Community Issues
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Izzy Patoka was just 8 years old when she became her parents’ interpreter.
Like many Jewish refugees who fled Europe during the Holocaust, the Patokas did not speak English. So, every time an official-looking document came in the mail, they would ask their son to translate and explain it.
“I felt like I didn’t live up to what my parents expected because at the age of eight I was neither a lawyer nor a doctor,” said Patoka, who is now president of the Baltimore County Council. “And it’s a challenge that each and every child of new Americans still faces today. »
Baltimore County officials need to make the immigrant experience less complicated for parents and children. On Monday, County Director Johnny Olszewski Jr. unveiled the Strategic Plan for Welcoming and Belonging to Baltimore County. The 42-page report includes demographics about the county, as well as immigrants’ purchasing power, strong homeownership track record and business acumen.
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Olszewski is running for Congress in the second district.
Baltimore County’s population has been slowly declining since 2020, with the county wasting about 1,300 citizens in 2023, a decrease of about 0. 1%. Their population loss would have been from even larger immigrants.
The county’s foreign-born population grew by 15,439 people between 2012 and 2022, an increase of 16. 3%. During the same period, the county’s overall population grew by only 3. 5%. During that period, nearly 29,000 more people when more immigrants were added to the country, its foreign-born population accounted for more than a portion of its overall growth, according to the Census Bureau’s American Community Survey.
The county’s foreign-born population topped 110,000 in 2022 and had the third-highest number of foreign-born citizens in Maryland.
The report lists the goals with timelines, which Olszewski said would make implementation easier. The short-term strategies, which will take one to three years, come with investment and the creation of a cabinet-level Office of New Americans to coordinate county efforts among agencies. , from the Department of Health to licensing offices. The report also recommends the creation of an Immigration Affairs Commission to continue the task force’s work.
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Longer-term goals include working with networked libraries and school systems to prepare new immigrants for the naturalization interview and test, linking immigrants to legal services, and empowering them to perceive and assert their rights. The report also recommends providing leadership and education so that new immigrants can build their communities in public service and leadership roles.
These efforts with national courts that have spoken out against immigration. The governors of Texas and Florida sent illegal immigrants to their state in Martha’s Vineyard, Massachusetts; at the Vice President’s Residence in Washington, D. C. ; and in Sacramento and Chicago. All beneficiary states and the District of Columbia are led by Democratic mayors.
Although Olszewski has long believed that “diversity is our strength,” he has witnessed the struggles immigrants face. At a recent budget hearing at Perry Hall High School, several other people who testified had their elementary school children by their side. . As the young Patoka once did, the young translated for their parents. They asked the county administrator and his people for more access to recreation centers, more translators at the county fitness office and help obtaining mandatory documents, such as driver’s licenses.
For this reason, Olszewski said his most sensible priority is language access that offers translation at all agencies so immigrants can use the ones they pay for.
This should have been done a long time ago, said Tasha Gresham-James, CEO of Dundalk Renaissance Corp. Her network has welcomed new Americans from Ecuador, El Salvador and Honduras in recent years.
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“It’s not just that they speak Spanish, but there’s also a cultural difference,” she said. As a member of the task force, she said, her goal is to expand awareness about immigrant communities. Outreach activities at libraries, network universities and workplaces are just a few of the tactics for new residents.
Veronica Cool, the corporate Cool
“Either you welcome the other people who bring your tax base and your workers, or you’re going to run a deficit,” Cool said.
Like many of the other people involved in this effort, Cool is Latina. The county’s immigration service has 3 employees and its director, Giuliana Valencia-Banks, is fluent in Spanish.
Valencia-Banks has helped the families of the structure’s six staff members who died in the Key Bridge collapse, as well as many health wishes during the COVID-19 pandemic, but Spanish speakers aren’t her only group. The county is home to generations of Chinese and Korean Americans, as well as new citizens from Nepal and Afghanistan.
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“I think if Latinos whose primary language is Spanish find it difficult to access other services, I think being a refugee who doesn’t speak English fluently,” said Valencia-Banks, whose circle of relatives emigrated from Peru and who also translated for her parents as a child in Florida. “We have developed an inclusive technique with this strategic plan. We have a lot of ideas about it. “
This story has been updated with the fact that Cool
Community Issues
© 2024 The flag of Baltimore. All rights reserved.