The New York Times is more worried that the U.S. census will be less accurate if illegal aliens are asked their citizenship status and would rather them lie by not being asked at all.

UCLA professor Lynn Vavreck, who has written a book about a perceived identity crisis in American in the wake of Donald Trump’s election, states that the question returning to the 2020 census at the request of the Justice Department “has unsettled demographic experts as well as advocates of voting rights and immigrants, who say it could lead Hispanic people to avoid being counted.”

She adds:

We can’t say at this point what the electoral consequences would be, but it’s likely to lead to undercounting. The Census Bureau itself estimates that the 2010 census failed to find 1.5 percent of the Hispanic population. Research conducted that year suggests that Hispanic trust in the census may have been undermined. And from the start of his candidacy up through his reported vulgar remarks last week about Haiti and African countries, President Trump has been fanning anti-immigrant sentiment nationwide.

Vavreck argues that invasive questions like “are you a U.S. citizen” need to be rethought in a culture that is battling over “what it means to be an American.” 

The professor argues that the Latino and Hispanic communities may avoid turning in their census because they are afraid of Trump:

Given the current climate, even they may be unsure of the government’s intentions, particularly as it relates to those who are undocumented or whose national origin may not be in keeping with the president’s view of being American.

Sorry, Lynn, we thought being an American citizen was being native born or having legal documentation via constitutional law. Our mistake. After all, you’re the UCLA professor, not us.