The U.S. Census Bureau is willing to hire foreigners without visas in some cases to help with this year's census.

But agency officials insist that only rarely will it do so.

The bureau wants to count illegal immigrants, not deport them.

Information disclosed by illegal immigrants in census forms won't be disclosed to the federal government's Immigration and Naturalization Service or the public for 72 years, said Debra Peebles of the bureau's regional office in Kansas City.

"Hopefully they will be legal by then," she said in a telephone interview Wednesday after the issue of illegal immigrants and the census surfaced at a Cape Girardeau Lions Club meeting.

Laverne Nothdurft, a recruiter with the Census Bureau office in Cape Girardeau, responded to a question about the issue at the Lions Club meeting.

Reached at her Cape Girardeau office a few hours later, Nothdurft said she told members of the civic club that the Census Bureau had authorized the hiring of "illegal immigrants."

But her boss, local census office manager Ellen Brandom, said the agency wants to hire legal immigrants. Brandom said the local census office doesn't plan to hire illegal immigrants.

Peebles said the bureau prefers to hire foreigners who have visas. Visas are required for foreigners to legally work in the United States.

Peebles said there could be isolated cases where foreigners who don't have visas would be hired to help a particular individual or family fill out a census form. Peebles said the scenario could involve refugees from a war-torn country like Bosnia.

Anyone hired without a visa would be hired as a temporary contractor for perhaps a few hours to help specific persons fill out the census forms, she said.

They wouldn't be hired to do the enumeration. "They would not be placed on the regular payroll," Peebles said.

"It is not that we are going to hire a force of illegal aliens," she said.

But Peebles said the bureau wants to count everyone, including illegal immigrants. She said illegal immigrants use government services. "That is why cities should want them counted."

The goal, she said, is to count foreigners who are living in the United States, not just visiting. Even if they arrive just before the April 1 census date, they need to be counted, said Peebles.

"If they arrived yesterday and have no intentions of leaving, we want them to fill out the form too," she said.