DALLAS – Education, housing and roads are just a few things affected by federal funds. And they are just a few of the reasons the U.S. Census Bureau kicked off its awareness campaign Monday.
The census bureau’s road tour in south Dallas aims to spread the message, “It only takes 10 minutes to fill out 10 questions every 10 years.”
Officials said it is a challenge to get lower income residents and immigrants to trust that filling out the forms won’t somehow adversely affect them or get them deported.
The reality is actually opposite, they said.
For example, information collected is used to figure out congressional seats. Experts say Texas could gain an additional three seats depending on the number of additional people counted.
And the census helps determine how more than $400 billion in federal funds is distributed to state and local communities for things like the Head Start and school lunch programs.
Bureau officials said they’ve tried to make it easier to coax people to fill out the forms.
“We feel that the short form will help out. Plus we’re using a bilingual questionnaire. Thirteen million households across the nation will receive a Spanish/English questionnaire which should help us out with that,” said Regional Director Gabriel Sanchez.
In addition, the census bureau announced it is hiring in Texas. There are about 84,000 jobs available around the state in a variety of positions and the pay ranges form $12 to $24 per hour.
On the Web: www.census.gov
