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Rural Areas, Tribal Lands Lag in Getting Census Forms

Associated Press

   ORLANDO, FLORIDA - Even before the pandemic, people living in rural
   communities and on tribal lands were among the toughest to count in the
   2020 census. The U.S. Census Bureau's suspension of work this spring
   pushed those efforts even further behind.

   That concerns advocates in rural America and Indian Country. Alaska,
   West Virginia, New Mexico and other states with large rural populations
   are lagging behind the rest of the nation in answering the
   once-a-decade questionnaire.

   Those states have the largest concentration of households that rely on
   getting the forms from visiting census workers. Ultimately, it could
   cost them congressional seats and federal funding for highways, schools
   and health care.

   Los Alamos County, where the atomic bomb was born and many people are
   highly educated, has one of the nation's highest response rates at 79%.
   Rio Arriba County, where a language other than English is spoken in
   over half of homes, is at the bottom at 9%.

   Waiting for drop-offs

   The reason for the difference? Households in Rio Arriba and other rural
   counties across the U.S. rely on census workers to drop off their
   questionnaires, which was on hold for a month and a half because of the
   coronavirus pandemic.

   While the Census Bureau is restarting that work, leaders in rural
   America worry it will be difficult to catch up.

   ``We have historically been underrepresented in the past, and there's
   an unfortunate precedent to show we will be underrepresented again.
   This pandemic makes it all the more challenging,'' said Javier Sanchez,
   mayor of Espanola, a city of 10,000 in Rio Arriba County. ``I think we
   are struggling like every other rural community and doing the best we
   can amid these problems when so much is at stake in the next 10
   years.''

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