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PUBLIC TESTIMONY
Testimony by Aracelis Lucero, Executive Director of MASA, on Language Justice and Immigrant Support
5:29:04
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6 min
Aracelis Lucero, Executive Director of MASA, testified on the importance of language justice and support for immigrant communities. She emphasized the need for continued funding for interpreter training, especially for languages of limited diffusion, and highlighted MASA's work in preparing immigrants for legal processes.
- Requested $7.8 million for the Community Interpreter Bank and language worker-owned cooperatives
- Highlighted the training of 27 interpreters, including 13 for indigenous languages
- Advocated for continued funding for adult literacy initiatives and increased funding for communication in the New York Public School System
Aracelis Lucero
5:29:04
Hello everybody.
5:29:05
My name is Araceli Susero from MASA.
5:29:08
Thank you for the opportunity to testify today.
5:29:11
I'm also gonna focus on language justice but also have other nuggets in there that we wanted to plug in.
5:29:17
We are an organization that is based in the South Bronx.
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We partner with immigrant communities from Latin America and indigenous communities living in New York City to strengthen literacy, leadership, and power.
5:29:30
As an our immigrant community and advocates continue to navigate a cruel anti immigrant political climate that seeks to instill fear and rip families apart.
5:29:39
I think we understand the urgency we are facing and the need for continued support.
5:29:43
I'm going to start off with just echoing the ask from the New York Immigration Coalition, the 7,800,000.0 that we're requesting for the continuation of the Community Interpreter Bank, and the funding for the language worker owned cooperatives being led by Massa, ACT, and Asian American Federation.
5:30:01
We started this project in 2017 and before that with Local Law 30 to focus on ensuring that languages of limited diffusion were also equally able to access interpretation services that were of quality.
5:30:23
And this would include community legal health and education interpreting as part of this initiative.
5:30:27
We currently Do you guys hear that?
Kayt Tiskus
5:30:40
Maybe it's my computer.
Farah N. Louis
5:30:48
Give me one second.
Sophie Dalsimer
5:30:51
Okay.
5:30:52
So,
Aracelis Lucero
5:30:53
as part of the initiative, we currently have a 27 interpreters in the pipeline, 52 of which are currently taking work force development classes to support their journey towards becoming interpreters.
5:31:05
We have approximately 40 interpreters who are going to be trained by the June.
5:31:11
'20 '7 of those interpreters are English and Spanish.
5:31:14
They hail from Mexico, Peru, Puerto Rico, Dominican Republic, Colombia, Ecuador, and El Salvador.
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And, we have 13 indigenous interpreters who are currently being trained in Mam, Mepa, Tunsabi, Nawal Garifuna, and Quechua.
5:31:28
And, we have students that speak Purepecha, Quechua, Kiche, and Haitian Creole also in the pipeline.
5:31:35
23 of our districts have been outreached and were part of the process.
5:31:43
And, this summer, we intend to continue to train interpreters to do their practice and to pick where they wanna specialize.
5:31:53
And, I talk about all of this because it is really, really Like, we've gotten this far and it's really important to continue to support this initiative.
5:32:00
There's a lot of interest and a lot of people that have the assets of our languages to offer and to provide better services, especially in this need where due process is being violated and immigrants don't really know what to do, increase to access and education in the languages that they speak is really important.
5:32:21
I also wanted to briefly talk about the Prostate Plus project and really focus on the plus part.
5:32:31
This is part of the Aslan network as we're finding out today that most of those providers as part of that project aren't being funded.
5:32:40
We have not yet heard, but we did want to share that we have part of our funding is funded by Moya and the other part is privately funded by foundations.
5:32:51
The importance of that project is that just like everybody else has spoken about the OASO closing, people need to go somewhere.
5:33:01
A lot of those people are coming to all of these organizations.
5:33:05
Some of the work that we're focusing on is how to do trial prep preparation for them, what to expect, how to be able to fight their case.
5:33:14
We heard how overwhelmed lawyers are, and so part of this work is to continue to support the people who are or who have to navigate the process pro se.
5:33:25
You know, give them a little bit more of an opportunity.
5:33:29
We continue to develop educational resources so that they're accessible to a larger community.
5:33:34
And, part of that project also includes ensuring that there's translation and interpretation services.
5:33:42
The How this all fits is that, Afri Lingual and our nonprofits are also being tapped into to do that work.
5:33:49
And, we've provided interpretation services for people going to their asylum interviews, trying to go to the court, and we're getting increased requests.
5:33:59
And so, there's an urgency to continue to move the interpreters that we currently have through the pipeline and to specialize them, and we can't do that without the continued funding.
5:34:09
So, it'd be really sad to see that just be cut abruptly.
5:34:13
We're also here to advocate for the Rapid Response Network and Knife Up, and last, I'll just plug in two more initiatives, the adult literacy initiative.
5:34:22
We need to continue to provide opportunities for our community to be able to progress and to move into workforce development, irregardless of where there there's a lot of fear, but they still deserve an opportunity to go learn and to live their lives, you know, and to better themselves.
5:34:38
And last but not least, I do wanna call for increased funding for the communication initiative with the New York Public School System.
5:34:48
Right now, it's at 3,000,000.
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We're asking it to be increased for 7,000,000.
5:34:53
And again, that additional 3,000,000 is to go towards meeting the growing need for translation interpretation services in the school system, which as we see is being impacted and prime place for community members to get information.
5:35:08
Thank you for your time.