A front page New York Times article examines the City's failure to comply with a July 2008 executive order requiring every New York City agency that dealt with the public to provide interpreters, translated documents and other language help to people who spoke little or no English. The order was supposed to help immigrant New Yorkers use services and navigate a daunting city bureaucracy as well as prevent the waste of time and money caused by miscommunication and misunderstanding. The Times talks to Legal Services NYC's Amy Taylor, Language Access Coordinator, about a August 2009 lawsuit filed by LS-NYC on behalf of 12 limited English proficient New Yorkers who have been injured by the City's failure. One of Amy's clients, Mercedes Cruz, discusses her own experience.

A lawyer who works at South Brooklyn Legal Services said Spanish speakers were routinely told that they had to come up with their own interpreters at a New York City Housing Authority office in Brooklyn that processes subsidized housing vouchers.

And a study based on interviews with 850 immigrant New Yorkers to be released this month describes complaints about a lack of interpreters in dealings with the Human Resources Administration, the New York Police Department and Housing Preservation and Development, which oversees the city’s affordable housing programs.

The study, by two advocacy groups, Make the Road New York and the New York Immigration Coalition, found that many immigrants had no idea they were entitled to interpreters and translated forms in large part because city workers never told them and they could find no signs explaining their rights.

Robert Doar, the commissioner of the Human Resources Administration, acknowledged shortcomings but maintained that language access was a priority and that the agency would “continue to focus on areas that need improvement.”

Even before Mr. Bloomberg issued his order, however, the agency’s poor record of providing translation and interpretation prompted the City Council to enact a law seven years ago dictating the types of language help it should offer to guarantee immigrants’ equal access to benefits. Legal Services NYC, a legal aid group, sued the agency in August, claiming that its failure to comply with the law had “deprived individuals of the necessities of life and repeatedly subjected them to humiliating discrimination.”

Amy S. Taylor, the lawyer who filed the suit on behalf of 12 plaintiffs, said that “there’s a stark divide between what the agencies have on paper and what happens on the frontlines.”

The mayor’s executive order required 37 city offices and agencies to develop plans on language services and to train workers to ensure that the services were made available. No extra money was set aside, so many agencies, like the Department of Aging, recruited multilingual volunteers among their staff members.

[...]

Mercedes Cruz, 47, an immigrant from Honduras who lives with her three children in Sheepshead Bay, Brooklyn, is one of the plaintiffs in the lawsuit against the Human Resources Administration.

She first applied for food stamps and cash assistance in 2007 at an agency office in Coney Island, and in her 20 or more visits there over two years, she said, she was never offered an interpreter — not even after her lawyer wrote a letter saying that the agency was required to provide one. She ultimately received benefits, but only after a wait of several months and absences from school by her oldest son, a sophomore at Brooklyn College who had to serve as her interpreter.

“It shouldn’t be so difficult to get the help I need and qualify for,” she said.

Read the full article at www.nytimes.com. Read more about LS-NYC's lawsuit by clicking here (with additional media coverage here).