The Trump administration has said the questionnaires for the 2020 census would be printed without the citizenship question, a move seen as a major political victory for the opposition Democratic party, which joined hands with civil right groups against such a move.The decision came after a Supreme Court ruling last week refused to allow the citizenship question to be added into the census questionnaires.Trump's opponents said that the citizenship question, which has not been included since 1950, would drive many immigrants to avoid answering out of fear of being caught up in Trump's crackdown on illegal immigration. "The Census Bureau has started the process of printing the decennial questionnaires without the question (on citizenship). "The Trump administration's politically-motivated efforts to undermine the Constitution in this instance were so reprehensible that even the conservative Supreme Court couldn't let them get away with it. "The Trump Administration put our country through more than a year of wasted time and squandered resources -- all in the service of an illegal attempt to add a discriminatory question based on a pretext," he said.Steve Choi, executive director of the New York Immigration Coalition, said President Trump tried to politicise the upcoming Census 2020 in a naked effort to instill fear in immigrants and communities of colour. "But the Supreme Court of the US agreed with us, and today the Trump administration admitted defeat by removing this ridiculous citizenship question," he said.

Source: Economic Times July 03, 2019 02:37 UTC