DALLAS—As census forms begin arriving in mailboxes this week, federal workers tasked with counting humans in the nation's second-most populous state face their usual Texas challenge: how to account for immigrants who'd rather not be noticed.

It's a problem with every decade's census in a state that shares a 2,000-mile frontier with Mexico, but it's not exclusively a border issue. In fact, U.S. Census Bureau officials also are targeting areas away from the border where large pockets of "hard to count" immigrants wind up after entering the country.

The Census Bureau considers Harris County and Dallas County the hardest to count in Texas. Harris ranks fourth nationally and Dallas 10th in the difficulty rankings that consider various factors, including how many surveys were returned in the 2000 census, language, education, mobility, poverty and employment.

When it comes to immigrants, though, the biggest factor is fear.

"They fear the police, they fear deportation and they fear answering questions," said Teresa Sims, a volunteer at an Arlington church that's holding a forum March 20 explaining the census to immigrants.

The Census Bureau has launched a national campaign to better inform immigrants in response to complaints that Hispanics were largely undercounted in 2000. For the first time, millions of census forms have been printed in Spanish. And the bureau's trying to hire bilingual workers to get into isolated communities.


http://www.contracostatimes.com/search/ci_14668128


(posted by Tiffany Perales)