Volume 78, Issue 1 | www.elaccampusnews.com | Wednesday, February 23, 2021 | Single copy free - additional copies 50 cents
Executive order may give ‘Dreamers’ citizenship BY JUAN CALVILLO Staff Writer President Joseph R. Biden’s day-one executive orders and the proposed U.S. Citizenship Act of 2021 provide a path to citizenship for many undocumented students, but the order faces some legal challenges. East Los Angeles College’s Dream Resource Center and the Central American Resource Center (CARECEN) held a meeting covering both executive orders and the proposed act on Wednesday. Maria Zavaleta, a law student intern with CARECEN, said there were two batches of executive orders that have come from the Biden administration. The dayone executive orders are meant to strengthen Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals (DACA). “What that executive order does is that it calls on Congress to enact legislation that provides permanent status and a path to citizenship to all ‘Dreamers.’ So it would basically be providing support and pressure to Congress to pass the proposal (U.S. Citizen Act of 2021),” Zavaleta said. “Dreamers” is used to refer to undocumented young people who, through the Dream Act, are given the chance at a pathway to citizenship. Zavaleta said the executive order also includes protections that were given to DACA recipients. She said, per the order, the Secretary of Homeland Security would take actions to make sure that these protections held. A challenge to this comes from a lawsuit filed by the state of Texas. She said anyone who submitted applications for DACA during the previous administration and was denied status was then referred to immigration to be
removed from the country. Texas’ temporary restraining order allows for people who were denied status to still be deported. Zavaleta said the Texas lawsuit, Texas v. United States, creates a temporary restraining order on a proposed 100-day pause on deportations. The lawsuit challenges DACA, and is led by Texas and supported by an additional eight states. Julie Mitchell, managing attorney at CARECEN, said that the Texas lawsuit against DACA has been ongoing for quite some time. She said that there is a possibility that the case could be heard in the Supreme Court. If the U.S. Citizenship Act of 2021 passes, it will make changes to immigration policies as well. The act was proposed on day one of the new administration. Mitchell said there are already some people out there who are taking advantage of uninformed undocumented people by telling them that they qualify for this act. “We’ve already seen attorneys out there, or ‘notarios,’ telling people they can apply for this (U.S. Citizenship Act of 2021). That’s just impossible. It is not a law yet. There's already fraud being committed out there,” Mitchell said. She said the bill that passes as a law will look very different from what is being proposed. The act would help fix many of the problems that are currently plaguing the immigration laws in the country. There is the lawful prospective immigrant status (LPI), that will begin the process for a path to becoming a citizen for undocumented people that have been in the US since January 1, 2021. Mitchell said the status would
ELAC only campus offering Wi-Fi in LACCD BY GABRIELA GUTIERREZ Staff Writer East Los Angeles College is allowing students to access the school Wi-Fi on campus as a result of COVID-19. ELAC has opened the ground floor of parking structure number four (P4) for students who need a place to study or access to Wi-Fi, all from the comfort of their vehicle. The structure is open Monday through Thursday from 7:30 a.m. to 10 p.m. and Friday from 7:30 a.m. to 5 p.m. However, hours of operation are subject to change. According to the announcement posted by the school on students’ LACCD accounts, students who use the parking structure must always remain in their vehicles. Students must check-in and sign out when they leave, take all trash with them and are not allowed to use the restrooms or the water fountains on campus. To access the Wi-Fi, students can sign in with their school ID
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number, beginning with 88 or 90, and use their MyCollege. laccd.edu password. Students are then asked to accept the terms and conditions before being redirected to the campus website, confirming they have received access. According to the LACCD website ELAC is the only school allowing students to use the school Wi-Fi. The parking structure located on the corner of Collegian Avenue and West Floral Drive is mostly quiet aside from the surrounding traffic and is sparse enough for students to practice social distancing safely. There is only one entrance and exit accessible to the parking lot. Several signs have been placed within the structure to indicate where students can park. T h e Wi - F i n e t w o r k i s named LACCDstudents. Since it is a special network created specifically for the parking structure, it was given a different name from the network students would
Cash for College
ELAC Financial Aid will be holding a Cash4college workshop on Friday from 11 a.m. to 1 p.m. Attend at https://laccd.zoom.us/j/93721218250
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take about five years and the person would become eligible, after fulfilling certain requirements, for a Green Card or visa. She said there are exceptions to this process. She said that immigrant farm workers, temporary protected status holders and “Dreamers” would be considered different. She said knowing how farm workers, “ D r e a m e r s ” a n d Te m p o r a r y Protective Status (TPS) holders will be defined and the restrictions won’t be known until the bill becomes a law. “It’s hard because all we have now is the proposal. So, we don’t know how those terms will be defined. Whether ‘Dreamers’ are going to be people who have DACA, or people who would have been eligible for DACA, or if they are going to define ‘Dreamers’ in another way,” Mitchell said. More of the changes can be seen in the graphic alongside this article.
