Some minority groups missed at higher rate in 2020 US census

During a conference call Thursday, Census Bureau Director Robert Santos said many Latino communities throughout the U.S. suffered during the pandemic from joblessness and housing insecurity, and that played a role in the undercount. But he added that the Trump administration’s actions also may have had an impact.

“I’m personally not surprised to see the results we see today,” said Santos, who was sworn into the position at the beginning of the year.

The severe undercount of the Hispanic population helps explain why three states with large Latino populations underperformed in the 2020 census, with Arizona failing to gain an extra seat, Florida gaining only a single seat and Texas getting only two seats, said Arturo Vargas, CEO of NALEO Educational Fund.

“It was startling to me, the level of undercount,” Vargas said. “We knew there was going to be an undercount, but the extent of it took me by surprise.”

About 70% of Native Americans live on reservations. James Tucker, the chairman of a Census Bureau advisory committee, estimated the undercount translates to at least 100,000 Native Americans on reservations not counted and more than a $300 million loss in federal funding for Indian Country annually.

“This undercount is not new — it is a continuous cycle of erasure of Native people from society,” said Lycia Maddocks, a citizen of the Fort Yuma Quechan Indian Tribe in Arizona who is political director of NDN Collective, a South Dakota-based advocacy group. “In a practical sense, an undercount means that Native people are not looked at as a significant voting block when in reality, our population has proven itself to be the margin of victory in key states such as Arizona.”