A growing distrust of government is worrying people planning for New Mexico’s 2030 census count, even though it is still nearly four years away.
The count, conducted every 10 years by the U.S. Census Bureau, relies on a vast network of partners and community organizations, including the League of Women Voters.
Robert Rhatigan, state demographer and director of the Geospatial and Population Studies Center at the University of New Mexico, said New Mexico has had a persistent problem with undercounting first-generation immigrant families and Native Americans, primarily because addresses are missing from the Census Bureau’s address list.
“Those reasons include nonstandard addressing, field work limitations; there’s the language and cultural barriers, and distrust of the federal government,” Rhatigan outlined. “The Hispanic community in particular, and that is a big part of it.”
Rhatigan pointed out census undercounts can prevent tribal communities and other groups from receiving federal funding. He noted the state’s investment in a program called the Local Update of Census Addresses for the 2020 census was highly successful, adding more than 100,000 previously overlooked addresses.
He added New Mexico could see more gains if the state Legislature allocates about $300,000 for the 2030 census.
Compared with other agencies, the Trump administration’s staff cuts to the Census Bureau have been minimal. About 300 workers, or 25% of the bureau’s employees, were laid off during broader federal downsizing. Rhatigan stressed the cuts could still be detrimental.
“That 25% of staff represented well north of 50% of the institutional knowledge, folks who’d been through two or three censuses,” he observed. “That’s a huge loss.”
In 2019, the U.S. Supreme Court ruled the first Trump administration could not include a question about citizenship on the 2020 census form but there are new efforts in Congress to add a similar question in 2030.
States with a majority of Democratic voters argued such a question would discourage immigrants, both those in the country legally and illegally, from responding and make the population count less accurate.
Rhatigan pointed out congressional Republicans are also working to limit the Census Bureau’s contact strategies.
“The policy in 2020 was six knocks on the doors,” he explained. “They want to limit that to two contacts. That would be extremely problematic, and it would almost certainly depress the count in New Mexico more so than in other states.”