Senators decry ‘disastrous,’ ‘flabbergasting’ Census changes

October 15, 2026

By JENNIFER SMITH

Lawmakers are trying to get their arms around possible changes to the US Census that they fear could dramatically alter congressional representation and cause funding for federal assistance to be slashed.

The Massachusetts Senate Committee on the Census, which has been grappling with the looming 2030 decennial census, held a hearing Wednesday to examine proposed federal rules that would exclude non-citizens from the count and change the way residency is determined. The new residency requirements would count people based on where they are between January 3 and April 1, potentially decimating counts for university students and the “snowbird” population who spend the harsh winter months in warmer climes.

During the hearing, experts testified that these changes would hit Massachusetts with particular force.

The change, if implemented, would “dramatically and inaccurately favor southern states where many northern residents, sometimes called snowbirds, spend some or all of the months of December through March, despite spending a majority of their time voting in and paying taxes to northern states like Massachusetts,” Jessie Partride Guerrero, director of data services at the Metropolitan Area Planning Commission, testified.

The new rules, if enacted, would mean census counts could not include many international students, international workers, those with Temporary Protected Status because their home countries are considered unsafe to live in, refugees, asylum seekers, and more.

Some 1.3 million residents in the Bay State are foreign born — about a fifth of the state’s population, and over 641,000 of whom are noncitizens, said Susan Strate, senior program manager at the UMass Donahue Institute’s Population Estimates Program. That would be the rough equivalent of losing the entire city of Boston in the Census.

“It’s flabbergasting to think of the impact that this could have,” said Sen. Becca Rausch of Needham. “It is disastrous in so many ways. Maybe it’s not sloppy. Maybe it’s deliberate. Maybe it is a deliberate attempt by the Trump administration to force counts out of northern states and into southern states. It’s certainly not beyond the pale or beyond comprehension that that could be a goal here. It’s disgusting.”

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