Mario Corrado and Miguel Herrera moved from within Prince George’s County to the town of Morningside, seeking affordable housing and homes with large enough space for a family. Both men speak limited English.
Corrado, 49, moved to Morningside two years ago with his family. While he enjoys the quiet community, Corrado faces obstacles as a resident with limited English proficiency.
“On occasion, when I’ve had to go down to the police station, they’ve had to get me a translator,” Corrado said. “They find a way to translate, like with someone over the phone.”
In Hyattsville, where he lived previously, there were more bilingual residents, including the police officers, he said, so communication was easier.
Herrera, 38, and his family have lived in Morningside for six years. While his primary language is Spanish, his wife and two children are more proficient in English and are able to translate communication from the town for him as needed.
“All communication is in English,” said Herrera. He noted translators have been available to residents when needed in the past.
The town is working to overcome language barriers to provide an opportunity for all citizens who want to participate in the town’s events and governance, town officials said. They’ve enhanced they’re website with a clickable conversion option that automatically translates the site from English to Spanish, and they turn to bilingual residents for assistance for other translation issues.
“It was the 2020 census,” said Karen D. Rooker, Morningside town clerk. Rooker served as mayor from 2007-2013. “We had a lot of people who were not participating.”
Rooker described the moment when town officials realized they would need to find a translator to bridge an emerging linguistic divide. Some of the Spanish-speaking residents, according to Rooker, were struggling to understand the town’s communication around the census.
Language barriers are one of the factors that several experts say contribute to the country’s Hispanic population’s undercount in the U.S. census. A Pew Research overview of the 2020 census highlighted that one in 20 Hispanic persons in the U.S. was not counted in the most recent census. Language barriers, cultural barriers and the pandemic may have contributed to the nationwide undercount, the report said.
“I think we did as best we could,” Rooker said, who lamented the pandemic’s negative impact on the census process.
While bridging the language gap can help to solve issues for the town, for Prince George’s County’s growing Hispanic communities, learning how to communicate in English is deeply personal.
For some, learning English is the first step to achieving an American dreamNorman Varela, 52, drives 45 minutes from his home in District Heights to attend English language evening classes in Takoma Park. He has faced more than the challenge of overcoming a language barrier when he arrived in the U.S. having lost his right leg while migrating through Mexico from Honduras. He rolled up his pant leg to show the toll the journey through Mexico exacted upon him, visible through his prosthesis.
Valera has struggled to communicate with his English-speaking wife. He had difficulty understanding the doctor. Further, with minimal proficiency in English and disabled from the journey, he struggled to find work, a situation he described as negatively affecting his self esteem.
“I was like a rat hiding away while people with English-speaking capabilities went off to work and I was jobless but wanting to work and unable to talk to anyone,” he said. “It wasn’t easy.”
Navigating public transportation was another challenge for Varela.
Unable to read signage designating bus stops and their direction, Varela described an instance in which he got lost for six hours when attempting to take the bus. Another time, he boarded the DC Metro with the intent of visiting his sister in Washington, D.C., but ultimately ended up lost in Virginia for four hours before finding his way home.
Valera is taking English language classes with CASA, a nonprofit immigrant advocacy organization serving Maryland’s Black, Hispanic, Indigenous and Immigrant communities. The organization offers English as a second language classes for adults throughout Montgomery and Prince George’s counties. As his proficiency in English increases he has grown more confident.
“These are the first few months that I feel the urge to laugh and cry,” he said with a smile.
Because of his participation in CASA’s ESL program, Varela has been able to better communicate with his wife and her kids, coworkers and classmates whose primary languages are those other than Spanish.
“When I didn’t know how to speak English, I felt less than,” he said. “And now I realize how useful I am.”
Edis Villanueva, 49, lives in Montgomery County. Also attending evening classes at CASA, she described how learning English is also important to achieving her American dream.
“I moved here without even knowing how to say ‘hello’, ‘how are you’, or even how to give an address in English,” said Villanueva. Prior to her move to Silver Spring, she lived in Houston, Texas, where she was able to get by by communicating with other Spanish speakers, as they were commonplace.
Villanueva recalled feeling welcomed by her community but struggling to hold conversations with neighbors. It was a challenge for her to submit maintenance requests to her leasing office when a repair was needed in her apartment and difficult to understand communication from her children’s school.
Villnueva believes the courses she’s taking to learn English will have a positive impact on her business. A food vendor who sells mostly tamales and empanadas, Villanueva hopes to expand her customer base to English speakers not previously able to understand her offerings.
For Spanish speakers like Villanueva and Varela, learning English is a major step in their goals, too.
“We all have dreams, us Hispanics,” said Varela “But, the first step is to speak English so we can make our dreams our reality.”