Adding to that confusion is that California is still operating public charge under the definition set by the previous administration. Public charge pertains to immigrants who may become a dependent or unlikely to earn a living in the United States. Mitchell said that immigration and public charge have always been linked. She said it will take more doing by the Biden administaion to affect the previous President's changes to public charge rules. Mitchell said that currently there are many DACA applications being made through CARECEN, and that many attorneys are pushing undocumented people to apply for DACA. She said that if there is a negative outcome in the Texas lawsuit, it would affect all those who have yet to apply. This application can be costly for many undocumented people. The U.S. Citizenship and Immigration Service website has
the information on the fees for consideration of DACA. According to the USCIS website, “The fee to request consideration of deferred action for childhood arrivals, including employment authorization and biometric services, is $495, and cannot be waived.” Mitchell said that the state of California had helped with this fee through the California Department of Social Services. “They haven’t had funds now for–probably around the summer of last year. They are the number one provider of filing fee assistance. And they don't have any funds,” Mitchell said. Mitchell said the Mexican Consulate also helps with filing fees. She said this process was more specific in cases and that up until December of 2020 it had helped. She said that currently they are not providing funds for fees. Mitchell
said that schools have also helped pay the filing fee. Currently that is not the case at ELAC. Elizandro Umana, DRC coordinator, said the role the DRC plays is more on the academic side of things. He said that when it comes to DACA and information concerning it, the DRC relies heavily on the connection they have with CARECEN. With attorneys from CARECEN going to court to represent students. The DRC can not help when it comes to the legalities of DACA when it concerns students. Umana said it comes to the question of what else the DRC and the school can do for the many students at ELAC in this type of legal situation. He said that it would take having a real conversation with the administration at ELAC. Umana said there are things that can be done that other schools might already be doing. “To be quite frank, one of the things that us as the DRC are not necessarily doing here at ELAC, is providing direct aid to undocumented students,” Umana said. He said any emergency money that is being provided to students is done through financial aid. A lot of undocumented students are worried about being able to pay the DACA application or renewal. Umana said the total of applying can end up costing students upwards of $600. He said money aid was just one thing that could be done, and that DACA was only one piece of the larger immigration pie. Umana said that being reactionary is not enough, and that undocumented students should look at the community like ELAC and find those who want to do more than just react. He said that coming together and organizing for immigration change is important at this time.
$18 million additional funds go to student housing Board member cautious in use of COVID relief funds BY JONATHAN BERMUDEZ Staff Writer
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normally use while on campus. Prior to dealing with Covid19 the Wi-Fi would not reach most parking lots on campus. Students had to be on the campus’s main grounds to have reliable Wi-Fi connection. As said in the school’s announcement, the Wi-Fi parking has been established because ELAC is committed to supporting to complete educational goals. Students are not allowed to use the school Wi-Fi for anything other than schoolrelated work. Students can make an appointment to save a parking spot by going to https:// w w w. s i g n u p g e n i u s . c o m / tabs/13577de0faecbefc0ae7laccdparking. For added convenience, the website to sign in also shares how many slots have been occupied out of a total of 100. However, there is the option to drive to the parking structure without an appointment, as spaces are also granted on a first-come-first-serve basis.
