Last week, New York City Council passed the landmark
Language Access Bill that mandated the city to use six
non-English languages for government services. The
measure, also known as Intro. 38A, was hailed by
various community groups. However, no South Asian
language was included in the bill causing widespread
disappointment and frustration among the large
immigrant population.
The six languages taken up on the bill for mandatory
interpretation and translation services at public
offices were Spanish, Chinese, Korean, Russian, Arabic
and Haitian Creole.
Council members John Liu (D-District 20) and Gayle
Brewer (D-District 6) were the prime sponsors of the
bill overwhelmingly passed by a margin of 44-6. Mayor
Bloomberg indicated he would sign it.
"As a result of this bill, New York City residents
will now have easier access to city's public services
and nobody will be turned down because of their
non-proficiency of English," Liu said. A few years
ago, a federal government human rights oversight
committee indicted New York of underserving city's
English-handicapped immigrants.
A recent census shows that South Asians hold a high
percentage of the city's immigrants, and Bengalis in
particular are one of the largest linguistic groups
whose numbers surpass some of the groups included in
the list of six languages. Other South Asian languages
such as Hindi, Punjabi, Gujarati and Urdu are also
spoken by tens of thousands of new immigrants, many of
whom could use the city's new initiative. A blanket
exclusion of these languages irks South Asians.
Bengalis in particular are furious. Many of them blame
their own community leaders for the situation.
"What have our big community leaders done to include
Bangla on this list?" A Kensington, Brooklyn Bengali
couple, who go by their last name Salim, asked. "We
don't know if they even knew about the important
legislation."
Their frustration was echoed by Nargis Ahmed, an
actress and social worker based in Jamaica, Queens.
"Honestly, I had no idea that such a bill was coming,"
she said. "Otherwise, we could have taken it up to
lobby our [American] friends in the city council or
Congress to do something about it."
She wanted to know if a mass petition by city's
Bengalis would now help include the language on the
list.
Advocacy group New Immigrant Community Empowerment
recently met with city legislator Helen Sears
(D-District 25) and informed her about the problem and
the feelings of South Asians who form a large part of
her district Jackson Heights.
New York City residents speak nearly two hundred
languages and about 67 percent of city's immigrants
speak at least one non-English language at home.
Nearly half of city residents are first or
second-generation immigrants.
Partha Benarjee is an organizer/activist associated with the New Immigrant Community Empowerment (NICE) in Jackson Heights, and has been actively involved in taking on legal, social and economic
