Residents celebrate Supreme Court blocking citizenship question from 2020 census

The Supreme Court ruled 5-4 against the citizenship question in next year’s census; good news for some Imperial Valley residents.

Comite Civico del Valle Jose Luis Olmedo said, “We’re very happy to hear that the supreme court has made a judgment against that question, and we encourage the federal administration to respect that decision and not continue to pursue this question.”

Esperanza Colio , Imperial County Administration, said the question would have intimidated millions of people living here legally.

“If this questioned would have been posed into the census twenty-twenty, it would discourage a lot of the community, a lot of residents, legal residents, to even answer,” Colio said.

An inaccurate census count could have resulted in the loss of millions of dollars of government funds given to the area, because such funding depends on population numbers.

“Having an accurate count is really important because this is how resources and lot of decisions are being made to bring in valuable resources into our community,” Olmedo said.

Tomas Oliva , El Centro City Council Member, said “The resources, the funding, the allocations that we would get in order to fund schools, in order to fund roads, in order to fund public safety would be questioned, would fall short of what is our due.”

He said this line of questioning would have pushed some people, such as legal residents, away from census participation out of concerns over their privacy.

“I think it was very obvious that this administration’s effort in adding that question was to deter and to get some people in feeling uncomfortable in filling it out to begin with,” Oliva said.

Some people on social media expressed their disagreement of the Supreme Court’s decision on social media. Oliva had a response for them.

“For those that feel that this was not a positive, that feel that knowing someone’s citizenship has value, I say, I hear you, and I understand what you’re focused on, however, i do not agree that the census is the purpose and method for that,” Oliva said.

Numbers from the census are also used to allocate congressional seats making it a possible political tool.