A growing population across the stateAs bridging the language gap continues to pose issues, the number of Hispanic residents has been steadily growing across Maryland, with Prince George’s County numbers leading the way. Data from the American Community Survey from 2011-2021 shows that Prince George’s County has seen the greatest numeric increase in Hispanic residents in comparison to all counties across the state. With an estimated population increase of roughly 61,000 people over this time period, the percentage of Hispanic people in the county has grown by nearly 50%.
In fact, every single county and Baltimore City from the period of 2011-2021, has seen an increase in its Hispanic population, with a majority of Maryland’s counties experiencing an increase of more than 25%, according to the ACS.
Hispanic Americans who live in the U.S. longer tend to have a greater command of the English language. Many newly immigrated Spanish speakers in the U.S. may lack English proficiency, according to an analysis of ACS data published by the Pew Research Center. Roughly 26% of new Hispanic immigrants report being proficient in English.
Within Maryland, a reported 42.8% of foreign-born residents were proficient in English in 2021, up roughly 3% from 39.9% proficiency reported in 2000, according to ACS data. Still, the percentage of foreign-born residents reported as having limited English proficiency remained virtually flat at 37.8% and 37.6% in 2021 and 2000, respectively. Of households where Spanish is the primary language spoken at home, 44.5% of residents reported themselves as limited in English proficiency.
Political Representation has become an issue some are trying to addressThe inability to connect with state institutions and political representation due to language barriers can create negative outcomes.
“If we don’t get representation, then we become an afterthought,” Madelin Martinez, executive director for the Maryland Legislative Latino Caucus, said during a Zoom interview. “Then our needs are not considered, and our voices …are not elevated to the level where decisions are made.”
Martinez grew up in El Salvador and moved to the United States as a teenager. She has been working in her current position since November 2021. Martinez pointed to COVID statistics and data surrounding educational outcomes to emphasize the need to successfully reach Hispanic residents through civic engagement.
“God forbid something happens again like COVID,” she said. “Then our communities are left behind with ZIP codes that have the highest concentration of Latinos having the highest number of positive cases [and] the lowest number of people getting vaccinated.”
The zip code 20783 which includes areas off Hyattsville, Adelphi and Langley park is a predominantly Hispanic zip code. The zip code faced, at times, the highest number of COVID-19 cases in the county, according to data from the Maryland Department of Health Prevention and Health Promotion Administration.
But for Martinez, education is the crux of the matter.
“One way you can find out how our communities are struggling, look at the test scores, the graduation rates, the dropout rates of Latino students, compared to the general population in P.G. County,” Martinez said.
Close to 40% of Prince George’s County students are Hispanic, according to enrollment data on the Maryland State Department of Education website — up from 25% of enrolled students 10 years ago and 11%, 20 years ago. But graduation rates are lower among Hispanic students in the county and dropout rates are higher. The graduation and dropout rates for all students are 77% and 16% respectively. For Hispanic students, it’s 62% and 29% respectively.
Hispanic students are the only cultural group in the county with a graduation rate of less than 80%, the county data show.
Martinez said that attracting more leadership sensitive to the linguistic and cultural needs of the Hispanic population could improve outcomes for them.
“We need leaders that can understand that and develop or improve the current systems in a way that would work for these families so that our test scores, our graduation rates, our drop-out rates improve,” she said.
Martinez said the leadership across the county should focus on “developing plans that include how to hire, recruit and keep talent that is supporting and meeting the needs of the immigrant populations and Latinos in Prince George’s County.”
Inclusivity in MorningsideIn Morningside, town officials use a variety of methods to communicate with Spanish speakers that have low English language proficiency. One of the main efforts to improve communication with these residents has been through implementing a translatable website. But they also engage younger or bilingual individuals to help when needed.
Mayor Bennard Cann has served as mayor of the town since 2016. He moved to Morningside in 2007 and kept to himself until his house caught fire in 2009, according to Cann. The generous response from the community prompted him to get more involved with the town.
When he became mayor, Cann said his mission was to ensure that he helped to create a community that was inclusive, and he created the town’s website to help improve inclusivity. Now, in an effort to include non-English speakers, the town has worked to make the website translatable into multiple languages including Spanish..
“It’s a challenge,” said Cann regarding ensuring communication with non-English speaking citizens works and pointing to a lack of resources as an underlying factor toward bridging the language gap. “We had a staff member that left us about a year ago that would assist us in translating, “ he said.
The website helps with some level of communication but for other issues, “it’s a harder lift,” said Cann, adding that the town figures out a way.
“If we have something that really needs to get out, we will find someone in the community,” said Cann.
He said that working with some of the younger bilingual population has been a key to bridging the language gap. But bilingual community volunteers would be welcomed.
“We’re always seeking assistance, volunteers, to help us with communication with the residents.”
Cann pointed to the outcome at community events the town hosts as an indicator that people from all walks of life are getting engaged at the town level but believes there’s still more to be done.
“We’re not going to be happy with the status quo. We always want to engage more and more. That’s my goal,” said Cann.