The inclusion of a “citizenship” question in the 2020 US Census has been highly contentious — but supporters note that census information could never, ever be used to identify individuals, and so any concern by resident aliens or even illegally present aliens — who are actually supposed to be counted by the federal census, according to the US Constitution — that responding to the census would be a dangerous thing to do are clearly overblown paranoia.
Except that the US Census has been used for nefarious purposes against individuals in the past — specifically, against Japanese-Americans at the outbreak of WW2.
Does anyone actually doubt that Trump would push for a similar use of census data, and coerce Congress into passing legislation to allow such thing (assuming he didn’t just command it by fiat)?
Secret use of census info helped send Japanese Americans to internment camps in WWII – The Washington Post
The abuse of data from the 1940 census has fueled fears about a citizenship question on the 2020 census form.
Census information on hollerith cards processed by IBM helped the Nazis efficiently implement the final solution.
+Linda Tewes Indeed it did.
This isn't to say that the Federal Census is some dire plot — but as both history and the information security issues of the recent past show, when data is collected it is prone to use or misuse in unexpected ways. So one only collects the data necessary or where the value exceeds the cost (and evaluates "necessary" and "value" with skepticism). The citizenship question provides no useful data aside from suppressing the census, which is not valuable in a way that can be openly argued for.
This is the flip side, it occurs to me, over the anger by LGBT groups that a sexual orientation question was not included in the census; while there would be value in getting broader numbers on such things (to justify or target programs), there's also an opportunity for mischief with that data. Gay people, broadly speaking, are less vulnerable of a population than illegal immigrants, but that's at present; there are those who would like to see that change, and imagine a "religious freedom" nation where employers using federal validation of identity (to protect against illegal aliens) got back a status on the application with sexual orientation included on it.