Congressman Dan Goldman Pushes For Emergency Alert Language Accessibility in FY 2024 Budget

Nearly 25 Percent of New Yorkers Lack English Proficiency 
  
Over 13 Million People in the United States Speak Language Other than English or Spanish 
 
AAPI Community One of Fastest Growing in New York; Traditionally Underserved by Public Resources Due to Lack of Language Accessibility 
 
Read the Letter Here

Washington D.C. – In the FY 2024 budget, Congressman Dan Goldman (NY-10) has requested funding for the Federal Emergency Management Agency (FEMA) to expand life-saving emergency alerts to ideographic languages such as Chinese, Japanese, and Korean. Currently these alerts are only disseminated in English and Spanish. Asian Americans are expected to be the nation’s largest immigrant group within 30 years, yet only about 57 percent of the Asian immigrant community is proficient in English. New York’s 10th Congressional District is home to some of the largest and most historic Asian communities in the country. This funding request would ensure that everyone would have access to the life-saving information disseminated by FEMA’s national alerts.  
 
This request is one of Congressman Goldman’s letters to the House Appropriations Committee for inclusion in the Budget of the United States Government, Fiscal Year 2024.  
 
“Emergency alert language access is critical for the safety of non-English or Spanish speaking immigrant communities like those in the Manhattan Chinatown and Sunset Park neighborhoods of my district,” Congressman Dan Goldman said. “The AAPI community is one of the fastest growing in New York, and presently large swaths of our community are cut off from the vital information disseminated in our national alert system. I’m committed to expanding language access across the board for our community because no one should be at risk of missing critical information during a natural disaster or other emergency due to a language barrier.”  
 
The Federal Emergency Management Agency (FEMA) uses the Integrated Public Art and Warning System (IPAWS) for local alerting that provides authenticated emergency and life-saving information to the public through mobile phones using Wireless Emergency Alerts.  
 
Wireless Emergency Alerts are sent in times of national emergency, natural disasters, or imminent threats including active shooters, public safety alerts, human-made disasters, and AMBER Alerts.  

Currently these alerts are only disseminated in English and Spanish.  
 
Congressman Goldman’s request would require FEMA to submit a report on the resources necessary to support Wireless Emergency Alerts issued using non-Roman characters. The report should outline the data and technological capacity upgrades that would be necessary as well as the systems and technologies that other localities or countries have adopted to successfully issue emergency alerts to multilingual residents using ideographic languages. 
 
These funds would be used by FEMA and IPAWS to expand language accessibility to languages other than English or Spanish, including ideographic languages such as Chinese, Japanese, and Korean.

###