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U.S. census bureau watching Arab-Americans

WASHINGTON, July 30 (UPI) -- The U.S. Census Bureau has given the Department
of Homeland Security detailed demographic data on Arab-Americans, New York
Times said Friday.

The tabulations were produced in August 2002 and December 2003.

One piece of datum provides ZIP-code-level breakdowns of Arab-American
populations, sorted by country of origin. The categories provided are
Egyptian, Iraqi, Jordanian, Lebanese, Moroccan, Palestinian, Syrian and two
general categories, "Arab/Arabic" and "Other Arab."

Though legal, civil libertarians and some Arab-American groups liken it to
the Census Bureau's compilation of similar information about
Japanese-Americans during World War II.

Many of those Japanese-Americans were later incarcerated.

James Zogby, president of the Arab American Institute, said the data sharing
is particularly troubling at a time when the Census Bureau is struggling to
build trust within Arab-American communities.

"As this gets out, any effort to encourage people to full compliance with
the census is down the tubes," Zogby said. "How can you get people to comply
when they believe that by complying they put at risk their personal and
family security?"



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Copyright 2004 by United Press International.

All rights reserved.

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