Welfare Policy Unfair to Immigrants, Group Says By HANNAN ADELY
A sweeping law enacted by Congress and President Clinton in 1996 required welfare recipients to be in an educational program, job training program or in a workfare program like the city's Work Experience Program (WEP). But many of the immigrants went into WEP without being informed of their options by welfare caseworkers, said CAAAV representatives. Eating Welfare reports that many immigrants were cut off from welfare benefits because they weren't provided with accurate or translated information. The Human Resources Administration (HRA), the city agency that administers welfare benefits, did not respond to questions posed by the Norwood News. "One hundred percent of the people we surveyed in this community were denied job training," said CAAAV organizer Eric Tang. "It's ridiculous given the fact you're asking them to move from welfare to work" Those people who go into WEP say the work, mainly cleaning up parks and other public land, is dead-end. "WEP is not job training," said CAAAV organizer Kim Nguyen. "They're learning to pick up garbage" Immigrant WEP workers say they cannot communicate with their managers and feel isolated at their jobs. Loann Nguyen, a 60-year-old Cambodian woman who has been working in WEP for five years, said that when she tried to ask for a day off, her boss wouldn't let her and she couldn't argue because of her limited English. "People in my situation - over 60 - shouldn't have to work everyday," she said.
To cope, community residents said they often brought their children into the welfare offices to translate for them, even though the kids sometimes had to miss school. One 9-year-old girl at the press conference explained she took off from school a few times to translate for her mother, but worried because her knowledge of Cambodian was limited. CAAAV representatives had met with Elaine Darby, director of the HRA welfare office on Bainbridge Avenue, and with two HRA officials, who, according to Tang, agreed the center should have translators. But weeks later, no one had been hired for the job. So, after the press conference, community members and organizers marched over to the office, carrying signs and bearing slogans in support of welfare reform. CAAAV organizers met with Darby, who responded that no translators were available at that time. She did say, however, that HRA officials would set a timeline for hiring a full-time translator. In the meantime, Darby said, translation would be provided by telephone. Tang spoke with HRA officials the day after the protest. "They haven't said anything definitive," he said. "They said they couldn't get a translator from central administration" That's unacceptable to CAAAV. The group, which has sent the agency a list of qualified candidates for translator positions, points out that HRA has funding specifically for this purpose. CAAAV stressed that southeast Asians aren't the only immigrant community having difficulty communicating with welfare office workers. At the press conference, members of the Brooklyn-based advocacy group, Make the Road by Walking, said translation was not available for the Spanish-speaking community in Bushwick either. On a positive note, Tang noted that one change was apparent when a community member went to the welfare office on Bainbridge two days after the press conference. When workers learned she didn't speak English, they provided her with telephone access to a translator.
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Eating
Welfare, a recent study by the Committee Against Anti-Asian Violence
(CAAAV), found that most immigrants in the Bronx' southeast Asian
community who rely on public assistance have not been offered translation
or job training services. At a press conference on Aug. 23 at Concourse
House, CAAAV highlighted these problems and demanded reform in welfare
policies.
CAAAV,
which has also, in the last couple of years, protested the lack of
translation services for parents in Community School District 10 and
for patients at a Montefiore health center, estimates that over 80
percent of the southeast Asian population in the Bronx is receiving
some type of public assistance. (The north Bronx has the highest concentration
of Vietnamese and Cambodian refugees in the city.) Even though state
and federal law requires that HRA welfare offices hire translators,
there are no translators in the local office on Bainbridge Avenue
near Fordham Road, or at many other city offices, CAAAV reported.