San Francisco Chronicle - (Sunday)
Law would ease language barrier in jobless claims
After fleeing domestic violence, Victoria Vega was living in a San Francisco shelter with her two children and working two jobs when the pandemic hit. She stopped driving for Uber because there were no riders and she was scared of the virus. She had to give up her car because she couldn’t make payments. Her janitorial work also disappeared.
“I tried applying for unemployment benefits, but it was really difficult for me,” she said in Spanish through an interpreter. “I was trying to call and call and call on the Spanish line and nobody would ever answer. I don’t know how to use technology,” so the website was not an option. “I spent months not being able to apply.”
Eventually a friend referred her to a nonprofit with bilingual staff who helped her submit a
claim in August. With the back benefits and help from her brother, she was able to get an apartment for herself and her daughter, Alondra, 16, and son, Bryant, 8. “I didn’t have anything, so that money really helped me out,” she said.
Her situation is hardly unique as the coronavirus ravages the economy, leaving many people needing unemployment benefits. About 7 million Californians speak a language other than English at home. The majority are Spanish speakers but 2.4 million speak a myriad of other tongues. Many toil in lowwage service jobs — mopping floors, flipping burgers, driving ridehail — exactly the kind of work that vanished during shelter in place.
Lack of language access for jobless benefits “creates a tsunami of exclusion for millions of California residents,” said Santosh SeeramSantana, legislative director at Chinese for Affirmative Action, a civil rights nonprofit. A strike force on the Employment Development Department, which administers unemployment, said not being fluent in English presents “insurmountable barriers” to receiving benefits.
“It’s well documented that EDD isn’t working for Englishspeaking claimants,” said Assembly Member David Chiu, DSan Francisco, referring to the many thousands of Californians who have struggled to get their benefits, had their accounts frozen, and/or been unable to verify their identities. “These difficulties are exponentially compounded if you speak a language other than English.”
EDD said in a written response that it sees language access as a priority.
“We are taking a comprehensive, datadriven view toward the issue, as well as exploring options to more substantially expand (limited English proficiency) services,” it said.
Portions of the EDD website are available in Spanish and the agency is seeking to get the whole site translated into Spanish, it said. It “is currently exploring options ... which may include additional languages,” it said. The agency also offers a button for Google Translate on its website and has some YouTube videos in different languages explaining how to recertify for benefits.
EDD has some operators who speak Spanish, Cantonese, Mandarin and Vietnamese, it said, and can also use outside services for interpretation.
EDD did not answer questions about how many bilingual agents it has and how many it has added.
Advocates and lawmakers said that, like all of EDD’s phone support, its language lines are overwhelmed, and that Google Translate’s wordforword approach misses context, especially with complex materials.
Chiu said the situation is critical. “We can’t effectively shut out 7 million people from receiving unemployment benefits during a pandemic and recession,” he said.
That’s why he’s proposing legislation, AB401, that would alleviate language barriers by requiring EDD to identify claimants’ language needs and communicate with them in their preferred language. It would mandate that EDD translate applications and other documents and increase multilingual phone lines. It would also establish a reviews process to monitor progress and deficiencies.
The bill is among a series of EDD reform measures that Assembly members introduced at a teleconference Thursday. Other bills would require the EDD to offer direct deposit of benefits, crosscheck applications against prison rolls, create a consumer advocate office and stop penalizing claimants who accidentally give a wrong answer on forms. All must now go through the regular legislative process.
Chiu’s proposal would require a yettobedetermined amount of funding. Whatever it costs, “it’s a very minor price to pay to ensure that the 40% of Californians who speak a language other than English at home can access desperately needed benefits,” he said.
For that matter, not offering language access is a civil rights violation, he said. “It’s not just the right thing to do; it’s required by law.”
SeeramSantana, of Chinese for Affirmative Action, said her community members, who speak a variety of Asian languages, receive written EDD notices that come only in English or Spanish.
“They can’t read it,” she said. “They don’t understand it. It may lead them in a direction where they become suspect for fraud or don’t have the financial services they need. The consequences are dire for community members who do not speak English or have a limited proficiency in English.”
Joyce Li of San Francisco, who worked two parttime jobs to help support her family of five, saw her hours reduced during shelterinplace. She got some help to submit an unemployment application, but there was a typo, which caused her benefits to be about $450 less a month than she was owed.
“After realizing the mistake, I called EDD’s Chinese line to rectify the issue,” she said in Cantonese through an interpreter. “I called morning, noon and night for many times. However, I never got a response back or had the opportunity to talk to a real live person. I tried both the Cantonese and Mandarin lines, and both don’t work.”
Eventually, a bilingual worker at Chinese for Affirmative Action helped her notify EDD of the mistake. She got reimbursed for part of it, but now she continues to receive the lower amount. “I’m still trying,” she said. “Every day, I call the Chinese EDD lines to see if I can get a response. I still have no luck. It’s quite difficult.
“My situation isn’t uncommon,” Li said. “In my immediate family I have members whose benefits all of a sudden got stopped for no reason, and they tried to call and never got help or response. It’s hard, even impossible, if you don’t know the language.”
SeeramSantana said the language barriers encourage unscrupulous people who offer to help monolingual Californians get their benefits in exchange for an exorbitant fee or a percentage of the check. “Then they’re never seen again or there’s an error,” she said. “And now they have personal information” about their victims.
Jenna Gerry, senior staff attorney at Legal Aid of San Francisco, said that while EDD has taken some steps, it has not actually created “real access for most individuals. The language lines are understaffed and impossible for people to reach, and they’re not in enough languages.” Even when EDD translates materials into Spanish, there is no consistency among the three benefits programs it administers — unemployment, paid family leave and state disability insurance, she said.
“During the pandemic, people are switching between these programs frequently,” she said. They may be out on disability with COVID, then switch to family leave while caring for an ill relative, and then go on unemployment, for instance, she said.
EDD froze 1.4 million accounts in December because of fraud concerns, inadvertently sweeping up many legitimate claimants. To get their benefits restarted, they needed to provide documents to a service called ID.me, “but all the instructions are in English,” Gerry said. (EDD does offer some Spanishlanguage instructions online, though it links to more detailed instructions in English. ID.me said it has some Spanishspeaking agents but could not say how many.)
Vega, who is still trying to get her new home set up, has run into further snags with her jobless benefits. She had problems getting them extended, but Chiu’s office helped. Then her account was frozen, along with many others in December, so she needs help to verify her identity.
Vega wants to return to work but thinks that will have to wait until the pandemic is over. “I was cleaning the offices in buildings where people work, but they aren’t working there anymore,” so there are no jobs, she said. After returning to janitorial work, she hopes to save enough money to buy a car so she can also resume her Uber driving.
She wishes EDD would make things easier for her and others.
“It would be good if they have people that would be answering the phones in Spanish, because a lot of people don’t have access to the internet or they don't know how to use technology,” she said. “I would spend days trying to apply, but they would never answer.”