Title 13, United States Code, Sec. 221.Refusal or neglect to answer questions; false answers
(a) Whoever, being over eighteen years of age, refuses or willfully neglects, when requested by the Secretary, or by any other authorized officer or employee of the Department of Commerce or bureau or agency thereof acting under the instructions of the Secretary or authorized officer, to answer, to the best of his knowledge, any of the questions on any schedule submitted to him in connection with any census or survey provided for by subchapters I, II, IV, and V of chapter 5 of this title, applying to himself or to the family to which he belongs or is related, or to the farm or farms of which he or his family is the occupant, shall be fined not more than $100.
(b) Whoever, when answering questions described in subsection (a) of this section, and under the conditions or circumstances described in such subsection, willfully gives any answer that is false, shall be fined not more than $500.
(c) Notwithstanding any other provision of this title, no person shall be compelled to disclose information relative to his religious beliefs or to membership in a religious body.
The last time the census people came to my house, I let them count the rotties over their sholders as they raced for the gate.
They never came back to try and fine me.
Technically yes, you can be fined for not cooperating with the Census.
But there are never any ACTUAL prosecutions of private citizens to do so. I can't guarantee there never will be but there aren't currently and I haven't seen any sign there will be.
There have been a handful of cases against companies and landlords running gated communities or apartment houses that do not allow Census workers access, that's it in terms of people being prosecuted.
If you don't send the form back, however, in about a month or so you'll be getting phone calls from the Census on a regular basis. Then the next month you'll have a series of people from the Census day after day coming by to attempt to do an interview with a laptop computer.
I'll bet those statues don't apply to illegal aliens ...
Suffice it to say that "the best of my knowledge" includes knowledge of many of the loopholes and ambiguities in the English language, and the Bill Clinton was an amateur in this regard.
I can afford the $500 fine for telling them that today I have 181 illegal aliens in my 3 bedroom house. Tommorrow the number will only be 34 but by the weekend it should be close to 200 again.
A hundred dollars ain't bad. It would be worth it.
We're still waiting :)