Refusing to answer is one thing. Lie is another - unethical, not moral for some, ... just don't go there. But the question remain, does the census count you if you don't answer everything?
I am not doing that or advocate for that, but if enough people advocate for boycott, it would make the census useless, for example if say 30 million people sign a petition to boycott, that would totally discredit the planned census and Trump administration MIGHT back down, although I highly doubt it (this is not Putin we are talking about here).
Probably not. As I'd said, I probably still won't boycott, even with Trump. But a lot of meditation here is on the trustworthiness of the Admin as a steward of this information. I'd feel pretty confident in an Obama Admin (or a hypothetical Kasich Admin even) not doing a bait-and-switch and leveraging this data to target illegal aliens. With such confidence, I would feel like people in mixed-status households would not be justified in not answering the survey, since they would not be harmed by it. But, I don't have confidence that Trump will act with honor, so I see the threat mixed-status families would feel, and I think they are justified in being afraid of the census. So that's where the boycott question comes from, confidence. There are no sacred cows for Trump. I thought about that. Another form of protest could be for people to mark themselves illegal immigrants on the form to sabotage their data. But, that's unethical; I wouldn't do that. Illegal aliens could lie and say they're legal, but as I understand it the form goes on to ask questions about when you came to the country, when you were naturalized, etc. People will feel pretty quickly that a lie will be caught out. It is nominally required by law, with a fine for liars and boycotters. They haven't gone after anyone in decades though. You can probably get away with skipping that one question. They can probably cross-check your partial response against other data anyway, so your non-answer might be an answer of sorts anyway. But likewise on the 'what sort of black are you' question -- I bet a ton of people skip that.
What is the value of knowing my ethnicity? Gender? Income? Etc? Why is it NOT Valuable to know Sexual Orientation/Gender preference? In for a penny . .. in for a pound Rocket River
Obama isn't trying to fight a war against minorities or whites and blue states or red states. He had his flaws, but being so petty as to try to punish the people who didn't vote for him was not one of them. Your man Trump however...
This census is used for determining House seats, EC votes, etc, which is based on a headcount and not a citizen count. So anything that gets in the way of being as accurate as possible in counting heads is problematic. You can use other census efforts to get a count of citizens, and I'd have no problem with that. There is no Constitutionally-mandated use for the official census that I am aware of that would require knowing the count of citizens, so that count needs to take a backseat to getting the headcount correct. If -- as reasonably expected -- illegal aliens and mixed-status households dodge the census, Texas will be underrepresented in the House and in the Electoral College. For a Republican that might look like a worthwhile sacrifice if it means you can also suppress the influence of California, New York, and Illinois. But, if you're a Republican Texan, I don't see why you'd want this. The rationale on ethnicity I've heard is that you can use that data to police racial gerrymandering -- and sexual orientation gerrymandering probably isn't a thing. Though I do have to wonder if the census data really gives the advantage to the prosecutors, or if it actually helps the gerrymanderers more in coming up with clever ways to subvert democracy. Btw, I've said this before, but having a House elected by an ever-shifting geography of districts was one of the worst ideas our forefathers came up with. What a joke our House has become with all the gerrymandering they engage in.
The thing is...I have absolutely no doubt that this administration will use that question to target immigrants. Nothing they've done to this point shows that they would be trustworthy people. Even if they didn't, it would most certainly affect how people respond, if at all.
...What's even funnier for all of these evangelical Christians applauding this citizen count, their bible tells them that this is a particularly wrong thing to do...especially if you're using it to pick on certain people...or look for dead Democrats still showing up to vote...or busloads full of illegals showing up at voting polls trying to vote...
Why would I want illegal aliens counted in regards to government representation? I doubt many illegal aliens were going to respond in the 1st place.
Even slaves were counted back in the days (3/5) rule. Do you want have enough police force and fire departments? Or we should not worry about illegals when we do the planning for these?
Because the Constitution says 'persons' not 'citizens' or 'residents.' I suppose you could argue that illegal immigrants are like the "Indians not taxed" that are excluded from the Census in the article. But, that wouldn't resolve the mixed-status household issue, where US citizens won't be counted because they are the children of illegal immigrants.