Since Census workers (at least in the US) are surveyors and data takers, and not enforcement officers, they don’t break down gates, obtain search warrants and “enforce” their work. But they do attempt to convince those who man the guard shacks and gates that they are legitimate government workers with a legal function and reason for being there, and “negotiate” their way in.
When they’re completely stymied in those attempts, then I don’t know what actions the government will take to escalate “enforcement”, but the director of the 2000 Census (US), didn’t seem to think that it was a huge obstacle then in this interview (relevant portion shown below):
QUESTION: ...with Fox News.
I wonder if you can talk to us a bit about the response rates from upper income communities and the problems of getting enumerators into some gated communities. There was a report yesterday suggesting Malibu, for example, California, 15 percent below. How much of a problem is this? How much of a problem was caused, perhaps, by some Republican concerns about the intrusiveness of the questionnaire and the suggestion from Majority Leader Lott that people simply not return it?
PREWITT: The gated community phenomenon is an interesting phenomenon, and what’s happened in this society generally is that people are putting more and more barriers between them – themselves, their households—and anything else. So the proportion of unlisted phone numbers in the country has simply gone up: the number of people who have mail forwarding and, then, of course, the number of people who have guards or other kinds of gated community phenomena, where they simply are protecting their household from any kind of intrusion. And, so, that sets up a set of barriers for us. And the Census Bureau, therefore, has to figure out a way to get through and around those barriers. They’re not different from barriers – they’re different in kind from other kinds of barriers, just like the barriers in linguistically isolated communities. You have to figure out a way to get through there.
We knew those were there. We do have special procedures in place. We did expect a somewhat higher mail-back response rate from some of those communities than we got. We got very high mail-back response rates from them, so we’re always talking about the difference between what we would have liked to have had and what happened. It’s not because – we did not have low mail-back response rates. I don’t know the Malibu response rate in my head, but I know some other areas, which are characterized as gated-community areas, and you start with a high mail-back, which means the total number that you have to get in Non-Response Follow-Up is still pretty small. That is the absolute number.
Nevertheless, these have presented exceptional challenges. And we are busily, even as of today, working out particular strategies. We just worked out a nice one yesterday in Chicago with Mayor Daley that we think will work in that community. And that has to do with actually using the offices of the mayor to talk to the building managers and keep reminding them how important this census is.
These building managers in guarded communities are paid to keep people from getting into that building. It’s what they’re paid to do. And unless somebody can sort of convince them that’s not what they’re going to do in this particular instance, that’s what they are going to do. And, of course, we’re census-takers. We’re not enforcement officers. All we can do is come and try to plead and so forth. And they say – “My job is to keep you out, sorry.” Therefore, what we’re doing is working.
We did this also in Baltimore; did this in Chicago, working with the leadership that says, “Look, talk to the building managers. Tell them how important this is.” What we’re doing in Chicago – very innovative – we have something in our processes called cultural facilitators. Now cultural facilitators are people whom we thought we would be using and have been using in places like the colonies in southwest Texas.
We swear these cultural facilitators in. They become sworn – not employees, we don’t pay them – but we actually swear them in terms of Title 13 confidentiality protections – and then they either go with or go ahead of the enumerators and justify our presence. And we did not expect to have, quote-unquote, “cultural facilitators” in very wealthy high-rises in the Near North of Chicago. But lo and behold, if you think of these buildings as their own culture, then we can justify swearing in the building managers as cultural facilitators. They then go to the door or walk the hallways and say, “Look…,” or put notices up that say the census-taker will be coming through tomorrow. “I’m letting you know. It’s very safe. It’s very secure. We’ve worked this out. We believe this is important,” and so forth. So that’s what we’re doing.
In other places, we’ve realized, of course, the people who have the best access to the gated communities are the house workers, the servants, and so we are making some of them enumerators because they’re there. And so they become regular enumerators and they then know which households – and they’re recognized in the hallways, so no one is worried about strangers in their hallways.
So we do lots of things. All of which is to say it is a challenge, but it’s not a challenge that we don’t believe that we will easily surmount in the remaining four weeks.
Sure.
