Si Se Pueden! Two Latina Yale Grads Honored In DC For Their Impact
In 1793, the first woman in history passed the entrance exam to Yale University—but she was not allowed to attend the all-male institution. It took 180 years—1973—before the first woman actually graduated from Yale’s four year undergraduate program. Now on March 7, 2019, Kamala Lopez (actress and filmmaker) and Araceli Campos (founder and director of Los Angeles County’s “Women & Girls Initiative”) were among five Yale alums to be awarded the first national Impact award by the University’s YaleWomen organization at a banquet and ceremony at the National Press Club. They personify Hispanic women’s patience, passion and persistence for justice.
Kamala spoke to The Hispanic Outlook on Education about her passion for passing the Equal Rights Amendment—which has taken more than half as long as women to graduate from Yale—94 years—to be ratified as a constitutional amendment by 38 states. The ERA was first introduced in 1923! “Now it has only one state to go!” Kamala said with determination after showing her prize-winning documentary “Equal Means Equal” on March 6 to the Woman’s National Democratic Club in D.C. It was just a few days after Virginia—the hoped-for final ERA signator—suddenly was unable to pass the bill out of committee. Kamala is committed to having the ERA pass in the next year—possibly by Hispanic-rich Arizona. She is also prepared to convince the U.S. Congress to extend its 1984 expiration date for ratification.
ACE Supports DREAMers As Congress Re-Introduces A Failed Bill
There were almost no sessions on the agenda of the annual three-day packed conference of the American Council on Education in Philadelphia March 8-10 that dealt with the specific challenges in higher education of Hispanic heritage students. But ACE President Ted Mitchell opened the conference with a statement urging Congressional Action to Support DREAMers on the day the House Judiciary Committee held a hearing to discuss the “new” Dream and Promise Act of 2019. There had been hopes that the new bill in the now Democratic majority Congress would at last bring DREAMers and DACA recipients permanent legalization—especially since they had disappeared from almost all debates about immigration and the wall after the last government shutdown in 2018.
But the “new” bill is just a regurgitation of the “Dream Act of 2017” with several features that made it fatal before in addition to some new ones. Mainly, the bill would give green cards—Legal Permanent Residency permits—a “pathway to citizenship”—to four times more immigrants who are in the country illegally than before—from about one million to over four million. That’s because it raises the maximum age for entry from 16 to 18; lowers the number of years DREAMer applicants have be in the states before applying from five years to four and makes the required entrance date from 2007 to four years before the date of passage.
Besides having no English language requirements, the new Dream Act does not have any requirements for either education attainment or military service, nor any restrictions due to legal convictions. It also would give permanent status to millions of immigrants who came in legally on temporary permits and then knowingly overstayed them as adults. It also would give permanent status to hundreds of thousands of migrants who knowingly came in on TEMPORARY emergency protected status non-immigration permits. Critiques say the numbers to be permanently legalized is too high and that temporary permits are rendered meaningless by this bill—it will only encourage, not end future illegal immigration.
Actually Getting Fed Money For Approved Programs Is Complicated
Most people in higher education understand the legislative process fairly well—what it takes to get a program into a bill and eventually law. But once a bill is formulated, actually getting the funds that will pay for the program’s operations is complicated.
Briefly, funding goes through multiple steps and can involve all three branches of government. Those include:
• a cost review by the congressional review process
• inclusion in the bill’s budget
• approval of the costs in the appropriations process
• inclusion in the passed bill’s budget
• allocation of actual funds once the bill is a law
• inclusion of the allocation in the agency budget
• actual dispersal of the funds to cover program costs
The first four steps involve Congress. But the next three are the charge of the executive branch—ultimately the president who can change a budget priority to do what s/he thinks is best in order to operate “his/her” executive agency efficiently—especially for a declared emergency. The judicial branch may get involved if a constitutional violation is charged. •
