April 12, 2018

Castro Remarks at Congressional Hispanic Caucus Press Conference on 2020 Census

- As Delivered - Click Here for Video -

Washington, D.C.—Congressman Joaquin Castro (TX-20), First Vice Chair of the Congressional Hispanic Caucus, made the following statement at a press conference about the mounting concerns of the Trump Administration’s decision to add a new citizenship question to the 2020 Census and congressional efforts to hold the Trump Administration accountable and halt the addition of this damaging question:

“Welcome and thank you everybody for joining us today. My name is Joaquin Castro, I represent San Antonio, Texas in the United States Congress, District 20 in Texas. I’m the First Vice Chair of the Congressional Hispanic Caucus, and we’re here today to talk about the 2020 census.

“Recently, the Trump Administration announced that they will include a question specifically asking about U.S. citizenship in the next census. This question, especially coming from this Administration, which has been so hostile to immigrants and also in many ways to the Latino community, is meant as an act of political intimidation. It will also effect federal funding for states like my home state of Texas and for many cities across the nation. Texas stands to lose billions of dollars and cities will lose a lot of money because this will scare people away from answering the census.

“Anybody who has seen the census form knows that oftentimes people think that it’s an intrusive list of questions.  This will make it much less likely that we will get full and complete answers from so many people. Not only from folks who may be undocumented, or legal residents who for example, who believe that the President or his administration are coming after legal immigrants, but I believe it will also affect the response rate from citizens, who simply don’t want to be asked more and more questions that they consider intrusive from a hostile Administration.

“For Texas, the stakes are also high because we were slated to pick up about three new congressional seats. After the last census we were the only state in the nation that picked up four congressional seats, no other state even picked up three.  So I believe this will cost Texas at least one congressional seat after the next census in the new round of redistricting that follows.

“So the stakes are very high for this country and for the states that we all represent. Now I would like to bring up the dean of our delegation, Representative Jose Serrano from New York.”

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