Our Rights, Our Future

Why Language Access Matters

by Nisha Agarwal

Every person who reads this likely speaks English, and speaks it well.  Whether we are people of color, people with physical disabilities, members of a religious minority, women, gay, working class or poor, we stand with the vast majority of America in that we enjoy “English privilege.”  Practically speaking, English privilege means this: For over 24 million people in the United States, it is difficult and sometimes impossible to get jobs, hold jobs, feed their families, vote in an election, be on a jury, make doctors’ appointments, take medication, use the courts, receive an education, get a home, keep a home—basically, participate in all of the ordinary and extraordinary features of American life—because they do not speak English.

Consider the experience of María Angela C., a Spanish-speaking woman from New York City who is in the process of learning English but hasn’t mastered it well enough to understand complicated health information.  One day, her 5-year-old son broke out in hives due to an allergic reaction.  She rushed him to the doctor, who wrote her a prescription but did not explain how to take the medication.  When María Angela went to the pharmacy to fill the prescription, the pharmacist also failed to explain how to take the medication and handed her a bottle with instructions in English only.  María Angela took the bottle home, opened it and saw a pink liquid that resembled “pepto,” so she surmised that the medication should be administered orally.  After her son took a spoonful, however, he reacted with extreme disgust, and María Angela became nervous.  She asked a neighbor to translate the label and learned that the medication actually had to be applied topically.  María Angela was devastated.  Her son risked another allergic reaction, or worse, due to the fact that the health care delivery system that she encountered operated in English only, and she did not (yet) have the English-speaking ability to navigate it safely. 

María Angela and her son faced a barrier to equal health access, to a basic human need, that the rest of us take for granted.  Though many Americans have felt powerless and overwhelmed in the U.S. health care system, most of us have probably not felt silenced – quite literally unable to ask for or receive help because of the language we speak.  Fortunately, civil rights laws are in place to break this silence.  Title VI of the Civil Rights Act of 1964 prohibits discrimination on the basis of national origin, which includes language.  In the health care context, this means that hospitals and pharmacies must provide interpretation services and translated medication labels to ensure that individuals such as María Angela can access health services with the same hope as the rest of us: that it will improve well-being, not further compromise it.  Unfortunately, the Supreme Court has, in recent years, begun to interpret the law in such a way that this right to equal access does not have an adequate remedy.  In the 2001 decision of Alexander v. Sandoval, a case about an English-only amendment to the Alabama state constitution, the Court held that private individuals cannot sue in federal court for violations of Title VI unless they can show that they were the victims of intentional discrimination – that is, if they can point to something like a “Whites Only” sign on the front door of the pharmacy.

Sandoval put the kibosh on virtually all federal litigation under Title VI in the health care arena, among many others.  Advocates have sometimes been able to work around the problem.  For example, our Health Justice Program (HJP) represents Make the Road New York, a Latino community-based organization in New York City, and has successfully approached  government agencies such as the state Attorney General’s office to compel investigations of and settlement agreements with national chain pharmacies that do not provide interpretation services and translated medication labels for their non-English speaking customers.  We have also drafted and lobbied for the passage of language rights laws that would compensate for the erosion of civil rights protections at the federal level.  In fact, this morning, New York City’s Mayor Bloomberg signed the Language Access in Pharmacies Act, which will ensure that, in the future, María Angela and her son can use pharmacies in the five boroughs and have their rights to language assistance services respected. 

But what about people living in areas where government agencies are not as receptive to the claims of linguistic minorities, and where local elected representatives do not have the same numbers of immigrant constituents holding them accountable?  What about people like Baltazar Cruz, who went to a hospital in Mississippi to give birth and ended up having her child taken away from her because she didn’t speak English?   In these cases, re-opening the doors of the federal courthouse is crucial.  Language rights are, fundamentally, civil rights, which should have a remedy in every part of our country.  And leaving your health care provider with an understanding of how to care for your child, with that child still in your arms, is a basic right; it should not be a privilege.     

Nisha Agarwal is the Director of the Health Justice Program at New York Lawyers for the Public Interest (NYLPI), a non-profit civil rights organization in New York City.  You can learn more about the pharmacy language access campaign and download materials at: http://healthjustice.wordpress.com/resources/#Rx. 

Local Ordinances Being Used To Allow Anti-Immigrant Discrimination

In the wake of Congress' failure to pass comprehensive immigration reform, some anti-immigration activists are beginning to actively pursue discriminatory immigration policies through local ordinances. Many of the ordinances targeting undocumented workers appear to be grossly unconstitutional and largely hypocritical. Ironically, those who support anti-immigration policies, many of whom eagerly denounce the judiciary's connection to policy, are using the courts to accomplish their own policy aims.

Supreme Court Cracks Down On Government's Abusive Anti-Immigrant Tactic

The Supreme Court unanimously ruled that federal prosecutors can't charge illegal workers with aggravated identity theft for submitting false social security numbers to keep their jobs. Charges of identity theft carry up to a two-year prison sentence, and it had become a "favorite tool of prosecutors" to threaten workers with a jail term to prod them into pleading guilty to lesser charges. Conservative Justice Samuel Alito explained that the government's policy amounted to a roll of the dice, as workers couldn't possibly know whether the numbers they were submitting were false or not.

