nited States. So how do you get figures for how many Russian Americans live in the United States or how many Slovakians, for example, live in Michigan? MR. WEINBERG:
Again, that’s the American Communities Survey. There is a question on ancestry on the American Communities Survey. So we have, again, Hispanic origin and race, but then that’s followed by an ancestry question where people can write in the – I mean, we have boxes for the most common but they can write in anything they want there and we’ll tabulate it. QUESTION:
And all of this gets folded into some U.S.-wide calculation? MR. WEINBERG:
We produce data for the whole country every year, as well as for much smaller levels of geography. QUESTION:
Then why do you need a 10-year census? You’re doing – MR. WEINBERG:
Well, the American Communities Survey is just a sample of the population. QUESTION:
Oh, I see. MR. WEINBERG:
And the only way to do congressional apportionment is through a complete census. So it’s a sample, and it has margins of error around every estimate. We could say that New York City has – I’ll pick a number, 250,000 people of Russian ancestry, but it’s somewhere between 220,000 and 280,000, because there’s a margin of error. I made that number up; don’t quote it. You can look it up on the website, and it will have the actual margins of error around that number.
The Census – you can’t say that this block has three or four, maybe five people. You can’t do that. You have to say it’s got exactly 15 people so they can draw the line. There is no margin of error associated with the Census. Now, it doesn’t say there’s no error, because we know we miss people from time to time. We count duplicates from time to time. We know there are errors, but the number is the best number we have, and because it comes from a complete count.
Yeah. I’ll let – you want to follow up? No, go ahead. QUESTION:
Yes. You talk about people who don’t want to be counted, and I assume lots of illegal immigrants don’t want to be counted. So is there – I mean, I don’t know if there’s any way to reassure them to answer this government form, but how do you make estimates there? Because I know it’s been widely publicized that we’ve got, like, 11 million illegals or something like that. MR. WEINBERG:
Well, okay. We don’t estimate the number of illegal immigrants in this country. What we do is try to count everybody. Now, you’re right, some illegal immigrants worry that any contract – contact with the government might result in some negative results for themselves, so we have to go to as great a lengths as we can to reassure them. Now, the way we do that is several ways: We target advertisements to them and focus on the privacy and confidentiality message. We hire enumerators from their community, so the people who come to their door are people they recognize. And we work with community leaders in their communities to get the word out. There might be a pastor in the local church who might emphasize how important it is to answer the Census. It might be somebody who runs the local health center who might be willing to put up signs in their health clinic about how important it is to answer the Census. We go to – we target extra funds to partnerships programs for those people who might worry about it.
When – we try to create forms in their language, which might help as well. And I’m – just for example, I’ll give you an interesting example. The Secretary of Commerce, which is Secretary Locke, is from Chinese ancestry. And we showed him the Chinese form and he said, “This is in simplified Chinese. Most of the Chinese in this country use traditional Chinese.” And we said, “Yes, that’s true, but most of the people of Chinese ancestry in the country already speak English. They don’t need this form. This form is for the recent Chinese immigrant who may have come over in a container and is on the – not – we want them to understand this form.” So we do – it’s not easy. I’m not trying to say it’s easy, but we sort of really make an effort to reach all of them. QUESTION:
One last question: Some anti-immi