Census Proposal Would Stop Counting Undocumented Immigrants—and Ignore Race and Sexual Orientation
Census Proposal Would Stop Counting Undocumented Immigrants—and Ignore Race and Sexual Orientation
人口普查提案拟停止统计无证移民，并忽略种族与性取向
The US Department of Commerce, which oversees the Census Bureau, is circulating a proposed rule that would cease the collection of demographic data on racial minorities and LGBTQ+ people and prevent undocumented immigrants from being counted in the 2030 census, according to documents viewed by WIRED.
据《连线》（WIRED）查阅的文件显示，负责监管美国人口普查局的美国商务部正在传阅一项拟议规则。该规则将停止收集有关少数族裔和 LGBTQ+ 群体的人口统计数据，并阻止在 2030 年人口普查中统计无证移民。
The decision could have far-reaching implications for federal funding, particularly in states where there are substantial numbers of racial and ethnic minorities, as well as on immigrant communities across the country.
这一决定可能会对联邦资金分配产生深远影响，特别是在拥有大量少数族裔的州，以及全国各地的移民社区。
The proposed rule, which is being circulated across government agencies for review, says the census will eliminate questions about race and sexual orientation “to protect from any distortions created from the inclusion of personal questions.” The memo also states that “illegal aliens (among others) should not be included in the apportionment count, they are not true inhabitants, members of the body politics [sic], or persons with ‘usual residence’ in the United States.”
这项正在各政府机构间传阅以供审查的拟议规则称，人口普查将取消有关种族和性取向的问题，“以防止因包含个人问题而产生的任何扭曲”。备忘录还指出，“非法外国人（以及其他人）不应被计入分配统计中，他们不是真正的居民、政治共同体的成员，也不是在美国拥有‘惯常居所’的人。”
This would likely require the reintroduction of a census question about a respondent’s citizenship. During Donald Trump’s first presidential term, Republicans attempted to add a citizenship question to the census for the first time since 1950. The effort was struck down by the Supreme Court, 5-4, with Chief Justice John Roberts siding with the Court’s then-larger liberal bloc on the grounds that the justification for adding the question was “contrived.” The decision did not, though, find that citizenship questions are inherently unconstitutional.
这很可能需要重新引入关于受访者公民身份的人口普查问题。在唐纳德·特朗普的第一个总统任期内，共和党人曾试图自 1950 年以来首次在人口普查中增加公民身份问题。这一努力被最高法院以 5 比 4 的投票结果驳回，首席大法官约翰·罗伯茨站在了当时占多数的自由派阵营一边，理由是增加该问题的理由是“虚构的”。不过，该裁决并未认定公民身份问题本身违宪。
The Department of Commerce did not reply to requests for comment.
美国商务部未回复置评请求。
“This is about the Voting Rights Act,” says Danah Boyd, a professor at Cornell University who studies the census, referencing the landmark voter protection legislation that the Supreme Court dismantled earlier this year. Eliminating the collection of these data, she says, would make it difficult to make basic assessments, like whether a congressional district is predominantly made of minorities.
“这关乎《投票权法案》，”康奈尔大学研究人口普查的教授达娜·博伊德（Danah Boyd）说道。她指的是最高法院今年早些时候废除的具有里程碑意义的选民保护立法。她说，取消这些数据的收集将使人们难以进行基本的评估，例如某个国会选区是否主要由少数族裔组成。
“If we don’t know certain things, we can’t challenge them politically,” says Boyd. “If we don’t know that certain peoples live in a particular geography, we can’t say, ‘Oh my gosh, here’s some massive inequality.’”
