Quote:
Originally Posted by Busy Bee
Regarding the counting of illegal/undoc immigrants... I was a census enumerator in 2010 in Illinois (I was between jobs and thought it was a good way to serve)... Enumerators are sent out to attempt contact with addresses that files show did not return the census form... The training and protocol was very competent and insists enumerators not ask about legal status and to explain to those they may suspect of illegal status what the census was and why it was important... I personally made contact with a small amount of people I strongly suspected were here illegally due to their apprehension to talk... But the point I wanted to make here was that the protocol for recording number of occupants for an addressed dwelling is fairly good in that it uses testimony of neighbors to confirm person count. I recorded dozens and dozens of properties as either vacant or occupied and if occupied, by how many by using neighbors testimony who's names are recorded as evidence of said testimony...
Long story short, I've always been very skeptical of these suggested undercounts of hundreds of thousands of illegal immigrants for this very reason. The same census enumerating methods are used coast to coast. I just can't see how that many people could be undercounted using those personal visitation methods without an elaborate conspiracy of some sort.
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My own experience working with the Census people during the 2010 Census was, they definitely undercounted rural people, at least where I was working. There are just a lot of people living in the boonies who are hard to get a hold of, or figure out their address, or get access to their property, or they avoid being counted, etc. My own guesstimate is that it was about 5%.