The United States is one of five countries in the world that has not adopted an official language, though English is the de facto national language with roughly 80% of U.S. residents reporting they only speak English. Of the remaining population, almost 1 in 5 report speaking a language other than English in the home.
Immigrant communities, especially those experiencing an influx of migration, are more likely to speak a non-English language in the home. Immigrant communities also tend to have lower digital literacy skills than non-immigrants, which only serves to further disconnect them from the services they need.
To address this problem, reporters from URL Media partner newsroom Documented took their efforts to the streets of New York City to talk with asylum seekers at shelters and learn how they could best serve them. Using the feedback they received and the outlet’s WhatsApp platform, the team created a 10-page booklet in Spanish that listed addresses, contacts and directions to centers where they could obtain assistance as soon as they arrived.
“When we shared the booklets we had created, some began asking questions while others stayed quietly in the back,” Documented reporters Rommel H. Ojeda, Lucía Cholakian Herrera and Rosario Marina wrote. “But they all seemed to be browsing the booklets very carefully.”
By providing this vital information to asylum seekers in a way that can be easily read, understood, transported and shared, Documented was able to help this vulnerable population connect with the services and agencies needed to remain in the U.S.
The effort, to me, felt like the epitome of the message carved into the base of the Statue of Liberty.
Give me your tired, your poor,
Your huddled masses yearning to breathe free,
The wretched refuse of your teeming shore.
Send these, the homeless, tempest-tossed to me,
I lift my lamp beside the golden door!
— Statue of Liberty Inscription —
While Documented chose to use language as a way to help a vulnerable population, the U.S. government has chosen to propose changes to the U.S. citizenship test raising concerns for those with limited English proficiency.
According to the Associated Press, the current test allows immigration officers to evaluate an interviewee’s speaking ability by asking personal questions that the applicant has already answered in their naturalization paperwork. The proposed changes, expected to go into effect late next year, would require applicants to verbally describe photos of daily activities, weather and food.
Other proposed changes to the citizenship test would turn the civics section on U.S. history and government from an oral short-answer format to a multiple-choice test, requiring both a larger base of knowledge and a higher level of English proficiency to pass.
“We have a lot of students that are refugees, and they’re coming from war-torn countries where maybe they didn’t have a chance to complete school or even go to school,” Mechelle Perrott, a citizenship coordinator at San Diego College of Continuing Education in California, told the Associated Press. “It’s more difficult learning to read and write if you don’t know how to do that in your first language.”
The current list of 100 questions (and answers) can be found online in Arabic, Chinese, English, Korean, Spanish, Tagalog and Vietnamese, though the actual test is conducted in English.
Let me tell you, going through those questions was quite humbling — and that’s coming from a native English-speaker educated in the U.S.
