Ester Da Silva, a Plainfield school nurse and mom of two, is volunteering with the Plainfield Health Department as an interpreter for mainly Spanish-speaking residents who tested positive for COVID-19.
New Jersey’s Hispanic community – made up of more than 1 million people – is facing disproportionate impacts from the outbreak. She says for non-English speakers, language barriers can it make it difficult to get help.
“As soon as I start talking and I speak Spanish, I can feel that they feel a little more relaxed, and they’re more open to talk about it, and then they have a lot of questions,” Da Silva said. “They always ask a lot about the virus itself, like, ‘How did I get it because I don’t know anybody who got it?’ ‘What should I do? Should I go to the hospital?’ I have talked to people who are afraid to get tested because they think about the whole immigration thing, but I clarify to them that this has nothing to do with immigration.”
Katia Paz Goldfarb, the assistant vice president for the Hispanic Serving Initiatives at Montclair State University, says New Jersey’s Hispanic population is also struggling with access to health care and job loss.
“Restaurants, hotels, driving, cleaning, those kinds of industry and that kinds of work are the jobs that pay less but also some of them are considered essential. You may not have the benefits, or some places are closed — if you cannot got to the offices to clean, what do you do?” she said.
And with Hispanic parents struggling at home, Goldfarb says their kids, many of whom are the first to go to college, are forced to put education on the back burner.
“They may lose their jobs, they cannot live on campus, they have to help with taking care of younger siblings, or nieces or nephews, or elderly grandparents because parents are going to work,” Goldfarb said.
In response to the crisis, Goldfarb says Montclair is holding virtual summer programs to prepare high school students for college. The university is searching for creative ways to reach and educate the Hispanic community.