Dear Nashville: Next Time, Please Unshackle Detained Pregnant Immigrants Before They Go Into Labor

Here's why local police departments shouldn't be allowed to enforce federal immigration laws: Nashville officers forced Juana Villegas to give birth while shackled to a hospital gurney, and then separated the mother from her newborn. Villegas' breasts soon become infected and the infant developed jaundice. Juana, a 33-year-old undocumented immigrant, was arrested and thrown in jail for the misdemeanor charge of driving without a license.

This Angry Protestor Makes A Convincing Argument

"Excellent point: In Houston, a Texan protesting amnesty for illegal immigrants argues that anyone who can't master English doesn't deserve to live in America."

Iowa Judge Joins Forces with Anti-Immigrant Congressman

Cross-posted from The Huffington Post.

Through his typo-ridden decision that declared illegal the presentation of voter information in any language other than English, Iowan Polk County District Judge Douglas Staskal joined the Civil Rights Rollback Hall of Shame.

Judge: Learn English Or Go To Jail

A Pennsylvania judge threatened four men with hefty jail terms if they failed to learn English. Luzerne County Judge Peter Paul Olszewski Jr. was inspired to issue his ruling when he saw defendants Luis Reyes, Ricardo Dominguez, Kelvin Reyes-Rosario and Rafael Guzman-Mateo appear before the court with the aid of a translator. After sentencing, the judge remarked: “There’s no way young kids can be hurt by knowing how to read and write the English language.”

Senate Slashes EEOC Funding To Support English Language Training

The Senate voted 54-44 last week to steal $670,000 from the Equal Employment Opportunity Commission (EEOC) and hand it over to the Department of Education to fund English language training. The destructive amendment to the chamber's must-pass budget resolution would severely constrain the EEOC's ability to fight discrimination based on national origin, and was the brainchild of Senator Lamar Alexander (R-TN), who has waged a rabid war against the EEOC's efforts to protect minorities.

Last year the Senator shoved a similar amendment into the Commerce, Justice, and Science appropriations bill that would have barred the EEOC from taking action against discriminatory employers . The amendment was ultimately yanked from the conference report, and once again, House conferees will need to serve as agents of reason and justice. Who supported the amendment and how is the media characterizing the vote? Join us after the jump to find out.

Students Deserve Residency Not Deportation

By Ricardo Sánchez
National Campaign to Restore Civil Rights guest blogger on immigration and education

U.S. Department of Homeland Security chief, Michael Chertoff, proclaims these days that Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) agents are doing all they can to “control our borders,” part of which entails workplace enforcement.

Truth is, since well before World War II, immigration authorities have, at best, selectively enforced our laws. Selectively means, for one, not straying into agricultural fields during harvest seasons. To be fair, agriculture is only one of many industries that have thrived using undocumented workers—count hotels, restaurants, forestry, fishing, construction, roofing and others in the mix.

So that taxpayers believe immigration officials are vigilant in their duties, periodically we see television footage of workplace raids where a handful of workers are detained. 

But what we don’t see or hear about is more telling. None of us heard two weeks ago of ICE agents apprehending an 18-year old at a south Seattle-area apartment complex while getting into her car to go to high school, did we?

They guessed right. She was in the U.S without legal papers. Without providing or ensuring that she had legal advice, this frightened young woman went before a judge just last week to be told that she could leave the country voluntarily, or face further detainment and a hearing at a later date. She chose to leave the country—dreams dashed for this high school senior who aspires to become a doctor. 

Ah, another victory for ICE and U.S. taxpayers. 

We’re easily duped. No, worse—we’re silently assenting to duplicitous immigration practices that keep immigration agents at bay during harvest seasons. Why? Because for consumers, it ensures we continue to pay lower prices for agricultural products than any industrialized nation in the world.

If Chertoff and ICE were to take their job of “controlling our borders” seriously, they would be conducting raids in the apple fields of eastern Washington even as you read this article. They know, however, that members of our own congressional delegation would intervene to stop the raids, just as they have in recent years in Washington and across the nation.

The reason: ill-timed raids would spell economic ruin for our state’s largest tree-fruit industry—valued at more than a billion dollars annually. Washington grows well over half of the apples consumed in our nation. The stakes are large. 

But individuals in bus stops, or student scholars on their way to school, remain fair game. It’s been this way for decades, but it’s not my version of “The American Way.” 

If that ideal guided the national conscience, we would stand collectively and say to Michael Chertoff and the Congress: Until and unless you are willing to enforce our laws, no exemptions for industries with powerful friends, keep your hands off innocent young people, especially promising students whose only “wrong” was obeying their parents when they were brought into the country, some as infants. 

One would hope that if the nation’s top lawmakers can force the administrative agencies to not enforce our laws during select times of the year—and they do—they might also find the courage and compassion to help deserving student scholars who want to obtain college degrees and contribute to our nation as law abiding citizens that they now only can dream about.

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Ricardo Sánchez is chair of the Latino/a Educational Achievement Project, and is a U.S. citizen who lives in Seattle. He can be reached at rsanchez@seanet.com.