Census in Wonderland

As soon as I eyed the bright, clear white envelope from the 2010 Census, I rushed upstairs, tore it open and hardly contained my enthusiasm to find out what all the commotion has been about. Everyone seems dissatisfied these days and there is an inexhaustible amount of opportunities to aim this discontent at the government. Here comes the Census and before even officially having been distributed, there are already outcries far and large how race-intensively the questions are molded. I couldn't help but wonder, how did they know???

 'Tis true. There is no denying it, nevertheless I felt excited to make my tiny contribution to the population census as I do believe in the principle wholeheartedly. I filled out the shiny bluish pages with a trembling hand focusing really hard not to make a silly mistake in my DOB or to misspell my name. In less than three minutes, it was all over and I sighed proudly with a sense of accomplishment such as after a long, standardized test.

Then it hit me. Oh, no! Who's going to count me in the Bulgarian Census (the next one is to be expected next year, I presume, as the last one was in 2001) when I'm not there? The blessing and the curse of having dual citizenship strike again. Well, there's nothing I can do now. I can only hope that my poor grandmother can figure out how to add us to the official record for I do not wish to be reduced to nothing. I'd much rather be a mere statistic than a nonexistent one.

Does anyone know how such questions are settled? Is the brain drain data overly exaggerated or on the contrary, quite understated? Alice understood the situation all too well: "'But it's no use now,' thought poor Alice, 'to pretend to be two people! Why, there's hardly enough of me left to make one respectable person!'"