Hispanic Democrats demand funding for multilingual coronavirus messaging

A group of Congressional Hispanic Caucus (CHC) members asked Monday for Congress to fund coronavirus-response messaging in languages other than English.

In a letter to House and Senate leaders of both parties, the members asked “that any further legislation include robust funding for the development and dissemination of all official public health information, announcements, and proclamations in multiple languages on radio and television networks.”

“Over the past several days, we have learned that our non-English speaking constituents have had limited access to reliable information concerning the COVID-19 response, including official documents, announcements and proclamations from local, state, and federal officials,” the members wrote to Speaker Nancy Pelosi (D-Calif.), Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell (R-Ky.), Senate Minority Leader Charles Schumer (D-N.Y.) and House Minority Leader Kevin McCarthy (R-Calif.).

“The lack of information and prevalence of disinformation have demonstrated the urgent need for announcements to be disseminated effectively and in a multi-lingual way,” they added.

The letter was signed by Reps. Vicente Gonzalez (Texas), Jesús García (Ill.), Ben Ray Luján (N.M), Jimmy Gomez (Calif.), Filemon Vela (Texas), Norma Torres (Calif.), Tony Cárdenas (Calif.), Debbie Mucarsel-Powell (Fla.), Sylvia Garcia (Texas), Darren Soto (Fla.), Ruben Gallego (Ariz.), Veronica Escobar (Texas), Raul Ruiz (Calif.), Nanette Diaz Barragán (Calif.), and Grace Napolitano (Calif.).

The response to the coronavirus crisis, and its accompanying public service announcements, has for the most part been delivered in English by the federal government, despite the around 25 million Americans who are not proficient in the English language.

“In the absence of medical treatments or vaccines, we know that one of the few means to halt the spread of the virus is through preventive actions by the public,” wrote the CHC members.

“Therefore, local, state, and federal public officials must communicate clear and concise messages that are targeted to local audiences, available in the media they regularly utilize, and in the languages they primarily speak at home,” they added.

Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) information is available online in Spanish and Simplified Chinese, but on a more limited basis than English-language information.

The Federal Emergency Management Agency (FEMA) has a language action plan that includes 19 widely-spoken languages, but it has not yet been fully activated to deal with the coronavirus response.

And non-English-language messaging has been slow to reach the communities it targets, increasing the chances of contagion among those populations.

In one case, the CHC’s campaign arm, Bold PAC, made a federal one-page information sheet available in Spanish before the federal government published its own translation, a day after publishing the original in English.

In their letter, the CHC members ask for funding to be included not only to translate the materials, but to make them available through media consumed regularly by language-diverse populations.

“Reaching our non-English speaking communities will enable us to more effectively curb the spread of this virus,” wrote the members.