October 28, 2021

The AAPI Population in Worcester, Massachusetts

BY Nghia TrinhMIE

I am currently the staff attorney leading the Asian Outreach and Advocacy Project at Community Legal Aid, funded by the Harry Dow Memorial Legal Assis¬tance Fund. I am a product of a Massachusetts upbring¬ing through and through and I have never been outside of the Commonwealth for a period of longer than three weeks. I grew up in the suburbs of Boston and went to college in Waltham; after a few years working as a legal assis¬tant for a South Boston IP law firm, I enrolled in law school at Northeastern University School of Law.

Aside from instilling regional pride in me, my parents always made it a very important point to remember and honor the history and sacrifices of my ancestors and they made sure I would never forget my ethnic identity. I grew up speaking Vietnamese as a first language and I eventually learned to fluently read and write in Vietnamese as well. My parents did not give me a westernized name and I never adopted a western¬ized nickname, though I guess the common pronuncia¬tion of my name serves as a pseudo-nickname as it is an incredibly butchered version of the actual Vietnam-ese pronunciation. I have found that being completely bilingual is an incredible advantage…among other things; it helped me qualify for my current position!

The Asian Outreach and Advocacy Project at Community Legal Aid in Worcester focuses on increas¬ing access to legal services and addressing the legal needs of the low-income and limited English profi¬ciency AAPI community in Worcester County. Ulti¬mately, my vision for the Project is to become a safe haven where low-income AAPI community members with varying levels of English proficiency can feel comfortable to come for legal aid and advice.

The project collaborates with a number of community partners, like the Worcester Senior Center and the Southeast Asian Coalition in order to provide basic legal education to the AAPI community as well as offer legal services for those in need. Recently, we have given presentations regarding Medicare benefits in multi¬ple languages for our AAPI elders at the Senior Center. Next month, we are scheduled to give presentations regarding Fair Housing law to the community in collabo¬ration with the Fair Housing Project at Community Legal Aid.

The AAPI population in Worcester has been steadily growing in the past few decades and the AAPI commu¬nity is quickly gaining more and more recognition. The City of Worcester, and Worcester County as a whole, remains a vibrant hub for Vietnamese Americans in Massachusetts. At about 6,000 individuals currently, the City of Worcester is home to the second largest concen¬tration of Vietnamese Americans in the Commonwealth.2 Worcester County is home to about 8,000 Vietnamese Americans, about a ten percent increase from 2010, and they are the second largest concentration of foreign-born residents in the county.2 Worcester County is also home to more than 8,000 Chinese Americans, of whom only about 2,000 reside in the City of Worcester, meaning these individuals and families are more widely dispersed throughout the county.
Unfortunately, poverty rates for this population in Worcester are high—24.5% for families and 27% for all people. Fewer Vietnamese Americans in Worcester have bachelors or graduate degrees than do their counterparts statewide. The median household income of Vietnam¬ese Americans in Worcester is $35,114, which is about 78% of the median household income of the city’s total population. Additionally, in the past decade, Worcester has emerged as the predominant city for placement of refugees in Massachusetts. From 2007-2015, Worcester’s Southeast Asian refugee community has included people from Vietnam, Bhutan, and Burma.

Beyond financial and economic turmoil, a growing societal presence goes hand in hand with growing problems. CLA conducted a needs assessment in 2018-2019 which identified several priority needs of the AAPI community we serve. These included immi¬gration issues such as naturalization, disability-based waivers and LPR renewals; language access; and access to public benefits. In my own practice, I’ve seen a host of issues dealing with government benefits (both federal and state), housing issues, and family law issues, amongst a plethora of other things. All of this was compounded by the COVID-19 outbreak and a surge in anti-AAPI hate crimes across the world.

Growing up in and around the Boston area, I am no stranger to “casual” racism. I have been racially taunted and teased numerous times: at Red Sox games, on the T, it feels like everywhere. But starting in early 2020, everything changed. NextShark, an Asian Ameri¬can news outlet, started covering a sudden surge in hate crimes against Asians across the world. The sheer volume was staggering and it seemed like I was reading about hate crimes against Asians and AAPIs multiple times a day, spread throughout the entire world.

Since I began working at CLA in Worcester eight months ago I have heard of numerous incidents of community members being harassed or verbally abused. Often, the victim is an elder who does not understand English and did not comprehend what someone just screamed at them. A silver lining, if you can call it that, is that I have not heard anything about physical abuse in Worcester, though we can never be sure that it isn’t happening; AAPI community members are often introverted and will internalize racism to resist imposing on another’s time or risk embarrass¬ing themselves. Oftentimes, they may not seek help to address their problems or even acknowledge that prob¬lems exist.

Janet Vo, the attorney who preceded me at Community Legal Aid, used to hold in-person intake hours at our community partner locations on a monthly basis. Over the years, this face-to-face interaction cultivated an important trusting relation¬ship between Attorney Vo and the AAPI community that this position serves. Of course, because of the pandemic I have been unable to continue this practice of in-person interaction since I began work. Instead,

I have begun to sit in on weekly virtual meetings with Vietnamese and Chinese elders to get more and more exposure to them so that they feel more trusting and comfortable approaching me with their issues. Sincethe pandemic has shown signs of easing up, I have begun scheduling walk-in hours with our community partners again, which should be a big help in getting awareness of our services out to the community.

Beyond this, word of mouth is a strong endorse-ment and a great way to spread awareness. When I take on a client, I may not always have the legal expertise to solve their problem right away, but you can bet that I will put everything I have into assisting that person. One wonderful aspect of community lawyering is that the gratitude is completely genuine — I can almost feel how grateful my clients are and they often refer me to their friends and peers. I have had at least a few new clients as a direct result of a former client’s referral.

Legal trainings and presentations are also a good way to spread awareness of our services. As stated above, I have held a few virtual trainings with commu¬nity members in the past and already have a few in-person trainings scheduled for the future. These presentations not only help to educate and inform the community, but also serve as an example of what we can offer individuals seeking legal help and further build our relationship with the community.

CLA has been fortunate enough to receive a grant from the Harry H. Dow Memorial Legal Assistance Fund for the past several years. CLA makes up the difference with general support funding, acknowl¬edging the importance of this project for our client community. The Project has provided legal assistance to about 300 low-income and elderly individuals and families, cultivated relationships with several commu¬nity stakeholders, and conducted more than two dozen community education workshops to the general public and advocates, including the Southeast Asian Coali¬tion, Worcester Senior Center, and Asian Task Force Against Domestic Violence. Additionally, the Project supervised and mentored three student interns, all of whom identify as Asian Pacific Americans, creating a pipeline of future attorneys committed to serving the AAPI community.

1 Nghia Trinh is a staff attorney in the Asian Outreach Unit of Community Legal Aid in Worcester. He gradu-ated from Northeastern University School of Law in 2020 with a concentration in Environmental Law. In his spare time, he enjoys hiking, reading, and spending time with his family. Nghia may be reached at ntrinh@ cla-ma.org.
2 Lo, Shauna and Tran, Thao, “Profiles of Asian American Subgroups in Massachusetts: Vietnamese Americans in Massachusetts” (2012). Institute for Asian American Studies Publications. Paper 30.