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<p>Scripps Howard Foundation Wire</p>
<p><strong>WASHINGTON</strong> — Representatives of 29 civil rights organizations gathered on Capitol Hill Tuesday to express their opposition to legislation that would require individuals to indicate their citizenship status in the 2010 census.</p>
<p>&nbsp;Simon Rosenberg, president of the liberal Washington think tank NDN, said the amendment put forth by Sens. David Vitter, R-La., and Robert Bennett, R-Utah, will “undoubtedly politicize the census.”</p>

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&nbsp;La Cruz Roja, anunció el inminente cierre de sus servicios hospitalarios y apenas al día siguiente un ataque armado contra policías municipales dejó 3 muertos y 5 heridos que fueron atendidos en su sala de emergencias.</p>
<p>&nbsp;Este hecho subraya la necesidad que existe de los servicios de la Cruz Roja, ya que esta institución maneja el 98% de los traslados de ambulancia y 60% del trauma de Tijuana.</p>

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&nbsp;The American government, in my opinion, contributed to the deaths of my parents by not providing universal health care.</p>
<p>&nbsp;In every other advanced industrial nation, they would have received quality health care as a right.</p>
<p>&nbsp;Here, they did not.</p>
<p>&nbsp;My father first came to this country as an agricultural worker from Mexico during the Bracero Program, and he and my mother settled in the United States legally, with work permits, in the late 1960s.</p>

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&nbsp;After thirty years of dutifully cooperating with the census count, and even enthusiastically promoting and organizing for a successful enumeration in 1990 and 2000, I have decided this year to sit it out and not comply with the federal law. I do so very conscious of the implications of such noncooperation and noncompliance, but this is more than just a statement of protest; not a whim nor a lark.</p>

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<p>&nbsp;I would make just the opposite argument to Nativo Lopez’ call for undocumented people to abstain from answering the census. Mr. Lopez says, “Their resounding demand is – before you count you must legalize us!” Mr. Lopez seems to have already contacted the undocumented people in the U.S., a task which the census is ready to spend millions of dollars to carry out.</p>