Tyler Cowen, Columnist

I Want More Immigrants and a Census Citizenship Question

Asking people their status would be an important first step toward a more open, honest political debate.

July 5, 2019 at 9:30 AM EDT

Tyler Cowen is a Bloomberg Opinion columnist, a professor of economics at George Mason University and host of the Marginal Revolution blog.

Just ask.
Photographer: Mandel Ngan/AFP/Getty Images

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The Trump administration is seeking to restore the citizenship question to the 2020 U.S. Census even after the Supreme Court ruled against it and the Commerce Secretary said the effort to do so would be dropped. The legality and practicality of this decision are unclear, and a federal judge has given the White House a Friday afternoon deadline to explain how it intends to proceed, but I would like to step back and consider some basic questions about this rather embarrassing debacle.

Even if you are pro-immigration, as I am, I believe you should favor asking U.S. residents whether they are citizens when the population is counted.

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