Response to Cencus?

Just thought I'd put my two cents in on this one. First of all, before there is any kind of fine that is going to be imposed, if you don't reply to the census you are going to receive a personal visit from a census taker. The census bureau is aiming for a 100% response rate this census because it is a millenium and they are going to send a person to help you fill it out. I know some of you are not going to be happy about that but that is what is going to happen. Secondly, the information submitted on census forms is not released to any law enforcement body whether it is the FBI, the local police or sheriff or the Immigration office. Believe what you will, it ain't gonna happen. When census data is finally released, it is at least 70 years old. For those of us who do geneology research, we can't get the census for 1950 or 1940 because it is still too new. While that can be frustrating for us, it is done to protect the people's privacy. The information in a census is used for a lot of purposes but it is not looked at for a particular person. Instead the information is dumped into categories for statistical use. For example, how many bathrooms you have will be added together with everyone else's bathroom information and the total bathrooms of everyone in your county will then be given to the people that are responsible for providing drinking water so they can plan water treatment plants and reservoirs, etc. They look at trends from the last census and it helps them plan if they need to build bigger reservoirs, etc. The commuting information is provided to the states to help them in planning future highways and roads, etc. The number of children and their ages is used to determine future school needs. This information is used to help the city, county, state and federal government plan for infrascture to meet our needs. They do not care that Jane and John Doe homeschool because they want to be in your business, they want to know from a total numbers perspective whether or not they should be building new schools or scaling back by looking at trends. Believe me, the people that get this information could care less what you are doing as a person. They aren't going to gossip about it to their neighbor, they just want to compile the data so that planning can be done.

Don't get me wrong, my husband and I are very private people and we definitely don't like uninvited guests to show up at our door, but we also recognize in the society we have today with the infrastructure that is provided to us to live the way we do, i.e. roads that are pavement and not dirt, grocery stores that are close by, libraries that meet our needs, etc., we recognize that this stuff takes planning and the only way the governments can plan is to have an idea of the way people live and what their needs are going to be a few years down the pike.

So please, bite the bullet, fill it out and send it in. No one cares what you, personally, are doing so they can use it for some ill purpose, they only want statistics, pure and simple.

Incidentally, the census has a website. Go visit at www.census.gov. Also, they are looking for census takers so if you want a chance to work in your own neighborhood and earn a little money for about eight weeks starting at the beginning of April, check it out. The money isn't bad and you'll get a chance to meet some of the people in your town. Let's look at this from a positive perspective instead of a negative one.

[ Previous | Next ]