Communication Crucible

“Give me your tired, your poor, your huddled masses yearning to breathe free.”

When the Statue of Liberty welcomes immigrants to our shores with her inspirational verse, she makes no mention of the need to bring a translator. Yet the American dream today remains a pipedream for as many as 21 million Americans who lack basic access to our justice system because of language barriers.

According to the 2000 Census, more Americans than ever are “linguistically isolated” from the mainstream. In more than 11 million households, everyone over 14 speaks some other primary language while possessing an inadequate grasp of English. Those with limited English proficiency (LEP) represent more than 8 percent of the total U.S. population. Collectively, immigrants make up one in nine U.S. residents, one in seven workers, and one in five low-wage workers.

Historically, immigrant settlements in major U.S. cities were a fact of urban life (Chinatown and Little Italy are still familiar to city-dwellers), but new arrivals today come from countries that did not exist a hundred years ago and make their homes in places where immigrants have not settled for centuries. While immigrants are typically resilient, hard-working, and focused on positive goals like education and home ownership, many are nonetheless impoverished and relegated to the outskirts of society—marginalized by language, culture, and educational barriers. Immigrants comprise 20 percent of our low-wage workforce, and two-thirds of these workers do not speak English proficiently. This makes them easy targets for exploitation. Given this demographic profile, it often falls to legal services programs to help legal immigrants protect and assert their most fundamental rights.

LSC is in the midst of examining what steps its grantees might take to make legal services more accessible to those still learning the language. This focus follows the issuance of a Department of Justice directive on national origin discrimination that took effect in June 2002 and a related Executive Order issued by President Clinton in August 2000. (Both documents are available at www.lep.gov/govt.html). LSC is examining a number of potential ways for grantees to address the problem, including the use of interpreters during intake interviews, the retention and training of bilingual and multilingual staff, the translation of vital documents, and outreach activities in clients’ native languages.

Legal services leaders can study the examples of colleagues who have broken down language barriers in innovative ways by visiting www.lri.lsc.gov. (Click on diversity.) Rhode Island Legal Services (RILS), for instance, dramatically improved access to justice for its Cape Verdean community, where one-quarter of the children live in households with incomes below the federal poverty level. Since most Cape Verdeans speak only Crioulo, a mixture of West African languages and Portuguese, RILS hired a staff attorney from within the Cape Verdean community. She works in the neighborhood public elementary school—a familiar, comfortable site for West African families—of which she herself is a graduate.

In Minnesota, 43,000 Southeast Asian Hmong immigrants live alongside 15,000 East African immigrants from Somalia. As the staff of Southern Minnesota Regional Legal Services (SMRLS) learned more about these cultures, they abandoned certain conventional approaches to helping domestic violence victims. In both communities, men have greater standing than women and problems are often resolved informally by elder males. So SMRLS’ domestic violence staff includes a male Somali paralegal, an atypical choice given that domestic violence clients are primarily women abused by men and often feel more comfortable discussing their cases with women. SMRLS outreach to the Asian Hmong generally occurs through Hmong patriarchs to whom the community goes for guidance. Communication is brokered by SMRLS’ bilingual advocates.

The pilgrims may have settled in Massa­chusetts, but its immigrants today are increasingly Asian American, including 20,000 Cambodians, many of whom fled Khmer Rouge massacres for our safer shores. Initially, Merrimack Valley Legal Services (MVLS) hired individuals who could train staff in Cambodian culture, with its emphasis on Buddhism and familial ties. More recently, the program has hired a Cambodian paralegal who uses Cambodian-language radio and TV broadcasts to spread the word about MVLS, explaining how American justice is a different experience than what many faced in the Killing Fields of their former home.

In New York City, Queens Legal Services Corporation (QLSC) serves a growing poverty population of nearly two million LEP clients. Many QLSC success stories are rooted in creative partnerships with local immigrant advocacy organizations, which often are able to provide caseworkers who double as translators. QLSC also trains the advocacy staffs about basic legal rights and resources for immigrants, so these partner organizations can refer eligible constituents to QLSC.