Census forms started arriving in people’s mailboxes Monday, but one can’t help but wonder how many people will never be counted.

The census is exciting to me. It gives me the chance to be counted as somebody even if I’m a nobody.

Historically, though, the response to these forms is pretty dismal. Only about 70-some percent of households fill out the forms and return them, and according to a Census Bureau map of Fort Wayne, the response rate in large parts of the city is as low as 51 percent, sometimes even lower.

The Census Bureau says it is trying to reverse that trend. It has been advertising for several months, telling people that the census determines how many representatives we get in Congress, etc. The bureau even had some ads on during the Super Bowl, though I don’t remember them.

I suspect a lot of people didn’t get worked up by those ads. Many people whom I talk to can’t even name their representative or U.S. senators, so I suspect they aren’t too excited about how many representatives Indiana has.

Maybe a better pitch would be to let people know that the U.S. government has a pile of money, it throws it around like confetti, and it throws more where it thinks there are more people.

That comment will irk some people. They are sick of the government squandering cash, but as long as they are squandering it, they might as well squander it here.

What concerns me about the census locally is the number of people who, for various reasons, will never be counted.

A representative for the Census Bureau acknowledged that language is an issue in getting people to respond. That’s why it prints its forms in six languages, has advertised in 28 languages, offers the census forms online in dozens of other languages, and hires people locally, hopefully people who speak the sometimes obscure languages that people here speak.

The language hurdle is perhaps the highest barrier that must be overcome. Recent problems some immigrants had getting driver’s licensees because no interpreters were available illustrate the language difficulties that exist in Fort Wayne. Even if forms were made available in obscure languages such as Maay Maay, they would be useless to immigrants who are illiterate.

Culture clashes involving Burmese also illustrate the difficulty in communicating with a particular segment of immigrants. Officials with the Burmese Advocacy Center even acknowledged that they don’t necessarily speak for all the area’s Burmese refugees because there are different segments of the population in Fort Wayne.

City and county agencies can do all they can to urge everyone to participate in the census. They can reassure people that no other government agency is going to come knocking on the door, asking what they are doing there.

When we get into the issue of language, though, it is up to the individual communities to come together and deliver the message themselves to every member of their community. They are the ones who are best equipped to do this, and in some ways the only ones who are equipped to get the job done.