“如果我们不知道某些情况，我们就无法在政治上提出质疑，”博伊德说。“如果我们不知道某些群体居住在特定的地理区域，我们就无法说：‘天哪，这里存在巨大的不平等。’”
Republicans and the Trump administration have long taken aim at the census. More recently, members of the Trump administration have attacked a little-known statistical method called “differential privacy,” which is used to prevent census data from being used to reidentify individual respondents, claiming that it makes the results inaccurate. In August 2025, Republican representative August Pfluger made another attempt to reintroduce a citizenship question on the census, sponsoring a bill called the COUNT Act, and in October, Republican senator Jim Banks of Indiana published a letter to Commerce secretary Howard Lutnick, writing, “There is a credible argument that the framers of the Constitution designed the Census to cover lawful inhabitants and not those who are present illegally.”
共和党人和特朗普政府长期以来一直将人口普查作为目标。最近，特朗普政府成员抨击了一种鲜为人知的统计方法，即“差分隐私”（differential privacy）。该方法用于防止人口普查数据被用于重新识别个人受访者，他们声称这导致结果不准确。2025 年 8 月，共和党众议员奥古斯特·普夫卢格（August Pfluger）再次尝试在人口普查中引入公民身份问题，并发起了一项名为《COUNT 法案》的提案。10 月，印第安纳州共和党参议员吉姆·班克斯（Jim Banks）致信商务部长霍华德·卢特尼克（Howard Lutnick），写道：“有一个可信的论点认为，宪法起草者设计人口普查是为了覆盖合法居民，而不是那些非法居留的人。”
Census questions are set between two and three years in advance of the actual survey, based on priorities set by the administration. The data from the census inform everything from the apportionment of congressional seats to federal funding that is allocated based on the size of a population.
人口普查的问题通常在实际调查前两到三年设定，基于政府设定的优先事项。人口普查数据为从国会席位分配到基于人口规模分配的联邦资金等一切事务提供依据。
An employee at the Department of Health and Human Services, who asked to remain anonymous because they are not authorized to speak to the press, tells WIRED that “many HHS programs use Census data to appropriate funding. Removing undocumented individuals from the census will cause localities with high numbers of those populations to lose critical federal funding.”
一名美国卫生与公众服务部（HHS）的员工因未获授权向媒体发言而要求匿名，他告诉《连线》：“许多 HHS 项目使用人口普查数据来拨付资金。将无证移民从人口普查中剔除，将导致这些人口比例较高的地区失去关键的联邦资金。”
The employee says that removal of racial categories could specifically impact Native populations, which sometimes receive specialized funding. “Some programs use the ‘American Indian or Alaska Native’ category from the Census to make determinations of grants set aside for Tribal entities,” they say.
该员工表示，取消种族类别可能会特别影响原住民群体，他们有时会获得专项资金。“一些项目使用人口普查中的‘美洲印第安人或阿拉斯加原住民’类别来确定拨给部落实体的补助金，”他们说。
An employee at the Department of Commerce, who also spoke to WIRED on the condition of anonymity because they are not authorized to speak to the press, says that they are concerned that adding a citizenship question to the census would make people who are undocumented—or who have undocumented family members—afraid to be counted.
一名同样因未获授权而要求匿名的商务部员工告诉《连线》，他们担心在人口普查中增加公民身份问题会使无证移民——或有无证家庭成员的人——不敢参与统计。
“Even if [the administration doesn’t] do anything operationally like ICE or anything like that, they can make people feel as if they answer the Census they will be rounded up,” they say.
“即使（政府）在操作上不做像移民及海关执法局（ICE）那样的行动，他们也会让人们觉得如果回答了人口普查，就会被抓捕，”他们说。
“When you eliminate people and when you make people too afraid to participate because of the eliminations of other peoples, you will actually purposefully suppress the number of people who are in a geography. And that is a way of trying to make certain that you erase their political power and their access to federal funding,” says Boyd.
“当你剔除某些人，并因为剔除其他人而使人们感到恐惧不敢参与时，你实际上是在蓄意压制某个地理区域的人口数量。这是一种试图确保抹杀他们的政治权力和获取联邦资金渠道的方式，”博伊德说。