Posted on 04/09/2010 6:57:14 AM PDT by Responsibility2nd
BROWNSVILLE — After months of encouraging people to heed U.S. Census billboards and TV spots urging everyone to mail in their all-important census forms, it wasn't until around April 1, or “Census Day,” that Rio Grande Valley leaders learned that as many as a quarter of the area's residents won't be getting the mailings at all. “I thought it was an April Fool's joke,” Hidalgo County Judge Rene Ramirez said of the Census Bureau's decision to go door-to-door in colonias.
Colonias are subdivisions that sprang up as recent immigrants built or parked homes, often substandard, on tracts that lacked paved roads or utilities, including water or sewer service. Estimates of their population range from 100,000 to 250,000, with 80 percent believed to be along the Texas border and most of those believed to be in Hidalgo County, Census Bureau spokesman Efren Salinas said.
Getting an accurate count of colonia residents was a key 2010 goal, Salinas said, and the decision was made up to a year ago to use the “Update/Enumerate” strategy, which costs from $52 to $60 per visited household, as opposed to the cost of postage.
But despite work with community and service groups to spread the “Yo Cuento” (“I count”) message in the Valley, Salinas admitted that “the messaging wasn't there” about the colonia plans.
Both Ramirez and Cameron County Judge Carlos Cascos since have written critical letters to Census Director Robert Groves, asking why they weren't in the loop and that the bureau include colonias in that first step of mailing forms.
“We have been telling all residents to expect a census form in the mail on or before April 1. This latest news hurts our credibility with the public, especially among these hard to count areas,” Ramirez wrote.
While unincorporated shantytowns have been noted around Corpus Christi and non-border cities, Salinas said the bureau used the Texas secretary of state definition of colonias as primarily a border phenomenon. “We have maps, maps, and more maps,” he said.
Valley locals say the colonia image of third-world shacks with outhouses is outdated. Communities formed in the 1980s and 1990s may now be pleasant neighborhoods that long since have acquired sewers, street lights and mailboxes, thanks to state and federally funded programs and residents' upward mobility.
Starting in 1989, legislation has evolved to crack down on the spread of new colonias, though they continue to pop up.
Ramirez said he lives in a rural area and — though he has a mailbox — he'll be getting a visit rather than the mailed form.
His letter to Groves came on the heels of his opinion piece, submitted to local news agencies, about the importance of census counts in assuring federal funding for the area.
“Our community can't move forward until we mail it back,” he wrote.
Cascos' letter to Groves made similar points and asked whether census workers were bilingual, numerous enough and if they'd visit during the day while people might be at work.
Salinas said using the mail no longer was an option but said the bureau had “absolutely no concern” that the workers — 2,100 between Brownsville and Laredo alone — won't get the job done. Going in person is costly and is reserved for “hard-to-count” areas such as American Indian reservations and remote areas of Alaska.
Ann Cass, director of a nonprofit agency that helps low-income families build homes, said she had doubts.
“People do receive water bills, electric bills,” she said. “The whole point was they were putting these in Spanish for the first time. That's what we were telling our families — it's going to be in Spanish, it's going to be 10 questions, it's going to be simple.”
And when you live where there are no addresses and even the streets and roads have no names, then what?
Hard to get a mailperson to take their lives in their hands just to pass out Census Forms.
So let me get this straight...we aren’t counting ILLEGALS?
And the problem with that is?
Who owns the property these “Colonias” are on? Are these folks just squatters or do they buy the land? Seems like the existing sanitary codes would preclude these communities from occurring, but obviously that is not happening. So someone must be looking the other way.
Such niceties did not stop Hoover from having Douglas McArthur, Dwight Eisenhower, and George Patton drive out the “Bonus Army” from the Anacostia flats in 1932. Those were US citizens and veterans, women and children.
These illegals have been squatting on our side of the border, sopping up food stamps, schooling, and free medical care for generations
The least they could do is put an X on the form and mail it so Texas can get something out of it...although 10 blanks for names may not be enough.
people “built or parked homes, often substandard, on tracts that lacked paved roads or utilities, including water or sewer service.”
I’ve lived in a small houses on dirt roads with spring-fed or drill-well water and underground septic tanks all my life, ‘cepting when I was in the Army. Hell, I work with people who grew up with a long-handle pump in the kitchen, dry sinks, and an outhouse in the back yard. Those poor, poor Hidalgos. My heart just bleeds and bleeds for them. Census idiots need to be sending immigration idiots and just use zip-tie handcuff inventory depletion to get an accurate count.
No worries. The feds will end up taking a swag at a figure - look for dozens more seats to open up in these districts anyway.
Instead of counting them, the Census workers will down a street of about 12 homes and say, “Don’t they always complain that immigrants live 50 to a home? So that’s about 600, there.”
In reality, there are three people who didn’t take off for Mexico again.
LOL! Subdivisions!!! Subdivisions for immigrants even! My, how Norman Rockwell sounding!
Census takers can find illegals but ICE is still hiding out under their desks.
““People do receive water bills, electric bills,” she said.”
Are they in Spanish, too, or do the resident manage to pay them although they are printed in English?
Didn’t the census do estimating during the 2000 census?
No problem anyway, obama admin is going to be compiling the results of the census. Those commerce dept types have just been screwing it up for the last 200 years. Can’t wait to see the results.
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