Latino leaders want illegals to boycott 2010 census
But now some Latino leaders want illegal immigrants to boycott the national survey, claiming that being counted — but not represented — isn’t fair.
“It doesn’t make any sense, in some way it is immoral that we are counting 12 million undocumented immigrants who have no benefit at all financially speaking,” said Rev. Miguel Rivera, president of the National Coalition of Latino Clergy & Christian Leaders.
Rivera, whose conservative group of evangelicals is behind the boycott, admitted that telling undocumented immigrants not to participate in the Census is a radical step. But he said it is the only way to make a political point to push immigration reform.
Works for me. I don’t think people who aren’t supposed to be here, legally, should be counted in a census of American citizens and legal residents. If that’s what they’d like to do, go right ahead.
As other Latino leaders are saying, however, that’s a move that’s going to backfire on them, big-time. The census isn’t just a matter of finding out how many people are here. It’s used to determine things like financial and academic support to schools, appropriations for emergency responder teams, and both state- and federal-level support to local governments for all manner of public assistance programs. By purposely refusing to participate, the numbers for a given locality will go down. Now, unless those same illegals are saying they’re going to pack up and head back to their home country those assistance programs are still going to be seeing the same numbers of people asking for help. With the lower census numbers they just won’t have the resources to help a lot of those people asking.
Rivera’s a fool, frankly, for suggesting this action. In my opinion, he’s a damned fool for saying that everything would be just peachy if only we’d all just ignore the illegals’ thumbing of their noses at our laws and just give them full citizenship, right beside other people who followed the rules all along. Fool or not, if that’s his ultimatum – that we grant amnesty or they’ll sit the census out – then I say let ‘em sit out and enjoy the effects for the next 10 years.
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