Emerging and Established Efforts by States to Expand Language Access

For the more than 25 million U.S. residents who have limited proficiency in English, language barriers can prevent or hinder access to critical public services such as education, health care, emergency response, and the legal system. Federal, state, and local government agencies also regularly need to communicate with linguistically diverse communities to conduct outreach, deliver services, and provide information. Removing language barriers to public services—commonly known as providing language access—has been a longstanding civil-rights requirement for state and local agencies and other entities that receive federal funding. These realities and growing U.S. linguistic diversity have made the provision of language access an important practical concern for all levels of government. State governments, in particular, can play important and unique roles in expanding language access given key functions and services they directly oversee, such as elections, policing, and granting drivers’ licenses, as well as the broad powers they hold in receiving and administering funds for numerous federal programs and funding streams. This webinar from the Migration Policy Institute’s National Center on Immigrant Integration Policy explores language access efforts in Colorado, Michigan, and New York—three states that provide important lessons for ensuring the effectiveness and long-term viability of state laws and policies that seek to ensure public services and information are accessible to all residents, regardless of the language they speak. State leaders provide insights into how their language access efforts evolved, how they are structured, and innovative approaches undertaken to reduce language barriers across their states. This webinar also previews findings from an MPI report on recent language access work undertaken by Colorado’s state agencies.