Eleanor Norton

Del. Eleanor Holmes Norton reintroduced a bill on Tuesday that would prohibit questions about citizenship, nationality and immigration status on the census.

“The decennial census determines issues such as congressional apportionment and distribution of federal funding to over 350 programs, and questions about citizenship and immigration status can lead to less accurate data,” Norton said. “These unnecessary and harmful questions shouldn’t be included.”

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Questions on citizenship, nationality and immigration status were ultimately removed from the last census in 2020 after prior debate. Norton's Ensuring Full Participation in the Census Act of 2026 would ensure that questions on citizenship remain removed from future federal censuses, under that idea that these questions make the survey harder to complete, reduce participation and invade privacy.

In a statement, Norton urged her colleagues to support the bill.

"Asking questions about citizenship status to every person in the decennial census has not been done in almost 70 years because it would discourage people, largely minorities, who are already undercounted in the census, from participating in the census," the statement said.

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The next federal census will be in 2030.