With a packed agenda, Maryland legislators began a new term on Wednesday, keeping in mind the concerns that most affect the Hispanic community.
Among the topics to be discussed is affordable housing and health services, both in our schools and for the undocumented community.
“Right now within Prince George’s County we are asking for $65 billion to provide that affordable housing within the district,” said Maryland State Delegate Deni Taveras.
Delegate Joe Vogel is another of the new faces in the House of Delegates, and one of the youngest.
“One of the first projects I’m going to work on has to do with mental health within our schools. We have a mental health crisis within the schools of the [condado Montgomery] and we have to help create more professionals, psychologists who can deal with these issues and who want to work within our schools,” Vogel said.
For her part, Joselyn Peña-Melnyk, who has been in the House of Delegates for 15 years, stressed the project of her authorship that would guarantee that pregnant and undocumented women can have Medicaid. It will enter into force next July.
“We have a proposal that will allow undocumented people to buy a health insurance policy in the market, which is now prohibited. So we have a proposal where we are going to ask the federal government for permission to be able to implement that policy here in the state of Maryland,” indicated Peña-Melnyk.
Another of the problems that Hispanic families face in the state is the theft of the codes of the cards of the Supplementary Nutritional Assistance Program, known as SNAP.
“Senator Kremer has that proposal in the Senate and I have it here in the [cámara], so we have that proposal as well. She comes to my committee and we are going to introduce her. He will have a hearing maybe in a month to be able to give people protection,” said Peña-Melnyk.