A Latino advocacy group accused the census bureau Monday of missing a third of Maine's Hispanic residents during the government's 2000 head count.
John Connors, director of the League of United Latin American Citizens, said Hispanic community leaders estimate the Latino population of Maine at about 14,000. Yet the official Hispanic population in the 2000 census for the state was only 9,360.
Connors and other activists said census workers did a poor job of overcoming stereotypes and dealing with the cultural issues that discourage Hispanics from participating in the census.
"They set up outreach centers in the libraries, but a lot of the Latino people can't even speak English," Connors said. "Why would they want to go into a library?"
Connors said the league plans to contact the census bureau to protest the population figure and request a more accurate count.
The bureau routinely undercounts minorities, rural residents, children and other groups with social, cultural or geographic characteristics that make them more difficult to count.
In 1990, the bureau adjusted Maine's total population upward by 9,202 people, or .7 percent. The Hispanic census was low by 5.5 percent, or 394 people, in 1990.
After census forms were mailed to households in April of 2000, the bureau hired and trained enumerators to go door-to-door to ferret out residents who did not get or return forms.
But participants who volunteered to help with the census in Portland said the bureau did a poor job of managing the outreach effort here.
Louise Rocha, a Spanish-speaking interpreter and translator, said she joined the census specifically to help reach Latino people in Portland – only to be assigned to Gray, an overwhelmingly white suburban town with an official Hispanic population of 40.
Rocha said the bulk of the minority census workers in Portland were given desk jobs or assigned to white communities.
Connors said the bureau also sent people directly to homes or apartments during evening or afternoon hours when many Hispanic people are still at work, holding down a second job.
He said the bureau should have worked with large employers like Barber Foods, Sysco and several seafood processors, to reach Hispanic residents in the workplace.
Rocha said the census bureau also failed to realize that some Latino residents are wary of the government because of their experience with revolution or political repression at home.
"The last thing these people are going to do is come to the door when some Anglo with a clipboard and briefcase shows up," she said.
Connors said the undercount could reduce federal funding available to Maine for housing, education and other programs geared to minority groups. He said being counted accurately also gives Latinos a larger social and political presence in Maine.
"One of the best kept secrets in Maine is that we don't have all migrant workers and seafood processors and apple pickers," he said. "We have doctors and teachers and engineers and a whole community. Latinos can be anyone."
The concerns of Latino people in Maine reflect a larger national dispute about how well the census counts members of racial and ethnic minority groups.
Mark Talbert, a spokesman for the census bureau in Washington, said Monday he was unaware of the complaints from Maine.
But he said communities can appeal certain bureau findings through a count resolution program, which will begin in the summer.
The Bush administration has rejected appeals for an adjustment of census numbers, at least for the purposes of congressional apportionment and legislative redistricting.
Talbert said the bureau may release adjusted numbers later, and states could decide whether to use these new figures for funding applications or other purposes.
But Connors scoffed at the idea of working with two sets of numbers.
"What you're saying is the numbers are good for one thing but not for something else," he said. "That's political crap."
Staff Writer Dieter Bradbury can be contacted at 791-6328 or at:
dbradbury, pressherald.com
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