http://thehill.com/homenews/administration/380387-2020-census-to-include-citizenship-questionPresident Trump's Commerce Department said Monday evening that the 2020 Census will include a question on citizenship, despite the strong objections of Democrats.
Commerce Secretary Wilbur Ross announced his decision to reinstate the citizenship question in a post on the Commerce website. The citizenship question has not appeared on the census since 1950, but Ross argued that collecting citizenship data has been “a long-standing historical practice."
The Department of Justice (DOJ) under Attorney General Jeff Sessions has reportedly pushed for inclusion of the question, arguing that it would allow the the department to better enforce the Voting Rights Act. Census data is used to redraw House districts and the number of House seats each state receives, as well as determining each state’s number of electoral votes in a presidential election.
Democrats have raised concerns that adding the question would result in an inaccurate population count because it would discourage some immigrants from filling out the questionnaire given the Trump administration's crackdown on those in the country illegally.