Presente! Latinos Participating in High Numbers in US Census; Massive Outreach that Includes Telenovela Plot Twists Paying Off

by Andrés T. Tapia — Despite deep concerns that Hispanics would be undercounted in the 2010 US Census for fear of immigration authorities, “the Census campaign targeting Spanish speakers has been wildly successful,” writes Washington Post journalist, Carol Morello in her article, Census campaign targeting Spanish-speakers generating good response. Various reports, including a recent one by Pew Hispanic Research, predict up to a 90% return rates for Hispanic/Latinos. Ironically, says the Pew study, recent Hispanic immigrants are more likely to return their census questionnaires than Hispanics born in the United States.

While 91% of the foreign-born said they had returned their census forms or would do so soon, only 78% of the U.S.-born said they would participate. Despite this gap, both estimated Census return figures would be an improvement over the last Census, when just 69% of Hispanic households mailed in their forms.

The strong results are the result of a massive get-out-and-be-counted campaign that has been in the works for a couple of years now by a broad coalition of national and local Latino and immigration organizations in collaboration with the Census Bureau, which for the first time has sent out bilingual English-Spanish census questionnaires to about 13 million households. Check out this list of partnering organizations and the Spanish-language media in the ¡HAGASE CONTAR! Campaign (Be Counted! campaign) working to inform and motivate the nearly 50 million U.S. Latinos to fully participate in the 2010 Census. 

The campaign is multipronged  including the involvement of parishes, community organizations, and the Spanish language media for first generation Latinos and the Internet for second and third generation Latinos.  One hot and successful outreach has been the insertion of a census worker plotline into  Telemundo’s top rated telenovela, “Mas Sabe el Diablo” (”The Devil Knows Best”). You gotta love this plot twist: Perla Beltran has had a tough life involving gangsters, the murder of the father of the baby she has just given birth to, giving up the baby for adoption only to claim it back…you get the idea. And her redemption just may come as she gets recruited to participate as a Census worker so Latinos don’t get undercounted.

The message is getting through to Latinos who are predicted to be a quarter of the US within the next 15 years.  if you don’t get counted, you don’t count!

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