Reporter Gloria Casas of the Elgin Courier-News covered our partners Xilin Association and their outreach to the Lao community in Elgin:
Fear is just one barrier, he said. The Census forms are not available in Lao, he said. “If they call the Census hotline, there’s a worker who speaks Lao,” he said, but not everyone knows about the translators available on the hotline, he added.
Laotians have been undercounted for years, said Aloun Khotisene, who also works with Xilin Association. For a long time, there was no ethnicity box for Laotians to check on the form, he said. In 2010, an “Other Asian” box was added, but Laotians didn’t necessarily understand they had to mark that box, he said.
Read the full story: Elgin urges Laotian population to get counted for Census