Language Access for Individuals with Limited English Proficiency

"Chair Garza, Vice Chair Nourse, and Members of the Commission,

Good morning and thank you for inviting me to testify today. My name is Jacob Hofstetter, and I am a Policy Analyst with the Migration Policy Institute’s (MPI’s) National Center on Immigrant Integration Policy. MPI is an independent, non-partisan think tank headquartered in Washington, D.C. that seeks to improve immigration and integration policies through authoritative research and analysis, opportunities for learning and dialogue, and the development of new ideas to address complex policy questions. I appreciate having the opportunity to testify today on the topic “Language Access for Individuals with Limited English Proficiency.”

More than 26 million individuals in the United States have limited proficiency in English. Language barriers can negatively impact this population’s ability to access important public information as well as government services for which they are eligible. Such barriers may also hinder these individuals’ economic mobility, wellbeing, and safety by disrupting their ability to access government programs such as healthcare, emergency services and education for themselves or their children. Language barriers can also disrupt government agencies’ and other service providers’ efforts to conduct outreach and provide information to linguistically diverse communities. These constraints limit the effectiveness and impact of government programs by hindering their ability to provide services and information to all eligible individuals and communities. As the COVID-19 pandemic and other emergencies have amply demonstrated, limited capacity to deliver important communications in languages other than English can also have serious consequences related to public health and safety.

As the Members of this Commission are well aware, providing language access also carries important civil rights implications. Without effective language access measures, an individual may be denied access to a government program for which they are otherwise eligible solely due to their level of proficiency in English. Providing language access to limited English proficient (LEP) individuals has been a requirement under federal civil rights law and regulations for decades. Federal, state, and local efforts to better support language access in government programs have also expanded in the past 25 years with particularly notable growth at the state and local levels in the last five years. Yet despite long-standing civil rights requirements and the growth of such efforts across levels of government, language access remains a work-in-progress, one that is challenging to fully assess due to the limited availability of relevant data and metrics as well as the vast reach of government programs across the country.

My testimony addresses several key topics. First, I will describe the size and distribution of the LEP population in the United States, drawing from various MPI data analyses. Second, I will discuss the current framework that aims to guide the provision of language access in federal programs as well as gaps and challenges facing these efforts, including the recent revocation of Executive Order 13166 by the Trump administration. I will then turn to state and local language access laws and policies, describing the nature, key features, and impact of these efforts before concluding with some comments on the future of language access in government programs [...]"