U.S. Census Bureau targets minorities for 2000 count

"In this country, everything is based on numbers," said Elias Vasquez, one of several community partnership specialists hired by the government to encourage minority participation.

He said if you're not counted, it means your government doesn't recognize your need for streets and schools and you don't count when they create your congressional district. Vasquez speaks out about the census at west Michigan ethnic festivals, villages, city halls, schools and churches.

The census, a headcount of the nation's population, occurs at the beginning of each decade.

AP PHOTO Elias Vasquez, shown last week in Grand Rapids, is a community partnership specialist for the U.S. Census Bureau. He urges the Latino/a community to participate in the 2000 Census.

Ten years ago during the last census count, community partnership specialists weren't on the bureau's payroll.

Critics say the result was a dramatic undercounting of minority populations.

It's estimated that Native Americans were undercounted by 14 percent; Latino/as by 5.5 percent and blacks by 4 percent, Vasquez told The Grand Rapids Press yesterday.

''In the final analysis, the (1990) census gave us a distorted view of the country's social and economic status,'' he said. An accurate count is important because the population figures determine how much state and federal aid the city gets.

Grand Rapids Mayor John Logie said he is convinced there are at least 200,000 residents living in the city, although the 1990 census concluded there were 189,126 residents.

Statewide, it's estimated 66,000 Michigan residents were not counted in 1990, roughly half of them in Wayne County. In Detroit, liaisons from the black, Hispanic and Arab-American communities have been among those trying to boost the city's numbers.

Vasquez' challenge is to bring a pro-census message to the Hispanic community, where distrust of the federal government is profound because of the Immigration and Naturalization Service and its enforcement arm, the U.S. Border Patrol.

"Folks perceive that anything to do with the government is part of the INS and the Border Patrol," he said.

"If I did not believe sincerely in my heart that the Census Bureau was not going to undertake this with the utmost of confidentiality, I would not be asking them this," Vasquez said. "I would not be working for them."

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