“Equal Access to Services” for non-English speaking residents
By Ji Hyun Lim
Seventeen-year-old Carrie Mai looks through the Chinese/English dictionary with confusion and frustration as she fumbles over the selection of words. For Mai, it’s a weekly battle trying to translate for her parents. Important documents, such as “Healthy Families Insurance” forms are indecipherable to her parents. Neither her mother nor father are fluent in English.
Fortunately, for the Mais and other Asian immigrant families in San Francisco and Oakland, relief is expected shortly. On Tuesday, the Oakland City Council voted unanimously to require departments hire workers who speak Chinese or Spanish, in order to better serve the city’s growing immigrant population. And in May, the San Francisco Board of Supervisors is expected to vote on a similar ordinance. Though state and federal laws requiring bilingual access to government services are already on the books, immigrant advocates say they rarely are enforced by law.
Oakland Councilman Danny Wan and City Council President Ignacio De La Fuente authored Oakland’s Equal Access to Services Ordinance. According to the 1990 census, 35 percent of Oakland’s population is Asian American or Latino. Under Wan and De La Fuente’s proposal, each ethnic population with 10,000 or more people will be guaranteed access to city services in their language. Although Oakland is still awaiting Census 2000 numbers, it is estimated that the Chinese American and Latino communities far exceed the minimum population requirement. The Vietnamese American population may also meet the criteria, but that needs to be confirmed by the newest census statistics.
Of course, not everyone agrees with the ordinance. On a national level, former President Clinton signed into law an executive order, mandating language access in federal departments and services. However, conservatives have scrutinized the law.
Proponents of Oakland’s Equal Access Ordinance say it provides bilingual staffing and translation materials. It also mandates that recorded telephone messages from city departments be in multiple languages. Fliers and brochures regarding library, police, recreation center service hours and other community services, will also be available in Spanish and Chinese.
“We’re not creating impositions,” Wan said. “We’re not establishing new programs. We’re asking them to fill vacancies [with bilingual staff]. Ten percent of the jobs in the city of Oakland are vacant.”
Executive Director of Family Bridges, Corrine Jan, said the ordinance will help entire immigrant families. Many times, the burden of translation becomes the responsibility of the children.
“The children or grandchildren who speak English, and sometimes not that well, are in a position to do the translations,” she said. “Sometimes, it’s not accurate, but that’s all we have.”
Jan also pointed out that Chinese immigrants frequently ask her organization to help translate because they have nowhere to go where people can speak their language. Access to resources for health can be a huge obstacle.
She added: “In America, the original melting pot, we should really be promoting people’s cultures and retention of their cultural habits and languages, and not try to take that away.”
De La Fuente is adamant that the Equal Access Ordinance is a necessary resolution because “non-English speakers” pay taxes like everyone else. He added that Chinatown is one of the highest tax-paying, revenue-generating areas in the city. Oakland is responsible for communicating with all its residents and providing equal access to services, he said.
“I think it’s absolutely, totally wrong that Asian immigrants, especially seniors, don’t have access to services because they don’t understand the system, or because they don’t get equal access in their own language,” De La Fuente said. |
