Census 2010 and the American Community Survey

Census Forms for 2010 should be arriving in your mail box in the next couple of weeks. If you are one of the lucky ones, you will only get the revised short form. One in six households get The American Community Survey. Questions in the American Community Survey used to be in the regular Census form, which I am old enough to remember filling out. In my opinion, neither was really authorized by our constitution. The language in the constitution only provides for an "enumeration". Webster's dictionary says to enumerate is "to ascertain the number of ". Some would say that it could be expanded to mean whatever the congress designates-that is, counting how many of each race, each sex, who works and who doesn't, etc. For strict constitutionalists like myself, that broad definition does not work. If you believe what can be seen on the Internet, there is a growing number of people who say they are not going to answer any questions except the one that asks how many are in the household. Government information says that both the Census and The American Community Survey are required by law. Although I did not find this on a government site, some information on the Internet states that a fine of $100 can be levied for not filling out the forms. Some sites state that there has never been a case where the government has pursued those who have not filled out the forms. It is my understanding that if you do not fill out the forms, a census worker will appear at your door to "help" you.

Below are some of the questions on both the short and the long forms.

Census 2010-short form-everyone will get this one

Government information touts that there is only 10 questions on the Census 2010 form. The questions asked are:

How many people live or stay at the address?

Is the address a house, apartment or mobile home?

What is your telephone number?

For each person living or staying at the address-list their name, sex, age, how they are related to the first person and answer two separate questions about race-first, are they Hispanic, Latin or Spanish and 2^nd -choose from a list of other races.

The last question is whether or not someone who lives at the address sometimes stays somewhere else.

Ironically, there is no question on this form about citizenship.

The short form of the Census 2010 above is much more intrusive than I believe the framers of the constitution were authorizing. The American Community Survey (that is just another form of the Census) is much more intrusive. Although, all government information states how beneficial these questions are for we the people, the questions were certainly not envisioned by the founding fathers and are not provided for in the constitution. As such, they should be optional, not required by law.

The American Community Survey form-one in six households will get this one

If you cannot bring yourself to only answer the "how many are in your household" question and accept whatever the consequences may be, I would advise you to start praying that your household is not the one out of six that will get this form. It is horribly intrusive and will take a lot of time requiring you to research and document every minute aspect of your life.

In addition to everything on the Census 2010 short form above, the American Community Survey form has a list of 48 questions on each person. Among them are questions about health insurance, education, mental ability, whether or not they could have worked last month, whether or not they have given birth, how many times they have been married, how they got to work last week, whether or not they were temporarily absent from work last week, what is their income from work-royalties-rental-trusts-retirement?

There are 21 questions under the category of "Housing". Some of them are:
How many rooms does your house have? How many bedrooms? How many cars do you have? What kind of fuel do you use (in the house)? How much did you pay last month for electricity, gas, water, oil, coal, wood? What is your monthly mortgage, rent payment? How much is your condo fee? What would your house sell for? How much are your real estate taxes, fire/flood/hazard insurance? Is all of this included in your mortgage payment? Do you have a Deed of Trust/contract to purchase on this house? Do you have a 2^nd mortgage? How much is all of this combined? Does your household get food stamps?

This list is not comprehensive. If you want to see the actual Census 2010 and American Community Survey forms, please use the link. This is not something new our government is doing. The forms used to be combined and everyone got the long form. However, more of us are becoming aware of how far the government will go if we allow it to take over our lives.

http://www.census.gov/acs/www/SBasics/acs_2010.htm
and personal opinion