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Government works to ensure accurate census count
Published 2/16/2010 in Local News
By SHAJIA AHMAD
As local census-taking efforts brew in the region, local officials are hoping cooperation between the government and the people they serve will aid in a more accurate 2010 count, though several challenges exist given the area's demographics.
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Brad Nading/Telegram A majority of the crowd tries to stay in the shade of an awning outside El Remido Market as Ritmo Latino entertains them with music during a Cinco de Mayo celebration May 2008.
Tim Hamilton, a planner with the Planning & Community Development Department which serves both cities in Finney County and the county at large, has said that western Kansas has not had a very high census participation rate in past decades. Hamilton said that ensuring as accurate a count as possible is extremely important because government funding for communities, school districts, and transportation or other projects often depend heavily on demographic information.
The city and county planner attributed the historically low participation in the area to possible cross-cultural barriers among the region's ethnic groups and the rural area's transient population, challenges that government officials are working to combat this year by partnering with both public and private agencies to reach as many segments of the population as possible, especially those who may need materials in different languages or who don't understand or are wary of the census-taking process.
Minorities in communities across the nation, especially in metropolitan cities, tend to be undercounted in most census years, a problem officials have been dealing with for several decades, said Jeffrey Smith, an associate professor of cultural geography at Kansas State University.
The problem of conducting accurate census counts holds true in sparsely-populated areas of the Midwest, too, Smith said, where large numbers of migrant, transient, Hispanic and Latino, and refugee communities exist, largely due to the agriculture-based economies and meat-packing plants.
Finney County, for example, became a majority-minority community in 2008 where at least 50 percent of the population now identifies themselves as minorities, according to the U.S. Census Bureau, and the population dynamics of western Kansas are fairly similar to areas across the Texas panhandle, parts of eastern Kansas and eastern Colorado, Nebraska, and the Dakotas, where the same cultural and linguistic barriers to census-taking efforts exist.
"A language barrier is much less of a problem for younger kids because they're either fluent (in English) or bilingual, but you have to remember for those people who are most likely doing the reporting, they're of older generations and may or may not be comfortable in English," Smith said.
The dynamics of language are also very important, Smith said. Some past census questionnaires translated into Vietnamese, for example, have unintentionally struck fear or mistrust among segments of Vietnamese-American communities, the professor added.
"I've read that (the government) did a terrible job in wording some of that language, using very formal words instead or more comfortable or soothing and informal words," he said. "Among the Vietnamese population, some of the particular words were very heavy-handed and may have reminded them of their former oppressive government."
Local officials have also said the challenge of ensuring an accurate count is exacerbated given the region's transient population, a segment of the population that has also been historically difficult to quantify even in non-census years, Smith said.
Prior to the economic downturn, the largest segments of migrant and undocumented individuals traveling in the region were "repeat migrants" who'd commonly work for several months in the U.S. and return to Mexico in the winter seasons.
Because of both the financial risks and heightened patrol along the U.S.-Mexican border over the last several years, the flow of repeat migrants has significantly decreased, the professor added.
"There are many places in the Great Plains that have seen a dying population since the 1990 census, and many communities should feel blessed that there are immigrant populations moving in, whether its from the Vietnamese, Latino or Somalian communities," he said. "If it weren't for the new arrivals, these populations would see a huge declining tax base, declining economic foundations and even declining services such as health care resources and police forces."
Census questionnaires will be mailed to households this spring, and the Bureau requests that they are returned by April 1.
Though the Bureau has already hired about one-third of its temporary workers since last February in the 59-county western Kansas area that includes the southwest corner of the state, officials say they still plan to hire around 1,000 people between now and next spring in the Dodge City area.
Various employment positions are available in every community, and individuals interested in learning more about temporary census employment can call (866) 861-2010, the bureau's Dodge City office at (620) 682-4190, or go to www.2010censusjobs.gov. The rate of pay for a part-time temporary census taker in western Kansas is $10 an hour, according to the U.S. Census Bureau's Web site. Other positions may have different pay rates.
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