El secretario de Educación Miguel Cardona, fue muy claro: el congelamiento de los pagos de préstamos estudiantiles que duró años está llegando a su fin. “El período de emergencia llegó a su fin y en consecuencia estamos preparando a nuestros prestatarios para poder reiniciar el proceso”, testificó Cardona la semana pasada durante una audiencia del […]
Author Archives: Patricia Guadalupe
Raised in Puerto Rico, Patricia Guadalupe is a bilingual multimedia journalist based in Washington, D.C., covering the capital for both English and Spanish-language media outlets. She is also an adjunct professor in the School of Communication at American University in Washington, D.C., and with the Washington bureau of the South Florida Media Network at Florida International University. She is a graduate of Michigan State University and has a Master’s from the Graduate School of Political Management at George Washington University.
Posted inOpinion
COMMENTARY: Student loan payment freeze is ending
Almost 70% of Latino student borrowers have current debt, says a report by the Education Data Initiative. The same report says that Latino borrowers were “the most likely” of any race or ethnic group to delay marriage and children because of student loan debt, and are the second-most likely (after Black Americans) to borrow high amounts from private lenders – close to 70% of Latino students who borrow from private lenders take out loans of $40,000 or more.
Posted inOpinion
COMMENTARY: Democrats criticize Biden sending troops to the border
Members of the president’s own party are smacking down the plan for troops at the U.S.-Mexico border around the same time that Biden announces his reelection bid. So the administration’s strategy appears to stress that the military deployment is temporary (just 90 days, for now) and that it has been done in the past, including during the Obama administration. Then-president Obama sent nearly 1,500 military to the southern border, and they were there for nearly a year at one point.
Posted inEspañol
COMENTARIO: Con el fin de la emergencia de COVID las vacunas costarán dinero
2 de mayo de 2023 En vísperas de la cancelación oficial de la emergencia nacional de salud pública por la pandemia del coronavirus, la administración Biden se enfoca en garantizar que la comunidad latina y otras poblaciones desatendidas no se queden atrás y sigan gozando del mismo acceso a vacunas y otros servicios. Como se […]
Posted inOpinion
COMMENTARY: The COVID emergency ending means vaccines will cost money
One key provision that is disappearing is the continuous enrollment of Medicaid, which means that up to 14 million low-income persons could lose Medicaid coverage. States can apply for waivers, while others, as Secretary Becerra mentioned, are working with the federal government and community groups to make sure no one gets left out.
Posted inOpinion
COMMENTARY: Tributes to Trailblazer Gloria Molina
Molina was the first Latina elected to the California State Assembly and served there from 1983-1987, and then became the first Latina elected to the Los Angeles City Council in 1987, followed by being the first Latina elected to the Los Angeles County Board of Supervisors in 1991. She served on the powerful and influential county board for 23 years, retiring in 2014 due to term limits, capping 32 years in public service in the state’s largest city and the second-most populous in the country.
Posted inOpinion
COMMENTARY: Federal agencies haven’t met contract goals for Latino businesses
Last year, President Biden signed an executive order directing every federal agency and department to set 15 percent as a targeting goal for contracting and doing business with Latino- and Latina-owned businesses. There are five million Latina- and Latino-owned businesses in the country, contributing more than $800 billion to the economy annually.
Posted inOpinion
COMMENTARY: U.S. Senators introduce DACA bill
The Dream Act of 2023 is just the latest alliteration and has been introduced in the last three sessions of Congress, but similar versions have been introduced – and at one point even passed the U.S. House of Representatives only to never see the light of day in the upper chamber. And while some legislators might say the ninth time’s a charm, others aren’t so convinced, in part because even supporters of granting permanent legal status to DREAMers and others seeking a path to U.S. citizenship complain that legislators constantly use DREAMers in particular as a pawn for greater security measures along the U.S.-Mexico border.
Posted inPolitics
COMMENTARY: Marco Davis and cultivating Latino Leaders
Marco Davis, a former Obama administration official, grew up in the New York City area as the son of a Jamaican father and Mexican mother, and is a graduate of Yale University. He brings more than two decades of public policy and community service experience as CHCI’s sixth president and describes how he felt when he was first approached for the top CHCI job.
Posted inOpinion
COMMENTARY: Could California have two U.S. Latino/a/x senators?
Politicians are eyeing the senate seat of Dianne Feinstein. Could California see two Latinos in the U.S. Senate? One name floating around is former Los Angeles congressman and Health and Human Services Secretary Xavier Becerra. While he hasn’t commented about it – and wouldn’t as a sitting Cabinet secretary anyway – Becerra is on a hypothetical short list that includes former Los Angeles Mayor Antonio Villaraigosa, among others.
Posted inOpinion
COMMENTARY: Biden Administration must do more on immigration
Biden has not done enough on immigration. The Biden administration promised to get rid of the Trump-era Title 42, a presidential executive order that allows U.S. immigration officials to turn away migrants at the U.S. borders without a hearing. Immigrant advocates called the program a clear slam at immigrants, and while the current administration says it wants to see it end as it wends its way through the courts, the Biden White House has proposed to deal with an influx of immigrants by allowing a certain number of migrants each month – 30,000 – from Cuba, Haiti, Nicaragua, and Venezuela on “parole” if they pass a background check and if they have financial sponsors here in the states. The White House has not said why migrants from those particular countries would be allowed in and others left out.
Posted inOpinion
COMMENTARY: Congress wraps with no action on farm workers or DACA
The massive $1.7 trillion – trillion with a T – bill of which the farmworkers and DREAMers legislation would have been a part of includes a funding boost for the U.S. Border Patrol, which is in line to hire several hundred new agents for what the agency says is an expected influx at the U.S.-Mexico border if Title 42 ends.