Representatives from those organizations have testified or made public statements in favor of the bill since it was proposed in March 2022 by Senator Teresa Ruiz. One of the agencies, called Partners, stated in a report that often, officers responding to a domestic violence incident spoke first to the English-speaking perpetrator instead of the non-English-speaking victim.
To finance the ambitious program, legislators will use funds from the federal American Rescue Plan and New Jersey’s current budget of USD 500,000 for language access.
In response to critics of the law, some of whom say the funds are better spent on English-teaching programs, Senator Ruiz countered that she was “not trying to create a burden. There’s an opportunity as a government to do better.”
The law’s implementation will be similar to that of the recently launched New York Office of Language Access. Each state government will have to publish a language access plan within 90 days of the bill’s effective date and appoint a language access coordinator, among other requirements.
California, Hawaii, and New York are among the states that now require vital documents to be translated into at least 10 most frequently spoken languages.
In New Jersey, the languages listed by the government as being most commonly spoken are Spanish, Chinese (Mandarin and Cantonese), Korean, Portuguese, Gujarati, Arabic, Polish, Haitian, Russian, Hindi, Tagalog, Italian, Vietnamese, Urdu, and French.
According to US census figures, more than 150 languages are spoken in New Jersey. The fastest-growing community in the state is the Asian-American and Pacific Islanders group, which has grown by 44% since 2010.
Editor’s Note: This article was updated on November 15, 2022 as a result of new information obtained by Slator.
