From Newsweek Pakistan
by Eric Cortellessa
DESPITE EXPERIENCING THE SECOND FASTEST POPULATION GROWTH OF ANY GROUP IN THE U.S., LINGUISTIC BARRIERS ARE LEAVING PAKISTANI-AMERICANS BEHIND.
Immigrating to the U.S. is challenging under the best circumstances. For people like Atthar Mirza, whose parents emigrated from Pakistan, living in America also meant having to deal with a factor downplayed by most immigrants: a language barrier.
“The Pakistani community faces the challenge of a language spoken rather rarely in America,” he toldNewsweek in an email interview. “Or at least perceived by Americans as rare, because I don’t find translations for important documents, signs, and warnings written in Urdu very often.”
Pakistani-Americans are the second fastest growing group in the United States, according to the Pew Research Center, and yet many are unable to fully adapt to their new lives due to a persistent language barrier. Research conducted by Asian Americans Advancing Justice shows over 80 percent of Pakistani-Americans do not speak English at home, while over 12 percent of the community suffers from “linguistic isolation.” Similarly, roughly 25 percent of Bangladeshi immigrants and 10 percent of Indians face the same problems.
The U.S. Census Bureau defines a household’s linguistic isolation as any circumstance in which no family member over 14 speaks English “very well.” The same census states that roughly 363,699 people of Pakistani descent are currently living in the U.S. Extrapolated, this could mean over 43,000 Pakistani-Americans are currently dealing with this problem.
Atthar, now 20 and attending the University of Virginia, says his parents encountered the problem shortly after moving to the Washington, D.C. metropolitan area. “They tell stories about the hardships all the time,” he says, adding that this is a common issue for new immigrants and can become exponentially worse in some cases if no one is available to guide them.
Thirteen years ago, the D.C. Language Access Coalition, an alliance of organizations serving immigrant communities around the Washington area, found that many of their clients were having trouble accessing public benefits due to the language barrier. This was especially concerning for families with low incomes because they were unable to sign up for essential services like Medicaid, which had no applications available in Urdu.
