The Center for Immigration Studies finds that the foreign-born population of the United States numbers 41.3 million, or one out of six adults, more than twice the number than in 1980.
There are many ways to gauge the impact of this huge increase; here's one small but telling way:
I just received paperwork from Independence Blue Cross (IBX) about medical issuance options for 2015. To my surprise, this hyper-routine mailing includes a two-sided sheet, "Multi-language Interpreter Services," that offers "free interpreter services to answer any questions you may have about our health or drug plan." Not only does IBX make this service available in 17 languages, from French Creole to Tagalog to Chinese Cantonese, but it counts English as one of them, as though it's just another language! More than that, it even mangles the name of the language spoken by the overwhelming majority of its users. Read it for yourself: "Someone who speaks English/Language can help you."
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Comments:
(1) Making English just another language to be interpreted points to multiculturalism gone haywire.
(2) Subsidizing these translation services silently increases the insurance premiums for IBX's English speakers.
(3) Why just those 16 foreign languages? Limiting myself just to the Middle East, Hebrew, Persian, and Turkish are missing, not to speak of Armenian, Berber, and Kurdish. And if Chinese rates two dialects, so should Arabic and Kurdish, some of whose dialects are mutually incomprehensible. Logic requires not 16 languages but, say, 160 or even 1,600.
(4) Although Arabic letters go from right to left, numbers in Arabic go from left to right. So, it is amusing to see some amateur get this backwards.
(5) If mundane insurance matters deserve "free" interpretation, surely the far more important conversations between medical personnel on the one side and patients on the other deserve "free" interpretation too. Where does this end? (September 29, 2014)
Oct. 1, 2014 update: A Massachusetts-based doctor informs me that he is "required by law to provide interpreter service to all patients covered by Medicare or Medicaid at no cost to those patients, regardless of the language they speak," and sends me this from the Massachusetts Medical Society for proof:
Guidance for Providing Interpreters: Title VI of the Civil Rights Act of 1964 prohibits those who receive federal funding, including providers of Medicaid or Medicare services, from discriminating on the basis of a person's national origin, including the language he or she speaks. Consequently, physicians who participate in Medicaid, Medicare, or any other federally funded program must ensure meaningful access to those programs for all individuals with limited English proficiency ("LEP individuals") by providing oral language assistance.
Comment: Note the unlimited range of this requirement – any language at all for any service at all. Little wonder that so many doctors dream of abandoning patients with federal funding.
Oct. 5, 2014 update: The Australian government's Department of Human Services offers translation services from no less than 65 languages. Some of the more notable from the Middle East include Assyrian, Dari, Hazaragi, Kurdish (3 dialects thereof), and Maltese – but no Hebrew.
Oct. 8, 2014 update: A California-based doctor points out California law SB 853 that requires all health plans in the state to ensure language access to their members, regardless of difficulty or cost.
