MIAMI – Marlon Hill, Advisory Board representative to the Jamaican Diaspora Southern, USA, has urged Jamaicans in the United States to participate in the United States Census 2010 by completing and returning the appropriate questionnaires that are currently being mailed to all households. The returned postage mailed responses are to be mailed in by Thursday, April 1.
Mr. Hill was speaking on a local radio broadcast ‘Caribbean Riddims’ on Saturday (Mar. 20) on WZAB 880 AM radio, with Jamaican radio producer, Eddy Edwards, to encourage Jamaican nationals and those residents of the wider Caribbean Diaspora to participate in the National Census so that communities in which immigrants reside would be accurately supported by the state and federal government.
Eddy Edwards (L) Host of Caribbean Riddims and Marlon Hill (R)
Budgets will be proportionate to the number of persons in the various communities and this will aid in delivering the services of government in a more efficient and relevant manner. For example, communities would receive funding for infrastructural projects, education and school building projects, as well as employment programs.
Mr. Hill advised that the Census does not require any personal information, only demographics – race, ethnicity, income – to help determine federal funding for those community programs and services.
Regarding confidentiality, he advised that all information obtained would be protected by law. “There are strict criminal penalties for use of this information by any person, other than for the Census,” he stated. The Census tracks those residing in the United States, legally or otherwise, and is essentially for statistical data and allocation of funds based on population numbers, according to Mr. Hill.
By completing the forms, he reiterated that all nationals must indicate their race and country of heritage, for example – Jamaican – in Question 9. This will enable a full and accurate count of ethnic communities and capture the total population breakdown, which would also help in identifying those in the individual Diasporic communities, for example, the demographic concentration of Jamaican nationals in the United States.
Census information is done every ten years, the last one in the year 2000 which only counted some 165,000 Jamaican nationals in Florida, Mr. Hill said.
Sample Census Form
