The recent debate dividing the Latino community across the country on whether to participate in the census is an issue which seriously threatens our ability to be counted in the way that matters most, political clout, and it will be a missed opportunity that will not come again until 2020.  It is well known by now that Latinos are the fastest growing group in the US. By 2010 the Census Bureau projects an estimated 50 million Latinos, excluding the 4 million in Puerto Rico and the US Virgin Islands.

The call for a boycott of the census is being pushed by the Rev. Miguel Angel Rivera of the National Coalition of Latino Clergy and other Christian leaders as a protest for the inability of the Obama Administration to take on the issue of immigration reform. The issue of a substantive and fair US reform of immigration policy has eluded previous administrations and even George W. Bush saw it come to a screeching halt and defeat during his last year in office. The issue becomes even more heated when you have right wing commentators like Rush Limbaugh, Michelle Malkin and perhaps the most tenacious of all CNN’s Lou Dobbs, whipping up anti immigrant sentiment with half truths and distorted lies. I must admit I am baffled by Lou Dobbs’ anti immigrant rhetoric as his wife Debi Segura is a Mexican American, a fact he is fond of pointing out to explain why he is not hispanophobic.

One such exaggeration made by Dobb’s was that Latinos/Hispanics were responsible for and outbreak of 7,000 new cases of leprosy in the US brought across the border by illegal migration, a fact widely disputed by experts who said that in fact, the actual number of leprosy cases had reached 7,000 in the registry over 30 years, not the previous three years, with 137 cases reported in 2006. But truth and fact are the casualties of opinionated reporters who rather than reporting the news, give us their point of view, and massive doses of self righteous indignation when questioned, for good measure.

The truth of the matter is that under current economic conditions, the issue of immigration reform is perilous for any politician wishing to take it on. Lou Dobbs and other populist media figures rely on this uncertainty to feed fear and misinformation. Indeed, I would venture to say that at no time in America since Jim Crow, has there been such an undercurrent of racist and xenophobic anxiety among certain segments of the population. Immigrants have become one such easy scapegoat, although in the current debate you’d think that word applied only to Latinos as if immigration from other parts of the world did not exist.

One recent example serves to illustrate how complex the debate is and how easily it can de derailed, manipulated, and come undone. Joe Wilson’s outburst calling President Obama a liar when he claimed illegal immigrants would not benefit from health care reform is a telling example of hypocrisy on the part of Wilson (he comes from North Carolina an agricultural state dependent on migrant labor) and how quickly the White House moved to reassure Americans that illegal immigrants would not be allowed to participate in the health care exchange which is part of the health care proposal currently being debated. In fact, changes to the current bill would prevent illegal immigrants from using their own money to pay for health care. The house just passed a health care reform bill that excludes illegal immigrants from receiving health care benefits.  

Which brings me back to the issue of Latinos and the census boycott. Given the complexities of the current debate which is not just solely about immigration, but about health care and how both are linked, it behooves us as Latinos to rethink how not participating in the census will hurt us. I think that the nationalistic and oftentimes racist, and xenophobic rhetoric accompanying the current immigration debate in this country will subside, and we will finally be able to have a reasonable discussion on immigration reform. Till then, not being counted will hurt our communities. It will hurt the allocation of federal resources targeted at Latinos which are oftentimes based on census data.  Community planners and other entities rely on census data to determine where there is a need for additional social services and funding, which can impact public health centers, schools, and social service agencies to name just a few.  Perhaps the greatest impact of the census is how its numbers are used to redistrict congressional and state legislative district boundaries. Not being counted is political suicide. Sometimes a bird in the hand is really worth two in the bush!