Andrew Friedman

Bloomberg Begins To Get It

The demographics of New York City have changed over the past twenty years. Literally millions of New Yorkers do not speak English. The vast majority of these folks are in the process of learning it, but other responsibilities and a paucity of free or affordable English as a Second Language classes make it difficult to learn English as fast as everyone would like.

Nonetheless, these New Yorkers pay taxes, and our government needs to provide interpretation and translation services in order to effectively provide information and services to all New Yorkers. Ensuring equitable access to government services by providing these crucial language assistance services, though, is often forgotten.

Over the past seven or eight years, community groups, unions and progressive legislators have worked hard to raise consciousness about this issue, and to pass important public policy initiatives that require government to do better. In 2003, Mayor Bloomberg signed Councilman John Liu's Equal Access to Health and Human Services Act to require translation and interpretation services at Medicaid, Food Stamps and welfare centers. City Hospitals have made real progress towards ensuring equal access to health care services for limited English proficient New Yorkers, and the State Department of Health has begun to impose more rigid requirements for these services at all New York State hospitals. The recently passed Education Equity Act requires public schools to support parent involvement by providing language assistance services for parents.

It is a sign of real progress that Mayor Bloomberg's announcement an ambitious new program to combat diabetes earlier this week included specific mention of how outreach and education materials will be provided in multiple languages (See yesterday's New York Times, City to Warn New Mothers of Diabetes Risk).

We still have a long way to go, but it is important to acknowledge that we are making progress.

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Posted at 10:03 AM, Feb 23, 2006 in Civil Rights
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