ICMA, Hispanic Network push for accurate census of immigrant population
The 2010 U.S. Census gets under way in less than a year, and the Washington-based International City/County Management Association (ICMA) and its affiliate, the San Antonio-based International Hispanic Network (IHN) are pressing for a full count of Latinos in the census. U.S. Census Bureau Acting Director Thomas Mesenbourg will address the subject during IHN's conference scheduled for May 7-9 in Miami Beach, and ICMA has released a white paper on the need for a better federal approach to immigration.
The immigrant population has boomed in recent years, according to Dr. Nadia Rubaii-Barrett, associate professor of public administration at Binghamton University in New York and author of ICMA's "Immigration Reform: An Intergovernmental Imperative," published earlier this year. "There are record numbers of foreign-born individuals in the United States, representing near record proportions of the total population," Rubaii-Barrett writes in the report. "The 2.2 million foreign born who were documented in the 1850 census represented 9.7 percent of the United States population. After dropping to a low of 4.7 percent (9.6 million individuals) in 1970, the proportion of foreign born was estimated at 12.5 percent (37.5 million individuals) in 2006."
Download "Immigration Reform" as a PDF. View more information on ICMA and IHN's immigration initiatives.