Indian population's growth presents new issues at polls

Three older men stood together at a Bensalem Township polling station Tuesday, chatting in Gujarati, an Indian language, about the election.

They weren't there to vote; they aren't yet U.S. citizens. But they went to the polling station, in a strip mall on Knights Road, to watch American democracy and anticipate their own chance to walk into a voting booth.

"I want to be here," Bhashkar Patel, 65, said in halting English. "So I observe this and [soon] I have the right."

Patel is among a significant number of Indian immigrants settling in the Bucks County community. About 7 percent of Bensalem's population, or 4,152 people, is of Asian Indian descent, according to recent census numbers. There were 2,438 counted in the 2000 census.

On Tuesday, the Asian American Legal Defense and Education Fund, which works to ensure voting access, sent volunteers to survey Asians who voted at the Bensalem polling station.

Among the issues attendant to burgeoning immigrant populations is how to deal with language barriers at the polls.

The English-language requirement for citizenship is minimal, said Jerry Vattamala, a lawyer with the defense and education fund, and voters with limited English can find themselves lost in the voting booth.

He said polling stations should provide assistance to voters with language barriers, including access to translators and allowing voters to bring someone into the voting booth to assist. Assistance is not always available, though.

Indian voters in Bensalem said they had few complaints, in part because several poll volunteers were themselves Indian immigrants.

"I'm helping out people," said Chandresh Patel, an election judge. "Try to help everybody, right?"

Indian poll workers were not specifically recruited, said Deena Dean, Bucks County Board of Elections director, but stepped up on their own to help.

Other volunteers from the defense and education fund were assigned to six polling stations in Philadelphia on Election Day, and there were issues reported, including a Vietnamese voter who could not get access to a translator, and a Chinese voter whose translator spoke such poor Cantonese that the person identified Tom Corbett as the Democratic gubernatorial candidate, a news release from the fund said.

The organization is suing the Philadelphia city commissioners, alleging failing to provide adequate language assistance for voters, which the suit argues violates a municipal nondiscrimination ordinance.

Philadelphia had 19,571 people of Indian descent in 2012, according to American FactFinder. Bucks County, which includes Bensalem, had 11,288, and Pennsylvania had 105,883. Records show 61.5 percent of the state's Indian population lives in Southeastern Pennsylvania.

One of the volunteers in Bensalem, Krishna Bhavsar, was impressed by the sense of community and enthusiasm for voting she saw at the polling station. "There are so many people who are not citizens and are eagerly watching the process and are looking forward to participating," Bhavsar, a Philadelphia lawyer, said.

Bhashkar Patel, the man watching the voting, came to the United States five years ago and is working toward citizenship, he said.

"Next election," he said, "maybe I can vote."

11,288

Asian Indians in Bucks County in 2012.

8,500

in Chester County.

8,525

in Delaware County.

17,244

in Montgomery County.

19,571

in Philadelphia.

105,883

in Pennsylvania.

SOURCE: American FactFinderEndText