The last U.S. Census was in many ways a notable success in Minnesota: the state had the country’s highest self-response rate, a level of engagement that likely helped it hold onto its eighth seat in the U.S. House of Representatives and tenth electoral vote by a margin of just 89 people.
But some communities came away from the process frustrated over how the Census Bureau had classified them — concerns they shared with U.S. Census Bureau Director Robert Santos on a visit to Minnesota last month.
In the years leading up to the census, the Bureau decided to classify Hmong people as East Asian, while Lahu and Tai Dam people, as well as Urdu speakers, were classified as “Other Asian.” Members of each group said their classifications did not accurately reflect their lived experiences and risked misleading policy makers who rely on Census Bureau data to help them decide where and how to allocate resources.
Though the Hmong, Lahu, and Tai Dam have roots in China, they mainly came to the United States as refugees from Southeast Asian countries during and in the aftermath of the Vietnam War and struggle with economic insecurity at higher rates than East Asian groups who have been in the U.S. for longer.
The economic impact of the Census is enormous: hundreds of federal assistance programs use Census Bureau data to distribute billions of dollars in areas like public housing and community development grants, while states and counties distribute more money. Some of that money is targeted to specific communities, including in Minnesota.
In June 2023, a group of Asian-American lawmakers in Minnesota wrote a letter to Santos requesting a meeting and asking that the Bureau “expeditiously recategorize the four ethnicities” by moving the Hmong, Lahu, and Tai Dam to the Southeast Asian classification and Urdu speakers to the South Asian classification.
Santos said he and his team have heard the concern loud and clear. In comments to Sahan Journal following his visit, Santos said he came to Minnesota “specifically” because of the concerns over the classification of those Asian groups.
“The Census Bureau recognizes that the current regional classifications for Hmong, Lahu, Tai Dam, and Urdu [speakers] do not align with how many members of these communities in the United States identify,” Santos wrote.
However, the Census Bureau has decided not to revisit its 2020 classifications.
“What we really want is a correction, and we keep getting told, ‘It’s not going to happen, it can’t happen,’” May yer Thao, the president and CEO of the Hmong American Partnership, said. “So that’s very frustrating for those of us who have been working on it for over a year and a half now.”
Santos wrote that the Census Bureau considered going back and changing its 2020 classifications, but ultimately decided it couldn’t.
“Following the release of our 2020 Census data products, our resources require us to be focused on preparations for the 2030 Census,” Santos wrote.
Retabulating would result in discrepancies with other official tabulations, which, he wrote, is one of the reasons data products “cannot be altered once they are published.”
Thao said she appreciated that Santos and his team showed up in person to hear their concerns, but that their unwillingness to revisit the 2020 classifications may have a significant impact on the Hmong community.
“If we are misclassified as East Asians, there’s very much a likelihood that we could potentially be losing out on resources that our community still needs,” Thao said.
On July 24 and 25, Santos met at the State Capitol with representatives from organizations such as the Council for Minnesotans of African Heritage, the Minnesota Council on Latino Affairs, COPAL, Deaf Equity, the Minnesota Indian Affairs Council, and a host of Hmong legislators and community members.
Santos was appointed Census Bureau director in 2022 after a long career at the Washington, D.C.-based think tank The Urban Institute. He did not lead the process to determine classifications for the last Census.
“I heard firsthand how regional classifications have adversely impacted their well-being, their work and their communities,” Santos wrote to Sahan Journal, noting that the practice of offering specific community counts was more well-received.
Santos noted that the Bureau is planning on seeking broad input on its race and ethnicity code list and classifications in the coming months, and is preparing to conduct a review of all the feedback it has received on the regional classification of Asian groups in particular.
In addition to the meetings in Minnesota, Santos wrote that he and his staff are also meeting with Asian American community groups and leaders in Wisconsin and California, states that are also home to sizable Hmong communities.
“One of my key messages in Minnesota was that we are making plans for the 2030 Census even now,” Santos wrote. “There will be several distinct opportunities earlier in the decennial-planning decade — including this year — to gather community input to help inform decisions for future censuses and surveys.”
Thao said the Census Bureau has not provided a timeline for when it expects to make a decision on its classifications for the upcoming Census, but added that she’s optimistic that the classification issue will be addressed for 2030 thanks to the community’s “relentless” advocacy.
The 2020 census marked the first time the Bureau released the data sets that provided disaggregated data for hundreds of racial or ethnic groups like the Hmong, Lahu, and Tai Dam and Urdu speakers that were classified previously only as “Asian.” Santos said the Bureau took that step “specifically to bring visibility” to those groups.
Now, Thao said, the next step may be to do away with regional groupings like “Southeast Asian” altogether and instead just release more specific data on different ethnic groups like Hmong.
May Yang, the senior manager of policy and partnerships at the Minnesota Council on Foundations, said the level of discussion between the Census Bureau and local stakeholders during the visit demonstrated the extent to which community members want to be involved in the Bureau’s work.
“The community desires to be engaged in the Census process: not just the getting out the count part, but also in forming messaging, in forming outreach,” she said. “They have lots of ideas for how to make things culturally relevant.”
Among other issues brought to Santos and his staff, members of Deaf Equity reiterated a request that American Sign Language be added as a language to the Census to ensure better data collection on Deaf communities. Other organizations strategized on how to better ensure that historically under-resourced communities are counted in the next Census.
Undercounts, like misclassifications, can have significant impacts on where governments direct resources. According to a 2018 report from Grassroots Solutions, a 7,123-person population decline across two North Minneapolis zip codes — whether the result of a Census undercount or not — cost the state of Minnesota, Hennepin County, and the city of Minneapolis over $100 million in federal funding.
Thao said that, given the challenges they’re facing, advocacy work and expert input should be especially important to the Census team.
“A lot of these folks are data people, and I don’t know that the lens they’re looking through is necessarily from a community level because they’re so analytical,” Thao said. “That’s just how they’re wired. So that’s where their community engagement comes into play.”
That means keeping the lines of communication with the Census Bureau open as 2030 approaches.
“At the meeting with Director Santos, we asked him: let’s stay in touch,” Monica Maria Hurtado, policy director at Voices for Racial Justice said. “Let’s continue this conversation. It’s great that you’re here, but let’s not do this one-time thing. Let’s continue the work.”
Clarification: This story has been updated to clarify that Urdu is a language, not an ethnic group.
