whether or not somebody's a citizen of the united states? how horrible and ridiculous is that? >> can you imagine you send out a census and you're not allowed to say whether or not a person is an american citizen? >> for more, joined by professor palmer. first of all, the question. what is the question we're discussing here? >> the question here is in the census to ask everybody filling in the form, are you a citizen of the united states? >> what's wrong with that? >> if you like -- superficially it's okay to be a decent question but on the other hand, federal funding follows population not citizenship so it could be in one household you have a number of people who are undocumented or a lot of them in residence and citizens. what you are effectively doing is identifying as part of a broadly wider policy is a