Miami.
January 1 arrived and the United States Census Bureau missed the deadline for submitting census data by December 31, and each day that passes threatens President Donald Trump’s plans to ban undocumented immigrants. national census.
This same week, the Census Bureau acknowledged that despite the fact that his technicians worked “hard” to process the data collected in the census, they did not get the figures before the “legal deadline“.
And finally, this warning was met and the agency that depends on the Department of Commerce failed to comply with it for the first time since the December 31 deadline was set in 1976, all because of the fallout from the coronavirus pandemic and the last minute changes by the Trump administration.
“We will continue to process the collected data and plan to deliver a complete and accurate number of state population for distribution by early 2021, as close as possible to the legal deadline,” the report said. Census Bureau it is a statement.
But days go by and Trump’s presidency ends on Jan. 20 and his options are to finalize a plan involved in a legal dispute that even reached the United States Supreme Court, which in December filed a lawsuit against Trump’s order. to exclude undocumented migrants from the census because it was too early to assess the matter.
The census is held in U.S every 10 years by constitutional mandate, and the goal of counting all the people present in the country is the allocation of representation of the states in Congress and the Electoral College for the next decade, and billions of dollars for infrastructure programs , hospitals, schools and social assistance.
The president wants that even if the ten-year registration counts them, undocumented immigrants are not taken into account in the next round of political and financial allocations.
Trump ordered Commerce Secretary Wilbur Ross in July to present him with two results from this year’s census, one of which excludes undocumented immigrants. The president believes some states are getting more representation than they deserve because of the number of undocumented migrants living there.
The constitution states that the census must count all the people living in the country, but Trump, in a memorandum issued in July for the first time in the republic’s history, granted the power to exclude undocumented immigrants when it comes time to distribute representations.
A Census Bureau employee, speaking on condition of anonymity, told the public radio station (NPR) that they are working to complete their job of processing the data by January 9, as a step before finally delivering the results. of the census.
“If we miss the date of January 9, it is hard to imagine that we can make the distribution (of seats in the House of Representatives and electoral votes of states)” before the inauguration of President-elect Joe Biden, on January 20 , the clerk said.
And with Biden in the White House, the Democrat could suspend Trump’s memorandum and decide which numbers to send to Congress for their final certification.
As an example, and based on an analysis of the Pew Center of the Census Bureau’s population projections in 2019, it concluded that if Trump’s criteria were applied, California would lose two seats in the House of Representatives instead of one. expected, while Florida would win one instead of two and Texas would win two instead of three.
California is predominantly democratic Texas It’s Republican, and Florida is considered the main pivot state, though they’ve backed the Conservatives in the last two presidential elections.