A national campaign for more accurate counting of Middle Eastern and North African residents has come to El Cajon.
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Under current U.S. Census Bureau rules, people who identify as coming from Middle Eastern or North African communities are counted as “White.”
“There’s a huge concern that they aren’t getting counted appropriately,” said Ryan Fan, advocacy and campaign manager at Majdal: Arab Community Center of San Diego. “The more detailed the data we can get, the more effectively we can serve our communities.”
The group estimates that at least 25,000 individuals in El Cajon identify with Middle Eastern or North African ancestry, according to 2020 census data. The East County city is home to one of the county’s largest communities of Chaldeans, an ethnic and religious minority group from Iraq.
But they believe that number to be an undercount, because many individuals continue to self-identify as White, or choose to fill out other categories.
In 2025, the California Legislature passed Assembly Bill 91, which required state and local agencies to offer categories for Middle Eastern or North African groups. However, state roll-out isn’t coming in the near future because of budget implementation delays, Fan said.
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Local advocates are now asking municipalities to pass local resolutions in support of the proposed new census categories, saying they fear the changes won’t be implemented ahead of the 2030 Census.
The group asked the El Cajon City Council to pass a local resolution during recent meetings, but Fan said the efforts haven’t gone anywhere. City leaders have said the census is a federal issue and they are unsure of a need for local action.
Despite local resolutions being “highly symbolic,” Fan said ensuring residents will be accurately counted during the 2030 census would provide necessary insight for research and funding in healthcare, education and more.
“We can’t track who has or doesn’t have health insurance in the community,” he said. “We also can’t track housing rates, we can’t track employment rates, we can’t track income rates. When it comes to minority-owned business opportunities and loans and grants, they don’t count as minorities, so they can’t even apply for those.”
The cities of Anaheim, Glendale and San Francisco have passed local resolutions in support of the data equity effort. In 2024, the San Diego County Board of Supervisors added the Middle Eastern and North African category to its data.
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