restrada's blog posts

People who work in law enforcement throughout the country are debating the principles of Arizona's new statute. What could this type of law mean for police officers' relationships with immigrant communities?

Recently, I conducted a site visit for Vera’s Unaccompanied Children Program, which helps legal service providers increase pro bono legal representation for immigrant children who have no parent or guardian to help them as they undergo removal (deportation) proceedings. The provider that I visited uses a host of child-friendly tools to inform unaccompanied children about their legal rights, the U.S. legal system, and why they are being removed. One of the most innovative tools I saw was the court tour.

A few weeks ago I was on a “What Works” panel at the 2nd Annual Hawaii Conference on Language Access. In addition to feeling extremely lucky to have an opportunity to swim, snorkle, and surf, I was excited to learn about language access issues in a state whose linguistic norms are very different from the rest of the country's. (For example, Hawaii’s Constitution recognizes Hawaiian as one of the state’s official languages.)
 

I grew up in a Spanish- and English-speaking household and feel comfortable speaking, reading, and writing in both languages. However, I’ve often wondered whether I could call myself truly bilingual.

Six months after Bridging the Language Divide was published, it’s still creating interest and discussion!

On July 14th, I was in Tampa, Florida, moderating a panel on Solutions to the Challenges of Providing Services to Individuals with Limited English Proficiency at the 2009 Community Capacity Development Office (CCDO) national conference. The panel included an attorney from the U.S. Department of Justice’s Office of Justice Programs, Office for Civil Rights, and representatives from three police departments.

Storm Lake, a city of about 10,000 people midway between Des Moines and Omaha, Nebraska, has the distinction of being the most diverse city in Iowa. This is largely the result of demographic changes experienced over the past 20 years. In the early 1990s, Laotian refugees resettled in the city and, later, Mexican immigrants arrived to work the local meat processing plants. I visited Storm Lake in August 2008 as part of a project to identify promising practices for overcoming language barriers in policing.