While waiting for a Campaign Event with jill biden, the wife of joe biden to get started. This is live coverage on cspan2. Joining us is arturo vargas, president of the ceo of the nationalassociation of latino electedand appointed officials educational fund. Thanks for giving us your time thismorning. How are you. Remind our viewers about your organization. Its purpose, what it does. Our Organization Established in 1976 by the late edward r bruegel, he was the pioneer in american politics and latino politics as well. The cdc campus is named after him because of his leadership in helping assure that we pass Effective Health policy. Our mission is to promote the full participation of latinos in tiamerican democracy so we are a Membership Organization but also a Nonprofit Organization that works every day to strengthen american democracy and making sure that latinos fully participate. On the topic of participation and i suspect one of the topics youre keeping a close eye on is his decision by the president when it comes to the senses. I remind viewers what was decided on by the administration and particularly the response your organization has. We are laser focused on making sure that this country as a fair and accurate 20 20 census and unfortunately the administration has been taking steps over the past three and half years to have undermined the work of the Census Bureau professionals and the latest is a policy memorandum that the president released on tuesday in which he has been directing the department of commerce that after the census is taken, he uses estimates and estimates to remove a certain number of people from each state that the secretary of commerce believes are undocumented immigrants and he uses that second set of numbers to reapportion the us house of representatives. Part of the memo that the white house put out said this. Although the constitution requires persons in each state are not enumerated in thecensus that requirement has never been understood to include the apportionment base. Every individual physically present within a state boundaries at the time of the census and instead says the terms persons in each state has been determined to mean theinhabitants of each state should be included. What do you think about that interpretation . As many things this administration does gets it wrong. The Census Bureaus policy for decades has been to ensure that everybody whose usual residence is the United States on april 1 which is the reference day for census day, the year the census is taken to be counted. That language, phone number of persons is in the 14th amendment ofthe constitution. When the drafters of that amendment wrote the language ftthey consider the word citizen. Fall number of citizens but they decided to go with fall number of persons to ensure that the apportionment of the house is based on the total population. Our guest with us until 8 30 and you can ask questions by calling the line this morning. Independence 2027488000 two. If you are latino and you want to give us your thoughts 202748 8003. If that goes forward i guess the siding Court Challenges to the administrations decision what happens then . What could happen to the census count and what does that mean for latinos in the United States . What i find offensive to american sensibilities as the president wants to change the constitution to a memo and number two is to really put the numbers after the census is alconducted. The Census Bureau already has an incredible challenge to try to finish the census given the current circumstances. We know that we are at risk of having a flawed census to begin with but after the census is taken to go ahead and change the numbers again and to cut the numbers really for political partisan benefit i think is truly unamerican. We saw the Citizenship Question when it was, going all the way to the supreme court, whats thepotential of this going all the way there and at has your organization followed suit on this . We didnt follow suit but i was a witness to lawsuits filed in new york. The thing about adding a Citizenship Question and what we learned in the federal lawsuit that came out as evidence n is that the purpose of including a Citizenship Question was so that the states could no where noncitizens lived so that they then could draw new ctelectoral districts in a way that would benefit not just nonhispanic whites and republicans. The whole point of that Citizenship Question was to give an unfair edge to one Political Party. This isnt the way we should be doing american politics in the country today. We shouldnt be writing the system so that a Political Party has an advantage. Going forward 2020, what is the message your organization as for the candidates involve particularly those of most interest to latino voters. Right now the latino population of the United States is in crisis. It is one of the publishing groups most affected by the pandemic. They are essential workers. They are the ones making sure we have food and theyre in the meatpacking industry, there and all these industries that are suffering outbreaks of covid19 infections and mortality rates among latinos are skyrocketing and the Economic Impact as been devastating so this now has become the outsized issue in the latino community. Prior to covid19 we know latinos were very interested in making sure. Are going to leave this program ta
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