The U.S. Census Bureau is gearing up for the 2010 census and to get the most complete count, its V.I. office is looking for lots of qualified counters who reflect the territory’s many demographic groups, V.I. census heads told Rotary of St. Croix Thursday.
In 2000 the census may have undercounted, especially on St. Croix, said census media and partnership specialist Emmet Hansen, at the group’s weekly luncheon at Gertrude’s Restaurant.
"I don’t believe the Hispanic community was counted accurately because there may be a lot of undocumented immigrants," Hansen said "A lot of people in that category felt: ‘If I give this person my information, Immigration will come knocking on my door the next day.’"
In reality, federal law strictly prohibits any sharing of census information, he said. Not even the Patriot Act, which reduces privacy protections in many other arenas, touches these longstanding, rigid rules.
"There is a $50,000 fine and up to five years in jail for violating privacy on the census" he said. "One thing Uncle Sam has no lack of is jail cells, and I don’t want to go."
Getting an accurate count of every person who resides in the territory is incredibly important because it has a huge impact on what sorts of federal assistance come in, he said. It affects when and where schools are built, money for roads, Medicaid and Widows and Infant Children assistance and veterans programs, to name a few.
"When I was in school in ’79, our high school was in split shifts, four hours in the morning, then four hours in the afternoon," he recalled. "It was after the ’80 census that funding came in to build more."
The census offices on St. Thomas and St. Croix are taking applications and giving qualification exams now. Former Sen. Juan Figueroa-Serville, himself bilingual in Spanish and English, is the St. Croix census manager. Figueroa-Serville is overseeing the hiring of roughly 40 to 50 full-time office staff and up to 300 part time "enumerators" or census-takers who will go door to door with big red bags marked "U.S. Census."
The door-to-door work begins April 1, but there is a lot of preparation to be done before then, and hiring and training is going on Monday through Friday from 10:30 a.m. to 2 p.m. In March, census questionnaires will be mailed to every known residence. Then census workers will pick up the forms in person and go into every neighborhood and populated area to count every head.
Pay for census takers is $13.50 an hour. So as to catch people after work and before it is too late, work is principally from 5 p.m. to 9 p.m. Anyone over 18 can apply, but everyone must pass a basic test of procedure and analytical skills, Figueroa-Serville said.
"Any age, any group, we are an equal opportunity employer," he said. "We have an aging population, too, so even if you are 102 and you have the ability to do the work, like we said, our aim is to represent the face of the community."
The census-taking will take three to four months, then there will be a few months of processing, after which the information will be sent off to the national census center. Once that is done, the whole V.I. operation will close its doors August 30, not to reopen until the next census in 2020.
To find out more about applying for a census job, on St. Thomas call 714-2010, and on St. Croix call 772-2010.