The LACCD board of trustees held a meeting to discuss student housing and money that is being lent by the government for the COVID pandemic. Senior Policy Adviser for the law firm Holland and Knight Leslie Pollner, was the first to speak in the meeting. She gave a federal update on President Joe Biden’s rescue plan. She said next week the House Budget Committee will put a care package together and by February 26 the committee will bring it to the floor. Pollner said “The bill includes $40 billion for higher education institutions in addition to funding for K through 12 and the $40 billion for higher education.” “They’re going to distribute it using the same formula that they used in December, which is 50% headcount and 50% FTE (full time employees), which is really great for LACCD.” Pollner believes this is the last covid relief package that they are going to receive, and she wants to use the money cautiously. Dale Shimasaki with Strategic Educational Services, was the next person to talk during the meeting. He went over hearing dates for bills and explained that there would be limits to committees for these hearings due to COVID-19. He went over bills with the committee that were sent by members from lobby day visits last month so the committee
Black History Month HBCU Scholar Panel at ELAC ELAC will host a seminar with the HBCU Scholar Panel on “How Black Creativity Influences Social Transformation” tomorrow from 12:15 p.m. to 1:45 p.m. Register at: https://tinyurl.com/ ELACBlackHistoryMonth
can consider them. These bills include AB 102, which is the removal of sunset date of dual enrollment programs so the program can operate indefinitely and don’t have to come back every two or three years to reauthorize the legislation. Another is AB 295, which provides working groups on public higher education free tuition. The working group tries to find a way to provide tuition free of charge to needy and disadvantaged students. More legislation was added by Trustee Andra Hoffman for AB 396, which is a CalFresh bill. This bill is to certify that they have employment in training programs so that students can apply to CalFresh. Trustee David Vela gave the motion to be moved and was second by Trustee Hoffman. The rest of the meeting centered around updates on funding for school, affordable housing and how they plan to provide more money for students in need. Mark Mcdonald, member of the committee, said that there will be $20 million dollars for outreach and retention. Two million dollars will go to the state chancellor and $18 million to the colleges in the district. He also said that there is $100 million dollars for food and housing that will go through the regular budget process and this will be discussed through June. He said that the Department of Finance proposed that this money would all go to the state chancellor for statewide outreach, but they suggested that
part of that money goes to the community colleges. “ T h e r e ’s n o s p e c i f i c distribution methodology for this. That hasn’t been determined yet. It will go through the Chancellor’s Office. It looks like now it will go out as grants to the district, but that can change.” Trustee Vela said in response in Mcdonald’s presentation. “There’s a lot of misconception that we have cheap housing. The (San Francisco) Bay Area thinks that of us and it’s not the truth actually. We are slowly and steadily climbing as to one of the most expensive cities to live in the United States next to New York and San Francisco,” said Vela. Housing is an important issue to him because he doesn’t want students living in horrible conditions. “We should be ashamed of not really understanding the more economic perspective of our communities and how they are living instead were pushed by a more progressive affluent community who is telling us what to do when it comes to how we should house our students.” That is the biggest concern and how they can remove these barriers to giving money to the community. Mcdonald clarified that the financial plan for the housing money distribution methodology is advantageous to the district. They are going to get more money then if they would have done the formula of distribution differently.
Myths and Truths about the COVID vaccine
ELAC Emergency Preparedness Committee & Student Health Center will be holding a seminar with the Department of Public Health tomorrow from 10 a.m. to 11:15 a.m. Register at https://tinyurl.com/EMP-Vaccine