Don’t Count Them Out

By Tim Henderson

In a Hidalgo County colonia, an area of sometimes makeshift housing near the Texas-Mexico border, neighborhood residents are learning when to, and when not to, speak up to authorities when you're living in the country illegally.

When it comes to next year's census? That's the time to be as forthcoming as possible: Fill out forms on the age and race of everyone who lives with you, even distant relatives or a friend sleeping in your shed or garage, says Cristela Rocha, a community organizer for the immigrant advocacy group La Union del Pueblo Entero, at a recent gathering with residents.

The community meeting, organized by LUPE, highlights the problem communities face in high-immigrant areas seeking to avoid an undercount in the 2020 census, a problem that can sap both political representation and federal funding.

Martha Sanchez, right, leads a census awareness meeting in a Hidalgo County, Texas, colonia with residents and La Union del Pueblo Entero community organizers. Photo courtesy Pew Charitable Trusts.

A challenge of outreach

Texas and New Mexico have 25 of the 37 Hispanic-majority counties deemed hardest to count, according to a 2017 University of New Hampshire study. In those places, fewer than 73 percent of census forms were returned in 2010; many of them are rural border counties like Hidalgo that host colonias.

"You need to stand up and be counted. You can't vote if you're not a citizen, but in this case, you do count. The government needs to know where you are, so we can get the resources you need," says Martha Sanchez, LUPE's community organizing coordinator, during the census awareness meeting for residents in the Rincon del Valle colonia.

Hidalgo County officials think the census missed as many as 20 to 30 percent of its residents in 2010, costing it as much as $210 million in federal funds over the decade.

"Sadly, I think the majority of those [uncounted people] were noncitizens who are afraid for it to be known that they're here," says Hidalgo County Judge Richard Cortez, the county's highest elected official. "That's a very significant amount of money we're missing out on to serve the people."

The county plans to spend $300,000 on census outreach and already has used aerial photography to add thousands of new addresses in the colonias and elsewhere to the Census Bureau's list of homes to be counted, Cortez says.

"We had no idea what was going on in 2010. This time we're going to hire people to follow the census-takers around and make sure they get everybody," says Pharr City Commissioner Daniel Chavez, who grew up in a colonia named Las Milpas near Pharr.

The changing colonia

Texas colonias have matured since the days when they were essentially shantytowns for migrant workers near fields, says Jordana Barton, who studies them for the Federal Reserve Bank of Dallas.

Today's colonia residents are still mostly Hispanic, but more than 60 percent of adults and 94 percent of children are U.S. citizens. As citizenship rates grow and colonias evolve into working-class neighborhoods with political clout, residents are more sensitive to the need for a full census count, Barton says.

"I'm sure they're going to double down on this next year," she says, adding that there's a growing awareness of infrastructure needs, such as broadband and streetlights.

The population of Hidalgo County has grown by about 10 percent to 861,000 since 2010, according to 2017 census estimates, and county officials hope a complete count could top one million.

The border has been a source of economic life for this county, especially after 1994 when the North American Free Trade Agreement brought more trade and cross-border factories sharing production. The city of Pharr, which owns a private commercial highway to Mexico, makes more than $1 million a month in revenue from tolls, Chavez says.

Tim Henderson is a staff writer for Stateline. This story was reprinted with permission from pewtrusts.org.