3 U.S. citizens here

I was sitting at my desk in the upstairs office this morning when my peripheral vision picked up some movement on the sidewalk in front of the house.

I went to the front door and found an old guy (you know he’s old if a 64-year-old calls him old) standing on the porch, apparently unable to find the doorbell button or to make an audible knocking sound on the door.

He introduced himself, confirmed our address, and extended a clawlike, liver-spotted hand clutching our 2010 U.S. Census form.

I took it, thanked him and wished him a good day as he shuffled away to the neighbors’ house.

The form is pretty straightforward. It asks the principal resident’s name and then age and race for everyone living there as of April 1, 2010. Obviously, this requires some guesswork at this point since an asteroid, tornado, fire or a major rupture of the New Madrid Fault between now and April 1 could cause this address to cease to exist.

I expected more questions, one in particular. Like “Are you a citizen of the United States?” It isn’t there. I know there’s been controversy over the issue and I naively supposed that the Bureau of the Census would like to have this valuable piece of information.

What this means, of course, is that illegal aliens get counted and lumped into the population figures along with those of us who are here legally. Yes, this will theoretically tell us how many human beings are in the U.S. as of April 1, 2010. It’s how those numbers will be used that I find troubling.

Congressional districts are apportioned on the basis of census figures and I think it’s wrong to let the presence of non-citizens skew that process.

The Democrats, who are also want to extend voting privileges to illegal aliens because they think illegals will vote for them, are using the White House’s control over the Census to game the system.

So, by participating in the Census, we’re helping the left rig elections for the next ten years. I suppose we could refuse to participate, but then bona fide U.S. citizens would be underrepresented in the final count.

At least it wasn’t someone from ACORN who showed up on my doorstep this morning.

Oh, by the way, the Canadian Census does inquire about citizenship status.