Transcript of remarks by Assistant Attorney General Wan Kim to the
Federal Interagency Working Group on Limited English Proficiency
December 6, 2006
Office of Justice Programs Conference Room
Washington DC
Good morning. I am pleased and honored to welcome you to the Department of Justice for today’s meeting of the Federal Interagency Working Group on Limited English Proficiency (or LEP). I am very proud of this group’s achievements. Many of those achievements are reflected in tools available on its website, LEP.gov to aid federally conducted and federally assisted programs to improve language access to the LEP communities they serve. I am also very pleased to see representatives of so many of our federal agencies present today. I am hopeful that this group’s legacy of successful interagency cooperation can be renewed and strengthened as a result of today’s event.
The topic of today’s meeting is The Importance of Language Access in Emergency Preparedness. We will be hearing from distinguished public servants today: Everette Jordan, from the National Virtual Translation Center, and Dan Sutherland, from the Department of Homeland Security. Both head programs having responsibility for improving language access in emergency situations – whether it be by bringing qualified linguistic resources into the federal government, or by improving compliance with civil rights laws as they pertain to linguistic minorities around the country.
A year ago, in a letter and a follow-up speech, I called upon agencies to focus on emergency preparedness issues as they relate to LEP communities. I renew that call this morning, and ask this Working Group and the agencies that make up its membership to prioritize language access issues in federal agency emergency preparedness activities consistent with Executive Order 13166 and its implementing regulations. We look forward to the discussion today, and to hearing about successful approaches our member agencies have found to meet emergency preparedness needs of LEP populations.
Every day, emergency responders and law enforcement officers nationwide are doing their best to help people with limited English proficiency get through what at times become life and death situations. The Civil Rights Division, as well as the Department’s Office of Justice Programs, have come to the aid of these federally-funded entities across the country by providing them with useful planning, language identification, and other tools for ensuring competent assistance to LEP individuals. One thing we know for sure is that state and local authorities simply cannot be responsive in an emergency if they do not have access to individuals competent to provide language assistance in the languages spoken in their jurisdiction. A lack of resources is particularly challenging for areas of the country currently experiencing growth and/or change among its LEP populations. Interpreters and translators criss-cross the country, filling in where they can – where budgets allow and where the need is greatest. Even states like California that have long grappled with serving large LEP populations have trouble filling their needs statewide for competent interpreters – even in criminal court cases.
When we at the Civil Rights Division go out to assess a language assistance program, we hear constantly that there are shortages of highly competent trained interpreters in even the most commonly encountered languages, let alone the rarer ones. We often hear that there are few or no quality control measures in place to gauge the competency of interpreters being utilized. Ad hoc approaches can lead to serious gaps in much-needed services in an emergency.
This Working Group is helping to facilitate discussions about a number of tough questions when it comes to language access. Some that come to my mind are:
• What can we advise our recipients of federal funding or our federal colleagues when they come to us with the realities of their lack of linguistic resources?
• Is it enough when some recipients offer staff a crash course in another language, or sign a contract with a telephonic interpretation company?
• Can translation technology be useful with appropriate expert human oversight?
• Can we do more to support collaborative approaches that would allow for cost efficiencies in using qualified local or regional interpreter pools or banks?
Many agencies, including the Civil Rights Division, have contracts with telephonic interpretation services. We’ve also taken a language capability survey of staff of the Division, to pinpoint where our in-house linguistic resources are, should we need to call upon them. In addition, we contract with translators and with in-person interpreters as needed for outreach and complaint or litigation-related matters. But more questions arise:
• Are we doing enough to get the word out to LEP communities around the country about the linguistic resources available to them in routine as well as non-routine situations?
• Are agencies doing enough to recruit bilingual and/or multilingual employees and, once hired, are these employees having their linguistic skills adequately assessed?
• In our language education programs for staff, are we encouraging a cultural competency component, not only to diffuse tensions in highly-charged situations, but to facilitate cultural as well as linguistic understanding as a means of preventing future mis-communication?
• In our joint efforts of oversight of federally-funded programs, are we seeing an increase in assurances relevant to LEP issues and to budgeting for language assistance as part of the programmatic costs of implementing grants?
• Are our agencies providing funding for programs that could become promising practices in the area of language assistance? In particular, are we funding programs that can help state and local agencies collaborate with one another to share highly qualified interpreters and translators and therefore create greater efficiency and quality?
Other presenters today, will speak to us about the approaches their offices are taking to address the shortage of linguistic resources in emergency situations across our government at the federal, state, and local levels. We look forward to those remarks.
Before concluding my remarks this morning, I would like to take just a moment to talk about another event that this group is putting on that will offer an opportunity to explore promising practices, challenges, and collaborations to ensure language access. That is, of course, the upcoming 2007 Interagency LEP Conference.
As you may recall, when I last addressed this Group in February, I was pleased to announce my support for the Conference Committee’s preparations to host an Interagency LEP Conference in 2007. As many of you probably already know, the Committee has accomplished a great deal over the last few months, and preparations are well underway for what promises to be a very exciting and informative event.
The 2007 Interagency LEP Conference will take place on March 15-16th at the National Institutes of Health in Bethesda, Maryland. We have approximately 10 agency partners working with us on the development of this important
conference, which is designed to explore cross-cutting LEP issues of significance to both federally assisted and federally conducted programs.
I am confident that the conference will offer a unique opportunity for all attendees to take advantage of the many natural partnerships that exist, and those that can be developed, in the provision of LEP services. The conference promises to offer a wonderful opportunity for individuals from jurisdictions all over the county to share strategies and best practices for improving communication with LEP individuals.
I am personally very much looking forward to this Conference – and I just wanted to take this opportunity to thank all of the members of the Committee, and their respective agencies, for all of the hard work that I know has gone into planning for this truly exciting event.
As you can see from today’s Agenda, we have a very full and informative program planned for you, so I’d like to turn things back over to Everette to introduce our next speaker - and I’ll look forward to seeing many of you again in March, if not sooner.
Thanks very much.