Ag Commissioner Urges Completion of Census
With a September 30th deadline for the 2020 Census data collection, more than 38 million American households are still uncounted. The COVID pandemic delayed census takers’ visits to non-responding households and more than one in three people hired as census takers have quit or failed to show up. That’s according to The National Conference on Citizenship.
Colorado Secretary of Agriculture Kate Greenberg says the census isn’t something to let slide.
Greenberg: “It’s just so important for folks everywhere but including and especially rural Colorado to take the census. The Census implicates so much of where resources go, what representation looks like. Redistricting is happening this year and the census is going to help determine that. If folks in rural Colorado think the census doesn’t matter to them or don’t want to take it means our representation is going to be less. That’s also for where the money for roads goes, money for other services that are really critical like healthcare to rural Colorado.“
The Urban Institute estimates that up to 62,700 Colorado residents may be undercounted in 2020.
Colorado is one of more than two dozen state and local governments suing the Trump administration for planning to ban immigrants living in the country illegally from being counted.
The American Immigration Council says 190,000 undocumented immigrants comprised 34 percent of Colorado’s immigrant population and 3 percent of the total state population in 2016.
