee, called "some very impassioned testimony." Yeatman says she was disturbed, but not surprised, by Prewitt's behavior: "These people had traveled great distances; they'd flown in from Kuwait and Paris and other very far places." Prewitt said, "It's not going to happen; it can't be done" -- and left without hearing them out. Staff on committees or boards who have to deal with the Census tell Insight that the bureau is "like that." An employee of the U.S. Census Monitoring Board -- established by Congress to observe and monitor all aspects of the 2000 census -- declines to be identified, calling them "unmovable." "They won't move on any of our recommendations," she says.

"We can't get them to do anything," complains Chip Walker of the House Reform subcommittee on the Census staff. "We've had this problem with them on a number of issues, things we wanted them to do but they won't. I doubt the bureau will do it, citing the lack of time." As Yeatman puts it, "If they don't want to do

something, they can come up with a thousand excuses why. I don't know why they don't want to do this." (No one at Census would talk to Insight; after weeks of requests for interviews, a reporter was referred to the director's June 9 statement.)

Critics say that the issue really involves partisanship over congressional redistricting. The Democrats think of Americans overseas as conservative Republican business types, so there is a fear of the unknown in losing or gaining in some districts. (At a meeting with the C2K Coalition, Republican Sen. Kay Bailey Hutchison of Texas joked, "We probably have a whole new district out there.")