Census Bureau sending violent felons to our doors?

Allow me to clear up a small percentage of the confusion.

I am one of only 6 semi-permanent employees in my city for the US Census Bureau. That is, when the USCB began their initial hiring process for the 2010 Census in Nov. of 2008, the entire project was broken up into about 12 different phases. (In order to prevent employees from receiving Federal benefits, as well as to inflate the number of jobs provided, no one is receving an employment contract of longer than 60 days.)Only the permanent employees work through the entire project, which is scheduled to end in Dec. 2010 with the possibility of lasting 2 additional years for a select group of employees who may have some massive data cleanup to perform.

The largest group of employees to be hired for the 2010 Census has already come and gone. Between March and early June we mapped every city block, county road and potential dwelling in existence at that time in the entire country. That was a massive undertaking, and your tax dollars were spent quite freely. I hadn’t known that it was paid for with stimulus money.

The second-largest group of employees will be hired as enumerators to perform personal interviews for all addresses that are known to exist but who fail to respond to the mailed survey form.

Many of those addresses who fail to respond will be vacant, but if a neighbor or housing administrator cannot confirm that status the enumerator and his crew chief will be required to make 4 visits to that address before passing the address up the line to the next chain of command.

They tell us the much-hated long form will not be used this year, but the questionnaire still will ask for all persons living in your home, ages, and relationship to the head of the household. I don’t know about requiring names but I wouldn’t be surprised if they do.

Cooperation with the Census is 1) required by law; and 2) only common sense. Do you really want your state/county/city/community to be underrepresented in the future because a whole bunch of us intentionally skewed the results because we didn’t trust 750 out of the 200,000 Census workers who are probably working in crime-ridden neighborhoods anyway? Why don’t you just give the Dems the right to control everything because you refuse to participate? /sarc

Out of my 24 co-workers in the early stages of the 2010 Census, 23 lived in one of the most conservative counties in my state, and I’d bet that 20 of us voted Republican or more conservative in the last election. None of us found out about the job through our local ACORN rep. We all laugh at the notion that the government could improve our health care. Nevertheless, many of our neighbors are fearful to talk to the stranger that appears on the doorstep, and the fact that we took an oath to uphold the Constitution and are actually working for the good of our local communities (cry for me, Mrs. O!) doesn’t, and shouldn’t change that.

My advice: do your civic duty. Fill out the questionnaire. If you want to control the info that gets turned in, you turn it in. Don’t require the enumerator to come looking for you and possibly fill in info based on their perception (that would be strongly against the procedures they swore to perform, but it happens).

The USCB does not have access to information that the rest of the government already has on you. Unless info was given to them in a previous census (including the smaller ones they perform on a constant basis) they cannot just go look you up in some other reference manual. If you are going to be counted in April, you must allow yourself to be counted.

The law very stringently forbids the USCB from sharing the specifics of the collected data with anyone until released to the federal Archives after 72 years. However, I must agree with all of the respondents I have interviewed who said that I couldn’t guarantee that those persons high up in the Executive Branch will actually respect that law after they’ve freely broken so many others.:{

BTW, the questionnaires will go out before April 1. Interviews are scheduled to begin shortly after that date.

Hope some of this helps.

rwenger43 on October 8, 2009 at 11:49 PM