7 FAM 500 Appendix B
U.S. Census Bureau
(CT:CON-879; 07-18-2019)
(Office of Origin: CA/OCS)
7 FAM 510 APPENDIX B Introduction
(CT:CON-879; 07-18-2019)
a. The Bureau of Consular Affairs (CA) is charged with
exercising the Secretary of States responsibility to provide consular
protection and services to United States citizens abroad.
b. While for workload and crisis planning purposes CA
compiles internally very rough estimates of U.S. citizens within a country, we
do not count them. Moreover, we have neither the expertise nor the resources
to conduct, what by any measure, could be represented as an accurate count of
U.S. citizens in a given country.
c. Advocates of an overseas census believe that better
demographic data on U.S. citizens abroad would be useful for a variety of
policy-making and business purposes, and would make their unique interests more
visible to Congress.
d. In 2004, the GAO concluded that "to the extent
that better data on overseas Americans might be useful for various
policy-making and other nonapportionment purposes that do not need as much
precision, such information does not need to be collected as part of the
decennial census" (GAO-04-1077T 010 Counting Americans Overseas as Part of
the Census Would Not Be Feasible).
e. The rights and obligations of U.S. citizens and
nationals overseas under various federal programs vary from activity to
activity. For example, U.S. citizens residing overseas are taxed on their
worldwide income, are required to register for Selective Service, can vote in federal
elections, and can receive Social Security benefits, but they are generally not
entitled to Medicare benefits, or, if they reside outside of the United States
for more than 30 days, Supplemental Security Income.
7 FAM 520 APPENDIX B AUTHORITIES
(CT:CON-879; 07-18-2019)
a. The Constitution (2 U.S. Const. Art I, 2, cl. 3; and
federal statutes (13 U.S.C. 141(a)) give the U.S. Census Bureau discretion over
whether to count U.S. citizens abroad.
b. The authority for the Department of State to enroll (formerly
known as register) citizens is derived from:
(1) 22 U.S.C. 2715 Procedures Regarding Major
Disasters and Incidents Abroad Affecting United States Citizens, which
provides:
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22 U.S.C. 2715
(a) Authority: In the case of a major
disaster or incident abroad which affects the health and safety of citizens
of the United States residing or traveling abroad, the Secretary of State
shall provide prompt and thorough notification of all appropriate information
concerning such disaster or incident and its effect on United States citizens
to the next-of-kin of such individuals.
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(2) 22 U.S.C. 4802 Responsibility of Secretary of
State, Subsection (b) Overseas Evacuations, which provides:
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22 U.S.C. 4802
(b) Overseas Evacuations
The Secretary of State shall develop and implement
policies and programs to provide for the safe and efficient evacuation of
United States Government personnel, dependents, and private United States
citizens when their lives are endangered. Such policies shall include
measures to identify high risk areas where evacuation may be necessary and,
where appropriate, providing staff to United States Government missions
abroad to assist in those evacuations. In carrying out these responsibilities,
the Secretary shall
(2) develop a mechanism whereby United States
citizens can voluntarily request to be placed on a list in order to be
contacted in the event of an evacuation, or which, in the event of an
evacuation, can maintain information on the location of United States
citizens in high risk areas submitted by their relatives; and
(4) develop a plan for coordinating communications
between embassy staff, Department of State personnel, and families of United
States citizens abroad regarding the whereabouts of those citizens.
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(3) 22 CFR 50.3 which provides:
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22 CFR 50.3
(a) A person abroad who claims U.S. nationality,
or a representative on his behalf, may apply at a consular post for
registration to make his residence in the particular consular area a matter
of record.
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7 fam 530 APPENDIX B u.s. DEPARTMENT OF State Liaison
with U.S. Census Bureau
(CT:CON-879; 07-18-2019)
a. CA/OCS/PMO serves as the Bureau of Consular Affairs
liaison to the U.S. Census Bureau in the U.S. Department of Commerce.
Questions about overseas census should be directed to (FedBen@state.gov).
b. Requests from the U.S. Census Bureau to the
Department of State for access to data in CA databases should be directed to
the respective Deputy Assistant Secretary in CA/OCS, CA/PPT and CA/VO. The CA
Directorates will, as appropriate, coordinate requests with CA/CST, CA legal
offices (OCS/L, VO/L, CA/PPT/S/L) and the Office of the Legal Adviser.
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NOTE:
With few exceptions, the Census Bureau has historically counted
only federally affiliated individuals, a group consisting of members of the
military, federal civilian employees, and their dependents.
Following the 2000 Census, in response to congressional
direction and the concerns of various private organizations, the U.S. Census
Bureau launched a 2004 test enumeration to assess the practicality of
counting both private and federally affiliated U.S. citizens abroad. The key
part of this effort, the data collection phase, took place between February
and July 2004 in three countries: France, Kuwait, and Mexico.
The initial results of the overseas census test suggest that
counting U.S. citizens and nationals abroad on a global basis would require
enormous resources and still not yield data that are comparable in quality to
the stateside count.
The Census Bureau encountered a variety of implementation
problems at each of the test sites. Although such difficulties are to be
expected given the magnitude of the Census Bureaus task, they underscore the
fact that there would be no economy of scale in ramping up to a full
enumeration of U.S. citizens and nationals abroad.
Because of the inevitability of country-specific problems,
rather than conducting a single overseas count based on a standard set of
rules and procedures (as is the case with the stateside census), the Census
Bureau learned that each country posed unique requirements.
For example, in the 2004 test, addressing French privacy laws
that restrict the collection of personal data such as race and ethnic
information took a considerable amount of negotiation between the two
countries.
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7 fam 540 APPENDIX B through 7 fam 590 APPENDIX B uNASSIGNED