The University of California system is cautiously pursuing a plan that would help undocumented students by giving them on-campus jobs, in a move that could potentially defy the federal authority.
The UC system’s governing board of regents voted in May in favour of developing the plan, saying that the lack of employment options is a major barrier to education for students not regarded as legally living in the US. But no further details of how it will work have since been released.
About 100,000 young immigrants without legal status graduated from US high schools this year, but less than 10 per cent of them even attempt college. California has nearly 45,000 such students – about a fifth of the US total – with about 4,000 of them in the UC system.
“This would be really significant, and life-changing for students,” said an advocate of the California initiative, Miriam Feldblum, executive director of the Presidents’ Alliance on Higher Education and Immigration, which represents more than 550 US college and university presidents and chancellors.
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Attempts to change immigration policy, however, are especially controversial across the US, and federal law generally forbids the hiring of people who are not legally in the country.
With the UC system’s implementation date drawing near, the leaders of the 10-campus grouping of top-ranked public institutions still have not put their promised programme in place, and are not guaranteeing they will.
A team formed by the regents to study the idea “continues to receive direct student feedback as their work progresses to determine whether, how and when to implement next steps by the end of November”, the UC system said, reiterating its months-long position on the matter.
University of California officials acknowledge their idea is based on an untested interpretation of a 1986 federal law that forbids any “person or other entity” hiring a person illegally in the country. Their argument is that state governments are not covered by that definition – since states are generally referenced directly by federal law when that is intended – thereby clearing the way for many public universities that are legally part of their state governments to hire undocumented students.
The Biden administration has not publicly expressed its position on the University of California’s proposed interpretation of the federal law, and administration officials declined to answer questions about it.
Conditions for students without legal status worsened in 2017 when the Trump administration formally ended the Obama-era Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals programme, leaving its future subject to court fights. Known as Daca, the legal framework allowed work permits and protection from deportation for large numbers of youth brought to the US as children by illegal immigrant family members.
Dr Feldblum said she has not heard of university leaders in any other states considering embracing California’s attempt to hire undocumented students. But even if that tactic did not succeed, she said, states should consider other approaches, including a California system of providing educational experiences that include job-like training, which includes a financial stipend for participants.
That kind of programme, which differs legally from employment, should be more widely adopted in other states, Dr Feldblum said. “All campuses should at this point try to pursue non-employment-based opportunities to enable experiential learning for undocumented students,” she added.
