Student Senate introduced two new pieces of legislation at their next-to-last meeting of the semester.
One bill, authored by Hispanic-American Senator Alejandra Aguirre and Lyle Senator Claudia Sandoval, is a resolution to support the DREAM Act. Bill authors said the resolution is only intended to be a statement of support.
“We have students here at SMU who are undocumented, and they are top students. They don’t receive federal aid, so they have to be here on some type of scholarship or they’re paying out of pocket,” Sandoval said. “And unfortunately when they graduate because they are undocumented they won’t be able to go and apply for jobs and use that degree. So that’s one of the ways we see this benefiting our students who are here.”
The DREAM act would apply to undocumented students who have been in the U.S. before they were 16, lived in the U.S. for at least five years, do not have a criminal background, and either attended college for at least two years or joined the military.
Bill authors explained that the bill wouldn’t automatically grant citizenship to undocumented students, but it would allow them to seek residency status and put them on a pathway to become active members in their community.
The authors said they gathered postcards from students who support the DREAM Act and that this shows the student body is supportive, although they did not specify the number of students who signed postcards.
The resolution originally contained a paragraph which grieved over a recent bill passed by the student government at Texas A&M, which would ban in-state tuition for undocumented students. The bill authors took out the paragraph after Dedman II Senator Alex Ehmke protested its presence.
“Do y’all think it’s a good idea to start calling out other institutions on bills that their student governments pass and to start sniping between colleges?” he said.
Parliamentarian Joseph Esau and Law Senator Jason Sharp introduced a bill that would amend current Senate policies and procedures. The bill changes some of the wording in the policies and procedures documents to provide consistency between the Finance Committee’s current policies and Student Senate.
Student Body President travels to College Station
Jake Torres will be traveling to Texas A&M today to speak to their student government about his disagreement with their passing of a bill that would deny in-state tuition to undocumented students.
“I think it’s the first step in a slippery slope of trying to get involved in national politics in a way that I don’t think is beneficial to the students at Texas A&M or to the students of Texas or the United States in general,” he said.
The bill’s authors say the bill opposes a state law that’s in violation of federal law and that it doesn’t discriminate against undocumented immigrants.
A&M Student Body President Jacob Robinson later vetoed the bill. He said the bill is a state issue, not a university issue and that the bill did not address the real problem: residency.
Torres said he would not be acting in an official capacity.
“I’m just going as Jake Torres,” he said.
Torres has spoken to Senate about his planned visit and tried to see if anyone else wanted to go with him. No one else is planned to accompany him.
Although he understands where the A&M student government is coming from, Torres says he disagrees.
“I think that right now the state of immigration is in desperate need of reform, but I don’t think bills like the one they passed” are helping the situation, he said.
