Asian American Legal Defense and Education Fund (AALDEF) has complained to US Census Bureau Director Robert Groves about continuing problems in the Bureau's programs and outreach to Asian Americans.
Since January 2010, AALDEF has received complaints from Asian American community-based organizations in 12 states. While the Census Bureau generally has been responsive to the needs of Asian Americans, problems still persist. They are:
* Mistranslated Korean census forms.
* Telephone Questionnaire Assistance (TQA) centers. Limited English proficient callers cannot get appropriate assistance from the TQA centers. The Chinese hotline is only offered in Mandarin, while Cantonese and Toisan are spoken by many elderly limited English proficient Asian Americans.
* Insufficient information about Questionnaire Assistance Centers (QAC) and Be Counted sites. On March 18, after a two-week delay, the Bureau launched its interactive website to find local QAC and Be Counted sites. However, the website is difficult to navigate and provides insufficient information, such as the language in which assistance is offered.
* Restrictions on providing assistance with Census forms. Community organizations and service providers routinely assist their clients in completing many government forms and other legal documents.
* Concerns about recruitment and hiring of QAC staff and enumerators. AALDEF is concerned about the Bureau's ability to hire sufficient bilingual census-takers for the follow-up enumeration. Census recruiters noted that many prospective enumerators, who spoke the Asian languages of various communities, were unable to pass the Census exam.
* Insufficient assistance at Questionnaire Assistance Centers. Respondents complained that the Census Bureau staff at one QAC site that serves limited English proficient Korean Americans in Philadelphia was not bilingual and was unable to help several Korean senior citizens.
* Available promotional materials ineffective.
* Community leaders complained about the lack of effective advertising about the confidentiality protections of census information and insufficient Asian American outreach staff in Northern Virginia and Detroit. Census staff in New York erroneously said that there were no telephone assistance hotlines in Asian languages, only Spanish.
AALDEF said it will continue to monitor census operations and report on problems as they arise. Individuals can report problems and potential violations of law through a multilingual telephone hotline and online form to an attorney. Individuals may also download the forms, which are available in Arabic, Bangla, Chinese, English, Gujarati, Japanese, Khmer, Korean, Punjabi, Urdu, and Vietnamese.
Founded in 1974, AALDEF is a national organization that protects and promotes the civil rights of Asian Americans. (Source: Inquiry, Mar 30, 2010).