June 10, 2014
Growing Karen population has court scrambling for interpretersShare
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St. Paul is home to the largest Karen population in the country. They are members of an ethnic minority from Myanmar, where they have long faced persecution and violence. Like Minnesota's Hmong population, many have moved from refugee camps in Thailand. There are now estimated to be more than 7,000 Karen people living in the St. Paul metro area -- more than double their population just four years ago. As the population grows, Ramsey County courts are handling more and more cases involving Karen people. In fact, the number of cases requiring Karen interpreters has increased more than four-fold in the past four years from 66 to 300 cases, said Kazoua Yang, operations supervisor for the interpreters office at the Ramsey County Courts. This has left Yang scrambling to find Karen interpreters. She said there are two Karen interpreters that consistently take cases in Ramsey County, where there are about five cases requiring a Karen interpreter each week.
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